On the same day that the battle of Worth was fought, the leading columns of the armies of Steinmetz and Prince Frederick Charles crossed the frontier at Saarbrucken. Frossard's corps, on the news of the defeat at Weissenburg, had withdrawn to its earlier positions between Forbach and the frontier: it held the steep hills of Spicheren that look down upon Saarbrucken, and the woods that flank the high road where this pa.s.ses from Germany into France.

As at Worth, it was not intended that any general attack should be made on the 6th; a delay of twenty-four hours would have enabled the Germans to envelop or crush Frossard's corps with an overwhelming force. But the leaders of the foremost regiments threw themselves impatiently upon the French whom they found before them: other brigades hurried up to the sound of the cannon, until the struggle took the proportion of a battle, and after hours of fluctuating success the heights of Spicheren were carried by successive rushes of the infantry full in the enemy's fire. Why Frossard was not reinforced has never been explained, for several French divisions lay at no great distance westward, and the position was so strong that, if a pitched battle was to be fought anywhere east of Metz, few better points could have been chosen. But, like Douay at Weissenburg, Frossard was left to struggle alone against whatever forces the Germans might throw upon him.

Napoleon, who directed the operations of the French armies from Metz, appears to have been now incapable of appreciating the simplest military necessities, of guarding against the most obvious dangers. Helplessness, infatuation ruled the miserable hours.

[Paris after Aug. 6.]

The impression made upon Europe by the battles of the 6th of August corresponded to the greatness of their actual military effects. There was an end to all thoughts of the alliance of Austria and Italy with France.

Germany, though unaware of the full magnitude of the perils from which it had escaped, breathed freely after weeks of painful suspense; the very circ.u.mstance that the disproportion of numbers on the battle-field of Worth was still unknown heightened the joy and confidence produced by the Crown Prince's victory, a victory in which the South German troops, fighting by the side of those who had been their foes in 1866, had borne their full part. In Paris the consternation with which the news of McMahon's overthrow was received was all the greater that on the previous day reports had been circulated of a victory won at Landau and of the capture of the Crown Prince with his army. The bulletin of the Emperor, briefly narrating McMahon's defeat and the repulse of Frossard, showed in its concluding words--"All may yet be retrieved"--how profound was the change made in the prospects of the war by that fatal day. The truth was at once apprehended. A storm of indignation broke out against the Imperial Government at Paris. The Chambers were summoned. Ollivier, attacked alike by the extreme Bonapartists and by the Opposition, laid down his office. A reactionary Ministry, headed by the Count of Palikao, was placed in power by the Empress, a Ministry of the last hour as it was justly styled by all outside it. Levies were ordered, arms and stores acc.u.mulated for the reserve-forces, preparations made for a siege of Paris itself. On the 12th the Emperor gave up the command which he had exercised with such miserable results, and appointed Marshal Bazaine, one of the heroes of the Mexican Expedition, General-in-Chief of the Army of the Rhine.

[Napoleon at Metz. Aug. 7-11.]

[Borny, Aug 14.]

After the overthrow of McMahon and the victory of the Germans at Spicheren, there seems to have been a period of utter paralysis in the French headquarters at Metz. The divisions of Prince Frederick Charles and Steinmetz did not immediately press forward; it was necessary to allow some days for the advance of the Crown Prince through the Vosges; and during these days the French army about Metz, which, when concentrated, numbered nearly two hundred thousand men, might well have taken the positions necessary for the defence of Moselle, or in the alternative might have gained several marches in the retreat towards Verdun and Chalons. Only a small part of this body had as yet been exposed to defeat. It included in it the very flower of the French forces, tens of thousands of troops probably equal to any in Europe, and capable of forming a most formidable army if united to the reserves which would shortly be collected at Chalons or nearer Paris. But from the 7th to the 12th of August Napoleon, too cowed to take the necessary steps for battle in defence of the line of Moselle, lingered purposeless a id irresolute at Metz, unwilling to fall back from this fortress. It was not till the 14th that the retreat was begun. By this time the Germans were close at hand, and their leaders were little disposed to let the hesitating enemy escape them. While the leading divisions of the French were crossing the Moselle, Steinmetz hurried forward his troops and fell upon the French detachments still lying on the south-east of Metz about Borny and Courcelles. Bazaine suspended his movement of retreat in order to beat back an a.s.sailant who for once seemed to be inferior in strength. At the close of the day the French commander believed that he had gained a victory and driven the Germans off their line of advance; in reality he had allowed himself to be diverted from the pa.s.sage of the Moselle at the last hour, while the Germans left under Prince Frederick Charles gained the river farther south, and actually began to cross it in order to bar his retreat.

