Recollections of Thirty-nine Years in the Army

Three Corps d’Armée, comprising more than one hundred thousand men, under the commands of Ducrot, Vinoy, and Bellemere, had taken, or were in progress of taking up positions under cover of Mont Valérien against the Prussian lines between Montretout and Bugeval, the prevailing fog so dense that assigned routes could not be maintained; several hours were thus lost. The French troops were consequently worn out with fatigue; portions of them had not arrived in position, among others considerable bodies of artillery, so that when about 9 a.m. the fight began, they had not been consolidated. On the other hand, the larger forces against whom they were led were unfatigued by night march and other difficulties; they had passed the night in relative quiet, had good and ample rations, and were in full physical strength. With all these disadvantages the first onslaught against the enemy’s positions at Montretout and Fouilleuse was successful. Thence, toward the French right, the combat quickly developed in fury; no fewer than five hundred cannon, including both sides, were estimated as engaged in their deadly work, excluding those of Mont Valérien, missiles from which whizzed above our heads in their flight towards the German lines. On our side, shells from the latter fell as it were from the zenith among the masses of advancing infantry, making great gaps, as each successive cloud of débris from their explosions cleared away. From Fouilleuse we were able to see the terrible violence with which the fight now raged. There the Société Internationale des Secours aux Blessés established a field ambulance; many wounded received first aid, and thence were dispatched to “fixed” establishments within the city. To reinforce the troops engaged, whose losses were already very great, large bodies of men from those in reserve marched laboriously towards the front. The ground was soaked by rain, their progress slow and difficult, themselves weary, fatigued, and physically weak. In their advance they came upon many carcases of horses killed by German shells, some of the men falling out of their ranks to cut from them slices of bleeding flesh; having secured them on their backs, they resumed their places, and so onward towards the enemy. Meanwhile, a horrible scene was taking place in close proximity to the place where, mounted, I stood with a group of Staff officers. A private of the 119th regiment of the line shot the captain of his company while their battalion was advancing, and torn by vertical fire as already mentioned. Ducrot ordered the man to be put to death on the spot. A party of his own regiment was at once detailed for the purpose; by it he was taken aside – not more than a few feet from the left of the advancing column; he was seen to fall. A party of brancardiers approached; they were warned off; one of the execution party levelled his rifle and fired at him as he lay struggling on the ground; then another; then a third, and now the unhappy man lies still in death. We speculated among ourselves as to the circumstances that may have led him to commit the crime so expiated.

As day advanced the thick mist of morning cleared away, revealing the progress of battle and extent of field on which it raged. That the French were more exposed than were the enemy was at once apparent; yet, though suffering greatly by shot and shell from unseen batteries, they stood their ground with obstinacy, inured as they had now become to combat by their four months of experience. Later on, however, hesitation is shown in their ranks; stragglers drop away; needlessly large numbers310 accompany to the rear their wounded comrades; unsteadiness affects battalions; and now the sad spectacle is seen Of one such body in flight down the declivity adjoining Montretout. Officers make frantic efforts to rally their men; daylight fades in gloom; soon night closes in, mist again covers the scene; firing from both sides have ceased; all around is dark and silent.

In the darkness for hours did the ambulance men of various societies traverse the field in pursuance of their work. As conveyances were in progress towards the general rendezvous, confusion and crush increased, as a combined result of darkness and an absence of regular roadways; progress consequently so retarded that night was far advanced when we reached the rampart gates, our conveyances complet with wounded men. As on the first occasion, roadsides and avenues within Port Maillot were crowded with people. Loud and anxious inquiries for relatives and friends who had taken part in the recent battle were frequent; frivolity in abeyance, as if experience had impressed upon them the significance of combat against our besiegers. That the result of the day had been disastrous to the French was speedily realized. Next day the casualties among the forces engaged were estimated at 1000 killed, the greater number by artillery fire; the wounded as “very many.”

Meanwhile the work of bombarding Paris, scarcely if at all interfered with by the incident of severe conflict just narrated, was increased rather than diminished in its intensity; new batteries opened upon the city, with acharnement, shells falling upon places hitherto untouched. St. Denis was assailed, and underwent greater destruction in respect to property and life than had been sustained by the capital itself. A rush of people from that suburb took place, causing serious inconvenience to those whose duty it was to provide them with accommodation and food. All hopes of deliverance had become extinguished; negotiations were accordingly opened with the German Chancellor in view to an armistice being arranged. While they were in progress, bombardment continued with its usual violence. Early in the night of the 26th there was a sudden lull; a few minutes before midnight there was discharged upon us a volley from all points of the circle, such as we had never previously experienced; then followed stillness. Bombardment had ceased; we knew that the Convention had been signed. For 130 days Paris had been besieged; during thirty, the advanced forts had been bombarded; during twenty-one, the city.311

Demonstrations by “the dangerous classes” of Belleville and Vilette took place; their plea, the terms on which the armistice had been concluded. The Hôtel de Ville was menaced by crowds of excited men, gesticulating wildly as they shouted, “Vive la Commune!” They are dispersed by force of arms; several of their numbers killed, many more wounded. There is a flight towards the Mazas prison; an entrance thereto is effected, some of the more noted of its inmates released. A rush is made upon the small remaining food stores of their arrondissements; they are broken into, their contents distributed among the assailants. After a time these disturbances are suppressed. Trochu has resigned his command; Vinoy is his successor.

When on January 27, 1871, the morning papers published the terms of amnesty, the fact was one of common knowledge that the stock of food remaining was not equal to more than six or seven days’ “rations,” even according to the reduced scale to which the besieged were at the time brought down; in fact, all were now at starvation point as a result of gradually diminishing allowances of food. Next day the Germans occupied Mont Valérien as the French troops marched out of it. Some hours later appeared a proclamation by the Government of the Defence announcing that “the Convention which terminates the resistance of Paris will be signed in a few hours”; that “we could not have prolonged the resistance without condemning to certain death two millions of men, women, and children. Mortality has increased threefold.” “We come out with all our honour,” the same document said, “and with all our hopes, in spite of our present grief.” In accordance with the terms agreed upon, the process began of disarming the citizen soldiers, of whom groups along the thoroughfares showed by their gloomy style and demeanour those pent-up feelings of disaffection which were soon to break out in the horrors of the Commune.

The conditions to which Paris and its people had been reduced were urgent. Severe cold, absolute want of fuel, the insufficient scale of food to which all were officially limited, prevailing sickness and mortality by disease, added to the recurring influx of wounded as a result of desultory conflicts beyond the line of fortifications, combined to render further resistance impossible.

All establishments set apart for the reception of wounded were overcrowded. Not alone food, but appliances were insufficient in quantity and kind. In many instances private families had received wounded into their houses, and so crippled their own resources. The result of the recent sortie and action at Montretout was an accession to the numbers requiring care and accommodation of three to five thousand, for actual statistics were unobtainable; professional and other attendants were insufficient to meet the demands on their services; while, as if still further to complicate matters, the Germans sent several hundred wounded French into the city, and so lightened the work of their own establishments.

In some ambulances such scenes were to be seen as French and German wounded occupying adjoining beds; no longer “enemies,” but helpless; unable to communicate with each other; many destined to quit the place in death, for hospital diseases setting at defiance disinfection and all other supposed preventive measures proved fatal to a large proportion of patients within those establishments. A heavy offensive odour, that of pourriture, pervades wards and corridors of the buildings, extending to the streets or boulevards immediately adjoining. In the mortuary of a large hospital the scene presented was too horrible for detailed description.

The defence now ended had been carried on at a cost in human life in respect to which reliable statistics were unobtainable. According to one account, deaths on the field of battle and in ambulances amounted among troops of the line and Mobiles to 50,000; to another to 63,000; to a third to 73,000; neither estimate taking into account mortality by disease and privation among the non-military inhabitants. On the capitulation of Paris the troops who became prisoners of war numbered about 180,000; the fortress guns “captured” by the enemy 1,500 field pieces and 400 mitrailleuses; in addition the gunboats on the Seine, locomotives, and rolling stock.

