The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 Part 6

By about two o'clock the French cavalry was practically disabled, and there now remained no Imperial Guard, as at Waterloo, to shed some rays of glory over the disaster. Meanwhile, however, de Wimpffen had resolved to make one more effort. Gathering about him a few of the best infantry battalions in and about Sedan, he besought the Emperor to join him in cutting a way out towards the east. The Emperor sent no answer to this appeal; he judged that too much blood had already been needlessly shed.

Still, de Wimpffen persisted in his mad endeavour. Bursting upon the Bavarians in the village of Balan, he drove them back for a s.p.a.ce until his men, disordered by the rush, fell before the stubborn rally of the Bavarians and Saxons. With the collapse of this effort and the cutting up of the French cavalry behind Floing, the last frail barriers to the enemy's advance gave way. The roads to Sedan were now thronged with ma.s.ses of fugitives, whose struggles to pa.s.s the drawbridges into the little fortress resembled an African battue; for King William and his Staff, in order to hurry on the inevitable surrender, bade the 200 or more pieces on the southern heights play upon the town. Still de Wimpffen refused to surrender, and, despite the orders of his sovereign, continued the hopeless struggle. At length, to stay the frightful carnage, the Emperor himself ordered the white flag to be hoisted[49]. A German officer went down to arrange preliminaries, and to his astonishment was ushered into the presence of the Emperor. The German Staff had no knowledge of his whereabouts. On hearing the news, King William, who throughout the day sat on horseback at the top of the slope behind Frenois, said to his son, the Crown Prince: "This is indeed a great success; and I thank thee that thou hast contributed to it." He gave his hand to his son, who kissed it, and then, in turn, to Moltke and to Bismarck, who kissed it also. In a short time, the French General Reille brought to the King the following autograph letter:--

MONSIEUR MON FReRE--N'ayant pu mourir au milieu de mes troupes, il ne me reste qu'a remettre mon epee entre les mains de Votre Majeste.--Je suis de Votre Majeste le bon Frere

NAPOLeON.

SeDAN, _le 1er Septembre, 1870_.

[Footnote 49: Lebrun, _op. cit._ pp. 130 _et seq._ for the disputes about surrender.]

The King named von Moltke to arrange the terms and then rode away to a village farther south, it being arranged, probably at Bismarck's suggestion, that he should not see the Emperor until all was settled.

Meanwhile de Wimpffen and other French generals, in conference with von Moltke, Bismarck, and Blumenthal, at the village of Donchery, sought to gain easy terms by appealing to their generosity and by arguing that this would end the war and earn the grat.i.tude of France. To all appeals for permission to let the captive army go to Algeria, or to lay down its arms in Belgium, the Germans were deaf,--Bismarck at length plainly saying that the French were an envious and jealous people on whose grat.i.tude it would be idle to count. De Wimpffen then threatened to renew the fight rather than surrender, to which von Moltke grimly a.s.sented, but Bismarck again interposed to bring about a prolongation of the truce. Early on the morrow, Napoleon himself drove out to Donchery in the hope of seeing the King. The Bismarckian Boswell has given us a glimpse of him as he then appeared: "The look in his light grey eyes was somewhat soft and dreamy, like that of people who have lived too fast."

[In his case, we may remark, this was induced by the painful disease which never left him all through the campaign, and carried him off three years later.] "He wore his cap a little on the right, to which side his head also inclined. His short legs were out of proportion to the long upper body. His whole appearance was a little unsoldier-like. The man looked too soft--I might say too spongy--for the uniform he wore."

Bismarck, the stalwart Teuton who had wrecked his policy at all points, met him at Donchery and foiled his wish to see the King, declaring this to be impossible until the terms of the capitulation were settled. The Emperor then had a conversation with the Chancellor in a little cottage belonging to a weaver. Seating themselves on two rush-bottomed chairs beside the one deal table, they conversed on the greatest affairs of State. The Emperor said he had not sought this war--"he had been driven into it by the pressure of public opinion. I replied" (wrote Bismarck) "that neither had any one with us wished for war--the King least of all[50]." Napoleon then pleaded for generous terms, but admitted that he, as a prisoner, could not fix them; they must be arranged with de Wimpffen. About ten o'clock the latter agreed to an unconditional surrender for the rank and file of the French army, but those officers who bound themselves by their word of honour (in writing) not to fight again during the present war were to be set free. Napoleon then had an interview with the King. What transpired is not known, but when the Emperor came out "his eyes" (wrote Bismarck) "were full of tears."