[Mars-la-Tour, Aug. 15.]

From Metz westwards there is as far as the village of Gravelotte, which is seven miles distant, but one direct road; at Gravelotte the road forks, the southern arm leading towards Verdun by Vionville and Mars-la-Tour, the northern by Conflans. During the 15th of August the first of Bazaine's divisions moved as far as Vionville along the southern road; others came into the neighbourhood of Gravelotte, but two corps which should have advanced past Gravelotte on to the northern road still lay close to Metz.

The Prussian vanguard was meanwhile crossing the Moselle southwards from Noveant to Pont-a-Mousson, and hurrying forwards by lines converging on the road taken by Bazaine. Down to the evening of the 15th it was not supposed at the Prussian headquarters that Bazaine could be overtaken and brought to battle nearer than the line of the Meuse; but on the morning of the 16th the cavalry-detachments which had pushed farthest to the north-west discovered that the heads of the French columns had still not pa.s.sed Mars-la-Tour. An effort was instantly made to seize the road and block the way before the enemy. The struggle, begun by a handful of combatants on each side, drew to it regiment after regiment as the French battalions close at hand came into action, and the Prussians hurried up in wild haste to support their comrades who were exposed to the attack of an entire army.

The rapidity with which the Prussian generals grasped the situation before them, the vigour with which they brought up their cavalry over a distance which no infantry could traverse in the necessary time, and without a moment's hesitation hurled this cavalry in charge after charge against a superior foe, mark the battle of Mars-la-Tour as that in which the military superiority of the Germans was most truly shown. Numbers in this battle had little to do with the result, for by better generalship Bazaine could certainly at any one point have overpowered his enemy. But while the Germans rushed like a torrent upon the true point of attack--that is the westernmost--Bazaine by some delusion considered it his primary object to prevent the Germans from thrusting themselves between the retreating army and Metz, and so kept a great part of his troops inactive about the fortress. The result was that the Germans, with a loss of sixteen thousand men, remained at the close of the day masters of the road at Vionville, and that the French army could not, without winning a victory and breaking through the enemy's line, resume its retreat along this line.

[Gravelotte, Aug. 18.]

It was expected during the 17th that Bazaine would make some attempt to escape by the northern road, but instead of doing so he fell back on Gravelotte and the heights between this and Metz, in order to fight a pitched battle. The position was a well-chosen one; but by midday on the 18th the armies of Steinmetz and Prince Frederick Charles were ranged in front of Bazaine with a strength of two hundred and fifty thousand men, and in the judgment of the King these forces were equal to the attack. Again, as at Worth, the precipitancy of divisional commanders caused the sacrifice of whole brigades before the battle was won. While the Saxon corps with which Moltke intended to deliver his slow but fatal blow upon the enemy's right flank was engaged in its long northward detour, Steinmetz pushed his Rhinelanders past the ravine of Gravelotte into a fire where no human being could survive, and the Guards, pressing forward in column over the smooth unsheltered slope from St. Marie to St. Privat, sank by thousands without reaching midway in their course. Until the final blow was dealt by the Saxon corps from the north flank, the ground which was won by the Prussians was won princ.i.p.ally by their destructive artillery fire: their infantry attacks had on the whole been repelled, and at Gravelotte itself it had seemed for a moment as if the French were about to break the a.s.sailant's line. But Bazaine, as on the 16th, steadily kept his reserves at a distance from the points where their presence was most required, and, according to his own account, succeeded in bringing into action no more than a hundred thousand men, or less than two-thirds of the forces under his command.

[540] At the close of the awful day, when the capture of St. Privat by the Saxons turned the defender's line, the French abandoned all their positions and drew back within the defences of Metz.

[McMahon is compelled to attempt Bazaine's relief.]

