The Fall of Paris: The Siege and the Commune 1870-71 (21 page)

… The Prussians have been here a month and more and
nothing
has been done. Nothing but false reports are constantly going about to excite or soothe the popular feeling, as the case may require. Every day it is the same, ‘
La Province
is rising up with the utmost energy, etc.’, why it’s been doing so the last 2 months and if it does nothing more, it isn’t much use.

Given the French temperament, something seemed bound to crack.

On October 27th, it did. To the north-east of Paris, just under four miles outside the city walls, lay the isolated hamlet of Le Bourget. Beyond it disappeared the endless plain of northern France. (Today the village is contiguous with urban Paris, while out of the plain has been carved the modern airport). With little apparent strategic value to either side, it was one of those featureless positions in featureless country that in the First World War would have been destined to become a name in no-man’s-land, changing hands untold times to satisfy the whims of local commanders. On the investment of Paris, Le Bourget had become an uneasy outpost in Prussian hands. Uneasy, because to some extent it was dominated by the two most powerful forts north of the
enceinte
, the Fort de l’Est and Aubervilliers, and it was flanked by St.-Denis, the ancient village in whose cathedral repose the bones of the French kings, which was itself a powerfully fortified and strongly garrisoned fortress. At the same time, Le
Bourget was also extremely vulnerable to artillery placed on the gently rising heights to the north, all of which lay in Prussian hands. Despite this consideration, to the French commander at St.-Denis, an ambitious brigadier called Carey de Bellemare, Le Bourget presented an irresistibly enticing morsel. All at once he could bear the temptation no longer, and—acting entirely on his own initiative—on the night of October 27th he sent some 250
francs-tireurs
to attack it. A company of the Prussian Guard was caught by surprise, and the following morning the French found themselves in occupation of Le Bourget. Having sent in a further two battalions of reinforcements, and feeling that tenancy was now assured, on the 29th de Bellemare set off for Paris to convey the good news personally to Trochu. So delighted was he with his success, that, according to Trochu, he promptly requested to be promoted
général de division
. His delight was certainly not shared by Trochu, whose immediate reaction was that Le Bourget was both inessential and indefensible, and that de Bellemare’s initiative was only ‘increasing the death roll for nothing at all’. Trochu was, he professed, even more surprised by the General’s departure from the line at such a time, and on such a mission. Then, while de Bellemare was still in the room, a telegram was handed to Trochu, reporting that the Prussians were counter-attacking at Le Bourget. ‘That is where
you
should be!’ exclaimed Trochu. But, to his further astonishment de Bellemare was back again that same afternoon, claiming that the attack was nothing but a ‘false alarm’, and once again pressing his suit for promotion.

The Paris Press, however, thirsty for a triumph at any cost, had refused to associate itself with Trochu’s dubiety and at once proclaimed the first great victory of the Siege. Even the sceptical Labouchere had been induced to enter in his diary for the 30th: ‘We really have had a success.’ Alas, a few hours later he was angrily correcting himself: ‘So we have been kicked neck and crop out of Bourget.’ The Prussian counter-attack of the afternoon of the 29th had in fact, as de Bellemare told Trochu, been successfully warded off. But it was no more than a reconnaissance in force which revealed to the Germans that they would have to bring up a much greater force to regain the village. In the meantime, with their customary speed the German guns had been rushed up and began to pound the village relentlessly, throwing in some two thousand shells. At 8 o’clock the next morning, 6,000 bayonets of the Prussian Guards division swept into the attack in loosely deployed formations: a new technique which, together with the preliminary ‘softening-up’ barrage, provided a remarkable preview of a First World War action. Hurriedly the French ordered up reinforcements. General Hanrion, bringing up a column of men, sent his own son back to speed it up; the young
sous-lieutenant
, having
accomplished his mission, returned only to be shot down close to the spot where he had left his father. On the other side, Prussian tempers were raised by the shooting of a colonel who had ridden up to a French unit waving white handkerchiefs, and still more by finding scrawled on a wall close to Le Bourget’s ‘
Pensionnat de Demoiselles
’ the provoking words ‘Prussian devils—you won’t see your wives again’. As the Prussians fought their way into the village, the action degenerated into house-fighting, becoming one of the most bitter of the whole war. The French reinforcements were too little and too late, but he defenders had to be winkled out house by house. Major Ernest Barcuche, son of one of Louis-Napoleon’s Ministers and commanding a battalion of
Mobiles
, shot himself rather than surrender. Gradually the fight narrowed down to the little Church of St.-Nicholas, where from behind the overturned pulpit another major, Brasseur, put up a gallant last-ditch resistance against huge odds. By midday on the 30th Le Bourget was once again in Prussian hands. Visiting the battered and bloodstained church shortly afterwards, Archibald Forbes, the
Daily News
correspondent attached to the Saxon Armies, noted that ‘the Virgin had a bullet-hole through her heart’.
¹

