by Michael Hill
Elihu Washburne, Paris—to Adele Washburne, Brussels—December 17, 1870
No bag & no nothing since the 25th instant. I am fearful we are cut off. “Star by star goes out; And all is night.” Grackskins & I are pretty well, still enough to eat and are likely to have, so please do not worry, but keep up heart and hope. It cannot be many weeks before we will be together again.
Léon Gambetta, who had departed Paris in a daring balloon escape on October 7, was still sending optimistic reports into the city about his efforts to raise additional armies from the provinces.
Diary—December 18, 1870
Sunday P.M., 91st day of the siege. A quiet morning for writing in my room. Have only had two callers. Gambetta telegraphed news up to the 12th, and put the best face he can on things. But I think the Army of the Loire has been very badly used up. But Gambetta is always full of pluck and courage and is consumed by enthusiasm. He is all there is of the government of France outside of Paris. He is a short, thick-set man of thirty-four only. Hair long and black, and black beard all over his face. Eyes black and restless, fiery, eloquent, rash, infectious, extravagant, courageous, determined, he has displayed the most superhuman energy since he left Paris.
6 P.M. At three P.M. went out riding. The boulevards were full of people and the Champs-Élysées still more crowded, and looking quite like Paris. Rode up to 75, but it was no more a summer morning in the leafy month of June. Then to the American ambulance, then a call and then home. It is said there is to be another sortie tomorrow. But what good? Only more bloodshed and nothing affected. It seems shocking to see all these brave men go to their death. To die for one’s country is one thing, but to die without doing the country any good is quite another thing.
Although Washburne occasionally enjoyed a “good dinner,” the daily food stocks of the Legation were beginning to run short. On Sunday, December 18, Washburne dined on mule meat for the first time.
Diary—December 19, 1870
92nd day of the siege. No bag yet and heard nothing since the 25th ult. [ultimo, i.e., November 25]. I think Bismarck is not going to permit me to receive anything more. I guess he is a little out of sorts in not getting into Paris. It is doubtful about my bag going out as usual tomorrow, as they talk of another sortie tomorrow. It did not come off today—always tomorrow. I tremble for the torrents of blood that are to flow. I am heart sick of all this military. Nothing but soldiers, soldiers, soldiers everywhere you move. A cloudy, dour, dreary day, but not cold. We ate mule meat yesterday for dinner for the first time. It cost two dollars per pound in gold . Gratiot continues well, my cold is better though I cough a good deal.
Diary—December 21, 1870
94th day of the siege. The fighting has been going on all day, but I do not think it has amounted to “a hill of beans” for the French. Heard a few rumors at the Legation and at four P.M. rode up to the American ambulance to see what they had there. I found the carriages had just come in from the battlefield with some dozen of wounded, many of them mortally. The fight was mainly an artillery duel. The French failed in retaking Le Bourget. The day has been cold. Dined as is usual on Wednesday, at Mr. Moulton’s and I would never ask to sit down to a nicer dinner. Perhaps tomorrow night I may be able to record something definite as to the fighting around Paris.
Diary—December 22, 1870
95th day of the siege. The coldest day of the season.6 As this was the day the French were to break through Mr. Hüffer7 and I thought we would walk to the heights of Montmartre to see what we could see. From that point the whole surrounding country can be seen. What was our surprise to find not even the sign of any military operations. Our ambulance men returned this P.M. and reported that nothing had been done today. All was a failure yesterday—the army of 140,000 men accomplished nothing. They made one attack on the battery at Le Bourget and were repulsed with the loss of a thousand men. And on that plain that vast army stood all day yesterday in the terrible cold and there they remained all last night, still colder, without shelter and almost without food. Gratiot, who was out both yesterday and today saw all, gives an account of the dreadful sufferings of the troops. Tonight is much colder than last night, and if the poor soldiers have to remain out tonight, half of the army must be used up. All our ambulance men who were out concur that there has never been anything more wretched than these last two days.