The Germans at once proceeded to block all the roads round the fortress, and Bazaine made no effort to prevent them. At the end of a few days the line was drawn around him in sufficient strength to resist any sudden attack. Steinmetz, who was responsible for a great part of the loss sustained at Gravelotte, was now removed from his command; his army was united with that under Prince Frederick Charles as the besieging force, while sixty thousand men, detached from this great ma.s.s, were formed into a separate army under Prince Albert of Saxony, and sent by way of Verdun to co-operate with the Crown Prince against McMahon. The Government at Paris knew but imperfectly what was pa.s.sing around Metz from day to day; it knew, however, that if Metz should be given up for lost the hour of its own fall could not be averted. One forlorn hope remained, to throw the army which McMahon was gathering at Chalons north-eastward to Bazaine's relief, though the Crown Prince stood between Chalons and Metz, and could reach every point in the line of march more rapidly than McMahon himself. Napoleon had quitted Metz on the evening of the 15th; on the 17th a council of war was held at Chalons, at which it was determined to fall back upon Paris and to await the attack of the Crown Prince under the forts of the capital. No sooner was this decision announced to the Government at Paris than the Empress telegraphed to her husband warning him to consider what would be the effects of his return, and insisting that an attempt should be made to relieve Bazaine. [541] McMahon, against his own better judgment, consented to the northern march. He moved in the first instance to Rheims in order to conceal his intention from the enemy, but by doing this he lost some days.

On the 23rd, in pursuance of arrangements made with Bazaine, whose messengers were still able to escape the Prussian watch, he set out north-eastwards in the direction of Montmedy.

[German movement northwards, Aug 26.]

[Battle of Sedan, Sept. 1.]

[Capitulation of Sedan, Sept. 2.]

The movement was discovered by the Prussian cavalry and reported at the headquarters at Bar-le-Duc on the 25th. Instantly the westward march of the Crown Prince was arrested, and his army, with that of the Prince of Saxony, was thrown northwards in forced marches towards Sedan. On reaching Le Chesne, west of the Meuse, on the 27th, McMahon became aware of the enemy's presence. He saw that his plan was discovered, and resolved to retreat westwards before it was too late. The Emperor, who had attached himself to the army, consented, but again the Government at Paris interfered with fatal effect. More anxious for the safety of the dynasty than for the existence of the army, the Empress and her advisers insisted that McMahon should continue his advance. Napoleon seems now to have abdicated all authority and thrown to the winds all responsibility. He allowed the march to be resumed in the direction of Mouzon and Stenay. Failly's corps, which formed the right wing, was attacked on the 29th before it could reach the pa.s.sage of the Meuse at the latter place, and was driven northwards to Beaumont. Here the commander strangely imagined himself to be in security.

He was surprised in his camp on the following day, defeated, and driven northwards towards Mouzon. Meanwhile the left of McMahon's army had crossed the Meuse and moved eastwards to Carignan, so that his troops were severed by the river and at some distance from one another. Part of Failly's men were made prisoners in the struggle on the south, or dispersed on the west of the Meuse; the remainder, with their commander, made a hurried and disorderly escape beyond the river, and neglected to break down the bridges by which they had pa.s.sed. McMahon saw that if the advance was continued his divisions would one after another fall into the enemy's hands. He recalled the troops which had reached Carignan, and concentrated his army about Sedan to fight a pitched battle. The pa.s.sages of the Meuse above and below Sedan were seized by the Germans. Two hundred and forty thousand men were at Moltke's disposal; McMahon had about half that number. The task of the Germans was not so much to defeat the enemy as to prevent them from escaping to the Belgian frontier. On the morning of September 1st, while on the east of Sedan the Bavarians after a desperate resistance stormed the village of Bazeilles, Hessian and Prussian regiments crossed the Meuse at Donchery several miles to the west. From either end of this line corps after corps now pushed northwards round the French positions, driving in the enemy wherever they found them, and, converging under the eyes of the Prussian King, his general, and his Minister, each into its place in the arc of fire before which the French Empire was to perish. The movement was as admirably executed as designed. The French fought furiously but in vain: the mere ma.s.s of the enemy, the mere narrowing of the once completed circle, crushed down resistance without the clumsy havoc of Gravelotte.

