Disheartened by racial chauvinism in the South and plutocratic monopoly in the North, some Americans questioned whether Lincoln’s political philosophy was capable of meeting the challenges of an age he never lived to see. The America Lincoln knew was overwhelmingly rural; in 1860 just sixteen percent of Americans lived in cities of eight thousand or more. But the country was changing fast. In their quest for a solution to problems created by the growth of cities and the rise of an industrial economy, some, like W. E. B. Du Bois, looked to the new forms of paternalism which Lasalle and Marx hoped to erect in place of the antiquated structures of medieval feudalism. Du Bois at first believed that Lincoln’s principles offered blacks a path to a better place; but as the liberal tide receded he, too, became disenchanted with free-state solutions.
Like Du Bois, Henry Adams wondered whether a form of paternal control was not the answer. The Constitution Lincoln preserved had, he said, “broken down.” The American governing machinery was “the poorest in the world,—the clumsiest,—the most inefficient.” Studying the savage markets of his age, Adams came to the conclusion that the Constitution needed to be amended and the government given greater power to manage the economy. The eighteenth-century constitutional machine “was never meant,” Adams said, “to do the work of a 20-million horse-power society”
Without quite articulating his vision, Adams foresaw the triumph of the modern administrative state. A new paternal clerisy would emerge; but unlike that which held sway in the Middle Ages, the modern master class would be technocratic rather than theocratic. Like others in the North who were appalled by the world the Civil War had made, Adams developed a secret fondness for the paternal ideal. His daydreams, like those of other discontented Brahmins, are as revealing as the fantasies of the defeated Confederates. The Southerner wallowed in Walter Scott; the disoriented Yankee, abjuring his native inspirations, went directly to the Middle Ages themselves. Shuddering at the vulgarity of the figures who were rising to power around them, the Northern high-castes walled themselves off in little Romanesque citadels of privilege. (Adams’s Harvard friend, Henry Hobson Richardson, delighted to design them.) To sift more effectually the coarse democratic light, they substituted for windows the stained glass which Adams’s friend John LaFarge was teaching himself to make. They sent their children to be educated in schools modeled on the medieval foundations of Eton and Winchester; and however agnostic they might have been in their own hearts, they were pleased that their progeny should gather together every morning in Gothic chapels designed by Henry Vaughan.
While Mary Chesnut, in the South, composed her encomium to the seignorial vision of the dispossessed planters, Henry Adams, in the North, made his own obeisance to the feudal ideal.
Paris, July 1870
PRINCESS MATHILDE would later remember the shock she felt when she saw her cousin in his study at Saint-Cloud. Louis-Napoleon’s face “was ashen, his eyelids puffy, his eyes dead, his legs wavering, his shoulders bowed.” His hair, which had once been brown, was now unnaturally black. It had been dyed by his valet-coiffeur.
“Is it true that you are taking command of the army?” Mathilde asked her cousin.
“Yes.”
“But you’re not in a fit state to take it!” she protested. “You can’t sit astride a horse! You can’t even stand the shaking of a carriage! How will you get on when there is fighting?”
“You exaggerate, my dear,” the Emperor said in a muffled voice, “you exaggerate.”
“No,” the Princess said, “I’m not exaggerating. Look at yourself in a glass!”
“Oh, I dare say,” he replied, “I’m not very beautiful, I’m not even very dapper.”
Yet when the Princess continued to insist that he was not fit to be generalissimo, Louis-Napoleon brushed her objections aside with a gesture of resigned fatalism. He had little choice, he believed, but to assume personal command of his armies. The nephew of Napoleon the Great could do no less. A Bourbon, anointed with all the precious oils of legitimacy, might remain at Versailles, or in a sumptuous tent a few leagues off from the battle, while his marshals wielded his sword in his name; a Bonaparte, if he were to prove himself something better than a usurper, must go to the front.
The day of departure arrived. The air was heavy as the imperial family went to Mass. In the chapel the Archbishop of Paris, Monsignor Dar-boy, a saintly prelate, raised aloft the consecrated wafer; and in the spirit of the Eucharistic sacrifice the Empress silently offered up the life of her son, the Prince Imperial, as an oblation to the Deity. “I gave it as a burnt offering to God,” she said of her boy’s life.
