THE WAR AND PREPARATION FOR THE SIEGE OF PARIS
1870
“_Nous serons vaincus. Il n’y a qu’à voir le désordre, l’impossibilité
des armements._”—George Sand to Mme. Adam, August 18, 1870.
For years a few clear-sighted Frenchmen had seen the German Peril
approaching. Now it was at the gates of France. George Sand and Edmond
Adam had been more afraid of the “Anglo-Saxon Contagion.” They had
been inclined to scoff at Nefftzer’s jeremiads;[163] but now, alas!
they proved to be only too well founded.
The Adams in the anguish of their souls recalled their memorable
drive,[164] in the spring of 1869, along the Corniche Road, in
the company of Nino Bixio, the Garibaldian hero, who was then
Commander-in-Chief of the Italian army. Bixio had just returned from
Germany, whither he had gone at Victor Emmanuel’s command in order to
ascertain the precise condition of the Prussian army. Bixio had come
back firmly convinced that Bismarck was preparing war against France.
“And you are not ready,” he had said to the Adams; “you will be
thoroughly beaten.”[165]
Then Adam, ghastly pale and half rising from his seat, had cried:
“Silence, Nino, or I will throw you into the sea. France, beaten by
the Prussians! Never, do you hear? Never.”
“And do you think it would give me pleasure?” the Italian had
retorted. “But understand, if you don’t wish to be beaten ... then
make an end of your opposition’s foolish, wicked, criminal campaign
against militarism. It is militarism which, entering into the very
marrow of Prussian bones, has for half a century been preparing her to
take her revenge for Jena. Ah! my poor Adam! How blind is France....
Your Napoléon III is a provoker of invasion, and you republicans, you
will be ready to eat your hearts out for having been party men before
Frenchmen. When you refuse him soldiers, you are idiotic.”
Then Bixio had spoken of the negotiations for a triple alliance
between France, Italy and Austria against Germany. According to the
Italian General, it was Napoléon’s support of the papacy, in which he
was encouraged by his ultramontane Empress, that had rendered these
negotiations fruitless.
In order to pass on to their political friends Bixio’s warnings,
the Adams had hastened their return to Paris. But they might have
spared themselves the trouble. For, with the exceptions of Thiers and
Nefftzer, no one had paid any heed whatever to the Italian General’s
prognostications. French politicians were then absorbed in domestic
affairs. But in a few weeks international matters forced themselves
upon their attention. For a new cloud appeared on the horizon. This
was General Prim’s offer of the Spanish crown to a prince of the House
of Hohenzollern. With feverish eagerness Juliette and her friends had
followed these negotiations. Instead of the usual weekly dinner-party,
followed by a reception, in Mme. Adam’s salon there had been an
assembly every evening. Juliette and her husband were full of alarm.
Their German friend, Louis Bamberger, said: “This time, my children,
you will have to give in.”[166] One evening Adam, who had been to
see Thiers in the afternoon, related how the _petit grand homme_ had
entreated him to supplicate his friends not to play with fire. “It is
pure folly,” he exclaimed, “we are on a volcano.”
Then had come the news that Prince Anthony of Hohenzollern had on his
son’s behalf renounced the candidature. “The incident is closed,” said
the chief minister, Émile Ollivier. “We were on the eve of war,” said
Thiers, “but now everything is arranged.”
With immense relief, believing peace to be assured, the Adams, who
had postponed their visit to George Sand on account of the national
crisis, now left Paris for Nohant.
But, alas! their equanimity had soon been disturbed. The French
Government, not content with Prince Anthony’s undertaking, had
required from the King of Prussia a promise that henceforth no
Hohenzollern should ascend the Spanish throne. King William’s refusal
of this demand, and the events of the following fortnight, had
culminated in the French Government’s declaration of war on July 20th.
On the afternoon of that day George Sand and her guests were sitting
in the park at Nohant. Conversation languished, for the menace of war
was in the air. Suddenly the sound of a drum was heard. Every member
of the company trembled.... Maurice came towards them, girded with
a drum, and crying, _Vive la France!_ George Sand and Juliette Adam
burst into tears, while all echoed that cry _Vive la France_, which
henceforth was to be the motive power of all Mme. Adam’s being.[167]
On their return to Paris the Adams found awaiting them numerous
letters from their friends, containing various opinions as to
the declaration of war. France in those days was not without her
conscientious objectors. The pacifist Arlès Dufour would have
preferred civil to international war. “The former would have cost
less in men and in money,” he wrote. M. Adam’s German friend, Louis
Bamberger, took his leave of him, saying, “Love your country, Adam, as
I love mine. I send you a last remembrance before the shock of arms.”