[Footnote 50: Busch, _Bismarck on the Franco-German War_, vol. i. p.

109. Contrast this statement with his later efforts (_Reminiscences_, vol. ii. pp. 95-100) to prove that he helped to bring on war.]

The fallen monarch accepted the King's offer of the castle of Wilhelmshohe near Ca.s.sel for his residence up to the end of the war; it was the abode on which Jerome Bonaparte had spent millions of thalers, wrung from Westphalian burghers, during his brief sovereignty in 1807-1813. Thither his nephew set out two days after the catastrophe of Sedan. And this, as it seems, was the end of a dynasty whose rise to power dated from the thrilling events of the Bridge of Lodi, Arcola, Rivoli, and the Pyramids. The French losses on September 1 were about 3000 killed, 14,000 wounded, and 21,000 prisoners. On the next day there surrendered 83,000 prisoners by virtue of the capitulation, along with 419 field-pieces and 139 cannon of the fortress. Some 3000 had escaped, through the gap in the German lines on the north-east, to the Belgian frontier, and there laid down their arms.

The news of this unparalleled disaster began to leak out at Paris late on the 2nd; on the morrow, when details were known, crowds thronged into the streets shouting "Down with the Empire! Long live the Republic!"

Power still remained with the Empress-Regent and the Palikao Ministry.

All must admit that the Empress Eugenie did what was possible in this hopeless position. She appealed to that charming literary man, M.

Prosper Merimee, to go to his friend, M. Thiers (at whom we shall glance presently), and beg him to form a Ministry that would save the Empire for the young Prince Imperial. M. Thiers politely but firmly refused to give a helping hand to the dynasty which he looked on as the author of his country's ruin.

On that day the Empress also summoned the Chambers--the Senate and the Corps Legislatif--a vain expedient, for in times of crisis the French look to a man, not to Chambers. The Empire had no man at hand. General Trochu, Governor of Paris, was suspected of being a Republican--at any rate he let matters take their course. On the 4th, vast crowds filled the streets; a rush was made to the Chamber, where various compromises were being discussed; the doors were forced, and amid wild excitement a proposal to dethrone the Napoleonic dynasty was put. Two Republican deputies, Gambetta and Jules Favre, declared that the Hotel de Ville was the fit place to declare the Republic. There, accordingly, it was proclaimed, the deputies for the city of Paris taking office as the Government of National Defence. They were just in time to prevent Socialists like Blanqui, Flourens, and Henri Rochefort from installing the "Commune" in power. The Empress and the Prince Imperial at once fled, and, apart from a protest by the Senate, no voice was raised in defence of the Empire. Jules Favre who took up the burden of Foreign Affairs in the new Government of National Defence was able to say in his circular note of September 6 that "the Revolution of September 4 took place without the shedding of a drop of blood or the loss of liberty to a single person[51]."

[Footnote 51: Gabriel Hanotaux, _Contemporary France_, vol. i. p. 14 (Eng. edit.)]

That fact shows the unreality of Bonapartist rule in France. At bottom Napoleon III.'s ascendancy was due to several causes, that told against possible rivals rather than directly in his favour. Hatred of the socialists, whose rash political experiments had led to the b.l.o.o.d.y days of street fighting in Paris in June 1848, counted for much. Added to this was the unpopularity of the House of Orleans after the sordid and uninteresting rule of Louis Philippe (1830-48). The antiquated royalism of the Elder or Legitimist branch of that ill-starred dynasty made it equally an impossibility. Louis Napoleon promised to do what his predecessors, Monarchical and Republican, had signally failed to do, namely, to reconcile the claims of liberty and order at home and uphold the prestige of France abroad. For the first ten years the glamour of his name, the skill with which he promoted the material prosperity of France, and the successes of his early wars, promised to build up a lasting power. But then came the days of failing health and tottering prestige--of financial scandals, of the Mexican blunder, of the humiliation before the rising power of Prussia. To retrieve matters he toyed with democracy in France, and finally allowed his Ministers to throw down a challenge to Prussia; for, in the words of a French historian, the conditions on which he held power "condemned him to be brilliant[52]."

[Footnote 52: Said in 1852 by an eminent Frenchman to our countryman, Na.s.sau Senior (_Journals_, ii. _ad fin_).]