From point after point the defenders were forced back within Sedan itself.

The streets were choked with hordes of beaten infantry and cavalry; the Germans had but to take one more step forward and the whole of their batteries would command the town. Towards evening there was a pause in the firing, in order that the French might offer negotiations for surrender; but no sign of surrender was made, and the Bavarian cannon resumed their fire, throwing sh.e.l.ls into the town itself. Napoleon now caused a white flag to be displayed on the fortress, and sent a letter to the King of Prussia, stating that as he had not been able to die in the midst of his troops, nothing remained for him but to surrender his sword into the hands of his Majesty. The surrender was accepted by King William, who added that General Moltke would act on his behalf in arranging terms of capitulation.

General Wimpffen, who had succeeded to the command of the French army on the disablement of McMahon by a wound, acted on behalf of Napoleon. The negotiations continued till late in the night, the French general pressing for permission for his troops to be disarmed in Belgium, while Moltke insisted on the surrender of the entire army as prisoners of war. Fearing the effect of an appeal by Napoleon himself to the King's kindly nature, Bismarck had taken steps to remove his sovereign to a distance until the terms of surrender should be signed. At daybreak on September 2nd Napoleon sought the Prussian headquarters. He was met on the road by Bismarck, who remained in conversation with him till the capitulation was completed on the terms required by the Germans. He then conducted Napoleon to the neighbouring chateau of Bellevue, where King William, the Crown Prince, and the Prince of Saxony visited him. One pang had still to be borne by the unhappy man. Down to his interview with the King, Napoleon had imagined that all the German armies together had operated against him at Sedan, and he must consequently have still had some hope that his own ruin might have purchased the deliverance of Bazaine. He learnt accidentally from the King that Prince Frederick Charles had never stirred from before Metz. A convulsion of anguish pa.s.sed over his face: his eyes filled with tears.

There was no motive for a prolonged interview between the conqueror and the conquered, for, as a prisoner, Napoleon could not discuss conditions of peace. After some minutes of conversation the King departed for the Prussian headquarters. Napoleon remained in the chateau until the morning of the next day, and then began his journey towards the place chosen for his captivity, the palace of Wilhelmshohe at Ca.s.sel. [542]

[The Republic Proclaimed, Sept. 4.]

[Circular of Jules Favre, Sept. 6.]

Rumours of disaster had reached Paris in the last days of August, but to each successive report of evil the Government replied with lying boasts of success, until on the 3rd of September it was forced to announce a catastrophe far surpa.s.sing the worst antic.i.p.ations of the previous days.

With the Emperor and his entire army in the enemy's hands, no one supposed that the dynasty could any longer remain on the throne: the only question was by what form of government the Empire should be succeeded. The Legislative Chamber a.s.sembled in the dead of night; Jules Favre proposed the deposition of the Emperor, and was heard in silence. The a.s.sembly adjourned for some hours. On the morning of the 4th, Thiers, who sought to keep the way open for an Orleanist restoration, moved that a Committee of Government should be appointed by the Chamber itself, and that elections to a new a.s.sembly should be held as soon as circ.u.mstances should permit.

Before this and other propositions of the same nature could be put to the vote, the Chamber was invaded by the mob. Gambetta, with most of the Deputies for Paris, proceeded to the Hotel de Ville, and there proclaimed the Republic. The Empress fled; a Government of National Defence came into existence, with General Trochu at its head, Jules Favre a.s.suming the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Gambetta that of the Interior. No hand was raised in defence of the Napoleonic dynasty or of the inst.i.tutions of the Empire. The Legislative Chamber and the Senate disappeared without even making an attempt to prolong their own existence. Thiers, without approving of the Republic or the mode in which it had come into being, recommended his friends to accept the new Government, and gave it his own support. On the 6th of September a circular of Jules Favre, addressed to the representatives of France at all the European Courts, justified the overthrow of the Napoleonic Empire, and claimed for the Government by which it was succeeded the goodwill of the neutral Powers. Napoleon III. was charged with the responsibility for the war: with the fall of his dynasty, it was urged, the reasons for a continuance of the struggle had ceased to exist. France only asked for a lasting peace. Such peace, however, must leave the territory of France inviolate, for peace with dishonour would be but the prelude to a new war of extermination. "Not an inch of our soil will we cede"--so ran the formula--"not a stone of our fortresses." [543]

[Favre and Bismarck, Sept. 29.]