While making my round among the ambulances, I was somewhat surprised to hear myself accosted by name by a wounded man who occupied one of the beds past which I was moving. At once I entered into conversation with him, naturally enough expressing sympathy for him. He briefly informed me that he was in the 101st (British) Regiment, and landed with that corps at Gosport on the occasion of its first arrival in England from India; that he remembered me on duty there; that having left the regiment he joined the Francs Tireurs of Paris at the beginning of the siege; that fifty per cent. of his comrades had perished by shot, disease, or at the hands of the Germans, into which they may have fallen as prisoners; that he himself had not slept in a bed for three months until brought to the ambulance wounded. He was but one example of the material of which such volunteers were composed, and a similar story to his could doubtless be told by many others.

Under the circumstances to which we were now reduced, welcome was the news that supplies of food sent to the besieged from England and elsewhere had arrived in proximity of the outskirts; credit must be accorded to the supreme officers of the investing force for the rapidity with which those supplies were forwarded to the now starving people within, so that on the last day of January many waggon loads were received, and forthwith distributed. On that day also postal communication with the outer world was re-established, though with the proviso that letters dispatched should be unsealed.

CHAPTER XXXII

1871. FEBRUARY. PARIS AFTER CAPITULATION

Food in abundance – Theatrical parody – Contrasted conditions – Preparations for German entry – Causes assigned for defeat – Citizen and regular soldiers – Distributing food.

Renewed disturbances inaugurated the month of February. The central market, in which were the food stores arriving from without, was again attacked and pillaged; nor were the rioters dispersed until a strong military force arrived on the spot. Further supplies came pouring into the city, until within a few days there was abundance everywhere; all restrictions on sale removed; restaurants recovered much of their ordinary aspect. From London came large quantities of food, and of appliances for wounded; a donation from the city to the Municipality of Paris. The whole of those supplies, in accordance with such terms, were divided among the twenty arrondissements of Paris, with the result that a large share fell to the dangerous classes so often alluded to; comparatively little to the professional and other respectable classes who all through the times of greatest trial had borne their privations in silence. Within a few days thereafter, so profuse had been the supplies issued that large quantities, exposed for sale in shops, could be purchased at less than their ordinary retail price. But money wherewith to make purchases had not yet come into the hands of those most in want.

The urgency of conditions among the “better” classes alluded to was known to those of us who had passed through the difficulties of the siege now at an end; proffered suggestions in regard to issuing food and other requirement to them were ignored by those in charge. Thus came about the undesirable state of things that the disaffected and dangerous among the population had more than they could make use of; the orderly and reputable obtained little, if anything, to relieve their necessities. An Englishman applied at the mairie of the 9th Arrondissement for help in food from the don anglais received. He was asked, “Are you really much in want to-day?” “Very much,” was his reply, “or else I should not have wasted the day by coming here.” So they gave him a halfpenny biscuit, a square inch of cheese, and three lumps of sugar, but not until he had been kept waiting several hours! That is but one illustration.

While on the one side the scenes just mentioned were in progress as an outcome of well-meant liberality on the part of our own country, others were to be seen, the style of which presented to us foreigners a phase of Parisian characteristics altogether new. In a theatre close to the Porte St. Martin, the privations and various other painful incidents of the siege were parodied much to the apparent amusement of the crowded house. Comment on the “performances” in question is best omitted.

Fugitives who had abandoned their houses while investment of the city was incomplete returned in daily increasing numbers, to find for the most part that stores of food and wine they had left behind were non-existent, they having been taken possession of meanwhile. Railway passenger traffic was resumed; on the Seine the bateaux mouches conveyed crowds of sightseers to the various river stations, near which the most interesting relics of the siege might be seen, including dismantled forts, dilapidated houses, devastated grounds, and burial places of victims of the war. For the payment of the indemnity to the Germans in accordance with terms of Convention it became necessary to raise a special loan. No sooner were the terms312 of that Convention published than the people took it up with enthusiasm; from morning till night queues of intending subscribers,313 from sums of a few francs to thousands, occupied the pavements in the vicinity of the offices where their contributions were to be received. Nothing could better indicate the frugality of the Parisian masses in respect to available money than the fact that a sufficient sum was thus quickly and readily obtained to enable the municipality to pay to the German authorities at Versailles the first moiety – namely, one hundred millions of francs – of that indemnity. Return to the ordinary conditions of the capital went on; shops were re-opened; the windows made gay with merchandise; gas re-lighted in the thoroughfares at night. Supplies of provisions and of money in large sums, sent from various sources, continued to arrive, one noteworthy contribution of the latter kind being 112,000 francs from Mexico. The process of disarming the troops was still in progress, until the numbers should be reached in accordance with the preliminaries already determined. The Government of the Defence gave place to the National Assembly. The armistice was extended, first from the 19th to 24th of February, then from the latter date to March 12, the Treaty of Peace being signed on 26th of that first named. Part of that Convention was that German troops should enter Paris, and occupy part of the capital until the ratification of the Treaty by the Assembly. Great excitement and threatened outbreak among the lower orders was the immediate result, while the papers of the day fanned rather than moderated popular ill-feeling by rhodomontade and calumnies in their columns.

Preparatory to the entrance of the German forces, it was determined that those of Paris should occupy quarters for the time being on the left side of the Seine; that the duty of maintaining order should be confided to the Garde Nationale. The citizen soldiers “magnanimously” offered to take charge of the artillery guns, for the removal of which horses were non-existent; the whole were collected and “parked” in the Parc de Monceau, though at the time questions arose as to the means by which they were again to be got from the hands of those to whom they had so fallen. Signs of probable disturbance multiplied apace; barricades were erected in some of the principal thoroughfares; fights occurred between the most violent elements of the populace and the Garde Nationale, with the result that some of the guns were taken possession of by the former.

Brought in contact with representatives of various classes of society, political and religious opinion, opportunity was afforded me to note the views expressed by them respectively as to the causes to which the present humiliation of Paris and of France was considered to be due. It was my custom to record the several opinions expressed in conversation as soon as I had an opportunity of doing so. I reproduce them as follows, rather than in a classified order, namely: —

1. The empire was looked upon as “expended.”

2. The manhood of Paris and of France had become degenerated in physique; the sick and the relatively weak having been alone left after the wars of the 1st Napoleon to propagate their kind.

3. The study of the military sciences had been neglected; officers underwent examination rather for the purpose of obtaining appointments than to attain proficiency in knowledge of their profession.

4. Defects in administration by the Intendance, and general obstructiveness in that branch of the service.

5. Over-centralization, so that when emergency of war occurred, no corps was complete in itself; materiel had to be obtained from Paris, means of transport and roads being at once blocked in consequence.

6. The soldiers being allowed to give their votes at elections, their sympathies were diverted to their political parties rather than with their military commanders.

7. Want of mutual confidence between officers from the highest to the lowest rank; between officers and their men, and between the men themselves.314 In fact, general mistrust prevails where confidence should exist.

8. The officers to a great extent being members of the same class of society to which the rank and file belong, there is an absence of that deference towards them by the latter, such as is considered essential to the maintenance of the highest order of discipline. From this and other circumstances there was said to exist a deplorable state of indiscipline, of which indeed some striking illustrations occurred during the siege.

9. Laxity of discipline among the higher officers, due to the (assigned) circumstance that the deposed Emperor manifested hesitancy and uncertainty with regard to punishments for shortcomings and offences on their part.

10. A spirit of impatience of control and of opposition against authority, fostered by the conditions of social life in France, including the absence of domesticity, and, as a consequence, of lively affection between parents and children, and among children themselves, many of whom spend their early years among strangers.

11. The expenses connected with the unfortunate expedition to Mexico had so far exceeded the estimate, that the Emperor “feared” to make public the whole of the circumstances connected therewith; hence it was considered necessary to divert to their liquidation money obtained nominally for current military purposes. Thus it was asserted the actual condition of military establishments differed from that represented on paper.

