The Fall of Paris

by Alistair Horne

  On that same day, after its usual procrastinations, the Government of National Defence made up its mind, one of its members having sown the seed of an idea with the remark: ‘When there are 10,000 National Guards lying on the ground, opinion will calm down’. It was an idea that at this late hour was even popular with the generals, despite their past contempt for the military virtues of the National Guard; for the regular Army, and particularly the provincial Mobiles, were getting increasingly fed up that the Parisians had not taken their fair share in the fighting for their city. So it was decided. In three days time a last attempt at a sortie would be made—what Trochu described, ex post facto, as the ‘Supreme Effort’ (although it was patently a little late in the day for such an effort); this time throwing in the National Guard. It would be based on a plan by Trochu’s deputy, General Schmitz, and would strike to the west of Paris, towards Buzenval in the sector nearest to Versailles. It was also, needless to say, the sector most strongly defended by the Prussians, and if it had any strategic justification at all it was the vague idea of linking up with Chanzy who was supposedly, once again, waiting in the wings.

  The Liberation of Flourens

  15. Breaking-Point

  FOR all its considerable numbers, and the length of time these had now been under arms, the National Guard could still by no stretch of the imagination be termed a formidable force. There were good battalions, and good commanders—like Arthur de Fonvielle, the brother of Wilfred the balloonist, who had fought for Shamyl in the Caucasian wars against the Russians. But these were in the minority. What Parisians remembered was how the swaggering Belleville units had turned and fled at the first cannon-ball during the Great Sortie; how others had done the same at the second Le Bourget; and the ubiquitous indiscipline and drunkenness of the National Guard as a whole. One battalion had been sent out to Fort Issy as relief for the exhausted garrison, but was returned the following day by the fort commandant with the explanation that it had arrived drunk and fought among itself all night, and that he preferred to make do with his worn-out men. Another, the 200th, reached Créteil during the Great Sortie in such a state of intoxication that it had to be dispatched to the rear by General Thomas himself. Following this episode, the peppery old general made a public example of the battalion, declaring that in such circumstances the National Guard constituted an additional danger; an action by which he, according to d’Hérisson, ‘signed his own death warrant’. In the boredom of its idleness, the Guard had an excuse for their drunkenness; and all too little preventive discipline was ever enforced. One admiral did try to cure the drunks by placing them in a post of danger for several nights; but more typical was the case of the grocer who, according to Whitehurst, declined to go on guard ‘because it is cold and wet’; or of the entire 147th Battalion which refused to march to the outposts because their wives had received no allowances during their last tour of duty. To the Bellevillites there was indeed something fundamentally undesirable about discipline. ‘Of what use is discipline?’ an orator at the Club Favier had asked, with an unusual display of (perhaps misdirected) logic, when Flourens’s Tirailleurs were dissolved; ‘How has it served us to the present time? It has resulted in our being beaten by the Prussians. It was the disciplined troops which lost at Reichshoffen, at Forbach, at Sedan; it was the disciplined troops which capitulated at Metz.’

  With some justification he might also have asked what was the point of the National Guard at all? Month after month it had been given no other tasks than to stand guard passively on the walls or to quell disorders in Paris (admittedly, most of the latter it had caused itself). Something of the grinding boredom and sense of futility emerges from the diary entries of Guardsman Edwin Child; even though, in the enthusiasm and optimism of youth, he continued almost to the bitter end to hope for a more gallant and purposeful role. On December 1st, during the Great Sortie, he begins:

  Up at 7. Reunion at 8 o’clock of our company at its usual place (Gare St. Lazare). We then marched to Champs Elysées, behind the Palais d’Industrie, and met the 3 other companies and went through the ‘école de bataillon’ under our Commandant, about 2 hours of it. In afternoon retired several articles, trousers, etc., and had them changed for various reasons, too large, etc….