Failing at Sedan, he lost all; and he knew it. His reign, in fact, was one long disaster for France. The canker of moral corruption began to weaken her public life when the creatures of whom he made use in the _coup d'etat _of 1851 crept into place and power. The flashy sensationalism of his policy, setting the tone for Parisian society, was fatal to the honest unseen drudgery which builds up a solid edifice alike in public and in private life. Even the better qualities of his nature told against ultimate success. As has been shown, his vague but generous ideas on Nationality drew French policy away from the paths of obvious self-interest after the year 1864, and gave an easy victory to the keen and objective statecraft of Bismarck. That he loved France as sincerely as he believed in the power of the Bonapartist tradition to help her, can scarcely admit of doubt. His conduct during the war of 1870 showed him to be disinterested, while his vision was clearer than that of the Generals about him. But in the field of high policy, as in the moral events that make or mar a nation's life, his influence told heavily against the welfare of France; and he must have carried into exile the consciousness that his complex nature and ill-matched strivings had but served to bring his dynasty and his country to an unexampled overthrow.

It may be well to notice here an event of world-wide importance, which came as a sequel to the military collapse of France. Italians had always looked to the day when Rome would be the national capital. The great Napoleon during his time of exile at St. Helena had uttered the prophetic words: "Italy isolated between her natural limits is destined to form a great and powerful nation. . . . Rome will without doubt be chosen by the Italians as their capital." The political and economic needs of the present, coinciding herein with the voice of tradition, always so strong in Italian hearts, pointed imperiously to Rome as the only possible centre of national life.

As was pointed out in the Introduction, Pius IX. after the years of revolution, 1848-49, felt the need of French troops in his capital, and his harsh and reactionary policy (or rather, that of his masterful Secretary of State, Antonelli) before long completely alienated the feelings of his subjects.

After the master-mind of Cavour was removed by death, (June 1861), the patriots struggled desperately, but in vain, to rid Rome of the presence of foreign troops and win her for the national cause. Garibaldi's raids of 1862 and 1867 were foiled, the one by Italian, the other by French troops; and the latter case, which led to the sharp fight of Mentana, effaced any feelings of grat.i.tude to Napoleon III. for his earlier help, which survived after his appropriation of Savoy and Nice. Thus matters remained in 1867-70, the Pope relying on the support of French bayonets to coerce his own subjects. Clearly this was a state of things which could not continue. The first great shock must always bring down a political edifice which rests not on its own foundations, but on external b.u.t.tresses. These were suddenly withdrawn by the war of 1870.

Early in August, Napoleon ordered all his troops to leave the Papal States; and the downfall of his power a month later absolved Victor Emmanuel from the claims of grat.i.tude which he still felt towards his ally of 1859.

At once the forward wing of the Italian national party took action in a way that either forced, or more probably encouraged, Victor Emmanuel's Government to step in under the pretext of preventing the creation of a Roman Republic. The King invited Pius IX. to a.s.sent to the peaceful occupation of Rome by the royal troops, and on receiving the expected refusal, moved forward 35,000 soldiers. The resistance of the 11,000 Papal troops proved to be mainly a matter of form. The wall near the Porta Pia soon crumbled before the Italian cannon, and after a brief struggle at the breach, the white flag was hoisted at the bidding of the Pope (Sept. 20).

Thus fell the temporal power of the Papacy. The event aroused comparatively little notice in that year of marvels, but its results have been momentous. At the time there was a general sense of relief, if not of joy, in Italy, that the national movement had reached its goal, albeit in so tame and uninspiring a manner. Rome had long been a prey to political reaction, accompanied by police supervision of the most exasperating kind. The _plebiscite_ as to the future government gave 133,681 votes for Victor Emmanuel's rule, and only 1507 negative votes[53].

[Footnote 53: Countess Cesaresco, _The Liberation of Italy_, p. 411.]

Now, for the first time since the days of Napoleon I. and of the short-lived Republic for which Mazzini and Garibaldi worked and fought so n.o.bly in 1849, the Eternal City began to experience the benefits of progressive rule. The royal government soon proved to be very far from perfect. Favouritism, the multiplication of sinecures, munic.i.p.al corruption, and the prosaic inroads of builders and speculators, soon helped to mar the work of political reconstruction, and began to arouse a certain amount of regret for the more picturesque times of the Papal rule. A sentimental reaction of this kind is certain to occur in all cases of political change, especially in a city where tradition and emotion so long held sway.

The consciences of the faithful were also troubled when the _fiat_ of the Pope went forth excommunicating the robber-king and all his chief abettors in the work of sacrilege. Sons of the Church throughout Italy were bidden to hold no intercourse with the interlopers and to take no part in elections to the Italian Parliament which thenceforth met in Rome. The schism between the Vatican and the King's Court and Government was never to be bridged over; and even to-day it const.i.tutes one of the most perplexing problems of Italy.

