by Michael Hill
Diary—January 19, 1871
123rd day of the siege. 15th day of the bombardment. This is the day of the great sortie. At this hour nothing is known of results, but it has undoubtedly been the bloodiest day yet seen around the walls of Paris. The great fighting seems to be between Saint Cloud and Versailles or rather to the north of St. Cloud. It is said, however, that other parts of the Prussian lines have been attacked also, but I hardly believe it. At half past two P.M. Col. Hoffman and myself went to the Château de la Muette in Passy . . . From the cupola of this château is the most magnificent view on that side of Paris, and it was there we went to look through the great telescope into the Prussian lines . . . We first looked at Mont Valérien, that now world-renowned fortress, standing in its majestic grandeur, overlooking and commanding this ill-fated city, and holding in awe its proud enemy for miles around. We then look at the Aqueduct . . . where we see the Prussian staff as plainly almost as we could see a group of men . . . from the balcony of our house. Then we turn to St. Cloud and see the ruins of that renowned palace for centuries the pride of France. Now we look right into the eyes of those terrible Prussian batteries which for two weeks have been vomiting fire and flame, death and destruction upon devoted Paris.
But strange to say they are comparatively silent—only now and then a gun from each battery. Other business to attend to besides killing innocent little children and women in the streets of this somber capital. One hundred thousand men are struggling to break through that circle of iron and of fire which has held them for four long, long months. The lay of the country is such that we cannot see the theater of the conflict which has been raging all day. The low muttering of the distant cannon & the rising of the smoke indicate, however, the field of carnage . . . From the château I went to the American ambulance. The carriages had just returned from the battlefield with their loads of mutilated victims. They had brought in sixty-five of the wounded and all that they had room for in the ambulance. The assistants were removing their clothes all wet and clotted with blood and the surgeons were binding up their ghastly wounds. The men who went out with the ambulance, Dr. Johnston, Mr. Bowles, Dr. Lamson, and Gratiot represent the slaughter of the French troops as horrible and they could not see that they had made much head way. The whole country was literally covered with dead and wounded and five hundred ambulances were not half sufficient to bring them away . . . All Paris is now on the qui vive [alert] and the wildest reports circulate. The streets are full of people, men, women and children. Who will undertake to measure the agonies of this dreadful horror!
61/2 P.M. Gratiot has just come in from the ambulance. He had charge of one of the wagons that went out to the battlefield and he brought in seven of the wounded. He says the last reports are bad for the French and that the left wing was giving way. My own opinion is the day has been a failure for the French arms. The government has today commenced rationing the bread. Each adult person is to have 3/5ths of a pound per day and children over five years of age one half of that amount. The quantity is very small when it is considered that there is not much else to eat, and the quality is horrible—black, heavy, miserable stuff, made of flour, oat-meal, peas, beans and rice. The cook put a loaf into my hands and I thought it was a pig of Galena lead smelted at Hughlet’s furnace.
Diary—January 20, 1871
124th day of the siege. 16th day of the bombardment. Results of yesterday—blood, agony, tears, anguish, horror. I was not mistaken last night as to the result of the fighting except that it is worse than I could have imagined. The troops have all come back into town. From what I can gather this sortie has been the most fatal of all to the French and has inflicted no great harm on their enemy. Everything has been so oppressive that I have been about but little today . . .
What fearful, fearful times we have fallen upon. Alas! we are compelled:
To dine on news of human blood
To sup on the groans of the dying and dead,
And supperless never will go to bed.5
Diary—January 21, 1871
125th day of the siege. 17th day of the bombardment . . . Only went out after dark for a little walk down the “Champs.” It was about as dark and muddy as Main Street, Galena. There is talk of trouble in the city as the people are very much excited. Some people are accusing Trochu as being “crazy as a bed bug.” Nobody knows anything of what actually took place at the sortie last Thursday. There are various estimates of the French losses running from 3,500 to 10,000. The weather has been very thick and foggy and quite warm.