Bamberger, desiring with all his heart German unity, was the fervent
admirer of Bismarck, whom he regarded as alone able to achieve it.
Hetzel reported in Juliette’s salon how he had just seen Mérimée.
In the previous winter, at Bruyères, Juliette had found her friend
obsessed by the impending calamity.[168] “You republicans,” he had
said, “you have disarmed France; and we imperialists, asleep in our
false security, have abandoned her.” “Now,” said Hetzel, “Mérimée is
deploring his country’s unpreparedness.” “We have soldiers, but we
have no generals,” he lamented.... “_Je supplie le grand Mécanicien,
si nous devons être vaincus, de faire cesser mes tours de roue._”[169]
Mérimée’s prayer was granted: dying on the 24th of September, 1870, he
did not live to see the consummation of his country’s defeat.[170]
Paul de Saint-Victor, Juliette’s Catholic friend, was furious against
Renan, whom he accused of being pro-German. It was true that Renan had
admired much that was German, and that he had often despaired of the
future of France. He believed that the Germans would be the teachers
of the world.[171]
“Several of the University professors,” remarks Mme. Adam, “have not
yet been able to bring themselves to love France as much as they have
admired Germany.”[172]
Nevertheless, despite these differences of opinion, a great wave
of patriotism swept through the country. _“Il n’y a plus de petits
crevés,”_ writes Juliette, _“ils ont disparu comme par miracle et sont
devenus les soldats de notre France.”_[173]
“People are beginning once more to use the word _patrie_.[174] It had
been forgotten, buried beneath humanitarianism. Now it returns. It is
uttered with reverence and devotion. Adam and I, when we pronounce it,
feel that to us both it is equally sacred.”
Mérimée had deplored the lack of generals in France. Bixio had said,
“You have neither a Moltke, nor a Bismarck, nor a William.” When
Bazaine was appointed to command the Lorraine army, Mme. Adam went to
see her old friend Toussenel, who had known Bazaine at the time of the
Mexican expedition. “He is no soldier,” said Toussenel; “I am more of
one than he. He may be a politician. He is probably not lacking in
diplomacy, neither will he be above intrigue.”[175]
The hesitations and inactivity of the French army during the first
days of the war filled with misgiving the Adams and their friends. “We
had thought,” writes Juliette,[176] “that we could arrest the Prussian
advance by throwing ourselves before the enemy with all our _furia
francese_ and our united forces. But already our troops are scattered.
There are marches and countermarches, but no advance. As during the
Italian war, so now, there is no unity of command.” In those days
Parisians, like ourselves during the present war, were troubled by the
lack of news. Silence, suspense, were harder to bear than anything.
“A frightful silence fills the boulevard,” writes Edmond de Goncourt.
“There is not a carriage to be heard, not a child’s cry of joy, and
on the horizon is a Paris where sound itself seems dead.” When it
did arrive the news was as bad as could be. All through August came
tidings of defeat after defeat: Wissembourg on the 4th; Forbach and
Woerth on one day, the 6th; then, on the 9th, the fall of Ollivier
and the Ministry; finally, on the 1st of September, the rout of Sedan.
On the evening of the 3rd, when about six o’clock the terrible tidings
began to spread like wild-fire through Paris, people came out into
the streets, crowds thronged the boulevards, growing every hour. By
ten o’clock, Paris between the Rue Montmartre and the Grand Opéra
presented the appearance of one immense forum. Juliette went down and
mingled with the people, listening to their conversation.
Everywhere the humiliation and disgrace of France were described as
unbearable. All manner of charges were brought against the Emperor.
Napoléon was said to have surrendered, not himself alone, but the
munitions of the army. His own personal baggage, however, that long
train of wagons encumbering the march of his soldiers, which had won
for him the nickname of _Empereur Colis_ (Luggage Emperor), he had
saved from the hands of the enemy.[177]
“The Prussians will be at Laon to-morrow, and in three days before
Paris,” murmured one. “Wherever you look it is ruin. Our last army has
capitulated. We are a nation no longer. We are nothing but a troop of
prisoners.”
“Down with the Empire!” shouted hundreds of voices. All the hatred of
the crowd at first focussed on Buonaparte, then it turned against the
Corps Legislatif, the Parliament, which had voted this accursed war,
and by its baseness had consummated the national disaster. The Chamber
had been hastily convoked, and at midnight it was still sitting. “We
must march against it and turn it out,” howled the crowd. But on the
point of falling in for this purpose there was a hesitation. “What
should be the rallying cry?” Parisians more than any other people in
the world have ever been dominated by fine and appropriate words.
And it was perfectly characteristic of the Paris mob that it found
itself incapable of proceeding until it should have discovered _le mot
juste_, the rallying cry, which should lead it like a banner.
“Down with the Corps Legislatif?” was suggested.
“No! No!”
“Long live the Republic?”
“No, it is too soon for that.”
_“Vive la France?”_
“No, that is too well known.”
“Death to the Prussians?”
“Better wait for that.”
But suddenly the crowd found the word, a word which indicated the
tenor of the Revolution which was to follow: a word which like a ray
of light was to conciliate a hundred opinions, to gather into one
collective act a hundred individual energies, a simple, powerful,
irresistible, sonorous word, the voice of the people pronouncing the
people’s sentence upon that imperial _régime_, which, for close on
a score of years, had been preparing the ruin of France; the word
was _déchéance_ (dethronement). To the refrain of that word scanned
thus—_Dé—ché—ance_, and sung to the refrain of _Les Lampions_, the
crowd thronged westward on to the Place de la Bastille, to awake
that revolutionary quarter, the Faubourg Saint Antoine, asleep for
twenty years. Then back again it surged on to the boulevards, there to
deliberate and to postpone the attack on the Corps Legislatif until
the morrow, Sunday.
In the small hours of that Sabbath morning Juliette from her window
watched the boulevards emptying, the people going home, but not to
sleep. Lights in the windows announced a vigil—_la veillée des larmes_.
_“Il semble”_, writes Mme. Adam, _“que sous chaque toit un malade est
à toute extrêmité et qu’on passe la nuit à son chevet. Ce malade c’est
La France à l’agonie.”_[178]
The 4th of September dawned resplendent, an ideal autumn day. “The sun
shines to-day,” writes Juliette in her diary.[179] “It is the people’s
sun. There is no fear of rain damping our patriotism.”[180]
In this diary, which she kept for her daughter, who was away in
Normandy, staying near Granville with her grandparents, Mme. Adam, as
they passed, described the events of those memorable hours. By ten
o’clock all Paris was in the streets, thronging towards the Place
de la Concorde and the bridge leading to the Chambre des Députés,
where the members of the Corps Legislatif were to meet at twelve
o’clock. Meanwhile, as the surging crowd outside grew larger and
larger and more and more clamant, in the smoking-room of the House
of Representatives perplexed deputies were vainly seeking some new
form of government to replace the Empire. They were hurriedly turning
over pages describing those numerous constitutional experiments which
France had been trying since the Great Revolution; between the Palais
Legislatif and the Palais des Tuileries, where the Empress was on the
point of flight, all the time despairing ministers were hurrying to
and fro. To Thiers’ house on the Place St. Georges the dying Mérimée
was dragging himself to entreat, on behalf of a woman and her son,
the intervention of _le petit grand homme_ on whose wisdom every one
counted.
Mme. Adam, from her place of vantage in a corner of the bridge close
to the balustrade and the great lamps, listened to the talk which
surged around her. Some wanted a republic, others feared that a
republic would mean a revolution. With the fire of republicanism
burning in her own heart like a religion, Juliette felt moved to
intervene in what she describes as her first public speech.
“The Republic,” she exclaimed, “is not decreed, it is made, it is
born of yourselves. It represents the highest degree of courage, of
intelligence, of activity, of expansion to which a nation can attain.
If society be a magnified edition of individuals, then the Republic is
the result of our noblest actions, a living assemblage of our broadest
and most progressive duties, rights and interests. Henceforth no
social malady, no monarchical canker shall kill it. Then long live the
Republic.”[181]
“My pathos,” writes Mme. Adam, “was not without its success. But my
chief delight was to hear repeated around me by thousands of voices:
_Vive la République._”
From twelve till three, while ministers were deliberating and Eugénie
de Montijo was escaping from her Palace, the mob continued to surge
round the Chambre des Députés.
At half-past three the deputies heard the crashing noise of doors
being broken open: the crowd had invaded the Chamber. But, like
Charles I, the Parisians found that the birds had flown; no ministers
were present, there were only a few deputies of the left. Among them
was Gambetta. He vainly tried to address the mob. But even that
resonant voice could not obtain a hearing. Amidst cries of “Where are
the ministers?” he was howled down. And it was not until the ministers
had reappeared, and the President of the Chamber, M. Schneider, from
his official seat, had reminded the people of the danger threatening
them, with the enemy barely one hundred miles away, that there was
something like order. The ministers, fearing the violence of the
mob, stayed but a brief space in the Chamber. After their departure,
Gambetta entered the tribune and declared that Louis Napoléon
Buonaparte and his dynasty had for ever ceased to reign in France.
