France: the End of Bourbon and Imperial Rule. page 2

A detailed account of this great struggle, with its succession of astounding events, may be sought in any of the special works devoted to its history. It has no parallel in mediaeval or modern times for the numbers of men engaged, along with the swiftness and completeness of success attained by the victors, a success due to superiority of force in well-trained troops, to better organisation, and to the skill of the German chief of the staff, von Moltke, one of the greatest strategists of all time. The "Commentaries" of Napoleon I. were the handbook of military study in the German staff; the French generals seemed to be wholly ignorant of his principles or incapable of applying them. The French emperor accompanied his men into the field, and quickly found his fears as to the real state of the army well founded. The force under arms was less than 250,000, or 100,000 below the numbers on paper. Mismanagement, and embezzlement of funds, the work of years, had left the actual numbers raised and disciplined short, to that extent, of those voted, and the. arsenals and storehouses were lacking in supplies of all kinds. The Germans took the field, within a fortnight, with about 400,000 men, crossed the frontier, and at once assumed the offensive. On August 4th a French advance-post of 9,000 men was crushed at Weissenburg. Two days later their right wing (45,000 men) was broken to pieces, under MacMahon, at Worth, and at Forbach, with the storming of the Spicheren heights, another army was driven back in rout upon Metz. The emperor retired with MacMahon to Chalons-sur-Marne, where a new army was being formed from the remnants of the force defeated at Worth and from the newly raised Mobiles. Bazaine, intending retreat on Paris with his army of 140,000 men, including the imperial guard, was finally shut up within the Metz circle of forts and the town, after the three great battles of Courcelles (or Colombey-Nouilly) on August 14th, Vionville (or Mars-la-Tour, or Rezonville, from other villages on the scene of action), and Gravelotte (or St. Privat), the last two of which were fought on August 16th and 18th. The next step was the adventurous and fatal attempt, prompted by political considerations as to the effect in Paris of the emperor's return thither as a defeated man, leaving Bazaine invested, made by the army under MacMahon and Louis Napoleon to come down upon Metz from the north, by way of Rheims, Mezieres, and Thionville, and extricate Bazaine by an attack on the rear of the investing army. Von Moltke's strategy foiled this by a change of direction given to the Crown Prince's army, then on the march for Paris, and by the formation of a new force, under the Crown Prince of Saxony, which went, by Verdun, down the valley of the Meuse, towards the Belgian frontier. By these two armies, the French, defeated by the Prussian prince at Beaumont on August 30th, and by the Saxon prince at Mouzon on the same day, were finally surrounded and utterly beaten at Sedan on September 1st, and compelled to surrender on the following day as prisoners of war. This greatest capitulation, up to that date, in the history of modern warfare, sent the emperor, MacMahon (severely wounded early in the day), and 100,000 men in captivity to Germany. The emperor, dethroned two days later, on September 4th, by a revolution in Paris, which founded the Third Republic, was a prisoner at Wilhelmshohe, three miles from Cassel, capital of Hesse-Nassau, until the close of the war, when he joined his wife and son in England, dying at Camden Place, Chislehurst, in Kent, in January, 1873.

With the exception of a single army-corps under General Vinoy, the whole regular (imperial) army of France was by this time in captivity, or shut up without hope of rescue in Metz, Strasbourg, and many other fortresses in the north and east. The people of France then took up the cause, and more than 1,000,000 fresh men were raised and organised under the direction of Gambetta, a native of the south of France, of Genoese-Jewish origin, minister of the interior in the new republican government, a man of marvellous energy and resolution. The whole nation was stirred by his appeals, and the republican troops, by a determined and prolonged, however vain, resistance to the German victors, redeemed the fame of the country whose interests had been sacrificed to the incapacity, if not the treachery and corruption, of imperialism. The whole contest now became a struggle for Paris, invested on September 19th, with its continuous line of bastions and trenches, or enceinte, and its 16 detached forts on the outside, by the armies of the Crown Princes of Prussia and Saxony, over 200,000 men. The defenders included about 85,000 trained fighters - the garrison, Vinoy's corps, sailors and marines - and over 300,000 of the guard-mobile and national guard of Paris, and mobile-guards from the provinces. The siege of over four months was one beyond all example in history, one whereby a city containing 2,000,000 of persons was cut off from all communication with the outer world except by permission of the investing force, and by the "balloon-post" and "pigeon-post." Gambetta, quitting the capital by balloon, made his way to Tours, and thence, as the area of German conquest was enlarged, to Bordeaux, from which places he directed the operations undertaken for the raising of the siege. The German line of communication with the frontier on the east was cleared by the surrender, on September 23rd and 28th, of the fortresses of Toul and Strasbourg, after severe bombardment, and many other places were given up after bombardment or blockade. The attention of the whole civilised world was concentrated on the siege of Paris and the efforts made for its relief from the outside. The operations were conducted, in two instances, with great ability and energy by French commanders, Chanzy in the south-west, and Faidherbe in the north, but all efforts failed against von Moltke's skill, well backed by intelligence in his subordinate commanders and by admirable discipline and courage in the troops. The surrender of Metz, on October 2 8th, by the treacherous Bazaine, who was in league with the exiled empress for the preservation of his great force with a view to an imperial restoration, was a capitulation far exceeding even that of Sedan. On that memorable day 3 field-marshals, 66 generals of army-corps, divisions, and brigades, about 6,000 officers, and 170,000 men, became prisoners of war.