As a result of the failed sortie, General Trochu was removed as head of the army and Governor of Paris. Trochu’s removal was not wholly voluntary, later saying, “I am the Jesus Christ of the situation.” He was replaced by the aging General Joseph Vinoy, a former senator and supporter of Napoléon III’s Second Empire.6 The siege had now lasted over four months and the bombardment almost three weeks. Daily rations were now down to a half pound of bread and an ounce of horseflesh per person. The bread was inedible, described as “black and bitter . . . [and] seems to have been made with the very last sweepings of the lofts.”
Diary—January 22, 1871
Sunday morning. 126th day of the siege, 18th day of the bombardment. And yet another week has rolled round and the end seems to be no nearer. Always the same ill-fortune for France. The bombardment less effective . . .
At two this P.M. Col. Hoffman and myself went to a meeting of the Diplomatic corps at Dr. Kern’s to consider Count Bismarck’s answer to our letter in regard to the bombardment without notice.7 We there learned of the great excitement in the town—that a great crowd was at the Hôtel de Ville, yelling a bas Trochu [Down with Trochu]—that the Belleville8 battalions were marching through the streets demanding the “Commune” etc.
Leaving [Dr. Kern’s] at 4 P.M. we started for the hôtel to see what was really going on. Everywhere on our way we saw straggling companies and straggling squads of the National Guard and great crowds of people in the streets. Descending to the Rue Rivoli there were yet more people all moving towards the Hôtel de Ville, or standing in groups engaged in earnest talk. Within two squares of the hôtel the street was completely blocked up by the crowd and our carriage could proceed no further. Beyond us there was a dense mass of men, women and children and still further on[,] the street and the great square were literally blocked with soldiers, all standing in the mud. Here we met an acquaintance, a young surgeon in the French navy, who was profoundly agitated and profoundly depressed. He said the Breton Garde Mobile had just fired on the crowd and killed five persons, and that nobody knew what would come next, but that, at any rate France was finished.
In returning, the street was filled with excited people all making their way rapidly towards the hôtel. At the Place de la Concorde a battalion of cavalry was drawn up in line and batteries of artillery were passing. Up the Champs-Élysées large numbers of the troops of the line and the Garde National were drawn up. “Mischief there foot,”9 in my judgment. The first blood has been shed and no person can tell what a half starved and exasperated Parisian population will do . . . To me it looks, at the present writing, that we had reached the crisis, but in these times it won’t do to predict. It may turn out that nobody has been killed after all. I am now going out to dine at the American ambulance.
Diary—January 23, 1871
127th day of the siege. 19th day of the bombardment. Yesterday was another dreadful day for Paris, and, as the Journal des Debats says, “the most criminal that ever reddened the streets of Paris with blood.” On Saturday night the mob made an attack on the Prison of Mazas. [Gustave] Flourens, [Félix] Pyat and others of the revolutionists of the 31st of October were released. Yesterday morning the insurrectionists seized the mairie of the 20th arrondissement and went to work to install the insurrection, but they were soon driven out by some companies of the National Guard. Along in the afternoon a crowd from Belleville of men, women and children surged towards the Hôtel de Ville crying, “Donnez nous du
pain!” [Give us bread!] etc. and some companies of the revolutionary National Guard. Some of these went into the neighboring house and it was not long before a regular attack was made on the hôtel. Many shots were fired and explosive balls and bombs were hurled, particularly from the windows. At this moment the gates and windows of the hôtel were opened and the mobiles fired upon the mob, killing five and wounding eighteen. And then such a scatteration—these wretches flying in every direction, and crying, “Ne tirez plus!” [No more firing!] and in twenty minutes it was all ended.
Diary—January 24, 1871
128th day of the siege. 20th day of the bombardment. A regular London fog and a day for the “Blue Devils.” I have never seen such a gloom upon the city—hardly a person to be seen in the streets except those persons who are cutting down the great trees that adorn the avenues. Today for the first time there is real talk about capitulation. The city is on its last legs for food and then there are whispers of further disasters outside. All hope of relief from the Provinces has finally died out and the question is seriously asked what good now is all this suffering and destruction of property. The bombardment of the forts of the east and the village of St. Denis yesterday and last night was very violent and the village and the great church, the burying place of the Kings, have been knocked all to pieces. It is said there has been but little firing today, at any rate, but little has been heard. Some interpret this in the sense of a talk about capitulation which is going on. People are beginning to prepare for the coming in of the Germans by hiding their valuables. Antoine just tells me that thousands of the people from St. Denis have been driven into Paris and that they are now in the streets without shelter and without bread.
Diary—January 25, 1871
129th day of the siege. 21st day of the bombardment. According to the military report there was a good deal of bombarding yesterday. The atmosphere was so heavy we did not hear the guns. It is probably the same way today for we have the same thick, heavy fog as yesterday. We really miss this good old bombardment and we feel that it [is now] quite dull and stupid. I am afraid that Bismarck is failing in consideration for us. He ought to order the fog to lift so that we could hear his guns and be jolly . . .
Many people at the Legation and only the one subject to talk about: “When will the city surrender?” “What do you know?” “What will the Prussians do when they come in?” And so on we go, question after question and one caller after another, until I finally get away and go down town, but nobody to see that I care a fig about, yet I must circulate. I call to see the young Barons Rothschild more frequently than anybody else, most agreeable, intelligent, excellent gentlemen, and well posted in what is going on.10 They appreciate the situation, and it is appalling enough. Were I a Frenchman and a Parisian, I think I should call upon the earth to open and swallow me up.
Diary—January 26, 1871
130th day of the siege. 22d day of the bombardment. Not only “wars and rumor of wars,”11 but wars and rumors of peace today. Paris is as mild as new milk. All sorts of talk about peace and armistice and every Frenchman makes things precisely as he wishes or hopes. These trashy newspapers are teeming with the most absurd reports, but I don’t believe there is a man in the city that knows anything about either peace or armistice. But something must come soon, very soon . . .
The day has been long and horrid. And what a dinner for a white man—a little piece of baked salt pork, saltier than Lot’s wife ever dared to be. One mouthful of it has made me so thirsty that I have drank a carafe full of water this evening.
On January 27 relief finally came. It was announced that an armistice had been reached and the siege would soon be lifted. Although Washburne received the news with “a heart bowed with grief,” he knew surrender had become a “necessity” for Paris to survive. In his diary, he proclaimed the news with joy.
Diary—January 27, 1871
131st day of the siege: “Hail mighty day.” The Journal Officiel this morning announces that we are to have an armistice upon certain terms which it shadows forth, and I feel that a mountain is lifted from my shoulders. The firing was to have ceased at ten o’clock last night, but they could not stop it till half past eleven. Not a gun is heard today—the most profound quiet reigns. My bag came in at ten o’clock this morning, and I have been engaged all day. We all want to know the terms of the armistice. I must run up to Brussels at the earliest moment after the rail road is opened. There is a poor prospect for living in Paris for sometime—no provisions, no fuel, no horses or means of locomotion. If it can only so fall out that peace can be made and we can remain here in our house [No. 75], we will rejoice . . . The weather is again cold and the sky is grey and dour. The people are on the very brink of starvation, but I learn tonight the army will turn over some of its bread to the starving. In eight days I hope we shall have something to eat once more.
