The Fall of Paris: The Siege and the Commune 1870-71 (92 page)

Vésinier,
332

Victoria, Queen,
3
,
20
,
24
,
36
,
67
,
79
,
82
,
162
,
165
,
289
,
426
, Villejuif,
80

Villiers plateau,
151
,
153
,
155–7

Vincenzoni,
267
,
424

Vinoy, General,
61
,
152
,
156
,
231
,
235–8
,
267–9
,
273–5
,
281
,
311
,
367
,
400
,
411

Viollet-le-Duc, Colonel,
63
,
195
,
259

Vivandières
,
149

Vizetelly, Henry,
157

Vuillaume, Maxime,
330
,
416

Walewski,
33

Wallace, Richard,
167–70
,
249
,
253
,
256
n.,
322
,
426

Washburne, E. B.,
xi
,
66
,
68
,
71
,
73
,
81
,
84
,
87
,
90
,
102
,
113
,
211
,
215
,
217
,
219
,
221
,
223
,
236
,
238
,
251
,
253
,
263
,
265
,
269
,
276
,
287
,
298
,
305
,
316
,
323
;
327
,
333
,
336
n.,
345
,
348
,
353–5
,
357–8
,
370
,
391–3
,
403
,
421
,
427

Werder, General von,
207
,
243

Whitehurst, Felix,
108
,
158
,
166
,
173
,
193
,
215
,
220

Wilhelm, King of Prussia,
8
,
11
,
37
,
75
,
81–82
,
197
,
199
,
202
,
211
,
262
,
419
; proclaims himself Kaiser of Germans,
218

Wilhelm, Prince (Wilhelm II),
240
,
274
,
420
n.

Wilson, Benjamin,
337–8
,
359
,
369
,
404
,
407

Wimpffen, General de,
51–52
,
81

Wingfield, Lewis,
352
,
407

Wissembourg,
43

Wodehouse, Secretary,
168
,
170

Wœrth,
44

Wolff, General,
269

World War I, comparisons with,
x
,
49
,
75–76
,
104
,
137
,
153
,
185
,
191–2
,
206

World War II, comparisons with,
x
,
49
,
51
,
79
,
106
,
201
,
206
,
214–15
,
408
.
See also
Leningrad, Siege of Worth
,
balloonist
,
130

Wroblewski, Walery,
299
,
329
,
380
,
400
,
425

Zola, Emile,
43
,
49
,
358

Zouaves,
38
,
52
,
77–78
,
80
,
153
,
231
,
280
,
307

*
Zeldin, T, p. 105, Oxford 1973–7.

1
One instance of this was the grand manoeuvre of MacMahon’s Army in August 1870, bringing him eventually to Sedan, which was lost to the sight of the Prussians—until they read about it in
The Times
.

1
In view of General Spears’s own role as a key eyewitness of events in France during both World Wars, his connection—through his grandfather and the Rafinesque family—with the Siege of Paris and the Commune imparts perhaps an additional interest.

1
The renowned vaudeville star of the ‘Alcazar’.

1
£160,000 or $800,000.

1
It was also said of the Duc de Morny, the Emperor’s natural half-brother and ablest counsellor, that he kept a casket containing portraits of his conquests in all strata of society, photographed naked and usually with flowers adorning their private parts.

2
The mother of Bertrand Russell.

3
‘Tell me, Venus, what pleasure you find In robbing me thus of my virtue’?

1
‘Vice, like virtue, has its steps up and down’.

1
‘It’s a frenzy, a contagion, No one is sheltered from it, in any region.’

1
The first issue of
La Lanterne
opened with the oft-quoted words: ‘France contains, according to the
Almanach Impérial
, thirty-six million subjects, not counting the subjects of discontent.’ Instead of an estimated circulation of four thousand, it promptly sold one hundred thousand copies.

1
De Morny was also Louis-Napoleon’s half brother; he once said of himself ‘I am a very complicated person. I am the son of a Queen, the brother of an Emperor, and the son-in-law of an Emperor, and all of us are illegitimate.’

1
Bismarck’s version of the Ems Telegram stated that the King had ‘refused to receive the Ambassador again, and had the latter informed by the adjutant-of-the-day that His Majesty had no further communication to make to the Ambassador.’

1
Your Rhine, German…/Where the father has passed/The child can certainly pass too.

1
Eugene Weber, pp. 102–4, 519,
Peasants into Frenchmen, the Modernization of Rural France 1870–1914
, 1977.

1
Following Louis-Napoleon’s 1851
coup d’etat
, the French Army had come to be recognized as the defender of the hierarchy; a situation which suited the bourgeoisie, but alienated the Republican foes of the Second Empire, who saw it now as an instrument of authoritarian repression. Indeed, under Louis-Napoleon the Army was widely used—instead of the police—to break strikes as well as to head off revolution. Conversely, the Army saw its own role as being one of upholding the existing regime, rather than attempting to alter or influence the political scene in any way; this despite the fact that some 30 per cent of the officer corps came from the nobility (or at least claimed to) and might therefore have been expected to support a restoration of the monarchy, while—as seen by the way they voted
Non
in Louis-Napoleon’s various plebiscites—many others were at best lukewarm Bonapartists. So, throughout the Second Empire, the Army cadres—worrying less about its legitimacy than they perhaps might have done—remained ‘loyal’ and ‘reliable’. On the other hand, the divisive effect that the Army’s role in the coup of 1851, and subsequently, had on the political scene bore the most baneful consequences for the state of France’s military preparedness by 1870. Especially was this so when it had come to opposing Louis-Napoleon’s military laws crucial to modernizing universal service, and providing the reserves, such as Moltke was churning out on the other side of the Rhine. Universal service in France was a farce anyway, with a system of substitution whereby the moderately affluent bourgeois could, for a modest sum (of perhaps 1500 francs), purchase a substitute. The results were not all that dissimilar to those of college deferrals to the draft permitted in the US during the Vietnam War; the Army got the rag-tag-and-bobtail, the élite stayed out.
While in the Provinces conscription had continued to be bitterly resisted, in Paris the Right mistrusted a conscript army that smacked of the
lev’e en masse
for obvious political reasons, and clamoured for a strong professional
armée de métier
, not just as a bastion against the menace abroad, but at home too. The Left saw this, saw the muskets pointing at them, and reacted accordingly. Thiers, the historian who described himself as a ‘monarchist who practises republicanism’, had studied the lessons of the First Empire and always believed in the superiority of professional armies. But most Republicans agreed with their colleague, Jules Simon, who declared during the debate on the Draft Law of 1867, just three years before war began, ‘We want an army of citizens which would be invincible on its home soil, but incapable of carrying a war abroad.’ Battling the creation of a
Garde Mobile
, the territorials that might have provided the answer to the Prussian reservists, Simon accused the Government’s intent of being ‘the organization of war; ours, exceptionally defensive, is the organization of peace’. In vain did Prévost Paradol criticize the left-wing opponents of ‘the strong army’, on the grounds that ‘defensive’ war demands as skilful soldiers as ‘offensive’ war.

1
Since I could not die in the midst of my troops, I can only put my sword in Your Majesty’s hands. I am Your Majesty’s good brother.’