Diary—December 23, 1870
96th day of the siege. A cold, bright, clear day. No military movements, and the grand sortie has proved a grand fizzle, resulting in nothing but loss to the French. One of their best generals has been killed. I understand that their whole loss will amount to fifteen hundred men, besides the vast number who have been put hors de combat [out of action] by the excessive cold. The situation is becoming daily much more grave here in Paris. The suffering is intense and augmenting daily. The Clubs8 have begun again to agitate. Hunger and cold will do their work. From the misery I heard of yesterday I begin to think it impossible for the city to hold out till the first of February, as I had predicted. They are killing off the horses very fast. I learn that the omnibuses will all stop running next week. At the present there are but very few cabs in the street and they will soon disappear. In passing across the Champs-Élysées the other day at noon, I could not count a half a dozen vehicles all the way from the Arch [of Triumph] to the Place de la Concorde. Without food, without carriages, without lighted streets, there is a pleasant little prospect ahead. The discouragement . . . which I feel creeping over me, as these long, dreary days and weeks run on. In the beginning no man was wild enough to imagine that the siege would last till Christmas.
Diary—December 24, 1870
97th day of the siege. Another cold, clear day and no military operations. The movements of this week have only proved simple ignoble fizzles and have only brought unheard of sufferings to the soldiers. A good many little bits of news have got in by the way of newspapers found on Prussian prisoners. There has evidently been a good deal of fighting on all sides and the Prussians have lost men as well as the French. The French must do a heap better outside than they do here [inside], or else nothing can come of it all. All this enormous force of 500,000 men now under arms for fourteen weeks have accomplished nothing and will not so long as Trochu is in command.
On Christmas Day, with no end to the siege in sight, Washburne’s spirits were lower than ever. Throughout the city, desperate measures continued. Trees everywhere were being cut down for fuel, and horses of every kind were being killed for food—in the end some 65,000 would be butchered to feed the people of Paris.
Diary—December 25, 1870
Sunday [Christmas Day]—98th day of the siege. Never has a sadder Christmas dawned on any city. Cold, hunger, agony, grief, despair sit enthroned at every habitation in Paris. It is the coldest day of the season and the fuel is very short. The government has had to take hold of the fuel question and the splendid forests of Vincennes and Boulogne and the magnificent shade trees which have for ages adorned the beautiful avenues of this unrivalled city are all likely to go, in the vain struggle to save France. So says the Official Journal this morning. The sufferings of the last week exceed by far anything we have seen. There is scarcely any meat but horsemeat and the government is now seizing every horse it can lay its hands on for food. It carries out its work with remorseless impartiality. The omnibus horse, the cab horse, the work horse, the fancy horse, all go alike in mournful procession to the butcher’s block—the magnificent blooded steed of the Rothschilds’ by the side of the old “plug” of the cartman. Fresh beef, mutton, pork are entirely out of the question. A little poultry yet remains at fabulous prices. In walking through the Rue St. Lazare last night I saw a middling-sized goose and chicken for sale in a shop window and I had the curiosity to step in and inquire the price—rash man that I was. The price of the goose was twenty-five dollars and the chicken seven dollars . . .9
Elihu Washburne, Paris—to Secretary of State Hamilton Fish, Washington, D.C.—December 25, 187
0
I hope you are having a “Merry Christmas” in Washington. I must confess it is not “jolly” here today. It is the coldest day of the season and all Paris is in one grand shiver. We have visions of roast turkey and cranberry sauce, plum pudding and mince pies, but they are in the dim distance. Passing through the Rue St. Lazare last night I saw a middling sized goose and a small chicken in the window of a shop for sale. The price of the goose was twenty-five dollars and the chicken seven dollars! If this siege continues much longer I do not know what is to become of many of our Americans who are here . . . I am doing all I can, but that is not much. But all seem to feel a sort of reliance upon me and I try to keep up their courage.
Diary—December 26, 1870
99th day of the siege. Quite a little dinner of ten covers yesterday evening at seven o’clock at seventy-five [75 Avenue de l’Impératrice]. I could not afford to let Christmas go entirely unrecognized. The cold was intense, but I managed to get the petit salon [parlor] and the salle à manger [dining room] quite comfortable by the time the guests arrived.
The dinner party was composed as follows:
Mr. Hüffer, Bowles, Durand of Chicago, Shepard of Chicago, McKean of Chicago, Col. Hoffman, . . . Dr. Johnston, Gratiot Washburne, Mr. Washburne.
Here is the bill of fare for the 98th day of the siege:
1. Oyster soup.
2. Sardines, with lemons.
3. Corned beef, with tomatoes and cranberries.
4. Preserved green corn.
5. Roast chicken.
6. Green peas.
7. Salad.
Dessert.
Pumpkin pie and cheese, macaroni cakes . . . cherries, strawberries, chocolates, plums, apricots, café noir.
The cold is not as great as yesterday. The papers of this morning speak of the awful suffering of the troops. Many have frozen to death. I take it all military movements are at an end for the present. The papers say that bad fortune pursues the French everywhere. We are now getting long accounts from the German papers of the fighting in the Loire and fearful work it must have been. Yet the Prussians go everywhere, but they purchase their successes at a dear price.
There is now high talk in the Clubs. This last terrible fizzle has produced intense feeling. Trochu is denounced as a traitor and an imbecile. They say that he is now staying out in one of the forts and [doesn’t] care about coming back into the city. He cannot fail more than once more without going to the wall. Never in the history of the world has any army of half a million of men cut such an ignoble figure. And it should not be said that the soldiers are not brave, for they are. It is the want of a leader that has paralyzed everything for fourteen mortal weeks . . .
Evening . . . I did not leave the Legation till six P.M., having been busy in getting my dispatches and letters ready for the bag which leaves in the morning. A great many people of all nations calling—a greater number of poor Germans than ever. The total number I am feeding up to tonight is 1547, and more a coming. It is now a question of fuel as well as of food and the wood riots have commenced. The large square across the street diagonally from our house was filled with wood from the Bois de Boulogne which had been sawed up to burn into charcoal. At about one o’clock this P.M. a crowd of two or three thousand women and children gathered in the Avenue Bugeaud, the Rue Spontini, and the Rue des Belles-Feuilles, right in our neighborhood and “went for” this wood. Old Père, undertook to pass through the crowd in an old cab, but they arrested him as an aristocrat, crying out, “On ne passe pas.” [They shall not pass.] Nearly all the wood was carried off. This may be only the beginning . . .
Diary—December 27, 1870
100th day of the siege. And who would have thought it? It was a cold, grey, dismal morning, spitefully spitting snow. Started on foot for the Legation at eleven o’clock, nearly two miles. The butcher’s shops and the soup houses surrounded by poor half frozen women. At the corner of the Rue de Courcelles and the Rue de Monceaux the people had just cut down two large trees and were cutting them up and carrying them off. Every little twig was carefully picked up. At a wood-yard in the Rue Biot the street was blocked up with people and carts. I hear that several yards were broken into last night. The high board fences enclosing the vacant lots on the Rue de Chaillot, near the Legation, were all torn down and carried off last night. The news this evening is that the Prussians commence this morning the bombardment of some of the forts, but we don’t learn with what success. The bag came in at one o’clock P.M. bringing my official dispatches and a very few private letters, and not a single newspaper. What an outrage I can look for nothing more for a week. The Prussians sent in news yesterday by parlementaire10 that the Army of the North had been beaten and dispersed—another “blessing in disguise” for the French.
By the end of December, Washburne and the American Legation staff were surviving on “our national pork and beans, and the poetic fish-ball,” as Wickham Hoffman would write. At times like a “denizen of the rough West,” the American Minister cooked his own pork over an open fireplace accompanied by beans “à la mode Livermore.”
Diary—December 28, 1870
101st day of the siege . . . I made a requisition . . . today for some provisions, more for others than for myself. Antoine got quite a piece of pork and some beans. M. Jules Favre wrote to the mayor of our arrondissement to do all he could for me to soften the rigors of the times. For the last two weeks I have been having for my first breakfast a piece of bread, a cup of coffee and sometimes one egg. My second breakfast I have taken at the Legation consisting of a piece of bread and a very small piece of cheese with a glass of red wine. But we always have a good dinner at half past six. But now that I have got my pork if you will come into my room at the Legation at one o’clock P.M., you will see the Ministre des États Unis cooking it for his breakfast on the end of a stick, before his generous wood fire . . .
