Despite the recent assertions of the French minister, M. Ollivier, it is
probable that the Empire of Louis Napoleon had lost all its allies.
Austria, anxious to avenge Sadowa, was restrained by the threat of the
intervention of Russia; that power still considered the dual empire its
rival in the Balkans and still remembered the Crimea; an offensive and
defensive alliance had been concluded by Prussia with the German states
south of the Main. Thus prepared, the chancellor waited for an
opportunity, and as none presented itself soon enough, he made one. The
revolution in Spain in 1868 had driven Queen Isabella into exile and
left her throne vacant; Marshal Prim, who retained the reins of power,
was negotiating in the different courts of Europe to find an acceptable
new sovereign. At the beginning of July, 1870, Paris was surprised to
hear that the candidate chosen by him, and who would probably be
proclaimed by the Cortès, was Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern. This
negotiation had been carried on secretly, the French ambassador at
Madrid had been informed of nothing, and from Marshal Prim's documents
it was afterward learned that Bismarck himself had suggested the prince
for the crown. It was very certain that France would oppose this union
of the dynasties of Berlin and Madrid, and, in fact, on the 6th of July
the government sent a message to the Chamber protesting against this
candidature and declaring that it would be compelled to oppose it, if
necessary, to the last extremity.
Three days later, M. Benedetti, the French ambassador at Berlin, sought
an interview with the King of Prussia at Ems, where he was taking the
waters, and requested him, as head of the Hohenzollern family, not to
give his consent to the candidature of Prince Leopold. The king replied
that, in this affair, he had intervened not as King of Prussia but as
head of the family, and the interview ended without any definite
assurances on his part. However, Prince Anthony of Hohenzollern, the
father of Leopold, officially announced that his son was no longer a
candidate. Then the French diplomacy came to Bismarck's aid by
committing a great blunder; M. Benedetti sought another interview with
the king, who had not yet heard of this withdrawal, informed him of it,
and requested him to give the French government formal assurance that
Prince Leopold would abide by it. This promise the king refused to give,
but he notified the ambassador that he would inform him when he had
received a confirmation of the renunciation. When this was received, he
sent word to M. Benedetti by an aide-de-camp, refusing him the third
audience which he requested, stating that he approved of the prince's
decision, but declining to bind himself with regard to any future
negotiations.
An official statement of these interviews was drawn up under the eyes of
the king by his private councillor Abeken, and telegraphed to Bismarck,
with authority to publish it. This statement contained nothing that need
inflame the national feeling in either Germany or France, but, as
re-edited by the chancellor, it represented the French ambassador as
unduly importunate, and as having received a flat refusal from the
monarch. The patriotism on both sides took fire; and war was declared on
the 19th of July. The Germans assert that it would have been inevitable
in any case, without this falsification of the despatch of Ems, but the
Iron Chancellor is convicted, on his own testimony, of having desired it
and of having wrought to bring it about.
M. Émile Ollivier, Louis Napoleon's minister, president of the Conseil,
whose "light heart" for the "great responsibility" of the war with
Germany has earned him a special measure of obloquy, has within the last
two or three years appeared again in public, in his own defence. In an
interview granted an editor of the _Gil Blas_ on the twenty-sixth
anniversary of his fall, the ex-minister made a series of statements
justifying the men and measures of that fatal period, and contributing
some very important assertions to history. "We committed no faults,"
said M. Ollivier; "we were unfortunate, that was all, and I have
nothing, nothing with which to reproach myself." France, he declares,
was assured of the alliance of Austria and Italy, even after
Reischoffen; the plan of campaign, which has been so much criticised,
the scattering of the troops along the frontier, was imposed by the
Austrian general staff. Sedan, however, chilled these allies, and
delivered Germany, as Bismarck himself wrote, from all danger of a
coalition against her. The inertia of the Emperor, who was ill with the
stone, who could not command himself, and "would suffer no one to take
the command in his place;" the errors of the generals, including
Mac-Mahon; the treason of Bazaine, and the council of war held by the
ministers and presided over by the Empress, at which the fatal march on
Sedan was determined upon, all combined to ruin the national cause. The
Empress would not comprehend, notwithstanding the instances of the
Emperor, of Mac-Mahon, of Prince Napoleon, that "it was at Paris alone
that the Empire could be defended, at Paris that France could be armed,
at Paris that the allies, who had promised their aid, could be
constrained to pronounce their adherence." Through a false conception of
the interests of the dynasty, it was resolved to go to Sedan,
notwithstanding the Emperor, who said to Mac-Mahon: "Since it is so, let
us go and get our heads broken." The last volume of M. Ollivier's work,
_L'Empire libéral: études, récits et souvenirs_, has appeared in this
present year (1898), and completes an able and very interesting defence
of a dynasty which has not found many apologists as yet.
General Trochu, military commandant of Paris during the siege, has also,
in his _Mémoires_, published in 1896, dwelt upon the all-important part
which the capital might have played in the great drama of the national
defence. "I dreamed," he says, "of a Parisian population forgetting
before the grandeur of the common peril its animosity toward the Empire,
in order to associate itself with us in the supreme effort which we were
about to make in conjunction with it; of Paris, with its immense
resources, put in a state of defence by the labor of a hundred thousand
arms and, after a brief delay, rendered impregnable." This theory of the
great importance of the capital is, however, by no means held by all the
military critics of the war.
