army passed through Rheims. Anxious, and knowing that
everything depended on speed, he addressed some columns as
they toiled onwards, reminding them that French soldiers had
marched thirty miles a day under the sun of Africa. The
difference, however, was great between raids made by a few
light regiments and the advance of a raw unwieldy mass; and
though the marshal endeavoured to hurry them forward, he was
confronted with almost insurmountable obstacles. Scarcely had
the army made a march towards establishing itself at
Bethniville, on the Suippe, when commissariat difficulties
obliged him to re-approach the line of the railway. He made a
movement on his left, and reached Rethel on the 24th, in order
to obtain for his troops several days' subsistence. This
distribution occupied the whole of the 25th. ... As the
direction of the French movement could not now be concealed,
at this point MacMahon made arrangements for marching with all
possible rapidity. It may be doubted, however, whether
Napoleon himself, at the head of the grand army could have
made the haste which the marshal designed with his raw and
partly demoralized troops. ... His army was altogether unequal
to forced marches, and moved at this critical moment with the
sluggishness inherent in its defective organization.
Encumbered with stragglers, badly pioneered, and checked by
hindrances of every kind, it made hardly ten miles a day; and
it was the 27th of August before its right column, still far
from the Meuse, passed through Vouziers, and the left reached
Le Chêne. ... On the 27th it was openly boasted of in Paris
that MacMahon had gained at least forty-eight hours' start of
the Crown Prince, and his coming success was firmly counted on
by the imperialist cabinet, whereas, in reality, the whole
scheme was foiled beforehand by Von Moltke's and General
Blumenthal's prompt combination. ... If in fighting, in the
boldness of their cavalry, the activity of their staff, the
cool firing of their infantry, and the skilful tactical use of
their guns, the superiority of the Germans to their
antagonists had been already proved; it only required the
contrast now presented between the movements of the two armies
to show, that in no point had the difference of training and
moral feeling told more in favour of the invaders than in that
of the marching, on which the elder Napoleon so often relied
for his advantage over these very Germans. ... Between the
27th and the morning of the 29th, the right column of the
French army had only its outposts at Buzancy, while the left,
though its outposts touched Stenay, was only at Stonne and
Beaumont, both columns spreading a long way backward; in other
words, they were still a march from the Meuse, which they
ought to have passed three days before, and their rearward
divisions were yet distant. The German armies, from the 26th
to the 29th, made astonishing exertions to close on MacMahon
as he crossed towards the Meuse, and success was already
within their grasp. The force of the Crown Prince of Saxony,
in two columns, had reached the Meuse at Dun on the 27th, and
was thus in a position to arrest and retard the vanguard of
the French whenever it attempted to cross the river. Meanwhile
the army of the Crown Prince of Prussia, hastening forward by
Varennes and Grand Prè, and to the left by Senuc and Suippe,
had arrived close to the line of march of MacMahon's right
column, and by the evening of the 28th had occupied it about
Vouziers. A step farther, and this immense army would be upon
the positions of the luckless French, who, assailed in flank
and rear by superior numbers, could not fail to be involved in
terrible disaster. ... MacMahon [on the 27th], observing that
the enemy so completely surrounded him, felt more than ever
satisfied that it would be impossible to carry out the plan
which had been prescribed to him at Paris; and to save, if
possible, the sole army which France had at her disposal, he
accordingly resolved to turn back in a westerly direction. ...
{1384}
The same evening he sent ... [a] telegram to the Count
Palikao, at Paris. ... In reply to this, the government sent a
telegram to the emperor at eleven o'clock the same night,
telling him that if they abandoned Bazaine there would
certainly be a revolution in Paris, and they would themselves
be attacked by all the enemy's forces. ... The emperor admits
that he could unquestionably have set this order aside, but
'he was resolved not to oppose the decision of the regency,
and had resigned himself to submit to the consequences of the
fatality which attached itself to all the resolutions of the
government.' 'As for MacMahon, he again bowed to the decision
intimated to him from Paris, and once more turned towards
Metz. These orders and counter-orders naturally occasioned
further delay, and the French headquarters had reached no
farther than Stonne on the 28th. ... On Monday, August 29, De
Failly occupied the country between Beaumont and Stonne, on
the left bank of the Meuse; while the main body of the French
army, under MacMahon in person, had crossed the river, and
were encamped on the right bank at Vaux, between Mouzon and
Carignan, and on the morning of the 30th the emperor
telegraphed to Paris that a brilliant victory might be
expected. MacMahon's position was in a sharp wedge of country
formed by the confluence of the rivers Meuse and Chiers, and
it was his intention to advance towards Montmèdy. The other
part of his army was close to the river on its left bank. ...
