The huge peacock-bubble of the Third Empire was pricked and leaking
in good earnest. Thenceforward it was to shrink, and pale, and
dwindle to its inglorious end.
The Emperor must have known its days were numbered, when those wires
of the 6th reached him. On the 7th the news of Wörth electrified
Paris. Can you hear Jules Ferry joyfully exclaiming to the father of
Paul Déroulède, "The armies of the Third Napoleon are annihilated!
At last there dawns a day of hope for France!" But fierce,
triumphant voices like these were drowned in the muffled sobs of
mothers, the moans of wives made widows, and the wailing of children
now fatherless. Later, and as though to enhance the bitterness of
defeat, lying telegrams were published in Paris, announcing that the
Duke of Magenta had retaken Wissembourg, captured sixty guns, and
made 25,000 prisoners. Chief among these unlucky ones figured the
Prussian Crown Prince, who in an access of despair had shot
himself....
For some hours the streets and boulevards were packed with rejoicing
multitudes. Cries of "_Vive l'Empereur_," scarce at this era as
snowflakes in summer, were suddenly heard again. Flags and Chinese
lanterns were displayed from every window, the people stopped the
hansom-cab in which the famous Opera tenor Capoul was being driven
along the Place de la Bourse, and, hoisting their idol to the top of
a stationary omnibus, compelled him to chant the "_Marseillaise_."
When the Emperor's sorrowful dispatches of the 7th revealed the cruel
truth, and proclamations signed by the Empress and the Ministers made
it public, rapture gave place to frenzy of the wildest. Troops of
cuirassiers and mounted Gardes de Paris,--bands of National
Guards,--companies of the Line, and Marines were employed to clear
the Rue de la Paix, and the Places de l'Opéra and Vendôme, of rioters.
The Chambers assembled amid tumult indescribable. Ministers were
insulted on their way to attend the deliberations. "_À la
Frontière!_" cried the huge crowd, thronging the quay before the
Palace of the Corps Législatif. "_Vive Rochefort!_" "_À bas les
Ministres!_" "_Chassepôts!_"
Their reiterated demands for arms could be heard within the Chamber.
Where, when M. Schneider mounted the tribune to read the Imperial
Decree of Convocation, the opening formula: "Napoleon, by the Grace
of God and the national will, Emperor of the French," was vigorously
howled down. Ollivier, the unpopular Head of the Imperial Cabinet,
who had egged on the war, fared no better. Later, the fall of his
Ministry was greeted with salvo upon salvo of enthusiastic applause,
and when the news was published all Paris went mad once more with joy.
While the moment of supreme collapse of the great peacock bubble was
coming nearer, the Crown Prince of Prussia was hunting MacMahon
through the defiles of the Vosges, his flying cavalry snapping up
scores of wounded or footsore stragglers, his advance batteries of
light artillery harassing the bleeding flanks of the fugitive. The
Second and First Armies were moving Metzward, the Warlock having
knowledge that the Emperor's main Army, the Imperial Guard, and
Bazaine's, Ladmirault's and Frossard's Corps, with part of
Canrobert's, were concentrating there.
The Great Bubble was sagging pitifully. The weather was wet and
chilly, the Imperial troops not yet in action were disheartened by
the news of battles lost. Their equipment was incomplete, their new
boots had proved to be of no better material than brown paper and
American cloth. Worst of all, the Commissariat, always inadequate,
showed signs of caving in. And the blame for all was heaped upon the
shoulders of the Emperor, whose faith in his fortunate star had quite
deserted him; a man tormented by telegrams of wifely censure and
wifely advice from Paris; disgruntled, if ever man was; haunted and
oppressed by premonitions of impending disaster; sleepless, shaky,
sick, and prematurely old.
The taking of the fortresses of Bitche and Phalsbourg--memorable by
reason of its brave Governor's resolute defense--the seizure of the
undefended City of Nancy, the Zorn Valley railway line, Forbach with
its immense military stores, Sarreguemines, and other garrison towns
were lesser shocks, falling on a mind already paralyzed. Hasty
decisions, contradictory orders, had emanated, one after another,
from the Headquarters. He was confused and flurried, finding his
good brother of Prussia so near. For the Warlock, scenting a
movement of French troops to the rear, had crowned the uplands
eastward of Metz with the 1st and 7th Corps of the First Army of
Germany under the veteran General Steinmetz, cavalry well to the fore
and outposts skillfully posted, so as to look into the French
position from all points of view, while the Red Prince felt for a
solid footing for his Second Army on the left or French bank of the
Moselle. Meanwhile, the Crown Prince, whose clutches Marshal
MacMahon had evaded by taking a vast circuit to Châlons, had swept
round and was marching northward from Vigneulles toward Metz.
Ah! in what a hornet's nest the Imperial Commander-in-Chief found
himself. Almost incapable of mental effort, he recognized, like Mr.
Wilkins Micawber,--whose epistolary style is occasionally suggested
by his Proclamations and harangues,--that something had to be done at
once. To shake off the intolerable burden of authority was the most
urgent necessity. He transferred it to the youngest of his Marshals,
Bazaine.
"You will get us out of this, won't you, Marshal?" cried an officer
of the Imperial Staff, as the new Commander-in-Chief came out of the
Prefecture.
The Marshal had left his Imperial master in bed, expecting answers to
letters he had penned to the Emperor of Austria and the King of
Italy, soliciting aid and alliance, which these potentates did not
bestow. True to himself, he could not quit Metz without a
proclamation, penned in the old flourishing, ambiguous style:
"Inhabitants of Metz. In leaving you to oppose the invading enemy, I
rely upon your patriotism to defend this great city. You will not
allow the foreigner to seize this bulwark of France, and you will
emulate the Army in courage and devotion.... I hope to return in
happier times to thank you for your noble conduct."
Then he quitted the place with his son, his cousin and his personal
following and escort. As his _cortège_ clattered through the streets
choked with soldiers, guns, provision-carts and baggage-wagons, and
faces of contempt, or derision, or hatred turned to see, did he hide
his sick, humiliated face behind the green silk screen of the
carriage window? How did he answer the inevitable questions of his
son?
A prey to hideous uncertainties, for the new Commander-in-Chief had
suddenly applied to be superseded, the luckless Emperor spent the
night at the camp at Longeville, waking upon a foggy morning--if he
could be said to sleep, who never slept--to a brisk salute of
Prussian guns. For a patrol of Uhlans with a half battery had made,
during the night, a bold attempt to seize upon the Imperial person,
and being foiled within an ace of success, had retreated, plumping a
shell or so into the lines from the German side of the river. And
while these hornets were being repulsed with heavy metal, the muddy,
travel-stained Army of the Red Prince crossed the river lower down;
the little episode described having diverted attention from their
transit; effected, even as in a jam of batteries, battalions,
squadrons, baggage and ammunition-trains, the French retreat was
being made.
So choked were the roads that the Emperor and his suite with the
Imperial Guard Escort only managed to struggle as far as Gravelotte,
a village some eight miles from Metz, where Bazaine had his
headquarters:
"Gentlemen, we will remain here, but keep the baggage packed!" had
been the Emperor's instructions to his following upon alighting at
the inn, where two miserable bedrooms were with difficulty obtained
for himself and his son. Prince Napoleon and the other personages of
the suite found harborage at various cottages; the lackeys slept in
the baggage-fourgons, it may be hazarded. For in the morning these
vehicles and their attendants were found to have disappeared. They
had departed for Verdun, whither their master was now to follow them.
Bazaine, who could not shuffle off his now detested responsibilities,
was summoned, to find the Imperial carriage standing in readiness
before the tavern door.