The National Guard.--Its Composition.--The American Ambulance.--Its
Organization.--Its Success.--Dr. Swinburne, Chief Surgeon.--The
Tent System.--Small Mortality.--Poor Germans in Paris.--Bombardment
by Germans.--Wantonness of Artillery-men.--Bad News from the Loire.
--"Le Plan Trochu."--St. Genevieve to appear.--Vinoy takes Command.
--Paris surrenders.--Bourbaki defeated.--Attempts Suicide.
A gentleman of rank and great historic name, of approved bravery, and
who had seen service as an officer in the French army, came one day
to the Legation in the uniform of a private. I asked him why he had
enlisted, when he could so easily have got a commission. He replied
that it was true he could easily have got a company in the National
Guard, but before he could know his men, and they could know him, and
he could drill and discipline them, they would go into action. Then
they would inevitably run away. If he ran with them, he would be held
responsible; if he stood, he would be killed. So he had decided to
enlist as a private, to stand as long as the rest stood, and to run
away when they ran. It struck me that this gentleman was wise in his
generation, but that it was not precisely in this way that France was
to be saved.
In speaking of the National Guard as I have done, it is proper to
state that I speak of the masses, the workmen of Paris, and the
_petite bourgeoisie_ of most of the arrondissements. There were some
few battalions that could be relied upon, some composed in part of
the "gentlemen of France;" but they were insufficient to leaven the
whole lump. The masses, those who drew a franc and a half per diem
for themselves, and seventy-five centimes for their wives, or for the
women who lived with them--for the Government of the National Defense
had decided that it was the same thing--were the turbulent, unruly,
unsoldierly mob I have described.
One of the most interesting and satisfactory features of the siege
was the American ambulance. Here were order, system, and discipline.
It was located on vacant lots in the Avenue de l'Impératrice. It
did better work than any other ambulance in Paris; and there were
many of them. A number of the wealthy people of the city gave
up their hotels, or parts of them, for this purpose. The Press
organized an admirable ambulance, copied as much from the American
as circumstances would permit. The Italians started one, and two or
three other nationalities. But the American ambulance was the only
one organized upon the tent system, which is unquestionably the true
one. Fresh air and fresh water are what is needed for the wounded.
It is impossible to get fresh air in a building, as you get it in a
tent. As Dr. Swinburne expressed it, "The air filters through the
canvas."
At the Exposition of 1867 we had a remarkably good exhibition of our
ambulance system. It was due to the energy and liberality of Dr.
Evans. At the close of the exhibition he bought the whole collection;
and when the war broke out, he organized an ambulance association,
presented it with this material, and gave it ten thousand francs.
Other Americans contributed, and the enterprise was launched. Dr.
Swinburne, a distinguished corps surgeon of our army, and afterward
Quarantine Officer at Staten Island, happened to be in Paris,
traveling for his health and amusement. He gave up his trip, and
staid in the city, that he might be of service to the wounded French.
He deserves much credit for his humanity. Dr. Johnson, a prominent
American physician in Paris, took charge of the medical department.
Both of these gentlemen discharged their duties with devotion and
skill, and with remarkable success, and without remuneration, except
that they were decorated by the French Government. For an American
residing at home a decoration is of very little account. In France
it is useful. It procures him attention on the railways and at the
restaurants. But it has been very much abused of late years. There
are about one hundred thousand _décorés_ in France, so that they now
say it is the correct thing not to be decorated. I never heard of but
one individual, however, who refused it, and that was from political
motives.
A number of American ladies and gentlemen who remained in Paris
offered their services in the ambulance, and were enrolled as
volunteer nurses. Among them Mr. Joseph K. Riggs was particularly
conspicuous by his skill and devotion. They went upon the field
after, or even during, an engagement and picked up the wounded.
Indeed, there was quite a contest among the ambulances to get
possession of the wounded; for while the number of the sick in Paris
was very great, that of the wounded was comparatively small. The
medical director of General Ducrot's corps became much interested in
our ambulance. He turned over to Dr. Swinburne the charming house
of M. Chevalier, the eminent French writer on political economy, and
then begged him to take charge of the wounded of his corps. Swinburne
used the house as a convalescent hospital when his tents were full.
So successful was his treatment that of the amputated only one in
five died; while at the great French ambulance of the Grand Hôtel
four in five died. The mortality there was fearful.
The apparatus for warming the tents was simple, but most effective.
It had grown up among our soldiers during the war. A hole was made in
the ground outside of one end of a long tent, a stove placed in it,
and the pipe carried the whole length of the tent in a trench. The
result was that the ground was thoroughly dried and warmed, and this
warmed the whole tent. I have known the thermometer outside to be at
20° Fahrenheit, while in the tents it stood at 55°. The doctor said
that for wounded men well covered up in bed 55° was better than 70°.
The men were well fed, and admirably cared for generally. The French
Government put the best of their stores at the disposition of the
ambulances, and treated them with the greatest liberality. There was
always plenty of canned fruit, jellies, etc., in Paris, so valuable
in sickness. The ladies bought these, and brought them to the
wounded. Tobacco was provided in the same way for the convalescents.
The American ambulance was soon so well and so favorably known, that
I heard of French officers who put cards in their pocket-books, on
which they had written the request that if they were wounded they
might be carried to _l'ambulance américaine_.
The great drawback we had to contend with was the impossibility of
procuring new tents. Dr. Swinburne told me that at home they would
have been condemned after a month's use, and new ones substituted.
But in Europe the cloth is not to be had. We use cotton cloth, the
French use linen. Cotton is lighter, is more porous in dry and fulls
in wet weather. The result is that the air filters through it in the
one case, and the water does not penetrate it in the other. In the
absence of new canvas, the doctor thoroughly fumigated the old from
time to time. This answered the purpose tolerably well, but did not
exhibit the tent system in its perfection.
We had now reached the middle of January, and the end of the
siege was rapidly approaching. The want of proper food, especially
for young children, was producing its necessary results; and the
death-rate had risen from about eight hundred--which is the average
number of weekly deaths in Paris--to four thousand, and this without
counting those in hospital which may be set down at one thousand
more. The number of poor Germans supported by the Legation had also
increased very greatly, and had risen to twenty-four hundred. We
were compelled to hire another room, where the weekly allowance
made them was paid and duly entered in books kept for this purpose;
for every penny expended was regularly entered and vouched for. The
poor German women were obliged to walk two or three miles on those
cold winter days; for the workmen's quarter is far from that of the
Champs Elysées. Mr. Washburne pitied these poor creatures, and gave
them omnibus tickets for the return trip. He bought a cask of _vin
ordinaire_, too, and gave a glass of warm sweetened wine to each of
them. It did them infinite good.
Provisions were now running short; enough remained for a few days
only. Even in this most vital matter there was blundering. A
gentleman high placed in the office of the Minister of Commerce, the
_ministère_ which had charge of the supplies, told Mr. Washburne that
there were provisions in Paris to last till March. We could hardly
credit it, but it came to us from such high authority that we were
staggered. He spoke positively, and said he had seen the figures.
After the surrender this gentleman met a mutual friend, and said, "I
am afraid your minister must take me for either a liar or a fool. I
hope I am neither. The mistake we made at the _ministère_ happened
in this way: the minister appointed two officers; each was to take
an account of all the food in Paris, in order that one account might
control the other. When their statements came in, he added them
together, but forgot to divide them by two."
Meantime we were being bombarded, but after a very mild fashion. I
have since talked with a German general who commanded at the quarter
whence most of the shells entered the city. He assured me that there
never was the slightest intention to bombard Paris. If there had
been, it would have been done in a very different style. The German
batteries fired from a height upon a fort in the hollow, and their
shells, flying high, entered Paris. Still, when nearly two hundred
lives were lost, and shells fell among us for nineteen days, people
had a right to say that they were bombarded, and no Parisian will
admit to this day that they were not. Artillery-men of all nations
become not only very careless, but very wanton. The Germans were
eager to hit something, and the public buildings of the Latin Quarter
offered a tempting mark to the gunners. I was complaining to a
French officer one day of the shameful manner in which the French
Government troops during the Commune bombarded the quarter of the
Champs Elysées, a quarter inhabited almost exclusively by friends of
the Government, who were longing for the troops to come in. He told
me that it was due to the wantonness of the artillery-men, and cited
an instance which came under his own observation. A gunner at Mount
Valérien pointed out to the captain of the gun a cart making its
slow way through the distant plain toward Paris, and exclaimed, "O,
my officer! see that cart carrying supplies to the enemy." "Where,
where?" "There, near that white house." "Give it a shell." He fired,
missed half a dozen times, but finally hit. It turned out to be
the cart of a poor washer-woman, carrying the week's wash to her
customers.