Le Bourget cost the French nearly 1,200 men, most of whom were captured, and the Germans 477. The battle had annoyed the Prussian General Staff almost as much as it had Trochu. Blumenthal considered it ‘a perfectly unnecessary fight’, while the humanitarian Crown Prince Frederick thought that ‘possession of that village was not of such great importance that it had to be retaken with such relatively heavy losses’. In Paris, for once even the eager Ducrot had been in agreement with Trochu over the uselessness of de Bellemare’s action. So a communiqué was issued explaining the unimportance of Le Bourget, duly written off as ‘not forming part of our general system of defence’. This was of course true; its sole importance to the French was in so far as any extension of the siege lines was an advantage, and provided that such extension was tenable. Compared with vital Châtillon, Le Bourget was both less easy to hold and strategically far less valuable. But the real significance of the episode lay in morale, not strategy. Here was what the Paris newspapers had led the populace to believe was the first big victory of the Siege apparently frittered away and turned into defeat through what looked like yet another display of ineptitude and lethargy by the Government. The build-up made the ensuing disappointment all the sharper. Yet before its full impact could be felt, another sledge-hammer blow of still worse news came down on top of it.

On September 27th, Strasbourg had surrendered after a gallant defence culminated by a bombardment which, destroying the magnificent old library and killing many civilians, had provided a savage foretaste of the twentieth century. Towards the end food had begun to run out, and the inhabitants literally forced to live on the famous but indigestible
pâté de foie gras
. Meanwhile, Metz, better provisioned, had continued to hold out, pinning down an entire Prussian Army. But as October advanced, the population, swollen by Bazaine’s enormous force inside the walls, was also beginning to suffer from hunger. On October 14th bread rationing had been introduced; most of Bazaine’s transport mules and many of his cavalry horses had already been eaten. The most decisive shortage, however, was of salt. It may sound trivial, but without it none of those brilliant French sauces could be prepared that made palatable otherwise unpleasant dishes such as the rats that would soon become a stable diet of Paris, and because of this deficiency the children of Metz, covered in scorbutic sores, were beginning to die in depressing numbers. All the time the stolid Bazaine, according to Robinson of the
Manchester Guardian
who was in Metz, ‘smoked by day and played billiards by night’, having made no attempt to break out during the seventy days the siege had lasted. His friends insisted: ‘The Marshal is a deep one; he has some hidden movement to make which will cover his name with glory….’ But Bazaine had nothing up his sleeve, and on October 29th he was forced to surrender a starving city to Prince Frederick-Charles’s forces. The last of Louis-Napoleon’s armies, 6,000 officers and 173,000 men, marched out; ragged, sick, demoralized, and many wretchedly and sullenly drunk. As Bazaine himself rode forth into captivity, women spat at him, and immediately the news reached Tours Gambetta had Bazaine proclaimed a traitor. History’s verdict on Bazaine is that he was an indifferent general and an unenthusiastic Republican, and probably nothing worse.
¹
But as even one of France’s own historians has remarked of one of her least endearing national characteristics: ‘In France we have to have traitors. It is impossible to admit that we should be beaten without someone’s treachery.’ Thus it was as a traitor that Bazaine was hauled before the courts after the war, sentenced to death and then—after a reprieve—to life imprisonment; a fate remarkably similar to that which overtook another
Maréchal de France
seventy years later, the
aged Pétain. Whether Bazaine was guilty or innocent, or whether he had any alternative to surrender, the fall of Metz was a grave blow to French fortunes. It meant that the whole of Frederick-Charles’s Second Army was now free either to join in the Siege of Paris, or to carry the war against the new armies Gambetta was levying at Tours. In England a judgement that typified changing British emotions towards the war was expressed by the
Illustrated London News
: ‘Germany is thought to have had enough of triumph, France enough of punishment.’ But the Supreme Arbiter evidently did not agree. Reports that Bazaine was negotiating for the surrender of Metz had begun to reach the Government in Paris on about the 26th. Trochu told Rochefort, who told Flourens (with a caution to keep it quiet), who promptly told Pyat, who headlined
Le Combat
on the 27th ‘
FALL OF METZ
’. The Government immediately, and clumsily, denied the story, stigmatizing the paper a ‘Prussian organ’, and
Le Combat
was burnt on the streets by outraged citizens. On the 29th Rochefort wrote a letter of resignation from Victor Hugo’s house. The next day the evacuation of Le Bourget was announced; on hearing the news Juliette Lambert declared: ‘I cannot express the chagrin, the discouragement, the rage and the despair which invaded me, I slumped into a chair without knowing where I was’. On Monday the 31st, after a weekend of rising excitement, rumour and counter-rumour, the Government was forced to admit the truth of
Le Combat
’s story.

