Chapter XL, of Cassells Illustrated History of England, Volume 9 page 3

Behind the Lisaine, a stream running parallel to the little river Savoureuse, on which Belfort stands, and like it flowing northwards to join the Doubs, Werder resolved to stand firm, and bar the advance of the French towards Belfort. It was a bold resolve, for he had not more than 50,000 men at his disposal, and of these 15,000 were engaged in laying siege to Belfort. But the event showed that he rightly estimated the large deductions which the rawmess of the troops, the inexperience of the general, the terrible severity of the weather, and the various moral agencies which were at work to deprive the French soldiers of their historic elan and natural hopefulness, left it reasonable for him to make from the mere numerical strength of his opponents. On the 15th, 16th, and 17th January, Bourbaki made successive attempts to force Werder's position behind the Lisaine, but always without success. With his immense preponderance in numbers, the boldest flank movements would have been permissible, and could hardly have failed to dislodge the Germans; but Bourbaki simply attacked them in front, and as they were strongly posted, and had a solidity which his own troops had not, his efforts failed. On the night of the 15th January, the thermometer stood at twenty-five degrees below zero, and the sufferings of the French soldiers, imperfectly clad and shod, with no shelter from the piercing wind, and but little firewood to be got, were indescribable. On the 18th Bourbaki resolved to retreat; and by the 22nd instant he had again concentrated his army in the neighbourhood of Besançon.

By the failure of the French to force Werder's position the fall of Belfort was made a certainty; but a greater disaster was behind. An Army of the South had been formed by Moltke, and placed under the command of Manteuffel, who took charge of it, on the 13th January, at Chatillon-sur-Seine. Marching southwards to the assistance of Werder, Manteuffel was still sixty miles distant from the Lisaine on the 18th January, the day on which Bourbaki made his last fruitless attack. Pressing forward, he seized Dole, to the south-west of Besançon, and sent detachments to occupy various points near the Swiss frontier, so as to intercept the retreat of Bourbaki's army in that direction. After # reaching Besançon, Bourbaki remained for some days irresolute what to do; the desperate situation of his army, and the consciousness, perhaps, of his own incapacity to command, overset his reason; and on the 24th he attempted to commit suicide by shooting himself through the head. Happily the wound was not mortal, and ultimately the General recovered. The want of supplies sufficient both for the fortress and for the support of so large an army was probably the cause why Clinchamp, upon whom the command devolved, instead of keeping the army under the shelter of the mountain forts and lofty citadel of Besançon, resolved on continuing the march southward, in order either to elude the Germans by escaping along roads close to the Swiss frontier, and so reaching Lons le Saulnier, or, if the worst came to the worst, to cross the border and surrender to the Swiss authorities. Eventually the 24th Corps, under General Bressolle, succeeded in making its escape and reaching Lyons. The rest of the army, overtaken and attacked by Manteuffel in and around Pontarlier, after losing thousands of prisoners, was driven into Switzerland. A convention was entered into by Clinchamp (February 1) with the Federal General Herzog, under which about 85,000 French soldiers, having with them 11,000 horses and 202 guns, were interned in Switzerland. The friendly Swiss flew to the assistance of their unfortunate guests, whose state of destitution and misery was truly pitiable. Fully one-third of the whole army were said to have had their feet frost-bitten.

In pursuance of the terms of the armistice, elections were held throughout France in order to the convocation of a National Assembly. By the 12th February, about three hundred members only, out of the seven hundred and fifty who were to compose the new Legislature, had arrived at Bordeaux; but so urgent was the case that the Assembly proceeded to constitute itself on that day. On the 16th February M. Grévy was chosen President of the Assembly, and on the following day M. Thiers was appointed, by a large majority, Chief of the Executive Power. Some days before this, it being evident that the armistice, which was only to last till the 19th February, would expire before the Assembly could come to a decision upon the momentous question before it, Jules Favre hurried up to Versailles in order to obtain a prolongation of the time. It was granted, but at the same time the fate of Belfort, the Governor of which had hitherto repelled all attacks, was sealed: the fortress was to be surrendered to the Germans, but the garrison, with their arms and stores, and the military archives, were to march out with the honours of war, and be allowed to retire to the south of France. Accordingly the garrison, still 12,000 strong, marched out and proceeded to Grenoble; and the fortress was occupied by the Germans on the 18th February. This may be regarded as the closing scene of the Franco-German War.