Forthwith, at the invitation of another deputy of the left, Jules
Favre, the crowd followed Favre himself and Gambetta to the Hôtel de
Ville. There at half-past four the Republic was proclaimed and the
Government of National Defence declared. Its President was General
Trochu, Governor of Paris and Minister of War. Of the fourteen
members, all deputies either for Paris or the department of Seine,
nine were the Adams’ personal friends. Gambetta was Minister of the
Interior, Ernest Picard of Finance, Jules Simon of Education, Jules
Favre of Foreign Affairs, Dorian of Public Works. Garnier-Pagès,
Pelletan, Emmanuel Arago and Rochefort were all ministers without
portfolios.[182] When the Revolution broke out Rochefort was in prison
on a charge of high treason, based on his attacks on the Empire in his
paper _La Lanterne_. On the afternoon of the 4th, he was liberated by
the crowd and brought in triumph to the Hôtel de Ville.
“The end of that day was splendid,” writes Juliette.[183] “A fresh
breeze blew from the old river of Paris on to the assembled multitude.
Once again the Hôtel de Ville had become _le Louvre superbe des
révolutions_. The last rays of the setting sun gilded that people’s
palace, played upon its windows, causing them to sparkle with a
brilliance far surpassing the glitter of all the diamonds in the
imperial crown.”
The Revolution had passed without the shedding of a drop of blood,
without a single deed of violent disorder. The forecast of a working
man, whom Juliette had overheard that afternoon, had come true.
“Ah, well!” he had exclaimed, looking round on the crowd,[184] “we
are all here—we, the robbers, _les partageux_, the assassins! Here
we are on this fine Sunday. And there will be no robbery and no
assassination.... Every one is pleased, even the omnibus company; for
not one of their ‛buses has been held up and they have not lost a
threepence.”
Indeed, there was universal rejoicing. Confidence and determination
shone on all faces. Old friends met in the street and embraced
one another. The fall of that oppressive _régime_ established on
the 2nd of December brought intense relief. On the day after the
Revolution, George Sand wrote to Mme. Adam from Nohant a letter of
fervent rejoicing: _“Quelle grande chose,”_ she exclaims, _“quelle
belle journée au milieu de tant de désastres! Je n’espérais pas cette
victoire de la liberté sans résistance.”_[185] Even with the enemy
advancing to their gates Parisians breathed again, realising that
henceforth it was for _la patrie_ and not for a dynasty that they
would fight.
Search as we will among the numerous records of those memorable hours,
penned by those who lived through them, we shall find none describing
more vividly than these forty pages of Mme. Adam’s _Souvenirs_, the
talk, the incidents and the movements of that vast crowd, thronging
the Paris streets, all swayed by the excitement of a revolution. For
_la grande Française_, as Mme. Adam was later to be called, never
lives more intensely than when in a crowd. _“Je vis d’une autre
existence dès que je me mèle à la foule,”_ she writes.[186]
The gladness of that September evening, however, was but a rift in
the clouds now rapidly enveloping Paris. The Prussians were expected
to reach the capital on Thursday, the 8th of September. They did not
arrive until the 19th. In the interval, Mme. Adam took a hasty night
journey to Granville, in order that Alice might have a glimpse of her
mother before she was shut up in the besieged city. After waiting five
hours in a queue at the Gare Montparnasse, she obtained tickets for
herself and her maid, and caught one of the few trains running. Adam
feared that she might not be able to return. But after spending a few
hours with her family, whom she was not to see again for many months,
she tore herself away and entered the Paris train, which was said to
be the last. Indeed, whether it would continue as far as Paris seemed
doubtful. Juliette and her maid, who, with three fellow-travellers
and a dog, were the only passengers bound for that destination,
were, however, promised by the driver that, if compelled to abandon
his train, he would take them on his engine into Paris. This was
unnecessary, for, to the immense joy of Adam, who had almost ceased
to hope for his wife’s return, the whole train steamed into the Gare
Montparnasse.
This was on the 11th of September. During the following days Juliette
was busy stocking her larder ready for the siege.
_“Je vais, je trotte, pour compléter mes provisions,”_ she writes.