[Illustration: AVENUE DE L'OBSERVATOIRE, FROM THE CARREFOUR.]
It is, perhaps, well to dwell, at some length, in any effort--however
superficial--to appreciate the present condition and the promise for the
future of this nation and this capital, on this period of the war with
Germany, for the burden of contemporary testimony seems to be that there
has been, practically, no recovery from the blow. Nothing is more
interesting in contemporary sociology than the tone of depression,
almost of humility, of lack of national elasticity and self-assertiveness,
in the current French literature. There are still to be met with, of
course, the familiar assertions that France is "the cradle of
enlightened liberties," the "hope of struggling nationalities," and
similar vague phrases, but always qualified with some allusion to the
present depression and extinguishment. These admissions appear on every
hand:--in _Le Temps_, of November 7, 1898, in its review of the second
volume of M. Samuel Denis's _Histoire contemporaine: La chute de
L'Empire_, we read: "The period comprised between the 15th of July,
1870, and the last months of the year 1875 is, perhaps, of all our
national history, the most fruitful in dramatic events. It is, without
any doubt, that which has for us all the keenest interest,--the most
poignant. The history of these days of mourning, it is what our fathers
did, with their tears and with their blood, and it is the history of
events which still oppress with all their weight our national life. It
is that which constitutes our malady; it is, that after twenty-eight
years, we are still the vanquished." The Duc de Broglie, in an article
in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, July 1, 1896, a review of the colonial
policy of the Third Republic between the years 1871 and 1896, a period
in which her ministers strove--with very doubtful success, he thinks--to
recover in some degree the prestige lost in the war and in the
subsequent check in Egypt, _vis-à-vis_ with England, sums up: "We are
not alone in bearing the heavy heritage of the war of 1870; all the
world has its part in the sentiment of general uneasiness, from which no
one escapes. It is the common condition, and even though France should
be the only one to suffer from it, the other peoples, still, should not
resign themselves to it without mortification.... Well! behold it
revived, this sombre right of conquest, in all its nakedness, in all its
rigor;--it has installed itself in the very centre, in the full light of
civilization, and all, statesmen as well as doctors of philosophy,
political and social, have bowed before it.... So long as this spectacle
lasts, a brand is imprinted upon the front of modern society like a
_memento homo_ which recalls to it that the progress with which it
flatters itself has purified only the surface and which notifies
democracy, so proud of its puissance, that it is only a dust of men, a
plaything, like all human things, of all the winds that blow of brute
strength or of fortune."
Some interesting details have recently appeared concerning the official
residence, the Tuileries, under the last of the French Empires. For the
commonplace furniture which they found there, the Emperor and the
Empress gradually substituted other, much more luxurious. His apartments
were on the ground-floor, communicating by a small stairway with those
of the Empress on the floor above. There, the first salon, in pale green
and gold, reserved for the chamberlains and the ladies of honor, was
furnished with a great mirror in which were reflected all the gardens,
the Champs Élysées and the Arch of Triumph in the distance; this room
gave access to the pink salon, of which the chimney-piece was in white
marble, set off with lapis-lazuli and gold, and the ceiling represented
the Arts rendering homage to her Majesty. From this salon the visitor
entered the blue one, where she gave private audience, "always receiving
her guests graciously and manifesting an unwillingness to part with
them." Beyond the _salon bleu_ was a little cabinet with a secretary, a
little boudoir, the library with small ebony tables, the dressing-room,
the oratory, entered through folding-doors, and finally the bedchamber
of the Empress.
The Imperial couple breakfasted in their apartments _tête-à-tête_ but
the dinner was served in state and in full dress. On Sundays, after
_déjeuner_, the court heard mass in the chapel, the voices of the
singers were accompanied by harps, and the sermon was never to exceed a
half-hour in length. The Emperor, wearing the uniform of a general, sat
through the service in imperturbable gravity, his hands crossed. On Good
Friday, the _Stabat Mater_ was chanted by the best artists; the ladies
were in black, with long black veils.
A species of military discipline was imposed upon all those who were
lodged in the palace. All the doors were closed at midnight, and the
officer of the guard reported next morning all the delinquents who came
in later. No workman from outside was admitted into the palace, all
alterations and repairs were under the charge of the officials of the
_Régie_. In addition to the military guard, a brigade of special police
exercised a constant surveillance over the neighborhood and all the
entrances of the building. The agents, costumed _en parfaits gentlemen_,
stood about in groups at all the doors, and, without interrupting their
conversation, watched narrowly all those who presented themselves for
admission. When the Emperor went out, in a phaeton or brake, driving
himself, a small unpretentious coupé or brougham followed him
everywhere, a short distance behind, and in it was the chief of police
attached to his person. At the masked balls of the Tuileries, every
gentleman was obliged to remove his mask on entering; police officials
were stationed at all the doors, and several of them, wearing the
Imperial livery, passed about among the guests, serving refreshments.
The official balls of the Tuileries were splendid, but invitations to
the balls of the Empress on "Mondays," were the most prized. For this
information, we are indebted to an article in the _Century Magazine_.
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Typographical errors corrected by ebook transcriber: