The Fall of Paris

by Alistair Horne

  Meanwhile, Trochu, the new Governor, had reached Paris. On the journey, which had taken nearly twelve hours, his train had been held up by an immense train filled with equipment, labelled—the horrible irony of it—‘For the Siege of Mainz’. On the 18th, he had at once issued a lengthy and orotund first proclamation—precursor of many to come—calling for ‘not only calm in the street, but calm in your homes, calm in your hearts… in sum, the grave and restrained serenity of a good nation’. Finally, he added (for those who cared) the promise that when he had completed his task ‘I shall return to the obscurity from which I came’. But at once his plans were upset by the news that what had been agreed at the Châlons conference was abandoned and that not even MacMahon now stood between the Prussians and Paris. Worse still, he found himself thwarted in his every effort to prepare Paris for the now inevitable siege. When he had been received at the Tuileries the Empress was as cold as ice, and accused him of scheming a return of the Orleanists, to which he had replied acidly that he could not see how even their presence ‘could simplify a situation that had become so perilously complicated’. There had been a stormy session with Palikao, who had told him that his powers as Governor were ‘purely nominal’ and from then on assiduously boycotted his office. On August 25th, Trochu wrote a letter to Palikao, complaining that ‘… the city and its defenders could be surprised by the arrival of enemy columns’ and that since taking over his post

  I have received from the Government neither verbally nor in writing, neither directly nor indirectly, neither in confidence nor otherwise, any communication whatsoever relative to the movement of the Prussian Army. The defence of Paris is reduced… to the rumours of the newspapers….

  This having been said, he seems to have lapsed into a characteristic lethargy and, once more, to have withdrawn from responsibility.

  As the French leaders, preoccupied by their internecine squabbles, fiddled in Paris, on August 30th the Prussian Third Army, which had executed a grand right wheel, caught up with MacMahon at Beaumont-sur-Meuse, some fifteen miles south-east of Sedan. It was the hundredth anniversary of that prophet of German destiny, Hegel. There was a battle, and that evening French cavalry blades gave a ball at Douzy (did they recall Brussels on the eve of Waterloo?), attended by hopeful ladies come from Sedan to watch a triumphant battle the following day. But MacMahon, realizing that he no longer had any prospect of breaking through to Metz still sixty miles away, retired into the small citadel town of Sedan, the birthplace of the great Turenne, one of France’s more successful generals in past wars with Germany. It was also destined to be the scene of a second dreadful French disaster, in 1940.

  The second of France’s Armies was now trapped, with its back against the Belgian frontier seven miles away and two powerful Prussian Armies moving in rapidly on the other three sides. In the forthright words of one of the French corps commanders, General Ducrot, ‘Nous sommes dans un pot de chambre et nous y serons emmerdés!’ There were rations in Sedan sufficient only for a few days. The situation was hopeless. Nevertheless, right up to the last minute, the French cavalry attacked out from Sedan in a series of desperately gallant charges, worthy of the First Empire. They were commanded by General the Marquis de Gallifet, whose wife had been so renowned for her dazzling costumes at the imperial masked balls, and who was himself to play a rather less admirable role in the last days of the Commune. Would the cavalry try yet again, asked Ducrot? ‘As often as you like, mon général,’ Gallifet is reported to have replied, ‘so long as there’s one of us left.’ Once again they charged, to be shattered by the German guns, this time drawing forth praise from the watching King of Prussia himself: ‘Ah! The brave fellows!’, words that are still carved on the memorial above Floing. Soon after dawn on September 1st, MacMahon himself was severely wounded at Bazeilles on the outskirts of Sedan. He was replaced by a General de Wimpffen, recently arrived from Algiers, a man of (even by Second Empire standards) unbounded confidence in his own ability. By mid-morning he was still talking of ‘pitching the Bavarians into the Meuse’. But chaos inside Sedan had now reached catastrophic proportions; cannons were jammed wheel to wheel with refugee waggons and the wretched Emperor’s baggage train, with shells from four hundred Prussian guns bursting in their midst; soldiers were trampled to death trying to get through the gates about to close on the approaching enemy. During the last hours, Louis-Napoleon rode among his wavering troops outside the walls, his face rouged in order to hide just how ill he was, hoping a Prussian cannon would grant him an honourable release, but twice forced by pain to dismount. Finally, he ordered a white flag to be hoisted over the citadel. Though de Wimpffen promptly had it taken down again, crying ‘I will have no capitulation’, eventually even he had to bow to the inevitable.