Diary—December 30, 1870
103rd day of the siege. Called to see my colleague, Dr. Kern, the Swiss Minister, this morning . . . He says he now lives almost entirely upon horse meat and macaroni, and when I said to him that he would not be likely to starve he answered, ‘neigh.’Rather dull at the Legation today. I have made a new arrangement for the poor Germans. They became too numerous for the Legation and so I hired a room on the street right under us to receive them. I put up a stove to warm it and have arranged some seats so that they can sit down and warm themselves when they come. I have arranged also that each woman shall have a glass of hot sangaree before she leaves. The poor creatures suffer so much from the intense cold. There is no news of any kind today. Some think the Prussians will have one of the forts soon and that the city will be bombarded. Trochu is universally denounced and the government seems to hesitate. They are bawling louder and louder at the Clubs every night. The situation becomes more and more critical. Wood is becoming more and more scarce. I paid day before yesterday forty dollars for less than a cord. I feel that I am becoming utterly demoralized. I am unfitted for anything. This siege life is becoming unendurable. I have no disposition to send anything. I merely skim the trashy French newspapers. I get no American or English papers any more. I am too lazy to do any work and it is an immense effort to write a dispatch once a week. It is at night that I attempt to jot down what has taken place during the day. I have full time to think of bygone days and to reflect upon the incidents of life now, alas! not a short one.
Diary—December 31, 1870
[New Year’s Eve]: Saturday evening. 104th day of the siege. Antoine came a little after midnight and opened “Sesame” [the dispatch bag]. A feast of letters and papers and read till three o’clock this morning. Remained in my room till 2 P.M. devouring the contents of the leather pouch. Then went to the Legation and at 51/2 to see Mr. Jules Favre. Then G[ratiot] and I dined . . . So closed the last day of a sad and eventful year. A great deal of firing by the Prussians . . .
Diary—January 1, 1871
105th day of the siege. What a New Year’s Day! With sa
dness I bid adieu to the fatal year of 1870 and with sadness do I welcome the new year of 1871. How gloomy and triste the day. A few calls only . . . It is rather a heavy burden for me to carry around all the news from outside which there is in Paris. I only made three calls today and then dined at Mr. Moulton’s. And a good dinner for the 105th day of the siege.
4
DEFEAT
By mid-January 1871, provisions were running desperately short. Dog flesh was in high demand and the stocks of bread remaining in the city were described by Galignani’s Messenger as “black as the Spartan broth of old and entirely without flavor.”
With the unrelenting cold weather, Washburne reported to Washington that the “fuel famine” was “likely to become as severe as the food famine.” The death rate in Paris from disease and starvation had risen to 4,000 a week, more than four times the rate before the siege. On January 5, Washburne received news of one German family “dying of cold and hunger.” Although his own food stocks were running low, he immediately sent aid to the family.
That same day, in a final attempt to break the will of the French people, Bismarck began the bombardment of Paris. The Prussians fired some 300–400 shells each day, targeting mostly areas on the Left Bank. The Pantheon, Invalides, and surrounding neighborhoods were struck repeatedly. The beautiful ancient church of St. Sulpice was shelled as was the Salpêtrière Hospital, leading many to believe that the Prussians were intentionally targeting hospitals during the bombardment to “intimidate the population.”
Elihu Washburne, Paris—to Secretary of State Hamilton Fish, Washington, D.C.—January 2, 1871
The excessive and exceptional cold weather continues, and the suffering of the city is steadily increasing . . . Great discontent is now prevailing among the poorer classes, but yet there seems to be a disposition to hold out to the last extremity . . . The number of indigent Germans who are now calling on me for assistance is increasing fearfully. It amounts today to seventeen hundred and fifty-three. They are suffering severely, in spite of all I can do for them . . . but if the siege continues much longer, I really do not know what is to become of them, for the time is fast approaching when money cannot procure what is necessary to sustain human life. My position in this regard is becoming embarrassing to the last degree . . .