The battle--or rather series of battles, for the fighting
extended over three days--which was to decide whether or not
he would reach Metz and liberate Bazaine, began in earnest a
little before noon on Tuesday, August 30."
_H. M. Hozier,
The Franco-Prussian War,
volume 1, chapter 13._
"The retreating French were concentrated, or rather massed,
under the walls of Sedan, in a valley commonly called the Sink
of Givonne. The army consisted of twenty-nine brigades,
fifteen divisions, and four corps d'armée, numbering ninety
thousand men. 'It was there,' says Victor Hugo, 'no one could
guess what for, without order, without discipline, a mere
crowd of men, waiting, as it seemed, to be seized by an
immensely powerful hand. It seemed to be under no particular
anxiety. The men who composed it knew, or thought they knew,
that the enemy was far away. Calculating four leagues as a
day's march, they believed the Germans to be at three days'
distance. The commanders, however, towards nightfall, made
some preparations for safety. The whole army formed a sort of
horse-shoe, its point turning towards Sedan. This disposition
proved that its chiefs believed themselves in safety. The
valley was one of those which the Emperor Napoleon used to
call a "bowl," and which Admiral Van Tromp designated by a
less polite name. No place could have been better calculated
to shut in an army. Its very numbers were against it. Once in,
if the way out were blocked, it could never leave it again.
Some of the generals,--General Wimpfen among them--saw this,
and were uneasy; but the little court around the emperor was
confident of safety. "At worst," they said, "we can always
reach the Belgian frontier." The commonest military
precautions were neglected. The army slept soundly on the
night of August 31. At the worst they believed themselves to
have a line of retreat open to Mézières, a town on the
frontier of Belgium. No cavalry reconnoissance was made that
night; the guards were not doubled. The French believed
themselves more than forty miles from the German army. They
behaved as if they thought that army unconcentrated and
ill-informed, attempting vaguely several things at once, and
incapable of converging on one point, namely, Sedan. They
thought they knew that the column under the Prince of Saxony
was marching upon Châlons, and that the Crown Prince of
Prussia was marching upon Metz. But that night, while the
French army, in fancied security, was sleeping at Sedan, this
is what was passing among the enemy. By a quarter to two A. M.
the army of the Prince of Saxony was on its march eastward
with orders not to fire a shot till five o'clock, and to make
as little noise as possible. They marched without baggage of
any kind. At the same hour another division of the Prussian
army marched, with equal noiselessness, from another direction
on Sedan, while the Würtemburgers secured the road to
Mézières, thereby cutting off the possibility of a retreat
into Belgium. At the same moment, namely, five o'clock,--on
all the hills around Sedan, at all points of the compass,
appeared a dense dark mass of German troops, with their
commanders and artillery. Not one sound had been heard by the
French army, not even an order. Two hundred and fifty thousand
men were in a Circle on the heights round the Sink of Givonne.
They had come as stealthily and as silently as serpents. They
were there when the sun rose, and the French army were
prisoners.'
_Victor Hugo,
Choses Vues._
The battle was one of artillery. The German guns commanded
every part of the crowded valley. Indeed the fight was simply
a massacre. There was no hope for the French, though they
fought bravely. Their best troops, the Garde Impériale, were
with Bazaine at Metz. Marshal MacMahon was wounded very early
in the day. The command passed first to General Ducrot, who
was also disabled, and afterwards to Wimpfen, a brave African
general who had hurried from Algeria just in time to take part
in this disastrous day. He told the emperor that the only hope
was for the troops to cut their way out of the valley; but the
army was too closely crowded, too disorganized, to make this
practicable. One Zouave regiment accomplished this feat, and
reached Belgium. That night--the night of September 1--an
aide-de-camp of the Emperor Napoleon carried this note to the
camp of the king of Prussia:--Monsieur Mon Frère,--Not having
been able to die in midst of my troops, it only remains for me
to place my sword in the hands of your Majesty. I am your
Majesty's good brother, Napoleon. ... With Napoleon III. fell
not only his own reputation as a ruler, but the glory of his
uncle and the prestige of his name. The fallen emperor and
Bismarck met in a little house upon the banks of the Meuse.