  December 2nd. Up at 7. Reunion of the Company at 8, no drill but in place of it a few words of advice and warning from the Captain, order to fetch our ‘capotes’, military overcoats, at 2 p.m…. Upon fetching overcoat at 2, were ordered to be ready fully equipped by ½ past, rushed to magasin, put on coat and knapsack and managed to be on time, marched to the Madeleine and there remained under arms, in hourly expectation of being ordered outside, till 7 p.m., when we fetched our cartridges, being told to hold ourselves ready for ½ past 3 a.m. Not a very much admired order as all of us were almost frozen, after standing nearly 8 hours without any exercise.

  December 3rd. Up at ¼ to 3. Dressed myself with all the appurtenances and proceeded to Madeleine but on arriving there met the Sergeant Major who told us the movement had been countermanded, none to my chagrin by any means, it having snowed best part of night, returned without grumbling to my bed and rose again at 8, dressed a second time but without sac ou bidons and proceeded to our place de réunion, where we received commands to rest at our homes and hold ourselves ready at any moment to start….

  December 4th. Up at 7. Had a jolly good breakfast and then walked to our rendez-vous and from there to the Madeleine where we remained about 1 hour, but at last about ½ past 10 we heard the long-wished for order ‘Bataillon! par ½ sections, en ligne! marche!’ and then with drums beating and smiling faces we were fairly en route in search of glory, we traversed the Rue de Rivoli, Bastille and left Paris by the Porte de Charenton….

  Child’s battalion arrived at Créteil near the Marne just as the defeated troops were returning from it, following the failure of the Great Sortie. The action was over. Child continues:

  December 5th… Under arms at 1 p.m. for the inspection of our guns. Afterwards had a stroll along the Marne and watched the artillerie and the Mobiles crossing the river upon a bridge of boats, a very picturesque sight, the sky being of a spotless blue and it being a clear frosty day; after this I went marauding trying to find something to soften my bed….

  December 6th…. Amateur concert (one squad) in eve, obliged to do my share, gave them Rule Britannia. Were warned that an attack was hourly expected so could only sleep by fits and starts….

  On the 11th, after ten days in the line without seeing a shot fired, Child returned to Paris:

  By the time we arrived at the Madeleine, we were smothered in mud from head to foot and myself I was almost dead with fatigue the distance being about 14 kilometres and not being yet endurci to the weight of the sack upon my shoulders….

  Once again, on December 18th, on the eve of the second Battle of Le Bourget, Child’s battalion was ordered to stand by.

  … Up at 4, at 5 under arms and en route for our Grande Garde (outpost) this time in the trenches and directly in front of the Fort of Montrouge; the bullets of which whistling over our heads and shaking our frail habitation composed of loose stones piled one upon the other almost to pieces and about our ears…. At 11 I was ordered on service at the guard house, guard every four hours, the post being almost a sinecure, remained there till Tuesday morning….

  December 23rd. Rose about ½ past 4, prepared coffee and at 6 started with full accoutrements to act as reserve and in case of need to support a party of sailors at work making a new trench more in advance; close to where we were hidden, behind a wall, was a pond that was speedily turned into a series of slides, and that kept the blood in circulation, it being fearfully cold. We were not wanted during the day so about 6 returned to our quarters, made up a good fire and tried to sleep but found it impossible the cold being too intense, in spite of our blankets and capotes, so smoked away the night….

  December 24th. Sliding, etc., anything to keep warm….

  December 25th (Christmas Day)�
��. Card playing. 3 times on guard. 2 hours day & 2 separate hours at night. At 5 p.m. with 14 others volunteered, to make a short reconnaissance in the village of Bagneux, which lay right in front of us. Reached about 20 of the houses but without discovering the enemy….

  December 27th. At 10 a.m. with several others went to Fort Montrouge and fetched some targets that we afterwards fixed in a large field, where the rest of the company was each man firing 4 shots (put 2 in). Afterwards retired to our quarters and amused ourselves as best we could cleaning our guns, etc….

  December 28th. We were rather lucky. this time being in a shed hid by a wall with a stove in the middle red hot; to obtain wood, had to walk some distance and demolished a railway station (Cachan) entirely, roof, floor, doors and everything. Was nominated or rather proposed as Corporal a vacancy having occurred, but in consequence of a few remarks as to nationality, I retired from the ‘contest’ to prevent any disagreement, and at the request of the Captain. Fearfully cold, freezing hard.

  Back in Paris on January 5th, Child then records how his battalion marched to Place de la Concorde;

  … there being passed in review by the General Clément Thomas, commander-in-chief of the National Guards, who naturally much gratified with our martial appearance, etc., etc., all ‘bunkum’ as Americans would say….

  Disillusion had begun to set in; by January 12th, Edwin was ruminating gloomily:

  … Wonder whether I shall see the end, or leave my carcase to rot in the field of battle, cannot say that I much care which way it is, but would like to stick a Prussian before the latter arrives….

  What kept the National Guard plunged in this heart-breaking futility was partly the whole bourgeois Weltanschauung of nineteenth-century France, its roots deeply implanted in the Terror of ’93. Even so normally lucid an intellectual as Goncourt could hardly be rational when speaking of the proletariat, as witness when on December 29th he wrote ‘I am above all astonished at the demoralization of the working class caused by the luxury of well-being which the Emperor provided. I see this class become completely flabby. From everything that was virile, martial, enterprising about it, it has become loquacious and extremely economic with its skin…. The National Defence has found nothing but cowards in the battalions from La Villette. The debauchery of the National Guard exceeds anything that the imagination of a well-brought-up man could invent….’ If anything, bourgeois views of the proletarian National Guards had—not surprisingly—hardened in the course of the Siege, as a result of fresh fears awakened by the various demonstrations—and particularly that of October 31st. Ducrot in his summarizing remarks on the National Guard referred to ‘the conscienceless mob, what M. Thiers rightly called the “vile multitude”, which we armed.’ All the way through the Siege, just as the bourgeoisie never lost its fear, so the professional soldiers never abandoned their contempt of the National Guard, and Trochu readily seized upon such excuses as the poor showing of the Belleville units at the Great Sortie to disband whole battalions. No attempt was ever made to give the National Guard any proper training, and deaf ears were repeatedly turned to all appeals to equip it with chassepot rifles, in place of the obsolete tabatière muskets. It was a disastrous example of half measures; and no wonder that the Garde performed so poorly on the few occasions they had been under fire! In response to popular pressures, the Government had raised 400,000 National Guards; it had trained them and armed them insufficiently to be of any military value, but just enough to constitute the most potent revolutionary threat the nineteenth century had yet seen.

  Just what use could have been made of the Paris National Guard is suggested by the heroic performance of its equivalent, the Opolchenie, at the beginning of the Siege of Leningrad. Although some of its units were thrown into battle after only one day of training, they fought with great courage and tenacity actually alongside the regular troops at the front, and, out of 300,000 volunteers (a number of whom were women), four divisions were all but wiped out while others suffered about 50 per cent casualties.

  On January 18th the National Guard began its approach march to the west of Paris, ready to attack the world’s most efficient professional army. Goncourt was there watching them:

  It was a grandiose, soul-stirring sight, that army marching towards the guns booming in the distance, an army with, in its midst, grey-bearded civilians who were fathers, beardless youngsters who were sons, and in its open ranks women carrying their husband’s or their lover’s rifle slung across their backs. And it is impossible to convey the picturesque touch brought to the war by this citizen multitude escorted by cabs, unpainted omnibuses, and removal vans converted into army provision waggons.

  There did indeed seem to be present a flicker of the spirit of the taxicabs speeding to the Marne in 1914, and Juliette Lambert also was struck how the National Guards marched ‘behind the bands, eager to act, and resolved to dare all in this last effort to save our Paris’. (But, although half of the nearly 100,000 men earmarked for the sortie came from the National Guard, once again Edwin Child was disappointed. The 18th, the day after his 23rd birthday, found him at the other side of Paris, ‘playing cards in the afternoon with an unusually fine music of cannons to while away the time’. The following day when the sortie was in full swing, after more card-playing, he was ordered back into the city: ‘Sac au dos at 4 p.m. for Paris, but from some mismanagement rested under arms till ¼ to 7 then moved forwards but felt fatigued before starting.’)

  Among the regulars waiting to go into the attack, Tommy Bowles, who as usual had pressed forward as close to the front as he could get, found a rather different mood: ‘They showed little enthusiasm, I thought, their drums and trumpets were silent, and even the perpetual chatter and badinage which usually mark the progress of a French regiment were absent….’ Spirits were not improved by the inevitable chaos in the assembly areas, due to poor staff-work, such as in the past had preceded almost every initiative by the Paris garrison. Only two bridges across the Seine were available, and incredibly enough no orders had been given to remove the barricades on them, so that a hopeless tangle of men, guns, and ambulances piled up against these. There ensued, noted Bowles, ‘endless confusion and delay’. To make matters worse, once again the weather played traitor to the French. A sudden thaw on the 17th had turned the frozen earth to slippery, treacherous mud, and an opaque mist1 rendered even more difficult the process of disentanglement. The front of the attack lay immediately under the guns of Mont-Valérien, across the root of the same Gennevilliers peninsula where Ducrot had originally wanted to break out in October. Trochu’s plan was to move simultaneously with three columns: Vinoy on the left against Montretout, Bellemare towards Buzenval in the centre and across what is now St.-Cloud racetrack, and Ducrot on the right marching over the scene of his earlier undertaking at Malmaison. This time it was Ducrot himself who was critically late; his delay, wrote O’Shea acidly, ‘explained by the circumstance that he had some seven and a half miles English to traverse in the dark, on a railway hampered by obstructions, and a high-road occupied by a train of artillery which had lost its way. This occurred not in Cochin-China, but a short drive from Paris, on a bit of country every feature of which could have been mastered in half an hour by an intelligent huntsman, with the aid of the staff-maps and a reconnoitring glass.’

  Scheduled to begin at 6 a.m., the attack was postponed for several hours, and finally went in without Ducrot. The delay, continued O’Shea, was not ‘the only blunder which dislocated Trochu’s conception. The men of the National Guard had been kept under arms, packs on their backs and four days’ provisions, making in all a burden of four stone weight, from two in the morning. The Line, too, were haggard and worn with fatigue, and marched without elasticity of step when they got the word to go forward at ten o’clock.’ Yet the French chalked up some surprisingly encouraging initial successes. On the left Vinoy’s Zouaves, retrieving the name they had lost at Châtillon, took by surprise a Posen regiment at Montretout (an indication that even s
ome of Moltke’s forces were no longer fighting with their usual mettle), and advanced into the outskirts of St.-Cloud itself. In the centre, Bellemare actually secured a foothold on the Garches-La Bergerie plateau, from which the Prussian guns could dominate the attacking French and which was a vital defence to Versailles. There, the whirr and rattle of the French mitrailleuses little more than two miles away had drawn the German Emperor on the second day of his reign to the aqueduct of Marly, whence he and his court watched the battle with anxiety. On his way to join the Emperor, Bismarck met a musketeer who ‘gives us to understand we are in a bad way, the enemy being already in the wood on the hills behind La Celle’. His secretary, Dr. Busch, noted down in his diary serious fears that the French ‘might press on further and force us to evacuate Versailles’, and the Crown Prince went so far as to reveal that on the following morning, when he ‘arrived at the Prefecture for the usual report with His Majesty, the fourgons were standing there ready loaded, and all preparations had been made for a hasty departure!’ Gone was the festive mood of yesterday’s coronation; the Hall of Mirrors where the glittering kings and princes were now being replaced by rows of Prussian wounded had become, according to W. H. Russell, ‘a valley of lamentation’.

  But in fact Bellemare, unsupported by Ducrot on his right, was soon stuck. The adventurous Bowles, who was on the spot, considered that

  the officers, if they had been worth their salt and capable of leading their men, might, I am convinced, have taken the whole of Garches, batteries and all; but they seemed to lose their heads, and not to know what to do or whither to go, though I am sorry to say a few of them solved the latter question by going ‘back again’ down the valley. Their defects were of course not without influence upon the men.

  By the afternoon, the Prussian guns had checked the attack all along the line, the French had lost their initiative without taking any of the key points, and Bowles left the battlefield that evening gloomily predicting that ‘the real struggle will begin tomorrow under anything but favourable conditions’.