Diary—January 28, 1871
132nd day of the siege. I was greatly disappointed this morning in not finding the terms of the armistice in the Official Journal. Nothing seems to have been signed, but we have, at any rate, a suspension of arms. Paris is no longer bombarded and that must be a great relief in the assailed quarters. People will now be going back to their houses in the city. But to those people who had their splendid houses in the numberless little villages that surround Paris, what destruction and what horror. The houses that have not been burned or torn to pieces by shells, have all been broken open and robbed, furniture burned up or destroyed. It will take a quarter of a century to repair the damage done. In Paris proper, it is not so much. The Prussians utterly failed in their bombardment—they have not hastened matters an hour, but have subjected themselves to reproach for bombarding a great city without notice. Having a slight cold, I have not been out of my house today and have only seen a few persons. It seems that a portion of the National Guard made a demonstration against the armistice last night, but the cavalry charged upon them and dispersed them. Some people say that there will now be no fooling since General Vinoy has command of the Army of Paris. Trochu was too weak for anything—weak as the Indian’s dog which was so weak that he had to lean against a tree to bark.
Voilà, the effects of the armistice, I have already a piece of fresh beef, and the price of chickens has been reduced from eight dollars to six dollars for a single chicken.
5
PEACE
Diary—January 29, 1871
Sunday evening. 1st day of the armistice. Though we have had a practical armistice since Thursday night, it was only signed last night. It appeared this morning in the Journal Officiel and it has been sought for and read by the whole town. It is an appalling document to the French, but, after all, what can they do. Paris has held out well and suffered much, but there is a great history to be written of this memorable siege. But after all Paris has ignobly failed. With a half million of soldiers, not one effective blow was struck in four months and a half. Trochu has undoubtedly proved himself the weakest and most incompetent man ever entrusted with such great affairs. It is a question how the people are going to take this armistice. The soldiers are coming into the city today and the streets have been full of them wandering about perfectly loose. I hear tonight that the people broke into the great central market today and seized everything they could lay their hands on. The market men were demanding the most extortionate prices for everything that was eatable, and refused to make the least concession to the poor starving people. The consequence was that the said people “went” for them, and I am rather pleased than otherwise. I took a walk this evening up to 75, and all the way it was the desolation of desolations. How different from last June when everything was so beautiful and lovely. This evening Gratiot and I dined with the Moultons and had roast beef for dinner. In a few days more I hope we shall have something from the outside to eat. Still I have a “stock on hand” for a month yet, such as it is.
Diary—January 30, 1871
2d day of the armistice. I don’t know yet whether or not I will send o
ut my bag tomorrow morning. I have sent Antoine to see about the opening of the railroads. Unsealed letters are permitted to go out and come in. People can go out on a permission procured from the French authorities, their passes to be vised by the Prussians. There is nothing said about the people coming in. We are now entering upon a new and interesting phase of things and the world will watch with anxiety the progress of events in France. I have great apprehensions. The number of delegates [to be elected] to the convention—730—is entirely too large, and the time, seven days, entirely too short in which to do anything.1 And suppose peace is made, then what? What form of government is to be ordained? Is there to be a republic, or will an Orleanist2 mount the throne? We must wait. Speculation is simply childish. The papers this morning swallow the armistice, but with wry faces. The government of the National Defense is denounced without stint. They have commenced caricaturing the members of the government the same as they caricatured the fallen dynasty. We had a young snow storm last night and it is quite cold this morning with a fog so thick that we can hardly see a single square, and so dark as I write that I shall have to have the lamp lighted at high noon.
With an armistice in place, a desolate and suffering Paris slowly came back to life. Galignani’s Messenger reported that snow and cold continued for a time, but by early February the weather was “bright and mild.” Regular mail service resumed, the theaters reopened, train service was restored, and fresh provisions slowly made their way back into the bare city markets. On February 1 a single cartload of food from Versailles arrived, including a shipment of bread described as “white as snow and beautiful to look on.” Soon convoys of provisions were arriving from England “as a gift to the people of Paris.” The stalls of the central market were suddenly filled with mutton, salmon, “poultry in abundance,” potatoes, parsnips, apples, artichokes, veal, and freshwater eels. On February 11, Minister Washburne received a donation of $30,000 from the people of New York City for “the distressed population” of Paris and a month later 200,000 francs from the people of New Orleans “in aid of the French wounded.” With great hope Washburne wrote, “Paris is becoming quite Parisian and after a month of peace we will forget all the horrors we have seen.”