Chairs were brought out, and they talked in the open air. It
was a glorious autumn morning. The emperor looked care-worn,
as well he might. He wished to see the king of Prussia before
the articles of capitulation were drawn up: but King William
declined the interview. When the capitulation was signed,
however, he drove over to visit the captive emperor at a
château where the latter had taken refuge.
{1385}
Their interview was private; only the two sovereigns were
present. The French emperor afterwards expressed to the Crown
Prince of Prussia his deep sense of the courtesy shown him. He
was desirous of passing as unnoticed as possible through
French territory, where, indeed, exasperation against him, as
the first cause of the misfortunes of France, was so great
that his life would have been in peril. The next day he
proceeded to the beautiful palace at Cassel called
Wilhelmshöhe, or William's Rest. It had been built at ruinous
expense by Jerome Bonaparte while king of Westphalia, and was
then called Napoleon's Rest. ... Thus eighty thousand men
capitulated at Sedan, and were marched as prisoners into
Germany; one hundred and seventy-five thousand French soldiers
remained shut up in Metz, besides a few thousand more in
Strasburg, Phalsbourg, Toul, and Belfort. But the road was
open to Paris, and thither the various German armies marched,
leaving the Landwehr, which could not be ordered to serve
beyond the limits of Germany, to hold Alsace and Lorraine,
already considered a part of the Fatherland."
_E. W. Latimer,
France in the Nineteenth Century,
chapter 12._
"The German army had lost in the battle of Sedan about 460
officers and 8,500 men killed and wounded. On the French side
the loss sustained in the battle and at the capitulation
amounted according to their returns to the following: Killed
3,000 men; wounded 14,000; prisoners (in the battle) 21,000;
prisoners (at the capitulation) 83,000; disarmed in Belgium
3,000; total 124,000."
_The Franco-German War: German Official Account,
part 1, volume 2, page 408._
ALSO IN:
_Capt. G. Fitz-George,
Plan of the battle of Sedan, with Memoir._
_A. Forbes,
My Experiences of the War between France and Germany,
part 1, chapter 4 (volume l)._
_Colonel. A. Borbstaedt and Major F. Dwyer,
The Franco-German War,
chapters 30-40._
_G. B. Malleson,
The Refounding of the German Empire,
chapter 14._
FRANCE: A. D. 1870 (September).
Revolution at Paris.
Collapse of the empire.
Self-constitution of the Government of National Defense.
At Paris, the whole truth of the tremendous disaster at Sedan
was but slowly learned. On the afternoon of Saturday,
September 3, Count de Palikao intimated a little part of it,
only, "in a statement to the Corps Législatif, announcing that
Marshal Bazaine, after a vigorous sally, had been obliged to
retire again under the walls of Metz, and that Macmahon, after
a series of combats, attended by reverses and successes--
having at the outset driven a part of the enemy's army into
the Meuse--had been compelled to retreat to Sedan and
Mézières, a portion of his army having taken refuge in
Belgium. The junction of the two armies had therefore not been
made. The situation was serious, calmly observed the Minister
of War, but not hopeless. Not hopeless! when the truth was
that one army was blockaded and the other prisoner, and that
there were no reserves. ... At a midnight sitting Count de
Palikao, still determined to conceal a portion of the truth,
intimated that part of Marshal Macmahon's army had been driven
back into Sedan, that the remainder had capitulated, and that
the Emperor had been made prisoner. M. Jules Favre met this
announcement of fresh disasters by a motion, declaring the
Emperor and his dynasty to have forfeited all rights conferred
by the Constitution, demanding the appointment of a
Parliamentary Committee invested with the governing power, and
having for its special mission the expulsion of the enemy from
French territory, and further maintaining General Trochu in
his post as Governor of Paris. The Chamber then adjourned till
the morrow. But Paris had touched one of those crises when, as
Pascal says, a grain of sand will give a turn to history and
change the life of nations, and the morrow brought with it the
downfall of the Ministry, of the dynasty, of the Empire, and of
that bizarre constitutional edifice which had been kept
waiting so long for its complemental crown. ... It had been
intimated that the Corps Législatif would reassemble at noon,
before which time numerous groups collected on the Place de la
Concorde, and eventually swelled to a considerable crowd. The
bridge leading to the Palais Bourbon was guarded by a
detachment of mounted gendarmes, and numerous
sergents-de-ville. ... Battalions of National Guards having,
however, arrived, the gendarmes, after flourishing their
swords, opened their ranks and allowed them to pass, followed
by a considerable portion of the crowd, shouting 'Vive la
République!' and singing the 'Chant du Départ.' The iron gates
of the Palais Bourbon having been opened to admit a deputation
of National Guards, the crowd precipitated itself forward, and
in a few minutes the steps and courtyard were alike invaded.
Cries of 'Vive la Garde Nationale!' 'Vive la Ligne!' 'Vive la
République!' resounded on all sides, and the soldiers who
occupied the court of the Palais Bourbon, after making a show
of resistance, ended by hoisting the butt ends of their rifles
in the air in sign of sympathy, joining at the same time in the
shouts of the crowd, while the latter, encountering no further
opposition, proceeded to invade the passages of the Chamber,
at the moment Count de Kératry was attacking the Ministry for
surrounding the Corps Législatif with troops and
sergents-de-ville, contrary to the orders of General Trochu.
Count de Palikao, having explained the relative positions of
the Governor of Paris and the Minister of War, introduced a
bill instituting a Council of Government and National Defence,
composed of five members elected by the Legislative Body, the
ministers to be appointed with the approval of the members of
this Council, and he, Count de Palikao, to occupy the post of
Lieutenant-General. M. Jules Favre having claimed priority for
the motion which he had introduced the day before, M. Thiers,
pleading the necessity for union, next moved that:--'In view
of existing circumstances, the Chamber appoints a Commission
of Government and National Defence. A Constituent Assembly
will be convoked as soon as circumstances permit.' The Chamber
having declared in favour of their urgency, these several
propositions were eventually referred to the Bureau, and the
sitting was suspended. It was during this period that the
crowd penetrated into the Salles des Quatre Colonnes and de la
Paix. ... At half-past two, when the sitting was resumed, the
galleries were crowded and very noisy. The members of the Left
only were in their places. It was in vain the President
attempted to obtain silence, in vain the solemn huissiers
commanded it. MM. Gambetta and Crémieux appeared together at
the tribune, and the former begged of the people to remain
quiet. ...
{1386}
A partial silence having been secured, Count de Palikao,
followed by a few members of the majority, entered the
Chamber, but did not essay to speak. ... A minute or two
afterwards, the clamour arose again, and a noisy multitude
commenced invading the floor of the hall. ... Nothing was left
to the President but to put on his hat and retire, which he
did, together with Count de Palikao and the members by whom
the latter had been accompanied. By this time the Chamber was
completely invaded by National and Mobile Guards, in company
with an excited crowd, whose advance it was in vain now to
attempt to repel. M. Jules Favre, having mounted the tribune,
obtained a moment's silence. 'No scenes of violence,' cried
he; 'let us reserve our arms for our enemies.' Finding it
utterly impossible to obtain any further hearing inside the
Chamber, M. Gambetta, accompanied by the members of the Left,
proceeded to the steps of the peristyle, and there announced
the dethronement of the Emperor to the people assembled
outside. Accompanied by one section of the crowd, they now
hurried to the Hôtel de Ville, and there installed themselves
as a Provisional Government, whilst another section took
possession of the Tuileries--whence the Empress had that
morning taken flight--as national property. A select band of
Republicans, mindful of what Count--now Citoyen--Henri
Rochefort had done to bring Imperialism into disrepute,
proceeded to the prison of Sainte Pélagie and conducted the
author of the Lanterne, and other political prisoners, in
triumph to the Hôtel de Ville. The deputies who quitted the
Chamber when it was invaded by the mob, met that same
afternoon at the President's residence, and sent a deputation
to the Hôtel de Ville, with a proposal to act in common with
the new Government. This proposition was, however, declined,
on the score of the Republic having been already proclaimed
and accepted by the population of Paris. At an evening meeting
of nearly two hundred deputies, held under the presidency of
M. Thiers, MM. Jules Favre and Simon attended on the part of
the Provisional Government to explain that they were anxious
to secure the support of the deputies, whom they hinted,
however, could best serve their country in the departments.
After this unequivocal rebuff, the deputies, who had in the
meantime been apprised that seals had been placed on the doors
of the Corps Législatif, saw that nothing remained to them but
to protest, and protest they accordingly did against the
events of the afternoon. ... Not one of the two hundred
deputies present so much as dared suggest the breaking of the
seals and the assembling in the Legislative Chamber. ... The
Government which grasped the reins of power on the utter
collapse of Imperial institutions was a mob-named one in the
fullest sense of the term, the names having been chalked by
the populace on the pillars of the portico of the Palais
Bourbon during that invasion of the Chamber on the Sunday
afternoon which resulted in the overthrow of the Imperial
regime. The list appears to have been accepted by the
principal members of the Left, who, although they would have
preferred disassociating themselves from M. Rochefort,
nevertheless felt that it was impossible to leave him out of
the combination, and therefore adroitly--and not
inappropriately, as the safety of Paris was especially in
their keeping--made it embrace all the deputies for Paris,
save, as M. Jules Simon observed, the most illustrious
--meaning M. Thiers, who refused to join it. ... The
Government of National Defence, as it elected to style itself,
on M. Rochefort's suggestion, was composed of the following
members:--General Trochu, president; Jules Favre, Vice
President and Minister for Foreign Affairs; Emanuel Arago;
Crémieux, Minister of Justice; Jules Ferry, Secretary; Leon
Gambetta, Minister of the Interior; Garnier-Pagès;
Glais-Bizoin; Eugene Pelletan; Ernest Picard, Minister of
Finance; Henri Rochefort; and Jules Simon, Minister of Public
Instruction. Subsequently it associated with it General Le
Flô, Minister of War; Admiral Fourichon, Minister of Marine;
M. Dorian, Minister of Public Works; and M. Magnin, Minister
of Agriculture and Commerce. These, with Count de Kératry,
charged with the Prefecture of Police, M. Etienne Arago,
appointed Mayor of Paris, composed altogether no less than
eighteen members, upwards of two-thirds of whom were Bretons,
advocates, or journalists. ... For some days the new
Government was prodigal of proclamations and decrees. Its
first acts were to close the doors of the Palais Bourbon and
the Palais du Luxembourg, and dissolve the Corps Législatif
and abolish the Senate as bouches inutiles politiques, to
issue proclamations to the army, or rather the debris of one,
justifying the Revolution and appealing to the troops to
continue their heroic efforts for the defence of the country,
and to the National Guard, thanking them for their past, and
asking for their future patriotism. It released all
functionaries from their oaths, dismissed the ambassadors at
foreign courts, appointed prefects in all the departments, and
new mayors in the twenty arrondissements of the capital,
proclaimed the complete liberty of the press, ordered all
Germans not provided with special permission to remain, to
quit the departments of the Seine and Seine-et-Oise within
four-and-twenty hours. ... It pressed forward the provisioning
of the city and its works of defence, increased the herds of
sheep and oxen and the stores of corn and flour, provisionally
abolished all local customs and octroi dues, and fixed the price
of butcher's meat, armed the outer forts and the enceinte,
blew up or mined all the bridges and fired all the woods in
the environs, razed thousands of houses to the ground, felled
roadside trees, and constructed huge barricades with them;
laid in fact all the beautiful suburbs in waste; listened to
the thousand and one wild schemes put forth by patriotic
madmen for exterminating the invaders, and launched a huge
captive balloon, which hovered daily over Paris to give timely
notice of their dreaded arrival."
_H. Vizetelly, editor,
Paris in Peril,
chapter 1._
ALSO IN:
_J. Favre,
The Government of the National Defence, June-October._
_W. Rüstow,
The War for the Rhine Frontier,
chapter 22 (volume 2)._
{1387}
FRANCE: A. D. 1870 (September-October).
Futile striving for allies and for peace without
territorial sacrifices.
Investment of Paris.
Gambetta's organization of defense in the provinces.
Bazaine's surrender at Metz.