_“Il faut tant de choses! Tout peut manquer a un moment donné,
jusqu’au sel, jusqu’au poivre, jusqu’à la moutarde. Je déploie dans
mes recherches tout mon génie domestique. Je ne rève que mouton
d’Australie, Liebig, jambon, légumes Chollet, épicerie, comestibles.
Mes poches, ma robe, mes bas, mes mains, sont toujours encombrés
quand je rentre. Si je découvre une conserve nouvelle, je rève à
l’étonnement qu’elle causera dans trois mois, aux amis que j’inviterai
à la manger! Verrai-je des héros surgir dans mon entourage: au lieu de
leur tresser des, d’orner leur maison de guirlandes, je leur offrirai
une bouteille de jeunes carottes confites, un sac de choux frisés: il
faut qu mon héros ait accompli les plus grands exploits pour que je
lui présente un fromage tête de mort de Hollande.”_[187]
All Juliette’s friends were similarly employed. _“Le fanatisme de la
provision nous possède tous!”_ she exclaims, on meeting a Member of
Parliament loaded with boxes of sardines.
Having furnished her larder, Mme. Adam next volunteered to nurse the
wounded, who were pouring into Paris. Her father’s lessons in anatomy,
her grandfather’s lessons in the dressing of wounds, now stood her
in good stead. She was appointed to install in the Conservatoire
de Musique a private hospital with fifty beds. Henceforth the
provisioning and equipping of this hospital and the others which she
organised later became her chief concern. “I hold out my hand to every
one; I beg, I write, I do everything to get money,” she says. It was a
grand day when the hospital workers, well provided with bags, bottles
and baskets, were permitted to penetrate into the Tuileries, now given
back to the nation, and to replenish their stores from the imperial
larder. Lists had been made out of the viands to which each hospital
was entitled: macaroni for the Conservatoire de Musique, sausages for
the Picpus Hospital, kidney beans for the Théâtre français, oil for
the Grand Orient, jam for all.
In connection with the Conservatoire Hospital, Mme. Adam organised a
workroom where the wives, mothers and daughters of the men who were
fighting, instead of staying at home and eating their hearts out with
anxiety, could meet together, and, while sewing for the wounded,
encourage one another and sympathise with one another’s sufferings.
Edmond Adam was a member of the Government Committee appointed to
investigate the condition of the general hospitals. This he found so
lamentable, that in many instances, owing to the infection of wards
and operating theatres, amputation cases had no chance of recovery.
Despite the difficulties and dangers which beset her on every hand,
Mme. Adam’s heart burned with a courage and a hope, which her friend,
George Sand, appreciated to the full, when she wrote to her from
Nohant on the 15th of September.[188] _“Vous êtes généreusement
exaltée par un peril prochain et défini.”_ This was one of the last
letters Mme. Adam received before the gates of Paris were closed.
FOOTNOTES:
[163] See _ante_, 99.
[164] _Ibid._, 118.
[165] _Souvenirs_, III. 349 _et seq._
[166] _Souvenirs_, III. 448.
[167] _Souvenirs_, III. 464.
[168] _Ibid._, 409.
[169] _Ibid._, 470.
[170] For Mme. Adam’s description of the grim incident which occurred
at his funeral, see _Souvenirs_, V. 66.
[171] Grant Duff in _Notes from a Diary_, September 1864.
[172] _Souvenirs_, III. 471.
[173] _Ibid._, 468.
[174] _Ibid._, 471.
[175] _Ibid._, 470.
[176] _Ibid._, 473.
[177] _Souvenirs_, IV. 2.
[178] _Souvenirs_, IV. 7.
[179] This diary, first published in _Le Rappel_, was afterwards
embodied in the series of Mme. Adam’s _Souvenirs_, of which it
constitutes the fourth volume, entitled _Mes Illusions et nos
Souffrances pendant le siège de Paris_.
[180] To Edmond de Goncourt (_Journal_ under September 4, 1870) the
4th of September seemed a “grey day.” Jules Favre, _Gouvernement de la
Défense Nationale_, I. 64, writes, _“la journée ... se leva tiède et
radieuse.”_
[181] _Souvenirs_, IV. 23.
[182] For the complete list of members of the Government, see Jules
Favre, _Gouvernement de la Défense Nationale_, I. 89.
[183] _Souvenirs_, IV. 40.
[184] _Souvenirs_, IV. 30.
[185] George Sand, _Correspondance_, VI. 29.
[186] _Souvenirs_, IV. 244.
[187] _Souvenirs_, IV. 62.
[188] _Correspondance de George Sand_, VI. 34.