The German Chancellor had nothing ready in the way of rhetoric equal to his antagonist's phrases; but as soon as the battle of Sedan was won it was settled at the Prussian headquarters that peace would not be made without the annexation of Alsace and Lorraine. Prince Bismarck has stated that his own policy would have stopped at the acquisition of Strasburg: Moltke, however, and the chiefs of the army p.r.o.nounced that Germany could not be secure against invasion while Metz remained in the hands of France, and this opinion was accepted by the King. For a moment it was imagined that the victory of Sedan had given the conqueror peace on his own terms. This hope, however, speedily disappeared, and the march upon Paris was resumed by the army of the Crown Prince without waste of time. In the third week of September the invaders approached the capital. Favre, in spite of his declaration of the 6th, was not indisposed to enter upon negotiations; and, trusting to his own arts of persuasion, he sought an interview with the German Chancellor, which was granted to him at Ferrieres on the 19th, and continued on the following day. Bismarck hesitated to treat the holders of office in Paris as an established Government; he was willing to grant an armistice in order that elections might be held for a National a.s.sembly with which Germany could treat for peace; but he required, as a condition of the armistice, that Strasburg and Toul should be surrendered. Toul was already at the last extremity; Strasburg was not capable of holding out ten days longer; but of this the Government at Paris was not aware. The conditions demanded by Bismarck were rejected as insulting to France, and the war was left to take its course. Already, while Favre was negotiating at Ferrieres, the German vanguard was pressing round to the west of Paris.

A body of French troops which attacked them on the 19th at Chatillon was put to the rout and fled in panic. Versailles was occupied on the same day, and the line of investment was shortly afterwards completed around the capital.

[Siege of Paris, Sept. 19.]

[Tours.]

[Gambetta at Tours.]

The second act in the war now began. Paris had been fortified by Thiers about 1840, at the time when it seemed likely that France might be engaged in war with a coalition on the affairs of Mehemet Ali. The forts were not distant enough from the city to protect it altogether from artillery with the lengthened range of 1870; they were sufficient, however, to render an a.s.sault out of the question, and to compel the besieger to rely mainly on the slow operation of famine. It had been reckoned by the engineers of 1840 that food enough might be collected to enable the city to stand a two-months' siege; so vast, however, were the supplies collected in 1870 that, with double the population, Paris had provisions for above four months. In spite therefore of the capture and destruction of its armies the cause of France was not hopeless, if, while Paris and Metz occupied four hundred thousand of the invaders, the population of the provinces should take up the struggle with enthusiasm, and furnish after some months of military exercise troops more numerous than those which France had lost, to attack the besiegers from all points at once and to fall upon their communications. To organise such a national resistance was, however, impossible for any Government within the besieged capital itself. It was therefore determined to establish a second seat of Government on the Loire; and before the lines were drawn round Paris three members of the Ministry, with M. Cremieux at their head, set out for Tours. Cremieux, however, who was an aged lawyer, proved quite unequal to his task. His authority was disputed in the west and the south. Revolutionary movements threatened to break up the unity of the national defence. A stronger hand, a more commanding will, was needed. Such a hand, such a will belonged to Gambetta, who on the 7th of October left Paris in order to undertake the government of the provinces and the organisation of the national armies. The circle of the besiegers was now too closely drawn for the ordinary means of travel to be possible. Gambetta pa.s.sed over the German lines in a balloon, and reached Tours in safety, where he immediately threw his feeble colleagues into the background and concentrated all power in his own vigorous grasp.