Then, as a final blow to the
guerre à outrance
faction, it was revealed that Thiers had just returned from his travels with a four-power armistice proposal. He was in fact urging the Government to accept the latest Prussian terms—which included the cession of Alsace and an indemnity of two milliard francs—and the word had quickly got around the left-wing strongholds that a ‘peace-at-any-price’ sellout was being prepared by that old enemy of the working class. The Mayor of Montmartre, a fiery young radical called Georges Clemenceau, that morning posted up an
affiche
declaring: ‘The municipality of the 18th
arrondissement
protests with indignation against an armistice which the Government could not accept without committing treason.’ Coming in such swift succession, the combined force of the three blows shocked bourgeois Paris and was altogether too much for the Paris ‘Reds’. On the afternoon of ‘Black Monday’—which happened to be Hallowe’en—the storm broke.

All through the previous day, Tommy Bowles had noted ‘ominous threats uttered by the crowds on the boulevards’. It was, he predicted, ‘not unlikely that we may have troubles’, and others of the British Press corps shared his fears. So did Edmond Adam, Juliette Lambert’s husband, who had replaced Kératry as Prefect of Police.

Through Picard, the Minister of Finance, he warned the Government that an insurrection might well be in the offing and recommended that precautionary measures be taken. But Trochu, expressing utter confidence in his own popularity, had merely replied, ‘I shall be responsible for order’. At 8.30 on Monday morning Adam had gone to Trochu in person and repeated his warnings, only to be brushed away again with the remark ‘we are a Government born of public opinion… consequently,
mon cher préfet
, we only employ moral forces’. Unconvinced, Adam at once went to the Place Vendôme and ordered ten reliable battalions of the National Guard to stand by to cover the aproaches to the Hôtel de Ville. Later he followed this up with an order for a further ten battalions to be held ready. From the earliest hours of Monday morning everything indicated that Adam’s fears were by no means groundless. Felix Whitehurst, one of the British community in Paris, was writing up his diary when

a rather stronger storm of drums and trumpets set in than even we have been accustomed to during the last six weeks, and, as we have drums and trumpets on the brain, of course we took glass and went to the balcony to inspect. Thousands of National Guards were marching in every direction, and as they were not, as a rule, in heavy marching order, were too clean to be coming from, and too late to be going to, the forts or fortifications, it struck us that something was in the air…. I marched off at once to the Hôtel de Ville. As I passed along the Rue de Rivoli, I saw on every side the signs of a brewing storm. All the concierges were outside their gates, and their wives, who should have been ‘doing the first floor’ were talking to other conciergeresses, who should have been ‘doing’ the ‘entresol’ and the ‘second’. Men in trousers with red stripes were carefully putting up their shutters….