The little Prince was to accompany his father to the front. “I had no doubts of his courage, the dear boy!” Eugénie recalled long after the Prince met his tragic end. “But after all, he was fourteen! And I could not but fear, I was bound to fear, that he might be somewhat put out when he first heard the whiz of bullets. ...”
“Ite missa est,” Archbishop Darboy intoned; and the Emperor and his family rose from their knees and went to the principal salon of the château. There Louis-Napoleon took leave of his household. Some detected a sadness in his eyes as he shook hands with his retainers. He spoke to each of them with a peculiar tenderness.
“In a fortnight Your Majesty will be in Berlin,” one of his courtiers ventured to suggest.
“No, don’t expect that,” the Emperor said, “even if we are successful.” He was smoking a cigar, which some thought odd, for he usually smoked cigarettes.
The imperial family went down to the railway siding. The Prince Imperial, who had cried earlier in the day at the prospect of a separation from his mother, was now filled with excitement, and was constantly asking questions of his aides-de-camp, Major Lamey and Captain Duperré. “Lulu,” as the boy was called, had led a sheltered life. He had rarely been beyond the walls of his father’s palaces, and on those infrequent occasions when he had ventured forth from the imperial enclosures, he had been protected by a retinue of vigilant guardians—a governess, a nurse, an equerry, a body of strapping soldiers. Now he was to be ripped from this dreamworld and thrust into the atmosphere of war. The Empress had with her own hands packed the trunk he would take with him to the front, and although she delighted in the curls of his unscissored locks, she had consented to their being cropped in conformity to the military regulations.
A sad parting took place. The Empress kissed her husband mournfully: she knew as well as he that he could return in one of only two ways—dead or victorious. Eugénie then took her son in her arms, and after embracing him traced an image of the Cross on his forehead.
The whistle blew, and the train got underway. Members of the court doffed their hats and cried “Vive I’Empereur.” The Emperor and the Prince waved from the window; and the Empress struggled to repress a sob.
Alsace, August 1870
THE PLAINS OF ALSACE, sloping downward towards the Rhine, are among the most fertile in Europe. At the beginning of August 1870 the rich fields were covered with the white field tents then used by the French army. In the camps the soldiers stacked their arms and sat down to eat their dinners. Many a “merde” and “foutre” was heard, for there was a dearth of hot food. The supply wagons had lost their way, and in the ranks most of the men would have to content themselves with hardtack and brandy—unnourishing fare after a day’s march in the heat. Some soldiers turned resentful eyes towards the officers’ quarters, where elaborate kitchen wagons stocked with poultry, game, and vintage wines stood in readiness.
Taps sounded, and those who found it impossible to sleep in the close atmosphere of the tents lay outside in the twilight, scanning the eastern horizon as it grew steadily blacker.
Where were they?
Already rumors were abroad in the camps. A million Germans, it was said, had risen in the east and were moving, with a strange fervor, towards the Rhine. Meanwhile, in their own camps, the French soldiers found only confusion and disorder. General Lebœuf might have been right in saying that
not a gaiter-button was missing. But much else was.
Leaders, for instance. The first appearance of the Emperor at Metz was not encouraging. Louis-Napoleon drove up the Rue Serpenoise in an open carriage, surrounded by his Cent Gardes. A young man who, half a century later, would lead French armies against another German onslaught, saw him pass by. The Emperor gave the impression, said the future Marshal Foch, “of a man utterly worn out.” Louis-Napoleon’s soldiers took to calling him “the old woman.” He seemed to personify the rot that had crept into the army. In contrast to the Prussian army, which as a result of compulsory military service was an army of young men, the French army was filled with men like the Emperor, aging career soldiers. This in theory gave the French an advantage in experience, but in reality many of the men who were supposed to lead had soured in the barracks; they looked forward not to the next victory but to the next drink.