Gambetta fell from power as suddenly as he had risen to it. He caused the Delegation of the Government at Bordeaux to publish an electoral decree on the 31st January, excluding from the possibility of being elected to the Assembly all persons who had stood in any official relation to the Second Empire. Against this outrageous decree Count Bismark could not refrain from protesting, and fortunately he could appeal to the phrase in the article of the capitulation bearing on the question, which spoke of a "freely-elected" National Assembly. It was a critical moment, for had M. Gambetta found a large body of Frenchmen mad enough to back him in this frantic course, great delays must inevitably have arisen, the legality and plenary authority of the Assembly might have been disputed, and perhaps the Germans might have been called in, or might themselves have stepped in, to arbitrate in a question of French internal politics. This consummation was happily avoided. The Government at Paris undertook to cancel the decree of the Delegation, and sent one of their number, Jules Simon, to Bordeaux, with instructions to publish and enforce their decision. Gambetta, finding his proceedings disavowed, resigned office on the 6th February. A dictatorship more disastrous to the nation which submitted to it than any which history records was thus brought to a termination. It may be freely conceded that M. Gambetta was well- intentioned and incorrupt; we must also allow that he was patriotic, so far as a man could be so who was a Republican first and a Frenchman afterwards, and who, on many an important occasion, treated the plain interests of the country as secondary in comparison with the prosperity of the Republican cause. But his inordinate self- esteem led him to confound ambition with capacity, celerity with efficiency, quantity with quality. Having no true insight into character, he was perpetually working irreparable mischief by elevating incompetent men into posts of responsibility for which they were not fit, and depriving competent men of that latitude of action which a wise administrator would have eagerly thrust upon them. He placed Freycinet - the civilian, the mining engineer - over all the professional soldiers, who fumed with rage and scorn at the upstart's arrogance; while he foolishly and fatally interfered with General d'Aurelle de Paladines in the direction of the army which he had himself created. He lavished the blood of Frenchmen like water, himself incurring no danger; and spent their money by the milliard, himself suffering no loss by the war. It is indeed probable that the catalogue of his rash and foolish acts is as yet far from being thoroughly revealed. The Frenchmen of future generations will probably deem that, among many things difficult of explanation in the war of 1870-1, the most inexplicable of all was their forefathers' quietly permitting a rhetorical Italian to send them into a hundred fields of blood, and involve them in an abyss of debt, while possessing absolutely no one quality of greatness which should have induced them to trust in his leadership.

On the 19th February, the National Assembly elected a diplomatic commission of fifteen members, who were to accompany MM. Thiers and Jules Favre to Paris, and assist them in negotiating a peace. No serious intention of continuing the war was entertained by any considerable party or fraction in the Assembly. The members from Alsace and Lorraine did indeed, while protesting against the supposed intention of Germany to demand the cession of those provinces, declare that the populations which they represented were prepared to continue the war rather than consent to separation. The declaration was listened to by the majority with deep respect and sympathy, but it awakened no response. The Red Republicans of Paris, whom the failure of all their projections as to the invulnerability of the "holy city," and the certainty that the besieging troops would all find a grave under its walls, had exasperated almost to frenzy, raved and spouted against the " treason " of all who had had anything to do with governing France, Gambetta included, and proposed to retire to the fastnesses of the Cevennes, and wage an internecine war. But the majority of the Assembly, representing the sound, sensible, Conservative feeling of the rural districts of France - Monarchists on principle and attached to religion - knew that the military resources of the country were exhausted, and that to prolong the struggle was to endanger the existence of their institutions and even of society itself.