A few days before the surrender bad news came thick and fast. A
sortie in the direction of Mount Valérien had been repulsed. Chanzy
had been defeated. All hope of aid from that quarter had vanished,
and but a few days' provisions remained. Will it be believed that
even then Trochu "paltered in a double sense" with the suffering
people? He published a proclamation in which he said the "Governor of
Paris would never surrender." The next day he resigned, and appointed
no successor. When, three days later, the city surrendered there was
no Governor of Paris.
But even to the last moment there were people who had confidence
in Trochu's proclamation. The Parisians are credulous, and readily
believe what they wish to believe. Among the populace there was
always a sort of half belief in the "Plan Trochu," which, as he often
told us, when all else failed, was to save France. This plan he kept
mysteriously to himself, or confided it only to a few bosom-friends.
But I had it from a source I thought entitled to belief, that Trochu
confidently anticipated a miracle in his favor in return for his
devotion. St. Genevieve was to appear and save Paris. It is almost
impossible to believe that, in the nineteenth century, and in that
skeptical capital, a man of intelligence, cultivation, and varied
experience, could be found who believed in a miraculous appearance of
the saint; but Trochu was a strange compound of learning, ability,
weakness, and fanaticism, and I have little doubt that he confidently
anticipated the personal intervention of St. Genevieve to save her
beloved city.
On the 24th of January, Vinoy took command. He suppressed the clubs,
seized the violent press, and took other energetic measures. A mob
attacked Mazas, and released the prisoners. They then tried the Hôtel
de Ville a second time; but they had now a different commander to
deal with, and they were beaten off with ease. Mr. Washburne and I
happened to be in the neighborhood of the Hôtel de Ville, and saw
something of this affair. We did not stay to the end, however, for we
felt that it was not the proper place for us, accredited as we were
to the Government the mob was attempting to overthrow. Had Vinoy or
Ducrot been in command from the beginning, the result might have been
different. There was no reason why the National Guard should not have
made good soldiers; but they needed a discipline of iron. They were
permitted to choose their own officers. This of itself was fatal. In
the beginning of our war in some of the States the company officers
were elected by the men. But the men themselves were the first to see
the folly of this course, and petitioned that their officers might be
appointed by the Executive. Had the officers of the National Guard
been appointed by the Government, and when they halted at the barrier
and refused to go farther, had a battery been ordered up, and a dozen
or so of them shot, "_pour encourager les autres_," as the French
said of Admiral Byng, they might have given a very different account
of themselves in their combats with the Germans.
On the 27th of January, with seven days' provisions only in Paris,
with every man, woman, and child on the shortest possible allowance,
the city surrendered. An armistice was agreed upon, which was not,
however, to apply to the armies of the East operating toward Lyons.
It is said that the French commander in that quarter was not notified
that the armistice did not extend to him. He was attacked, caught
napping, and defeated.
If I recollect correctly, it was Bourbaki who was defeated in the
East. Bourbaki is the type of the _beau militaire_ of the French
Empire. A dashing, gallant soldier, he had distinguished himself and
gained his promotion by scaling the walls of an Arab town at the
head of his troops, armed with a light riding-whip only. But these
were not the men then wanted at the head of the French armies. When
Bourbaki was defeated, and his army in retreat, making its disorderly
way to Switzerland, and needing all its General's care and attention,
he attempted to commit suicide. In the German service he would
undoubtedly have been tried for desertion. In France every thing is
pardoned to a man who acts under the influence of strong emotion; and
Bourbaki was never even blamed for leaving his army to its fate.