12. A general lowering of the moral sense, of which the religious sentiment is the first great principle.

To this somewhat imposing list I append the subjoined, which was subsequently collated while perusing various works relative to the Franco-Prussian war, namely: —

(a) Absolute unpreparedness of a war, which was begun “with frivolity without parallel.”

(b) General maladministration.

(c) Antagonism between the Paris and Provincial Governments.

(d) Misrepresentations of actual conditions contained in official Proclamations and in organs of the Press.

(e) Political divisions and sub-divisions among the people, whether official or non-official.

(f) Antagonism of interests and personal considerations among the higher administrators and commanders.

(g) Disturbances fomented and brought about by agitators.

(h) The inferior military qualities of a large portion of the citizen-soldiers.

(i) Social immorality. For a long time past piety and moral earnestness have been much shaken in French society; the cancer of frivolity and immorality has eaten into the heart of the people.

That several of the defects above enumerated are real is beyond all question, even when allowance is made for those which are perhaps more theoretical than actual. Some had special reference to the episode of the war from which France was about to emerge heavily crippled; others have a prospective significance; nor is it easy to conceive of success, so long as they are permitted to continue.

Adverting to the non-military qualities already mentioned, and to the conduct in face of the enemy displayed by the extemporised citizen-soldiers, to whom per force of circumstances the defence of Paris had to a considerable extent to be confided, the fact is noteworthy and suggestive that, having become to some extent acquainted with the use of arms and with war, they became transformed into very dangerous elements when the Commune was declared. It was then that they fought resolutely against the Versailles forces, and committed many of the atrocities by which that occasion was to be disgraced.315 Of the troops belonging to the regular army, however, it is their due to observe that in actual combat the gallantry displayed by them could not be exceeded; no more could their patient endurance under the difficulties, privations, and general hardships incidental to the siege. But individual qualities were overbalanced by the disadvantages and evils just enumerated.

No sooner had the gates of Paris been opened, under provision of the armistice, than my coadjutor316 with the Germans performed to me the good and brotherly act of bringing for myself, and for distribution among my friends and other persons whom I knew to be in necessitous circumstances, not only liberal supplies of food, but also considerable sums of money, contributed by charitable persons to me unknown. It was a source of lively satisfaction to be able thus to aid individuals and some institutions; and in the performance of that most pleasant task several incidents occurred the recollection of which is still fresh. A few examples must suffice. One lady, to whom I carried a fowl, among other articles, was prostrate in bed, her physical powers reduced by starvation to an extremely low ebb. When I told her that she was simply dying from want of food, her reply was that she really had no appetite; she did not think she could eat anything if she had it; yet when I supplied her with some savoury morsels to be used at once, and then the fowl to be cooked later on, her face brightened, she half raised herself in bed, and clutched the little articles I had brought to her. Another lady, to whom I presented some balls of butter, rolled up separately in bits of newspaper, did not delay to unfold the packet, but took a mouthful of the whole, including butter and paper. Being informed that I had a few red herrings for distribution, she next day drove to my hotel in her well-equipped carriage to receive one317 of those savoury fish. The “Little Sisters of the Poor” were astounded and delighted to be presented with a small cartload of mutton, bread, eggs, butter, and various other articles; for the aged paupers, to whose care till death they devoted themselves, had been reduced to extreme want, not a few having succumbed under their privations. In accordance with invitation from the Lady Superior, I visited their establishment to receive expressions of gratitude from its inmates, and in the course of my visit was shown through a ward in the uppermost storey into which a Prussian shell had penetrated, and where some of the old, decrepid inmates had there and then died of fright. A Roman Catholic Seminary sent a representative to express the thanks of its inmates for supplies given to them. As I subsequently was informed, the nurses in an ambulance that I similarly aided danced round the table on which the supplies were displayed, while they invoked blessings on my head. Some British subjects to whom I was able to give assistance in food and money were most grateful. As regards myself, what I most craved for, and indulged in when opportunity offered, was fried fat bacon and fruit, more especially apples.