The Fall of Paris: The Siege and the Commune 1870-71 (44 page)

But on one point all factions were agreed: Trochu must go. When it was put to him, the General declared that it would be inconsistent with military honour for him to resign. The Government must replace him. After lengthy discussions, the following compromise was arrived at: Trochu would be relieved of his military command, but retain the Presidency; on the other hand, the Governorship of Paris would be suppressed. This last represented a final resort to casuistry that was as typical of this Government of lawyers as it was remarkable. When Trochu had made his rash promise, he declared, ‘The
Governor of Paris
will not capitulate’; therefore, it was argued with that insuperable logic of the French, if the Governor no longer existed, no promise would be broken. The way to capitulation was now open; although some of the British in Paris were reminded of Byron’s immortally cynical line from
Don Fuan
, ‘And whispering “I will ne’er consent”—consented’. But who would replace Trochu? Finally it was decided that the tough old Commander, Vinoy, would take over the military reins and that to Favre would be entrusted the invidious task of negotiating an armistice.

As Trochu left his headquarters, his staff were shocked to hear him mutter with uncharacteristic profanity about his sacrifice, ‘
Je suis le Jésus-Christ de la situation!
’ On the 22nd, Edward Blount called to find him calm but abandoned, alone ‘with Madame Trochu and one faithful member of his staff’, but still exuding a curious kind of self-satisfaction; ‘He asked me whether I would ever have thought it possible, with the kind of army left in Paris, demoralised, half starved, with nothing in abundance, except drink, to make an effectual stand against the splendid and highly disciplined troops of the invaders’. Few mourned the departure of this Hamlet among generals, who had led Paris, for better or for worse, from the first days of the Siege. Labouchere was among the kindest when he commented, ‘So poor Jonah has gone over, and been swallowed up by the whale.’ Victor Hugo, who had been responsible for many of the crueller puns on Trochu’s name running round Paris—such as ‘
trop lu
’, or ‘the past participle of the verb
trop choir
’
¹
—composed a mocking little epitaph:

…
Soldat brave, honnête, pieux, nul
,

Bon canon, mais ayant un peu trop de recul…
²

Washburne wrote, ‘Trochu is dethroned, having remained long enough to injure the cause’, and later added that he had ‘proved himself the weakest and most incompetent man ever entrusted with such great affairs… too weak for anything, weak as the Indian’s dog which had to lean against a tree to bark’. But Trochu had never had any tree against which he could have leaned. Although he ‘had much to answer for’, as O’Shea noted rather more charitably, ‘in the entire cabinet there was but one good Minister, Dorian—that because he was a practical man, a man of business. The rest were phrasers and praters.’ Wickham Hoffman, who regarded Trochu as ‘a strange compound of learning, ability, weakness, and fanaticism, and I have little doubt that he confidently anticipated the personal intervention of Ste.-Genevieve to save her beloved city’, also reckoned that ‘had Vinoy or Ducrot been in command from the beginning, the result might have been different’. But nobody was under any illusion that the advent of Vinoy could affect the issue now; it was, said Goncourt, simply ‘the changing of doctors when the invalid was on the point of death’.

As Vinoy took over, Belleville, still overflowing with rage at the futile slaughter of its National Guards, and realization of the imminence of surrender, burst out in its last—and most violent—revolt
of the Siege. Shortly before one o’clock on the morning of January 22nd, a band of armed men appeared at the gates of the Mazas prison and demanded the release of Flourens and the others imprisoned after October 31st. They induced the prison Governor to receive a deputation of three or four men; these promptly seized the gates and let in their comrades. The Governor (who seems to have acted with remarkable feebleness, and was indeed later arrested for complicity) handed over Flourens and the rest, merely requesting a ‘receipt for their bodies’. With drums beating, the insurgents then marched to the Mairie of the 20th
arrondissement
, where they pillaged all the food and wine stored there and set up a headquarters. In the course of the night, Flourens prudently evaporated, but the following afternoon his liberators headed—once more—for the Hôtel de Ville. Delescluze, Arnould, and other Red leaders had been conferring at a nearby house on the Rue de Rivoli, while, as usual, Blanqui was detachedly watching developments from a nearby restaurant. As on past occasions, the demonstrations began peacefully enough; there was much angry invective hurled against the Government, intermingled with cries of ‘
Donnez-nous du pain!
’ No member of the Government was in the Hôtel de Ville, so a deputy of Ferry, Gustave Chaudey, came out to meet the mob leaders, warning them that this time the building was well defended by armed Breton
Mobiles
behind every window. This time, the Government forces under Vinoy were ready and determined.