The effect of his presence was at once felt throughout France. There was an end of the disorders in the great cities, and of all attempts at rivalry with the central power. Gambetta had the faults of rashness, of excessive self-confidence, of defective regard for scientific authority in matters where he himself was ignorant: but he possessed in an extraordinary degree the qualities necessary for a Dictator at such a national crisis: boundless, indomitable courage; a simple, elemental pa.s.sion of love for his country that left absolutely no place for hesitations or reserve in the prosecution of the one object for which France then existed, the war. He carried the nation with him like a whirlwind. Whatever share the military errors of Gambetta and his rash personal interference with commanders may have had in the ultimate defeat of France, without him it would never have been known of what efforts France was capable. The proof of his capacity was seen in the hatred and the fear with which down to the time of his death he inspired the German people. Had there been at the head of the army of Metz a man of one-tenth of Gambetta's effective force, it is possible that France might have closed the war, if not with success, at least with undiminished territory.

[Fall of Strasburg, Sept. 28.]

[The army of the Loire.]

[Tann takes Orleans, Oct. 12.]

Before Gambetta left Paris the fall of Strasburg set free the army under General Werder by which it had been besieged, and enabled the Germans to establish a civil Government in Alsace, the western frontier of the new Province having been already so accurately studied that, when peace was made in 1871, the frontier-line was drawn not upon one of the earlier French maps but on the map now published by the German staff. It was Gambetta's first task to divide France into districts, each with its own military centre, its own army, and its own commander. Four such districts were made: the centres were Lille, Le Mans, Bourges, and Besancon. At Bourges and in the neighbourhood considerable progress had already been made in organisation. Early in October German cavalry-detachments, exploring southwards, found that French troops were gathering on the Loire.

The Bavarian General Von der Tann was detached by Moltke from the besieging army at Paris, and ordered to make himself master of Orleans. Von der Tann hastened southwards, defeated the French outside Orleans on the 11th of October, and occupied this city, the French retiring towards Bourges.

Gambetta removed the defeated commander, and set in his place General Aurelle de Paladines. Von der Tann was directed to cross the Loire and destroy the a.r.s.enals at Bourges; he reported, however, that this task was beyond his power, in consequence of which Moltke ordered General Werder with the army of Strasburg to move westwards against Bourges, after dispersing the weak forces that were gathering about Besancon. Werder set out on his dangerous march, but he had not proceeded far when an army of very different power was thrown into the scale against the French levies on the Loire.

[Bazaine at Metz.]

[Capitulation of Metz, Oct. 27.]

In the battle of Gravelotte, fought on the 18th of August, the French troops had been so handled by Bazaine as to render it doubtful whether he really intended to break through the enemy's line and escape from Metz. At what period political designs inconsistent with his military duty first took possession of Bazaine's thoughts is uncertain. He had played a political part in Mexico; it is probable that as soon as he found himself at the head of the one effective army of France, and saw Napoleon hopelessly discredited, he began to aim at personal power. Before the downfall of the Empire he had evidently adopted a scheme of inaction with the object of preserving his army entire: even the sortie by which it had been arranged that he should a.s.sist McMahon on the day before Sedan was feebly and irresolutely conducted. After the proclamation of the Republic Bazaine's inaction became still more marked. The intrigues of an adventurer named Regnier, who endeavoured to open a negotiation between the Prussians and the exiled Empress Eugenie, encouraged him in his determination to keep his soldiers from fulfilling their duty to France. Week after week pa.s.sed by; a fifth of the besieging army was struck down with sickness; yet Bazaine made no effort to break through, or even to diminish the number of men who were consuming the supplies of Metz by giving to separate detachments the opportunity of escape. On the 12th of October, after the pretence of a sortie on the north, he entered into communication with the German headquarters at Versailles. Bismarck offered to grant a free departure to the army of Metz on condition that the fortress should be placed in his hands, that the army should undertake to act on behalf of the Empress, and that the Empress should pledge herself to accept the Prussian conditions of peace, whatever these might be. General Boyer was sent to England to acquaint the Empress with these propositions. They were declined by her, and after a fortnight had been spent in manoeuvres for a Bonapartist restoration. Bazaine found himself at the end of his resources.

On the 27th the capitulation of Metz was signed. The fortress itself, with incalculable cannon and material of war, and an army of a hundred and seventy thousand men, including twenty-six thousand sick and wounded in the hospitals, pa.s.sed into the hands of the Germans. [544]

[Bazaine.]