The graying, gouty army might have had gaiter-buttons, but it had no plan of campaign. For days the men marched and counter-marched, often on empty stomachs, under a hot sun; but at the end of these expeditions they found themselves no nearer the German frontier. The Emperor spoke, vaguely and expansively, of taking the war to Germany, but the staffwork which might have allowed the army to act on the Emperor’s conception had not been undertaken. There were neither sound timetables nor accurate military maps, neither arrangements for the co-ordination of the railways nor machinery for the pooling of intelligence.
Most disastrous of all, there were not enough troops to launch an offensive. A fortnight after the mobilization order was given, only about 200,000 men were concentrated on the frontier, somewhat less than half the number General Lebœuf had promised. Nor were the regiments which had been successfully mobilized adequately supplied. Critical stores and arsenals were found, on inspection, to be dangerously depleted. Transport had in many places broken down. Long trains filled with provisions raced eastward at every hour of the day and night, yet when they reached their destinations there was no one to unload the precious matériel. The cars sat on the tracks, blocking the path of other trains.
Fear and frustration drove many soldiers to drink. Others threw down their arms and their kits in mutinous rage. A few blew their brains out. But mostly the soldiers waited. Turning their eyes constantly to the eastern horizon, they wondered what it held.
Chapter 30
“DÉCHÉANCE! DÉCHÉANCE!”
Paris, August 1870
EUGÉNIE, who had been designated Empress-Regent by her husband before he left for the front, was lunching with her ministers at Saint-Cloud when suddenly she burst into tears. The ministers looked about uneasily; the footmen who stood behind the chairs, in powdered hair and coats of Napoleonic green, stared impassively ahead. The Empress was seized by an hysterical vision. “I saw as it were a death’s-head on everything around me,” Eugénie remembered. “I was waiting in horrible anguish for the fatal message which I felt was on its way.”
One night, as she was preparing to go to bed, her maid brought news of a telegram. The message she dreaded had arrived.
The German invasion of France had begun. Tens of thousands of troops streamed onto French soil. On August 6 the invaders struck near the forest of Forbach in Lorraine and drove the French from the heights of Spicheren. The Corps of General Frossard, the Prince Imperial’s military instructor, was enveloped and crushed. At the same time, 100,000 Germans fell upon Marshal MacMahon’s positions at Woerth and Froeschwiller, where the plains of Alsace rise to meet the wooded slopes of the Vosges.
Eugénie fought back tears as she read the telegram. “In a flash,” she said, “I saw the abyss yawning, and thought I should swoon.” But the Empress quickly recovered her presence of mind, and before climbing into her carriage she gave orders for her ministers to assemble that night in Paris. “When I reached the Tuileries at one o’clock in the morning,” she said, “I was a different woman. I was no longer agonized, no longer excited, no longer weak. I felt calm and strong, I was lucid and resolved.” A strange light seemed to fill her whole being. “I felt,” she said, “as if I were raised above myself.”
Her moment had come. “The dynasty, sir, is doomed,” she told the Marquis de Piennes, “we must now think only of France.” She said this purely for effect; as her own actions were to demonstrate, she did not believe that the Napoleonic Empire was lost. Her husband’s star had been eclipsed; but Eugénie believed as passionately as ever in the romance of the Bonapartes. She could yet save the Empire for her son. She treasured in her soul the feeling of transfiguration she had experienced, fourteen years before, as she rode with the Emperor in a state coach to Notre Dame. There, in the baptistery, the Prince Imperial was to be christened. Eugénie wore a dress of light blue silk; the Regent diamond blazed in her crown. “The sun was just beginning to sink,” she said, “and the Rue de Rivoli was glowing purple; we filed along in this dazzling light. Beside me the Emperor remained silent, doing nothing but returning salutes. I myself was equally silent, for my heart was uplifted by an inexpressible joy, and I kept inwardly repeating to myself, ‘It is through this child, through my son, that the dynasty of the Napoleons will take final root in the soil of France, just as eight centuries ago the House of Capet was there implanted; it is he who will put the final seal on the work of his father.’”