Despite Chaudey’s intervention, at about three o’clock two to three hundred National Guards of the 101st Battalion arrived from the Bastille, armed to the teeth, and led by such extremists as Razoua, Malon, Louise Michel, wearing a képi and clad in a man’s uniform, and the two semi-lunatics, Sapia who had led the October 8th disturbances, and Jules Allix of
doigt prussique
fame. They took up a menacing position in front of the Hôtel de Ville, and then a solitary shot was fired—probably, but not certainly, by the National Guard. Panic seized the crowd, and there were shouts of ‘They’re firing on us’. Sapia’s men now got down on one knee and fired a carefully directed volley into the Hôtel de Ville. There, Adjutant Bertrand, a Warrant Officer of the Finistére
Mobiles
who was standing just outside the gate, was hit and badly wounded. Immediately a peremptory command was given, followed by a devastating fusillade crackling out of every window in the great building. For the first time during the Siege, Frenchmen were firing at, and killing, other Frenchmen. It was a terrible omen of what was to come, and Gustave Chaudey would later die for having, presumptively, given the
Mobiles
the order to fire. Meanwhile, a sharp-eyed Breton levelled his sights on the
gesticulating Sapia and knocked him down, mortally wounded. Jules Clarétie, a Republican journalist who had just arrived on the Place, describes how ‘the desperate crowd stampedes, tries to get away in all directions. The firing continues all the time. The windows of the Hôtel de Ville open and the
Mobiles
reply. People fall around me. On my left, I see a young man sink down in the yellow mud that has been diluted by a penetrating light rain; and on my right, a spectator in a top hat, killed outright.’ Louise Michel, who was to win her nickname ‘the Red Virgin’ that day, was driven to a frenzy by the sight of the mob being shot down. Firing from the cover of an overturned omnibus, she admitted shooting to kill and flayed those of her fellows who merely peppered the walls of the Hôtel de Ville. For half an hour the exchange of fire went on, until the arrival of reinforcements sent by Vinoy. The National Guard dissipated, overturning more omnibuses to cover its retreat, and leaving five dead and eighteen wounded—women and children among them—in the empty Place.

On his way to the Hôtel de Ville that Sunday evening, to discover what was going on, Washburne met ‘an acquaintance, a young surgeon in the French Navy, who was profoundly agitated and profoundly depressed’. Telling him about the shooting, the surgeon remarked ‘that nobody knew what would come next, but that, at any rate, France was “finished”.’ Certainly it seemed that, as the Siege was running to its end, a dreadful new phase was bound to begin. In fact the January 22nd uprising had been no full-scale attempt at revolution; the numbers of the insurgents were far fewer than on October 31st; none of the principal Red leaders—Delescluze, Blanqui, Pyat, or even Flourens—was involved; and up to that day the great majority of the National Guard was still opposed to violence. But the shooting changed everything, and Paris hardened into two irreconcilable camps. Echoing the bourgeois attitude, which now saw Red revolution just round the corner, a
Mobile
corporal in Fort Issy (whence the 101st National Guard had once been returned because of its ‘uselessness’) wrote to his father: ‘…those miserable bastards… they are nothing but cowardly bandits far more dangerous for us than the Prussians; the Bretons fired on them—so long live the Bretons!…’ But now Vinoy did what bourgeois Paris felt Trochu should have done months ago; he ordered the suspension of
Le Combat
and
Le Réveil
, the closing of all the Red Clubs, and the indictment of Delescluze and Pyat before a military tribunal. (But Pyat, as always, had vanished into thin air.)