A force of over 170,000 Germans was thus set free, after a deduction as garrison of the captured fortress, for operations against the French relieving armies. A great force had been gathered on the line of the Loire, and a Bavarian army, immensely outnumbered, had been defeated in several engagements, retiring in good order. The surrender of Metz sent Prince Frederick Charles of Prussia, one of the ablest generals, to the scene of action near Orleans, with 70,000 men, and he speedily, with some help from the army round Paris, broke up the army of the Loire, and retook Orleans on December 4th. Sorties from Paris, made in great force, failed to break through the German lines of investment, and the French army of the north was driven back within the network of fortresses on the Belgian frontier. Paris was drawing near to the end of her supplies of food, and the able French commander Chanzy, in charge of forces near Orleans, resisted with great skill and courage, for a fortnight, all attempts to force him away; by December lyth, however, he was driven back to Le Mans. The crisis was at hand, and the German army was largely reinforced to meet the last desperate efforts of their foe. On the north, Rouen, Amiens, and Dieppe had been occupied by the invaders, and Faidherbe, fighting an indecisive battle at Bapaume early in January, 1871, was utterly defeated, a few days later, at St. Quentin. Chanzy, advancing from Le Mans, was routed on January 10th and nth, and that town was taken, on the following day, with 20,000 men, and large supplies of food, arms, and ammunition. This defeat ended all hope for Pans from the south land west. A force of 100,000 men, under General Bourbaki, formerly commander of the imperial guard, was used to strike at the German communications to the east, first attacking von Werder, who was besieging the great fortress of Belfort at the southern end of the Vosges. Garibaldi and his son, heading French and Italian volunteers, had won some small successes over the Germans near Dijon, and Bourbaki hoped to master the line from Strasbourg to Paris. The strategical skill and promptitude of von Moltke wrecked the whole plan. On hearing of Bourbaki's move eastwards from Bourges, he formed a fresh army of 50,000 men, and sent them at the utmost speed across the country to strike at Bourbaki's flank and rear. That hapless man, defeated, about the middle of January, in a three-days' contest near Belfort, and driven under the guns of Besangon, was smitten with dismay on the appearance of the new foe, lost his head, and attempted suicide. His army, shoeless and starving amidst deep snow, was driven in detached bodies over the Swiss frontier, where they laid down their arms to the number of 80,000 men. On January 28th the French capital, starved out, surrendered to the German forces. There were fiery and determined, not to say reckless, spirits among the French people, including the brave Gambetta, who wished to continue the struggle "to the bitter end," but the vast majority of a national assembly gathered at Bordeaux voted for peace, and the Treaty of Frankfurt-on-the-Main, signed on May 10th, 1871, concluded the war with the cession to Germany of the whole of Alsace, except the fortress of Belfort and its district, and of the fifth part of Lorraine, including Metz and Thionville, and the payment of a war-indemnity of five milliards (5,000,000,000) of francs, or 200,000,000 pounds sterling, within three years, in addition to the ransom paid by the city of Paris on surrender - 200,000,000 francs, or 8,000,000 pounds sterling. The whole cost to France, direct and indirect, of this great war must have been at least 600,000,000 pounds sterling. Germany had her western frontier secured by possession of Metz and Strasbourg, which have been further fortified, and her national pride was also gratified in the recovery of territory and towns wrested from her, by fraud or force, in the days of the French kings Henry II., Louis XIV., and Louis XV.