Bazaine was at a later time tried by a court-martial, found guilty of the neglect of duty, and sentenced to death. That sentence was not executed; but if there is an infamy that is worse than death, such infamy will to all time cling to his name. In the circ.u.mstances in which France was placed no effort, no sacrifice of life could have been too great for the commander of the army at Metz. To retain the besiegers in full strength before the fortress would not have required the half of Bazaine's actual force. If half his army had fallen on the field of battle in successive attempts to cut their way through the enemy, brave men would no doubt have perished; but even had their efforts failed their deaths would have purchased for Metz the power to hold out for weeks or for months longer. The civil population of Metz was but sixty thousand, its army was three times as numerous; unlike Paris, it saw its stores consumed not by helpless millions of women and children, but by soldiers whose duty it was to aid the defence of their country at whatever cost. Their duty, if they could not cut their way through, was to die fighting; and had they shown hesitation, which was not the case, Bazaine should have died at their head. That Bazaine would have fulfilled his duty even if Napoleon III. had remained on the throne is more than doubtful, for his inaction had begun before the catastrophe of Sedan. His pretext after that time was that the government of France had fallen into the hands of men of disorder, and that it was more important for his army to save France from the Government than from the invader. He was the only man in France who thought so. The Government of September 4th, whatever its faults, was good enough for tens of thousands of brave men, Legitimists, Orleanists, Bonapartists, who flocked without distinction of party to its banners: it might have been good enough for Marshal Bazaine.

But France had to pay the penalty for the political, the moral indifference which could acquiesce in the Coup d'etat of 1851, in the servility of the Empire, in many a vile and boasted deed in Mexico, in China, in Algiers.

Such indifference found its Nemesis in a Bazaine.

[Tann driven from Orleans, Nov. 9.]

[Battles of Orleans, Nov. 28-Dec. 2.]

[Sortie of Champigny, Nov. 29-Dec. 4.]

[Battle of Amiens, Nov. 27.]

The surrender of Metz and the release of the great army of Prince Frederick Charles by which it was besieged fatally changed the conditions of the French war of national defence. Two hundred thousand of the victorious troops of Germany under some of their ablest generals were set free to attack the still untrained levies on the Loire and in the north of France, which, with more time for organisation, might well have forced the Germans to raise the siege of Paris. The army once commanded by Steinmetz was now reconst.i.tuted, and despatched under General Manteuffel towards Amiens; Prince Frederick Charles moved with the remainder of his troops towards the Loire. Aware that his approach could not long be delayed, Gambetta insisted that Aurelle de Paladines should begin the march on Paris. The general attacked Tann at Coulmiers on the 9th of November, defeated him, and re-occupied Orleans, the first real success that the French had gained in the war. There was great alarm at the German headquarters at Versailles; the possibility of a failure of the siege was discussed; and forty thousand troops were sent southwards in haste to the support of the Bavarian general. Aurelle, however, did not move upon the capital: his troops were still unfit for the enterprise; and he remained stationary on the north of Orleans, in order to improve his organisation, to await reinforcements, and to meet the attack of Frederick Charles in a strong position. In the third week of November the leading divisions of the army of Metz approached, and took post between Orleans and Paris. Gambetta now insisted that the effort should be made to relieve the capital. Aurelle resisted, but was forced to obey. The garrison of Paris had already made several unsuccessful attacks upon the lines of their besiegers, the most vigorous being that of Le Bourget on the 30th of October, in which bayonets were crossed. It was arranged that in the last days of November General Trochu should endeavour to break out on the southern side, and that simultaneously the army of the Loire should fall upon the enemy in front of it and endeavour to force its way to the capital. On the 28th the attack upon the Germans on the north of Orleans began. For several days the struggle was renewed by one division after another of the armies of Aurelle and Prince Frederick Charles.

Victory remained at last with the Germans; the centre of the French position was carried; the right and left wings of the army were severed from one another and forced to retreat, the one up the Loire, the other towards the west. Orleans on the 5th of December pa.s.sed back into the hands of the Germans. The sortie from Paris, which began with a successful attack by General Ducrot upon Champigny beyond the Marne, ended after some days of combat in the recovery by the Germans of the positions which they had lost, and in the retreat of Ducrot into Paris. In the same week Manteuffel, moving against the relieving army of the north, encountered it near Amiens, defeated it after a hard struggle, and gained possession of Amiens itself.