Despite the fact that Rome and Italy gained little of that mental and moral stimulus which might have resulted from the completion of the national movement solely by the action of the people themselves, the fact nevertheless remains that Rome needed Italy and Italy needed Rome.

The disappointment loudly expressed by idealists, sentimentalists, and reactionaries must not blind us to the fact that the Italians, and above all the Romans, have benefited by the advent of unity, political freedom, and civic responsibility. It may well be that, in acting as the leader of a const.i.tutional people, the Eternal City will little by little develop higher gifts than those nurtured under Papal tutelage, and perhaps as beneficent to Humanity as those which, in the ancient world, bestowed laws on Europe.

As Mazzini always insisted, political progress, to be sound, must be based ultimately on moral progress. It is of its very nature slow, and is therefore apt to escape the eyes of the moralist or cynic who dwells on the untoward signs of the present. But the Rome for which Mazzini and his compatriots yearned and struggled can hardly fail ultimately to rise to the height of her ancient traditions and of that n.o.ble prophecy of Dante: "_There_ is the seat of empire. There never was, and there never will be, a people endowed with such capacity to acquire command, with more vigour to maintain it, and more gentleness in its exercise, than the Italian nation, and especially the Holy Roman people." The lines with which Mr. Swinburne closed his "Dedication" of _Songs before Sunrise_ to Joseph Mazzini are worthy of finding a place side by side with the words of the mediaeval seer:--

Yea, even she as at first, Yea, she alone and none other, Shall cast down, shall build up, shall bring home, Slake earth's hunger and thirst, Lighten, and lead as a mother; First name of the world's names, Rome.

CHAPTER IV

THE FOUNDING OF THE FRENCH REPUBLIC

"[Greek: egigneto te logo men daemokratia, ergo de hupo tou protou andros archae]."

"Thus Athens, though still in name a democracy, was in fact ruled by her greatest man."--THUCYDIDES, book ii. chap. 65.

The aim of this work being to trace the outlines only of those outstanding events which made the chief States of the world what they are to-day, we can give only the briefest glance at the remaining events of the Franco-German War and the splendid though hopeless rally attempted by the newly-installed Government of National Defence. Few facts in recent history have a more thrilling interest than the details of the valiant efforts made by the young Republic against the invaders.

The spirit in which they were made breathed through the words of M.

Picard's proclamation on September 4: "The Republic saved us from the invasion of 1792. The Republic is proclaimed."

Inspiring as was this reference to the great and successful effort of the First Republic against the troops of Central Europe in 1792, it was misleading. At that time Prussia had lapsed into a state of weakness through the double evils of favouritism and a facing-both-ways policy.

Now she felt the strength born of st.u.r.dy champions.h.i.+p of a great principle--that of Nationality--which had ranged nearly the whole of the German race on her side. France, on the other hand, owing to the shocking blunders of her politicians and generals during the war, had but one army corps free, that of General Vinoy, which hastily retreated from the neighbourhood of Mezieres towards Paris on September 2 to 4.

She therefore had to count almost entirely on the Garde Mobile, the Garde Nationale, and Francs-tireurs; but bitter experience was to show that this raw material could not be organised in a few weeks to withstand the trained and triumphant legions of Germany.

Nevertheless there was no thought of making peace with the invaders. The last message of Count Palikao to the Chambers had been one of defiance to the enemy; and the Parisian deputies, nearly all of them Republicans, who formed the Government of National Defence, scouted all faint-hearted proposals. Their policy took form in the famous phrase of Jules Favre, Minister of Foreign Affairs: "We will give up neither an inch of our territory nor a stone of our fortresses." This being so, all hope of compromise with the Germans was vain. Favre had interviews with Bismarck at the Chateau de Ferrieres (September 19); but his fine oratory, even his tears, made no impression on the Iron Chancellor, who declared that in no case would an armistice be granted, not even for the election of a National a.s.sembly, unless France agreed to give up Alsace and a part of Lorraine, allowing the German troops also to hold, among other places, Stra.s.sburg and Toul.

Obviously, a self-const.i.tuted body like the provisional Government at Paris could not accept these terms, which most deeply concerned the nation at large. In the existing temper of Paris and France, the mention of such terms meant war to the knife, as Bismarck must have known. On their side, Frenchmen could not believe that their great capital, with its bulwarks and ring of outer forts, could be taken; while the Germans--so it seems from the Diary of General von Blumenthal--looked forward to its speedy capitulation. One man there was who saw the pressing need of foreign aid. M. Thiers (whose personality will concern us a little later) undertook to go on a mission to the chief Powers of Europe in the hope of urging one or more of them to intervene on behalf of France.