Unhappy France had not seen the end of her woes in the surrender of Paris. During the siege, a socialistic element had given some trouble and caused some disorder, and these "Red Republicans," working-men led by those who desired autonomy or independence for the capital through its "Commune" or municipality, and aimed at making France consist of a federation of municipal republics, seized on power in Paris after the capitulation. The movement is not to be confounded with "communism," or the social system based on community of property. The "Communists" of Paris, in the former sense, had become possessed of several hundred cannon and mitrailleuses, and, having already abundance of rifles and ammunition from the part which they had taken in defence of the city, they converted the north-eastern districts, Montmartre and Belleville, into strong fortresses, and rose in arms on March 18th. A fearful civil war, with a reign of terror inside Paris, ensued. German forces, holding territory near the capital as security for the payment of the indemnity, of course observed a strict neutrality. The regular forces of the republic, hundreds of thousands of men who had returned from captivity in Germany, represented the cause of law and order, and a powerful army, under MacMahon, had its headquarters at Versailles, the seat of the government headed by M. Thiers, a literary man of great eminence; a thorough, if in some respects a misguided, patriot; an able orator; a former chief minister of Louis Philippe; now elected President of the French Republic. The Parisian rebels murdered two generals, despoiled the churches, exacted large sums of money from the Bank of France, and arrested the archbishop of Paris (Monseigneur Darboy) and many priests as "hostages." They were masters of several outside forts, and the government-troops, or Versaillists, had to undertake a regular siege of the capital. The place was bombarded from the old German lines, and by the great fortress of Mont Valerien, and the "Commune," mad with rage, destroyed the house of Thiers and overthrew the great column in the Place Vendome, a monument of the victories of Napoleon I., covered with bronze made from cannon taken by his troops. On May 2ist (Sunday) the Versailles soldiers effected an entry at a point left unguarded, and on the following day the storming of Paris by Frenchmen was steadily progressing. With horrible slaughter, the work went on from day to day, and barricade-fighting took place in the heart of the city. In the fury of despair, as the inevitable end drew near under the incessant efforts of disciplined troops skilfully led, the "Reds" endeavoured to destroy by fire the city which they could not hold, and some government buildings, with the Tuileries, a part of the Palais Royal, the Hotel de Ville, the library of the Louvre, and other important edifices, perished in the flames. Notre Dame was just saved by the inrush of victorious Versaillists as a light was being applied to the choir-stalls smeared with petroleum. On May 28th the victory of order was complete, after many thousands of insurgents had perished, the archbishop and his fellow-hostages having been deliberately murdered by shooting. The blood-stained, blazing capital was a scene of horror such as has been rarely seen in modern days, but a sharp lesson was given to the supporters of anarchy, and the peace of Paris and of France has not since, during nearly thirty years, been seriously menaced or disturbed.

The latest history of France need not detain us long. The main fact is the firm establishment, against the efforts of monarchical agitators, of republican rule, and its continuance for a longer period than any form of government set up since the first downfall of the Bourbon monarchy at the great Revolution. The world, which had been astonished by the collapse of the country in the great war, was not less surprised by the vitality displayed in the speedy restoration from calamities so crushing. Among successive presidents have been Thiers, who induced the people to raise money enough to pay off the last instalment of the vast war-indemnity, and so clear the territory of German troops in September, 1873; Marshal MacMahon, an excellent soldier but weak in political affairs, favouring monarchical intrigues during his tenure of office ending in January, 1879; M. Jules Grevy, who held office from that date until 1887, and was then succeeded by M. Sadi-Carnot, grandson of the famous minister-of-war in the Committee of Public Safety and the Directory and under the Consulate. In 1892 there were serious dynamite-outrages perpetrated by anarchists in Paris, and one of these detestable miscreants effected the assassination of President Carnot at Lyon on June 24th, 1894. The colonial and foreign policy of France since 1815 will be seen under Asia, Africa, and America. To French capital, and to the engineering skill and energy of Ferdinand de Lesseps, the commercial world owes the construction of the Suez Canal. The same great engineer's undertaking at the 1sthmus of Panama ended in the collapse of the company in 1889, after the useless expenditure of some 70,000,000 pounds sterling, and attempts to revive and continue the scheme were productive of scandalous disclosures showing that republics as well as empires are not free from gross financial corruption. The French military system has been restored on a new basis supplying an enormous force of trained troops, and a continuous rivalry has existed between France and Germany in this matter. The great increase of naval power has caused a more than corresponding activity in British shipyards, and has greatly contributed to the development of naval force which enabled us to make so magnificent a display at the Portsmouth review in 1897. In the early spring of 1898 the trial of the French novelist Zola for libel in connection with his championship of the army-officer Captain Dreyfus, condemned for treason in January, 1895, gave a very unfavourable impression of French "militarism," as overriding not merely the sense of decency and propriety among civilians and officers, but judicial dignity and impartiality.