After the January 22nd uprising, ‘civil war was a few yards away’, Jules Favre wrote in retrospect, ‘famine, a few hours’. Though he
may have exaggerated the proximity of starvation (subsequent estimates suggest that there was still enough food for another ten days), the fear of civil war had suddenly become very real. Rather than attempt to fight a war on two fronts, the Government considered it imperative to obtain an armistice with the least delay. There would not even be time to consult Gambetta and the Tours Government. On the 23rd, Jules Favre called for Captain d’Hérisson, Trochu’s former staff officer, and entrusted him with a dispatch for Bismarck. He was enjoined to the utmost secrecy; ‘God only knows’, said Favre, ‘what the Parisian populace will do to us when we are compelled to tell them the truth.’ D’Hérisson sped to the parley-point on the Pont de Sèvres, where in October he had met the American generals Burnside and Forbes bound on another armistice mission to Paris. He arranged for a cease-fire at 6 o’clock that same evening, and immediately returned to collect Favre. Together they crossed the Seine in a row-boat, made dangerously leaky by bullet-holes: Favre—an incongruous figure in his top hat and badly made lawyer’s frock-coat—and d’Hérisson, immaculate in his red-striped trousers, frantically bailing with an old saucepan. On landing, Favre was escorted at once to Bismarck’s residence. ‘You have grown whiter since Ferrières, M. le Ministre’, he was greeted. Playing with the distraught old lawyer like a cat with a mouse, when Favre first mentioned with pride the resistance of Paris, Bismarck revealed the same brutality he had shown at Ferrières; ‘Ah! you are proud of your resistance? Well, sir, let me tell you that if M. Trochu were a German General I would have him shot tonight…. Do not talk to me of your resistance. It is criminal!’ That night Favre dined with Bismarck, who reported gleefully to the Crown Prince that he had ‘developed a perfectly wolfish hunger’, eating even the second night ‘a dinner intended for three’.

The armistice talks continued on the 24th, which, the Prussians noted auspiciously, happened to be the anniversary of the birth of Frederick the Great. Bismarck, secure in the knowledge of possessing all the cards, was hard and uncompromising, but Favre obtained terms sufficient for him to return to Paris for his Government’s approval. The only outstanding point was whether or not the National Guard should be allowed to retain its arms. On the 25th, 26th, and 27th he was back again with Bismarck, this time accompanied by a General d’Hautpoul, as military representative, whose strange conduct the Prussian Crown Prince and Dr. Busch both ascribed to drink; though Favre, more charitably, insisted he was reeling from sheer emotion. Bismarck was clad in the uniform of a White Cuirassier; the same that had made Paris stare during the Great Exhibition, those brilliant days
of only three and a half years ago which now seemed to belong to another century. ‘He looked a giant’, said d’Hérisson. ‘In his tight uniform, with his broad chest and square shoulders, and bursting with health and strength, his proximity overwhelmed the stooping, thin, tall, miserable-looking lawyer, with his frock-coat wrinkled all over, and his white hair falling over his collar. A look, alas! at the pair was sufficient to distinguish between the conqueror and the conquered, the strong and the weak.’ Such was the new balance of power in Europe. Immediately the conversation returned to the National Guard. Having heard Favre say that France needed to keep at least three regular divisions to maintain order, Moltke declared that he could accept only two and that the National Guard would have to be disarmed. With some passion, Favre cried out, ‘I cannot at any price have the National Guard disarmed. That would mean civil war.’ To this, Bismarck replied coldly, ‘You are being foolish. Sooner or later you will have to bring reason to the National Guard, and you gain nothing by waiting’, and he added cynically, ‘Provoke an uprising then, while you still have an army to suppress it with.’ According to Bismarck, Favre ‘looked at me in horror, as much as to say, “What a bloodthirst fellow you are!” ’

Finally Favre was allowed to keep the National Guard under arms, but Moltke insisted, in exchange, that he be allowed to retain only one regular division. It was to prove a disastrous compromise for the French forces of order. For the rest of the terms, the Army was to surrender its arms and its colours, but the officers would be left their swords; an armistice would be granted to Paris immediately, and would extend to the rest of France in three days’ time; Paris would pay a war indemnity of two hundred million francs, surrender the perimeter forts to the Prussians, and throw the rampart guns into the moats, but no Prussian troops would enter Paris for the duration of the armistice, which was to last until February 19th; during this time an Assembly would be freely elected, and would convene at Bordeaux to discuss whether or not to resume the war, or on what terms to conclude a definitive peace treaty; and meanwhile the Prussians would do all in their power to permit the revictualling of Paris. As a last favour, Favre begged for Paris to be allowed to fire the final shot of the Siege—which he was granted. It was January 27th, and noting that it was also the thirteenth birthday of his heir, Prince Wilhelm,
¹
the Crown Prince of the new German Reich added in his diary a pious wish that history was to make sound somewhat ironic: ‘May he grow up a good, upright, true and trusty man, one who
delights in all that is good and beautiful, a thorough German who will one day to learn to advance further in the paths laid down by his grandfather.… It is truly a disquieting thought to realize how many hopes are even now set on this boy’s head.’