On the 21st February, the French negotiators met Count Bismark at Versailles. Thiers knew that* the Germans meant to have, substantially, the terms which they demanded, and he did not waste time by idle reclamations or counter proposals. On two points, however, his efforts achieved a certain success. Count Bismark desired to retain Belfort, a fortress which in German hands would make France as vulnerable to attack on the upper Rhine, as the loss of Metz has left her weak and vulnerable on the lower. Thiers, however, succeeded in retaining Belfort for France, purchasing the concession, as some assert, by consenting to the march of the German army through Paris. Again, whereas Count Bismark originally demanded six milliards (£240,000,000) as the war indemnity, Thiers with infinite exertion succeeded in reducing it to five milliards. On this second point the assistance of English diplomacy was specially invoked by the French Government. Lord Granville, at the urgent request of the Duc de Broglie, the new French Ambassador, wrote to Berlin (February 24) the mildest, faintest, weakest representation - remonstrance it was not - that could have been made, if any was made at all, on the subject of the excessive indemnity. Before, however, the duplicate of this despatch reached Mr. Odo Russell at Versailles, Count Bismark had already given way. The preliminaries of peace were signed on the 26th February. By them France agreed to cede Alsace and German-Lorraine, including Metz, to Germany, and to pay a war indemnity of five milliards.

It may be well believed that France had tried every expedient, and snatched at every straw, before consenting to terms like these. The efforts of Jules Favre and Thiers, in September, to bring about an intervention on the part of all or some of the neutral Powers had not then succeeded; nevertheless, they were renewed, with reference to England at least, more urgently than ever during the last period of the struggle. Austria, it was well known, was friendly, but Russia compelled her to be neutral; Italy, if she was bound to France, was also under obligations to Prussia; Spain, in her revolutionary condition, could do nothing if she would. England alone, so reasoned French politicians, would have the power, if she had also the will, to interpose effectually with a view to preventing the imposition of exorbitant terms of peace. The pressing solicitations which the French Government addressed to the Foreign Office were supplemented by the calm reasonings of M. Chevalier and the touching appeals of the aged Guizot. It was urged that England should not abdicate her place in the European family of nations so far as to look calmly on, and suffer the nation, with which she is connected by innumerable ties of friendship and interest, to be despoiled and dismembered to an extent which it was impossible for her to acquiesce in. If England wishes that the standing order of things on the continent should be peace and not war, let her intervene rigorously and decisively to save Metz for France.

When Frenchmen entreated the English Government to intervene on their behalf with that of Germany, they were not, of course, thinking of an intervention which could not conceivably outstep the limits of advice and exhortation. It was not such an intervention as that which Lord Russell had employed in favour of Denmark, but such as that by which France had saved Austria, in 1866, from the extremest consequences of defeat, that was now/in question. But it may be asked - Was there a possibility of England's intervening with effect at any time? Before Paris surrendered, there certainly was; for if Germany had refused moderate terms - for instance, to be satisfied with Alsace alone - when appealed to by this country, a moderate English force landed in the north of France and co-operating with Faidherbe might have caused the siege of Paris to be raised, since even by their own exertions the French were, at one time, not far from accomplishing this. After the fall of Paris it does not appear that we could, with our small army, have attempted an armed intervention with any prospect of success. Yet, though we could not declare war in this case, if Germany did not listen to reason, it does not follow that our intervention would have been useless. We might, as M. Guizot suggested, have declared to Germany that, in the interest of the European equilibrium, the preservation of which, considering the stake we have in Turkey, is of the greatest importance to us, this country would not recognise the forcible separation of (at least) German-Lorraine from France. The threat might have produced its effect, in which case the chances of a long peace in Europe would be much greater than they are now; if it had failed, things would be no worse than they are at present, and we should have earned the lasting gratitude of France.

In the preliminaries of peace a convention was inserted, authorising the occupation of a definite portion of Paris by a body of German troops not exceeding 30,000 men. Accordingly, on the morning of the 1st March, portions of the 11th, 2nd Bavarian, and 6th Army Corps, crossing the Seine by the bridge of Neuilly, defiled along the avenue of the same name, passed under the Arc de Triomphe, and marched through the Champs Elysées into the Rue Rivoli and other parts of the district assigned to them. But this occupation, deeply painful and humiliating as it must have been to the Parisians, was not of long duration. News came, on the 2nd March, that the preliminaries of peace had been ratified at Bordeaux, and then Paris, in accordance with an express stipulation to that effect, was immediately evacuated.