All her life had been a preparation for this moment and this trial. She had long known the fascinations of power. “Even as a girl I had a taste for politics,” she said. “It is one that I inherited from my mother, in whose house I used to hear statesmen, diplomats, generals, publicists, orating from morning till night.” “What stirred me were the broad questions, where national interest, national prestige, were at stake. It was even through this that I first felt drawn to my future husband, before I ever knew him personally. His chivalrous follies . . . his heroic bearing . . . his proud proclamations . . . the noble accents of his patriotism—all these things exalted me.” Her whole being quivered with the desire for mastery, an emotion which in some natures is as strong as that of love, and unites as mysteriously the desires of the body and the aspirations of the soul. She remembered how once she was taken out onto the lake of Annecy, in a barge festooned with purple silk, and towed by twenty rowers. “The sky was ablaze with stars. . . . Now and then the whole landscape would be lit up by Bengal lights or showers of fire, or sheaves of rockets. It was magical. ... I was in a low-dress, with my diadem and my most splendid jewels. It was a warm evening, but I had flung a great scarlet burnous with gold fringes over my shoulders, and for a moment, so as to enjoy the spectacle more fully, I stood up on our deck. Immediately, from every vessel, the cry broke out ‘Long live the Empress!’ I was beaming with joy.”
The joy had vanished. Passing into the Tuileries, the Empress-Regent went at once to the council chamber. Her bearing was queenly. She held herself so erect that, when she took her seat, her shoulderblades scarcely touched the back of the chair. Fragile though she was, she possessed, one observer thought, an “almost virile courage.” Her husband’s vigor had disappeared, but Eugénie, in spite of her beauty, radiated authority. She had no patience for the belief that women were unfit to rule. Nothing “used to irritate me more,” she said, “than to hear myself denied a political sense because I was a woman. I longed to reply, ‘Indeed. Women have no political sense? What about Elizabeth? Maria Teresa? Catherine II?’”
She strained every nerve to revive the courage of her weak and tremulous ministers. Emile Ollivier, agitated by the thought of the retribution that awaited him should the government fall, babbled incoherently about the need to arrest enemies of the state. The Empress silenced him. There must be no arbitrary measures. The first task of the government was to prepare Paris to receive the news of the defeats. The full extent of the disaster must be made public, not at once, but by degrees. The Empress gave the necessary orders. She then turned to the task of putting Paris in a posture of defense. Her aide-de-camp, Admiral de la Gravière, could not but admire the energy
and resolution which the delicate woman displayed in that terrible hour. “Madame,” he said, “at this moment you are like one of Corneille’s heroines.”
Tragedy might be her destiny; but Eugénie was determined that it should be of the heroic rather than the pathetic variety. She would go down, not meekly, like Lady Jane Grey, or in the grip of a tender insanity, like Ophelia. She would go down as a fighter. She would inspire France as Joan of Arc had done—and if courage had its reward, she might yet live to see her son crowned Emperor. Her first communiqué as Empress-Regent, drafted in the depths of that dark night of defeat, bore witness to the heroic rôle she conceived for herself:
THE TUILERIES.
Frenchmen! The opening of the war has not been in our favour. Our arms have suffered a check. Let us be firm under this reverse, and let us hasten to repair it. Let there be among us but a single party, that of France; but a single flag, that of our national honour.
I come into your midst. Faithful to my mission and to my duty, you will see me first, where danger threatens, to defend the flag of France.
Eugénie.
Moscow, Zurich, and Saint Petersburg, September 1871-March 1872
THE CIRCLE TO WHICH Prince Kropotkin had attached himself, known by the name of a prominent revolutionist who belonged to it, Nicholas Chaikovsky, was one of many which appeared in Russia at this time. It drew its inspiration, as did so many of Russia’s red brigades, from the various and interconnected tissues of the red romance—nihilism, anarchism, socialism, terrorism. If the Circle of Chaikovsky differed from other revolutionary cells, it did so by being more intensely moral and intellectual than the others. Its members were dedicated to an ideal of ethical excellence; Prince Kropotkin called them “visionaries,” and compared their philosophy to that of a “religion which gave a more or less simple symbolical form” to its communicants’ “aspirations to purity and total sacrifice.”
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