The details of that mission are, of course, not fully known. We can only state here that Russia now repaid Prussia's help in crus.h.i.+ng the Polish rebellion of 1863 by neutrality, albeit tinged with a certain jealousy of German success. Bismarck had been careful to dull that feeling by suggesting that she (Russia) should take the present opportunity of annulling the provision, made after the Crimean War, which prevented her from sending war-s.h.i.+ps on to the Black Sea; and this was subsequently done, under a thin diplomatic disguise, at the Congress of London (March 1871). Bismarck's astuteness in supporting Russia at this time therefore kept that Power quiet. As for Austria, she undoubtedly wished to intervene, but did not choose to risk a war with Russia, which would probably have brought another overthrow. Italy would not unsheathe her sword for France unless the latter recognised her right to Rome (which the Italian troops entered on September 20). To this the young French Republic demurred. Great Britain, of course, adhered to the policy of neutrality which she at first declared[54].

[Footnote 54: See Debidour, _Histoire diplomatique de l'Europe_, vol.

ii. pp. 412-415. For Bismarck's fears of intervention, especially that of Austria, see his _Reminiscences_, vol. ii. p. 109 (English edit.); Count Beust's _Aus drei Viertel-Jahrhunderten_, pt. ii. pp. 361, 395; for Thiers' efforts see his _Notes_ on the years 1870-73 (Paris 1904).]

Accordingly, France had to rely on her own efforts. They were surprisingly great. Before the complete investment of Paris (September 20), a Delegation of the Government of National Defence had gone forth to Tours with the aim of stirring up the provinces to the succour of the besieged capital. Probably the whole of the Government ought to have gone there; for, shut up in the capital, it lost touch with the provinces, save when balloons and carrier-pigeons eluded the German sharpshooters and brought precious news[55]. The mistake was seen in time to enable a man of wondrous energy to leave Paris by balloon on October 7, to descend as a veritable _deus ex machina_ on the faltering Delegation at Tours, and to stir the blood of France by his invective.

There was a touch of the melodramatic not only in his apparition but in his speeches. Frenchmen, however, follow a leader all the better if he is a good stage-manager and a clever actor. The new leader was both; but he was something more.

[Footnote 55: M. Gregoire in his _Histoire de France_, vol. iv. p. 647, states that 64 balloons left Paris during the siege, 5 were captured and 2 lost in the sea; 363 carrier-pigeons left the city and 57 came in. For details of the French efforts see _Les Responsabilites de la Defense rationale_, by H. Genevois; also _The People's War in France, 1870-1871_, by Col. L. Hale (The Pall Mall Military Series, 1904), founded on Honig's _Der Volkskrieg an der Loire_.]

Leon Gambetta had leaped to the front rank at the Bar in the closing days of 1868 by a pa.s.sionate outburst against the _coup d'etat_, uttered, to the astonishment of all, in a small Court of Correctional Police, over a petty case of State prosecution of a small Parisian paper. Rejecting the ordinary methods of defence, the young barrister flung defiance at Napoleon III. as the author of the _coup d'etat_ and of all the present degradation of France. The daring of the young barrister, who thus turned the tables on the authorities and impeached the head of the State, made a profound impression; it was redoubled by the Southern intensity of his thought and expression. Disdaining all forms of rhetoric, he poured forth a torrent of ideas, clothing them in the first words that came to his facile tongue, enforcing them by blows of the fist or the most violent gestures, and yet, again, modulating the roar of pa.s.sion to the falsetto of satire or the whisper of emotion. His short, thick-set frame, vibrating with strength, doubled the force of all his utterances. Nor did they lack the glamour of poetry and romance that might be expected from his Italian ancestry. He came of a Genoese stock that had for some time settled in the South of France. Strange fate, that called him now to the front with the aim of repairing the ills wrought to France by another Italian House! In time of peace his power over men would have raised him to the highest positions had his Bohemian exuberance of thought and speech been tameable. It was not. He scorned prudence in moderation at all times, and his behaviour, when the wave of Revolution at last carried him to power, gave point to the taunt of Thiers--"c'est un fou furieux." Such was the man who now brought the quenchless ardour of his patriotism to the task of rousing France. As far as words and energy could call forth armies, he succeeded; but as he lacked all military knowledge, his blind self-confidence was to cost France dear.