  On a hill outside Sedan, General Sheridan put down his telescope and remarked to Bismarck ‘the battle is won’. Bismarck replied, calmly, he should be glad to think so but saw no signs of it yet. Like a Mongol empire ruled from the saddle, the whole power of Prussia seemed to be present; the King, Moltke, Roon the Minister of War, Bismarck gigantic in his Pickelhaube and spurs. There was also a host of German princelings, and reporting the deeds of the day was Mr. Russell of The Times. America’s General Sheridan was present too. At 6.30 that evening, a French general rode slowly under a flag of truce through the Prussian lines that were reduced to silence by a sense of the moment. To the King he handed a brief note from the French Emperor:

  N’ayant pas pu mourir au milieu de mes troupes, il ne me reste qu’à remettre mon épée entre les mains de Votre Majesté. Je suis de Votre Majesté le bon frère.1

  Bismarck dictated a reply. The terms were hard. Later de Wimpffen arrived to plead for something better, on the grounds—with a touch of prophecy—that

  a peace based on conditions which would flatter the amour propre of the Army and diminish the bitterness of defeat would be durable, whereas rigorous measures would awaken bad passions and perhaps bring on endless war between France and Prussia.

  Bismarck replied harshly, describing France as ‘a nation full of envy and jealousy’, and adding ‘We must have territory, fortresses and frontiers which will shelter us from an attack on her part’. The next day, at the humble house of a weaver in Donchéry, the Emperor met Bismarck to capitulate with 104,000 troops. With their men, Ducrot and Gallifet moved into the degrading misery of a temporary prisoner-of-war compound. There was a ragged last cheer of ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ from the Zouaves, and Louis-Napoleon passed on his way to imprisonment in Germany; to Schloss Wilhemshöhe that had once been the seat of his uncle Jérôme, King of prostrate Westphalia. On the capitulation the whole Prussian Army encamped at Sedan sang forth Luther’s ‘Old Hundred’ in thanksgiving, then began to pack their equipment with shouts of ‘Nach Paris!’

  It was indeed beginning to look as if, from the German point of view, victory was now only a matter of marching. Of the two Armies with which Louis-Napoleon had intended to cross the Rhine, one—MacMahon’s—had surrendered; the other—Bazaine‘s—was immured, with little hope now of relief, at Metz. What other forces, what weapons, remained to France? A few fortresses, such as Strasbourg, Belfort, Toul and Verdun in the east, Péronne, Lille and La Fère in the north, were intact. There were plenty of arms still in provincial depots, which the incompetent commissariat had so far proved incapable of distributing; just as there were strewn about France various scattered regular units which, in the chaos of mobilization or of subsequent manœuvres, had not yet arrived on any battlefield. There were also numbers of territorial Mobiles units, formed or forming. But there was no third army ready and on a war basis, to replace the other two, and the mood in the provinces, never as keen on the war in the first place as Paris, was hardly one of red-hot enthusiasm. Thus, between Sedan and the capital, Moltke’s victorious forces could expect to meet with little more than a few ill-organized groups of franc-tireurs. Many, like the observing General Sheridan, felt that in the immediate future ‘the taking of Paris was but a s
entiment’.

  For two days contradictory rumours flitted across Paris. One minute there would be universal rejoicing at news of some miraculous success, or that the King of Prussia had gone mad, and a rush to the windows to hang out flags and light lamps. Half an hour later another dispatch would arrive; away went the flags, and out went the lamps. It was not until the afternoon of the 3rd that definite news of the capitulation reached the Government. The Empress flew into a terrible, Spanish rage, then retired to her room to weep. Palikao was stunned. On recovering his senses, he at once warned the commander of the 1st Division to stand by for trouble—thereby deliberately short-circuiting Trochu, the Governor. But what was to come happened with barely a scuffle.

  That night there was a midnight session in the Corps Législatif at which Palikao confirmed the worst rumours. Jules Favre promptly tabled a motion calling for the abdication of the Emperor, but supporters of the Empire still held a majority and managed to stall off a decision with constitutional arguments. But outside in the Paris streets—that parliament of its own—pressure was mounting. Of the first reactions to the news of Sedan, Edmond Goncourt jotted in his journal:

  Who can describe the consternation written on every face, the sound of aimless steps pacing the streets at random, the anxious conversations of shopkeepers and concierges on their doorsteps, the crowds collecting at street-corners and outside town halls, the siege of the newspaper kiosks, the triple line of readers gathering around every gas-lamp?… Then there is the menacing roar of the crowd, in which stupefaction has begun to give place to anger. Next there are great crowds moving along the boulevards and shouting: ‘Down with the Empire! Long live Trochu!’ And finally there is the wild, tumultuous spectacle of a nation determined to perish or to save itself by an enormous effort, by one of those impossible feats of revolutionary times.

  The next day, September 4th, was a beautiful sunny Sunday; it was, as someone remarked afterwards, the century’s only day of revolution when there were neither barricades nor rain. Early that morning the crowds began to assemble again, now chanting in unison:

  ‘Déchéance! Dé-ché-ance! Dé-ché-ance!’ 1

  Gradually the women and children disappeared and the crowds assumed the look of a manifestation, though not yet of an uprising; a manifestation that was slowly converging upon the Corps Législatif. There the futile debates of the previous night had been resumed in an atmosphere of hubbub, rendered more chaotic by the intervention of outsiders who had infiltrated into the Chamber. Its Imperial Police guardians, as apprehensive as anyone about their immediate future, had suddenly become unaccustomedly polite, explaining amiably ‘There’s a session going on to overthrow the Government’, and allowing individuals to enter on the flimsiest of pretexts. Outside, the Palais Bourbon was still protected from the mob by a cordon of regular troops, but at midday the situation became thoroughly confused with the arrival of the National Guards. Edwin Child had met them on the Place de la Concorde as he was returning from church, ‘in steady silent march with drums beating, the silence almost choking in its expressiveness was broken here and there by the cries of À bas l’Empire, Vive la République!’.

  The Paris National Guard was a kind of militia which, under the Second Empire, had originally been formed chiefly from the ‘reliable’ bourgeoisie, but in the emergency of August the Government had been pressed to expand it on more democratic lines, and it was already thoroughly permeated with Republican sympathizers. Its arrival at the Palais Bourbon threw the regular troops there, commanded by an elderly and infirm general (who died of apoplexy a few weeks later), into complete bewilderment. Thus about a hundred National Guardsmen were permitted to enter the building as ‘reliefs’ for the overburdened police. With them agitators and leaders of the extreme Left made their way inside, reappearing at the windows to exhort their followers still outside to emulate their example. In a matter of minutes, the mob had invaded the Chamber itself, where they found the Deputies presciently packing up their belongings. Republican spokesmen like Picard and Crémieux tried to orate to the crowd, the latter forced to stand up on a step-ladder because of his small stature. Repeatedly the President, M. Schneider, called for order and then in despair left his seat; whereupon it was occupied by two young men who diverted themselves by ringing the presidential bell. At this moment of pandemonium, Jules Favre judiciously appeared and drew off the mob by telling it that ‘it is not here but at the Hôtel de Ville that we must proclaim the Republic’. There were good precedents for this piece of inspiration. It was on the Place de Grève1 outside the Hôtel de Ville that the revolutionary Municipal Government of Paris had been created in 1789, and it was from this building that the Provisional Government had ruled France after the proclamation of the Second Republic in 1848. Thus a cavalcade now set forth from the Palais Bourbon for the great Gothic pile of the Hôtel de Ville, flanked by the National Guard, whose muskets had in the meantime sprouted unmartial garlands of flowers. Favre and Crémieux went on foot, carried along by the mob, Picard in a coach.

  At the Hôtel de Ville they found a scene of even greater chaos than the one they had just left. Their opponents to the Left of them, the darlings of the extremist clubs—Delescluze, Pyat, Millière—had beaten them to it and were already in the process of forming a rival Government. There now ensued a scene in which the machinery of democracy can seldom have been seen to function in a more curious manner. Inside the Hôtel de Ville, politicians, demagogues, and men of the people who had been fortunate enough to gain entry scribbled down ‘lists’ of a new Government on scraps of paper; usually, and naturally enough, heading each list with their own name. They then ran to the windows and threw out their list to the waiting mob below; whoever caught it read out the names, and according to the mob’s response so a candidate was elected or not. The potentially explosive situation between the two groups of Republicans, the ‘moderates’ and the ‘ultras’—or ‘Reds’—was averted by Jules Favre who—with a lawyer’s ingenuity—proposed that the Government of the new Republic of France should be composed of the Deputies from Paris. The Parisian mob, as might have been expected, gave its approval and on this basis the Government was formed. But the air once again became charged by the unattended arrival of that arch rabble-rouser, Henri de Rochefort. Released from prison1 by the mob with Eudes and others, pale and emaciated from his sojourn there, but entwined like a maypole with coloured ribbons and flowers, he now appeared borne upon the shoulders of the crowd. On all sides delirious voices acclaimed him the saviour of France (‘Poor France!’ muttered Goncourt), and carried in triumph into the Hôtel de Ville. To pacify the mob, the new Government (wisely enough) offered Rochefort a sinecure job. Standing on a window-sill of the Hôtel de Ville, Gambetta with dramatic flourishes now proclaimed the Republic.

  All the new Republic needed was a leader. The thoughts of Favre and of his fellows immediately turned towards the man whose name had been called out by the mob nearly as often as Rochefort’s:

  General Trochu. Over the past few days, Trochu, his bad relations with the Empress and Palikao hidden from no one, isolated and aloof from it all, the one general whose reputation was still untarnished, had rapidly assumed the stature of a god in Parisian eyes. Far from making any gesture to save the regime (though he had only recently assured the Empress of his fidelity), he had remained locked in his headquarters at the Louvre while the Palais Bourbon was being stormed and had not left it until all was over; later, in his memoirs, blaming Palikao for having kept him completely in the dark. As the mob passed the Louvre on its way to the Hôtel de Ville, Trochu rode out on horseback and soon spotted Favre’s tall figure with its great head of hair. Favre had told him of the invasion of the Corps Législatif, and called upon Trochu to join in the march upon the Hôtel de Ville. Offered the post of President, Trochu accepted it with no great enthusiasm; having first been assured by his future colleagues that they would ‘resolutely defend religion, property and the family’. At a time when the country was involved in a li
fe-or-death struggle, it was perhaps a strange primary consideration.

  The remainder of the Government posts were filled amid an almost indecent scramble for spoils on the part of some of the new leaders. Crémieux was observed advancing on the Ministry of Justice in the Place Vendôme as fast as his small legs would carry him, accompanied by a horde of ragamuffins, while Gambetta and Picard—both after the same office—arrived at the Ministry of the Interior simultaneously. Gambetta triumphed, however, through the cunning de facto ploy of instantly dispatching telegrams signed ‘The Minister of the Interior, Léon Gambetta’. Favre was appointed Vice-President and Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Picard had to content himself with Finance. Étienne Arago became Mayor of Paris. Thiers declined office, and of the extreme Left only Rochefort was brought into the Government. Louise Michel recalled Favre genially greeting Ferré and young Raoul Rigault on the threshold of the Hôtel de Ville as ‘mes chers enfants’, but already there were those who wondered how long the peace between the two sets of Republicans would last. Edmond Goncourt for one, though certainly no supporter of Louis-Napoleon, had misgivings about the new regime: