READING HALL

THE DOORS OF WISDOM

A HISTORY OF MODERN EUROPE FROM 1792 TO 1878

CHAPTER XXIV

THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY

The reputation of Napoleon III was perhaps at its height at the end of the first ten years of his reign. His victories over Russia and Austria had flattered the military pride of France; the flowing tide of commercial prosperity bore witness, as it seemed, to the blessings of a government at once firm and enlightened; the reconstruction of Paris dazzled a generation accustomed to the mean and dingy aspect of London and other capitals before 1850, and scarcely conscious of the presence or absence of real beauty and dignity where it saw spaciousness and brilliance. The political faults of Napoleon, the shiftiness and incoherence of his designs, his want of grasp on reality, his absolute personal nullity as an administrator, were known to some few, but they had not been displayed to the world at large. He had done some great things, he had conspicuously failed in nothing. Had his reign ended before 1863, he would probably have left behind him in popular memory the name of a great ruler. But from this time his fortune paled. The repulse of his intervention on behalf of Poland in 1863 by the Russian Court, his petulant or miscalculating inaction during the Danish War of the following year, showed those to be mistaken who had imagined that the Emperor must always exercise a controlling power in Europe. During the events which formed the first stage in the consolidation of Germany his policy was a succession of errors. Simultaneously with the miscarriage of his European schemes, an enterprise which he had undertaken beyond the Atlantic, and which seriously weakened his resources at a time when concentrated strength alone could tell on European affairs, ended in tragedy and disgrace.

There were in Napoleon III, as a man of State, two personalities, two mental existences, which blended but ill with one another. There was the contemplator of great human forces, the intelligent, if not deeply penetrative, reader of the signs of the times, the brooder through long years of imprisonment and exile, the child of Europe, to whom Germany, Italy, and England had all in turn been nearer than his own country; and there was the crowned adventurer, bound by his name and position to gain for France something that it did not possess, and to regard the greatness of every other nation as an impediment to the ascendency of his own. Napoleon correctly judged the principle of nationality to be the dominant force in the immediate future of Europe. He saw in Italy and in Germany races whose internal divisions alone had prevented them from being the formidable rivals of France, and yet he assisted the one nation to effect its union, and was not indisposed, within certain limits, to promote the consolidation of the other. That the acquisition of Nice and Savoy, and even of the Rhenish Provinces, could not in itself make up to France for the establishment of two great nations on its immediate frontiers Napoleon must have well understood: he sought to carry the principle of agglomeration a stage farther in the interests of France itself, and to form some moral, if not political, union of the Latin nations, which should embrace under his own ascendency communities beyond the Atlantic as well as those of the Old World. It was with this design that in the year 1862 he made the financial misdemeanours of Mexico the pretext for an expedition to that country, the object of which was to subvert the native Republican Government, and to place the Hapsburg Maximilian, as a vassal prince, on its throne. England and Spain had at first agreed to unite with France in enforcing the claims of the European creditors of Mexico; but as soon as Napoleon had made public his real intentions these Powers withdrew their forces, and the Emperor was left free to carry out his plans alone.

The design of Napoleon to establish French influence in Mexico was connected with his attempt to break up the United States by establishing the independence of the Southern Confederacy, then in rebellion, through the mediation of the Great Powers of Europe. So long as the Civil War in the United States lasted, it seemed likely that Napoleon's enterprise in Mexico would be successful. Maximilian was placed upon the throne, and the Republican leader, Juarez, was driven into the extreme north of the country. But with the overthrow of the Southern Confederacy and the restoration of peace in the United States in 1865 the prospect totally changed. The Government of Washington refused to acknowledge any authority in Mexico but that of Juarez, and informed Napoleon in courteous terms that his troops must be withdrawn. Napoleon had bound himself by Treaty to keep twenty-five thousand men in Mexico for the protection of Maximilian. He was, however, unable to defy the order of the United States. Early in 1866 he acquainted Maximilian with the necessities of the situation, and with the approaching removal of the force which alone had placed him and could sustain him on the throne. The unfortunate prince sent his consort, the daughter of the King of the Belgians, to Europe to plead against this act of desertion; but her efforts were vain, and her reason sank under the just presentiment of her husband's ruin. The utmost on which Napoleon could venture was the postponement of the recall of his troops till the spring of 1867. He urged Maximilian to abdicate before it was too late; but the prince refused to dissociate himself from his counsellors who still implored him to remain. Meanwhile the Juarists pressed back towards the capital from north and south. As the French detachments were withdrawn towards the coast the entire country fell into their hands. The last French soldiers quitted Mexico at the beginning of March, 1867, and on the 15th of May, Maximilian, still lingering at Queretaro, was made prisoner by the Republicans. He had himself while in power ordered that the partisans of Juarez should be treated not as soldiers but as brigands, and that when captured they should be tried by court-martial and executed within twenty- four hours. The same severity was applied to himself. He was sentenced to death and shot at Queretaro on the 19th of June.

Thus ended the attempt of Napoleon III to establish the influence of France and of his dynasty beyond the seas. The doom of Maximilian excited the compassion of Europe; a deep, irreparable wound was inflicted on the reputation of the man who had tempted him to his treacherous throne, who had guaranteed him protection, and at the bidding of a superior power had abandoned him to his ruin. From this time, though the outward splendour of the Empire was undiminished, there remained scarcely anything of the personal prestige which Napoleon had once enjoyed in so rich a measure. He was no longer in the eyes of Europe or of his own country the profound, self-contained statesman in whose brain lay the secret of coming events; he was rather the gambler whom fortune was preparing to desert, the usurper trembling for the future of his dynasty and his crown. Premature old age and a harassing bodily ailment began to incapacitate him for personal exertion. He sought to loosen the reins in which his despotism held France, and to make a compromise with public opinion which was now declaring against him. And although his own cooler judgment set little store by any addition of frontier strips of alien territory to France, and he would probably have been best pleased to pass the remainder of his reign in undisturbed inaction, he deemed it necessary, after failure in Mexico had become inevitable, to seek some satisfaction in Europe for the injured pride of his country. He entered into negotiations with the King of Holland for the cession of Luxemburg, and had gained his assent, when rumours of the transaction reached the North German Press, and the project passed from out the control of diplomatists and became an affair of rival nations.

Luxemburg, which was an independent Duchy ruled by the King of Holland, had until 1866 formed a part of the German Federation; and although Bismarck had not attempted to include it in his own North German Union, Prussia retained by the Treaties of 1815 a right to garrison the fortress of Luxemburg, and its troops were actually there in possession. The proposed transfer of the Duchy to France excited an outburst of patriotic resentment in the Federal Parliament at Berlin. The population of Luxemburg was indeed not wholly German, and it had shown the strongest disinclination to enter the North German league; but the connection of the Duchy with Germany in the past was close enough to explain the indignation roused by Napoleon's project among politicians who little suspected that during the previous year Bismarck himself had cordially recommended this annexation, and that up to the last moment he had been privy to the Emperor's plan. The Prussian Minister, though he did not affect to share the emotion of his countrymen, stated that his policy in regard to Luxemburg must be influenced by the opinion of the Federal Parliament, and he shortly afterwards caused it to be understood at Paris that the annexation of the Duchy to France was impossible. As a warning to France he had already published the Treaties of alliance between Prussia and the South German States, which had been made at the close of the war of 1866, but had hitherto been kept secret. Other powers now began to tender their good offices. Count Beust, on behalf of Austria, suggested that Luxemburg should be united to Belgium, which in its turn should cede a small district to France. This arrangement, which would have been accepted at Berlin, and which, by soothing the irritation produced in France by Prussia's successes, would possibly have averted the war of 1870, was frustrated by the refusal of the King of Belgium to part with any of his territory-Napoleon, disclaiming all desire for territorial extension, now asked only for the withdrawal of the Prussian garrison from Luxemburg; but it was known that he was determined to enforce this demand by arms. The Russian Government proposed that the question should be settled by a Conference of the Powers at London. This proposal was accepted under certain conditions by France and Prussia, and the Conference assembled on the 7th of May. Its deliberations were completed in four days, and the results were summed up in the Treaty of London signed on the 11th. By this Treaty the Duchy of Luxemburg was declared neutral territory under the collective guarantee of the Powers. Prussia withdrew its garrison, and the King of Holland, who continued to be sovereign of the Duchy, undertook to demolish the fortifications of Luxemburg, and to maintain it in the future as an open town.

Of the politicians of France, those who even affected to regard the aggrandizement of Prussia and the union of Northern Germany with indifference or satisfaction were a small minority. Among these was the Emperor, who, after his attempts to gain a Rhenish Province had been baffled, sought to prove in an elaborate State-paper that France had won more than it had lost by the extinction of the German Federation as established in 1815, and by the dissolution of the tie that had bound Austria and Prussia together as members of this body. The events of 1866 had, he contended, broken up a system devised in evil days for the purpose of uniting Central Europe against France, and had restored to the Continent the freedom of alliances; in other words, they had made it possible for the South German States to connect themselves with France. If this illusion was really entertained by the Emperor, it was rudely dispelled by the discovery of the Treaties between Prussia and the Southern States and by their publication in the spring of 1867. But this revelation was not necessary to determine the attitude of the great majority of those who passed for the representatives of independent political opinion in France. The Ministers indeed were still compelled to imitate the Emperor's optimism, and a few enlightened men among the Opposition understood that France must be content to see the Germans effect their national unity; but the great body of unofficial politicians, to whatever party they belonged, joined in the bitter outcry raised at once against the aggressive Government of Prussia and the feeble administration at Paris, which had not found the means to prevent, or had actually facilitated, Prussia's successes. Thiers, who more than any one man had by his writings popularized the Napoleonic legend and accustomed the French to consider themselves entitled to a monopoly of national greatness on the Rhine, was the severest critic of the Emperor, the most zealous denouncer of the work which Bismarck had effected. It was only with too much reason that the Prussian Government looked forward to an attack by France at some earlier or later time as almost certain, and pressed forward the military organisation which was to give to Germany an army of unheard-of efficiency and strength.

There appears to be no evidence that Napoleon III himself desired to attack Prussia so long as that Power should strictly observe the stipulations of the Treaty of Prague which provided for the independence of the South German States. But the current of events irresistibly impelled Germany to unity. The very Treaty which made the river Main the limit of the North German Confederacy reserved for the Southern States the right of attaching themselves to those of the North by some kind of national tie. Unless the French Emperor was resolved to acquiesce in the gradual development of this federal unity until, as regarded the foreigner, the North and the South of Germany should be a single body, he could have no confident hope of lasting peace. To have thus anticipated and accepted the future, to have removed once and for all the sleepless fears of Prussia by the frank recognition of its right to give all Germany effective Union, would have been an act too great and too wise in reality, too weak and self-renouncing in appearance, for any chief of a rival nation. Napoleon did not take this course; on the other hand, not desiring to attack Prussia while it remained within the limits of the Treaty of Prague, he refrained from seeking alliances with the object of immediate and aggressive action. The diplomacy of the Emperor during the period from 1866 to 1870 is indeed still but imperfectly known; but it would appear that his efforts were directed only to the formation of alliances with the view of eventual action when Prussia should have passed the limits which the Emperor himself or public opinion in Paris should, as interpreter of the Treaty of Prague, impose upon this Power in its dealings with the South German States.

The Governments to which Napoleon could look for some degree of support were those of Austria and Italy. Count Beust, now Chancellor of the Austrian Monarchy, was a bitter enemy to Prussia, and a rash and adventurous politician, to whom the very circumstance of his sudden elevation from the petty sphere of Saxon politics gave a certain levity and unconstraint in the handling of great affairs. He cherished the idea of recovering Austria's ascendency in Germany, and was disposed to repel the extension of Russian influence westwards by boldly encouraging the Poles to seek for the satisfaction of their national hopes in Galicia under the Hapsburg Crown. To Count Beust France was the most natural of all allies. On the other hand, the very system which Beust had helped to establish in Hungary raised serious obstacles against the adoption of his own policy. Andrassy, the Hungarian Minister, while sharing Beust's hostility to Russia, declared that his countrymen had no interest in restoring Austria's German connection, and were in fact better without it. In these circumstances the negotiations of the French and the Austrian Emperor were conducted by a private correspondence. The interchange of letters continued during the years 1868 and 1869, and resulted in a promise made by Napoleon to support Austria if it should be attacked by Prussia, while the Emperor Francis Joseph promised to assist France if it should be attacked by Prussia and Russia together. No Treaty was made, but a general assurance was exchanged between the two Emperors that they would pursue a common policy and treat one another's interests as their own. With the view of forming a closer understanding the Archduke Albrecht visited Paris in February, 1870, and a French general was sent to Vienna to arrange the plan of campaign in case of war with Prussia. In such a war, if undertaken by the two Powers, it was hoped that Italy would join.

The alliance of 1866 between Prussia and Italy had left behind it in each of these States more of rancour than of good-will. La Marmora had from the beginning to the end been unfortunate in his relations with Berlin. He had entered into the alliance with suspicion; he would gladly have seen Venetia given to Italy by a European Congress without war; and when hostilities broke out, he had disregarded and resented what he considered an attempt of the Prussian Government to dictate to him the military measures to be pursued. On the other hand, the Prussians charged the Italian Government with having deliberately held back its troops after the battle of Custozza in pursuance of arrangements made between Napoleon and the Austrian Emperor on the voluntary cession of Venice, and with having endangered or minimized Prussia's success by enabling the Austrians to throw a great part of their Italian forces northwards. There was nothing of that comradeship between the Italian and the Prussian armies which is acquired on the field of battle. The personal sympathies of Victor Emmanuel were strongly on the side of the French Emperor; and when, at the close of the year 1866, the French garrison was withdrawn from Rome in pursuance of the convention made in September, 1864, it seemed probable that France and Italy might soon unite in a close alliance. But in the following year the attempts of the Garibaldians to overthrow the Papal Government, now left without its foreign defenders, embroiled Napoleon and the Italian people. Napoleon was unable to defy the clerical party in France; he adopted the language of menace in his communications with the Italian Cabinet; and when, in the autumn of 1867, the Garibaldians actually invaded the Roman States, he dispatched a body of French troops under General Failly to act in support of those of the Pope. An encounter took place at Mentana on November 3rd, in which the Garibaldians, after defeating the Papal forces, were put to the rout by General Failly. The occupation of Civita Vecchia was renewed, and in the course of the debates raised at Paris on the Italian policy of the Government, the Prime Minister, M. Rouher, stated, with the most passionate emphasis that, come what might, Italy should never possess itself of Rome. “Never”, he cried, “will France tolerate such an outrage on its honour and its dignity”.

The affair of Mentana, the insolent and heartless language in which General Failly announced his success, the reoccupation of Roman territory by French troops, and the declaration made by M. Rouher in the French Assembly, created wide and deep anger in Italy, and made an end for the time of all possibility of a French alliance. Napoleon was indeed, as regarded Italy, in an evil case. By abandoning Rome he would have turned against himself and his dynasty the whole clerical interest in France, whose confidence he had already to some extent forfeited by his policy in 1860; on the other hand, it was vain for him to hope for the friendship of Italy whilst he continued to bar the way to the fulfilment of the universal national desire. With the view of arriving at some compromise he proposed a European Conference on the Roman question; but this was resisted above all by Count Bismarck, whose interest it was to keep the sore open; and neither England nor Russia showed any anxiety to help the Pope's protector out of his difficulties. Napoleon sought by a correspondence with Victor Emmanuel during 1868 and 1869 to pave the way for a defensive alliance; but Victor Emmanuel was in reality as well as in name a constitutional king, and probably could not, even if he had desired, have committed Italy to engagements disapproved by the Ministry and Parliament. It was made clear to Napoleon that the evacuation of the Papal States must precede any treaty of alliance between France and Italy. Whether the Italian Government would have been content with a return to the conditions of the September Convention, or whether it made the actual possession of Rome the price of a treaty-engagement, is uncertain; but inasmuch as Napoleon was not at present prepared to evacuate Civita Vecchia, he could aim at nothing more than some eventual concert when the existing difficulties should have been removed. The Court of Vienna now became the intermediary between the two Powers who had united against it in 1859. Count Beust was free from the associations which had made any approach to friendship with the kingdom of Victor Emmanuel impossible for his predecessors. He entered into negotiations at Florence, which resulted in the conclusion of an agreement between the Austrian and the Italian Governments that they would act together and guarantee one another's territories in the event of a war between France and Prussia. This agreement was made with the assent of the Emperor Napoleon, and was understood to be preparatory to an accord with France itself; but it was limited to a defensive character, and it implied that any eventual concert with France must be arranged by the two Powers in combination with one another.

At the beginning of 1870 the Emperor Napoleon was therefore without any more definite assurance of support in a war with Prussia than the promise of the Austrian Sovereign that he would assist France if attacked by Prussia and Russia together, and that he would treat the interests of France as his own. By withdrawing his protection from Rome Napoleon had undoubtedly a fair chance of building up this shadowy and remote engagement into a defensive alliance with both Austria and Italy. But perfect clearness and resolution of purpose, as well as the steady avoidance of all quarrels on mere incidents, were absolutely indispensable to the creation and the employment of such a league against the Power which alone it could have in view; and Prussia had now little reason to fear any such exercise of statesmanship on the part of Napoleon. The solution of the Roman question, in other words the withdrawal of the French garrison from Roman territory, could proceed only from some stronger stimulus than the declining force of Napoleon's own intelligence and will could now supply. This fatal problem baffled his attempts to gain alliances; and yet the isolation of France was but half acknowledged, but half understood; and a host of rash, vainglorious spirits impatiently awaited the hour that should call them to their revenge on Prussia for the triumphs in which it had not permitted France to share.

Meanwhile on the other side Count Bismarck advanced with what was most essential in his relations with the States of Southern Germany-the completion of the Treaties of Alliance by conventions assimilating the military systems of these States to that of Prussia. A Customs­Parliament was established for the whole of Germany, which, it was hoped, would be the precursor of a National Assembly uniting the North and the South of the Main. But in spite of this military and commercial approximation, the progress towards union was neither so rapid nor so smooth as the patriots of the North could desire. There was much in the harshness and self-assertion of the Prussian character that repelled the less disciplined communities of the South. Ultramontanism was strong in Bavaria; and throughout the minor States the most advanced of the Liberals were opposed to a closer union with Berlin, from dislike of its absolutist traditions and the heavy hand of its Government. Thus the tendency known as Particularism was supported in Bavaria and Wurtemberg by classes of the population who in most respects were in antagonism to one another; nor could the memories of the campaign of 1866 and the old regard for Austria be obliterated in a day. Bismarck did not unduly press on the work of consolidation. He marked and estimated the force of the obstacles which too rapid a development of his national policy would encounter. It is possible that he may even have seen indications that religious and other influences might imperil the military union which he had already established, and that he may not have been unwilling to call to his aid, as the surest of all preparatives for national union, the event which he had long believed to be inevitable at some time or other in the future, a war with France.

Since the autumn of 1868 the throne of Spain had been vacant in consequence of a revolution in which General Prim had been the leading actor. It was not easy to discover a successor for the Bourbon Isabella; and after other candidatures had been vainly projected it occurred to Prim and his friends early in 1869 that a suitable candidate might be found in Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, whose elder brother had been made Prince of Roumania, and whose father, Prince Antony, had been Prime Minister of Prussia in 1859. The House of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen was so distantly related to the reigning family of Prussia that the name alone preserved the memory of the connection; and in actual blood-relationship Prince Leopold was much more nearly allied to the French Houses of Murat and Beauharnais. But the Sigmaringen family was distinctly Prussian by interest and association, and its chief, Antony, had not only been at the head of the Prussian Administration himself, but had, it is said, been the first to suggest the appointment of Bismarck to the same office. The candidature of a Hohenzollern might reasonably be viewed in France as an attempt to connect Prussia politically with Spain; and with so much reserve was this candidature at the first handled at Berlin that, in answer to inquiries made by Benedetti in the spring of 1869, the Secretary of State who represented Count Bismarck stated on his word of honour that the candidature had never been suggested. The affair was from first to last ostensibly treated at Berlin as one with which the Prussian Government was wholly unconcerned, and in which King William was interested only as head of the family to which Prince Leopold belonged. For twelve months after Benedetti's inquiries it appeared as if the project had been entirely abandoned; it was, however, revived in the spring of 1870, and on the 3rd of July the announcement was made at Paris that Prince Leopold had consented to accept the Crown of Spain if the Cortes should confirm his election.

At once there broke out in the French Press a storm of indignation against Prussia. The organs of the Government took the lead in exciting public opinion. On the 6th of July the Duke of Gramont, Foreign Minister, declared to the Legislative Body that the attempt of a Foreign Power to place one of its Princes on the throne of Charles V imperilled the interests and the honour of France, and that, if such a contingency were realized, the Government would fulfil its duty without hesitation and without weakness. The violent and unsparing language of this declaration, which had been drawn up at a Council of Ministers under the Emperor's presidency, proved that the Cabinet had determined either to humiliate Prussia or to take vengeance by arms. It was at once seen by foreign diplomatists, who during the preceding days had been disposed to assist in removing a reasonable subject of complaint, how little was the chance of any peaceable settlement after such a public challenge had been issued to Prussia in the Emperor's name. One means of averting war alone seemed possible, the voluntary renunciation by Prince Leopold of the offered Crown. To obtain this renunciation became the task of those who, unlike the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, were anxious to preserve peace.

The parts that were played at this crisis by the individuals who most influenced the Emperor Napoleon are still but imperfectly known; but there is no doubt that from the beginning to the end the Duke of Gramont, with short intermissions, pressed with insane ardour for war. The Ministry now in office had been called to their places in January, 1870, after the Emperor had made certain changes in the constitution in a Liberal direction, and had professed to transfer the responsibility of power from himself to a body of advisers possessing the confidence of the Chamber. Ollivier, formerly one of the leaders of the Opposition, had accepted the Presidency of the Cabinet. His colleagues were for the most part men new to official life, and little able to hold their own against such representatives of unreformed Imperialism as the Duke of Gramont and the War-Minister Leboeuf who sat beside them. Ollivier himself was one of the few politicians in France who understood that his countrymen must be content to see German unity established whether they liked it or not. He was entirely averse from war with Prussia on the question which had now arisen; but the fear that public opinion would sweep away a Liberal Ministry which hesitated to go all lengths in patriotic extravagance led him to sacrifice his own better judgment, and to accept the responsibility for a policy which in his heart he disapproved. Gramont 's rash hand was given free play. Instructions were sent to Benedetti to seek the King of Prussia at Ems, where he was taking the waters, and to demand from him, as the only means of averting war, that he should order the Hohenzollern Prince to revoke his acceptance of the Crown. “We are in great haste”, Gramont added, “for we must gain the start in case of an unsatisfactory reply, and commence the movement of troops by Saturday in order to enter upon the campaign in a fortnight. Be on your guard against an answer merely leaving the Prince of Hohenzollern to his fate, and disclaiming on the part of the King any interest in his future”.

Benedetti's first interview with the King was on the 9th of July. He informed the King of the emotion that had been caused in France by the candidature of the Hohenzollern Prince; he dwelt on the value to both countries of the friendly relation between France and Prussia; and, while studiously avoiding language that might wound or irritate the King, he explained to him the requirements of the Government at Paris. The King had learnt beforehand what would be the substance of Benedetti's communication. He had probably been surprised and grieved at the serious consequences which Prince Leopold's action had produced in France; and although he had determined not to submit to dictation from Paris or to order Leopold to abandon his candidature, he had already, as it seems, taken steps likely to render the preservation of peace more probable. At the end of a conversation with the Ambassador, in which he asserted his complete independence as head of the family of Hohenzollern, he informed Benedetti that he had entered into communication with Leopold and his father, and that he expected shortly to receive a despatch from Sigmaringen. Benedetti rightly judged that the King, while positively refusing to meet Gramont's demands, was yet desirous of finding some peaceable way out of the difficulty; and the report of this interview which he sent to Paris was really a plea in favour of good sense and moderation. But Gramont was little disposed to accept such counsels. “I tell you plainly”, he wrote to Benedetti on the next day, “public opinion is on fire, and will leave us behind it. We must begin; we wait only for your despatch to call up the three hundred thousand men who are waiting the summons. Write, telegraph, something definite. If the King will not counsel the Prince of Hohenzollern to resign, well, it is immediate war, and in a few days we are on the Rhine”.

Nevertheless Benedetti's advice was not without its influence on the Emperor and his Ministers. Napoleon, himself wavering from hour to hour, now inclined to the peace-party, and during the 11th there was a pause in the military preparations that had been begun. On the 12th the efforts of disinterested Governments, probably also the suggestions of the King of Prussia himself, produced their effects. A telegram was received at Madrid from Prince Antony stating that his son's candidature was withdrawn. A few hours later Ollivier announced the news in the Legislative Chamber at Paris, and exchanged congratulations with the friends of peace, who considered that the matter was now at an end. But this pacific conclusion little suited either the war-party or the Bonapartists of the old type, who grudged to a Constitutional Ministry so substantial a diplomatic success. They at once declared that the retirement of Prince Leopold was a secondary matter, and that the real question was what guarantees had been received from Prussia against a renewal of the candidature. Gramont himself, in an interview with the Prussian Ambassador, Baron Werther, sketched a letter which he proposed that King William should send to the Emperor, stating that in sanctioning the candidature of Prince Leopold he had not intended to offend the French, and that in associating himself with the Prince's withdrawal he desired that all misunderstandings should be at an end between the two Governments. The despatch of Baron Werther conveying this proposition appears to have deeply offended King William, whom it reached about midday on the 13th. Benedetti had that morning met the King on the promenade at Ems, and had received from him the promise that as soon as the letter which was still on its way from Sigmaringen should arrive he would send for the Ambassador in order that he might communicate its contents at Paris. The letter arrived; but Baron Werther's despatch from Paris had arrived before it; and instead of summoning Benedetti as he had promised, the King sent one of his aides-de-camp to him with a message that a written communication had been received from Prince Leopold confirming his withdrawal, and that the matter was now at an end. Benedetti desired the aide-de-camp to inform the King that he was compelled by his instructions to ask for a guarantee against a renewal of the candidature. The aide-de-camp did as he was requested, and brought back a message that the King gave his entire approbation to the withdrawal of the Prince of Hohenzollern, but that he could do no more. Benedetti begged for an audience with His Majesty. The King replied that he was compelled to decline entering into further negotiation, and that he had said his last word. Though the King thus refused any further discussion, perfect courtesy was observed on both sides; and on the following morning the King and the Ambassador, who were both leaving Ems, took leave of one another at the railway station with the usual marks of respect.

That the guarantee which the French Government had resolved to demand would not be given was now perfectly certain; yet, with the candidature of Prince Leopold fairly extinguished, it was still possible that the cooler heads at Paris might carry the day, and that the Government would stop short of declaring war on a point on which the unanimous judgment of the other Powers declared it to be in the wrong. But Count Bismarck was determined not to let the French escape lightly from the quarrel. He had to do with an enemy who by his own folly had come to the brink of an aggressive war, and, far from facilitating his retreat, it was Bismarck's policy to lure him over the precipice. Not many hours after the last message had passed between King William and Benedetti, a telegram was officially published at Berlin, stating, in terms so brief as to convey the impression of an actual insult, that the King had refused to see the French Ambassador, and had informed him by an aide-de-camp that he had nothing more to communicate to him. This telegram was sent to the representatives of Prussia at most of the European Courts, and to its agents in every German capital. Narratives instantly gained currency, and were not contradicted by the Prussian Government, that Benedetti had forced himself upon the King on the promenade at Ems, and that in the presence of a large company the King had turned his back upon the Ambassador. The publication of the alleged telegram from Ems became known in Paris on the 14th. On that day the Council of Ministers met three times. At the first meeting the advocates of peace were still in the majority; in the afternoon, as the news from Berlin and the fictions describing the insult offered to the French Ambassador spread abroad, the agitation in Paris deepened, and the Council decided upon calling up the Reserves; yet the Emperor himself seemed still disposed for peace. It was in the interval between the second and the third meeting of the Council, between the hours of six and ten in the evening, that Napoleon finally gave way before the threats and importunities of the war-party. The Empress, fanatically anxious for the overthrow of a great Protestant Power, passionately eager for the military glory which alone could insure the Crown to her son, won the triumph which she was so bitterly to rue. At the third meeting of the Council, held shortly before midnight, the vote was given for war.

In Germany this decision had been expected; yet it made a deep impression not only on the German people but on Europe at large that, when the declaration of war was submitted to the French Legislative Body in the form of a demand for supplies, no single voice was raised to condemn the war for its criminality and injustice: the arguments which were urged against it by M. Thiers and others were that the Government had fixed upon a bad cause, and that the occasion was inopportune. Whether the majority of the Assembly really desired war is even now matter of doubt. But the clamour of a hundred madmen within its walls, the ravings of journalists and incendiaries, who at such a time are to the true expression of public opinion what the Spanish Inquisition was to the Christian religion, paralyzed the will and the understanding of less infatuated men. Ten votes alone were given in the Assembly against the grant demanded for war; to Europe at large it went out that the crime and the madness was that of France as a nation. Yet Ollivier and many of his colleagues up to the last moment disapproved of the war, and consented to it only because they believed that the nation would otherwise rush into hostilities under a reactionary Ministry who would serve France worse than themselves. They found when it was too late that the supposed national impulse, which they had thought irresistible, was but the outcry of a noisy minority. The reports of their own officers informed them that in sixteen alone out of the eighty-seven Departments of France was the war popular. In the other seventy-one it was accepted either with hesitation or regret.

How vast were the forces which the North German Confederation could bring into the field was well known to Napoleon's Government. Benedetti had kept his employers thoroughly informed of the progress of the North German military organisation; he had warned them that the South German States would most certainly act with the North against a foreign assailant; he had described with great accuracy and great penetration the nature of the tie that existed between Berlin and St. Petersburg, a tie which was close enough to secure for Prussia the goodwill, and in certain contingencies the armed support, of Russia, while it was loose enough not to involve Prussia in any Muscovite enterprise that would bring upon it the hostility of England and Austria. The utmost force which the French military administration reckoned on placing in the field at the beginning of the campaign was two hundred and fifty thousand men, to be raised at the end of three weeks by about fifty thousand more. The Prussians, even without reckoning on any assistance from Southern Germany, and after allowing for three army-corps that might be needed to watch Austria and Denmark, could begin the campaign with three hundred and thirty thousand. Army to army, the French thus stood according to the reckoning of their own War Office outnumbered at the outset; but Leboeuf, the War-Minister, imagined that the Foreign Office had made sure of alliances, and that a great part of the Prussian Army would not be free to act on the western frontier. Napoleon had in fact pushed forward his negotiations with Austria and Italy from the time that war became imminent. Count Beust, while clearly laying it down that Austria was not bound to follow France into a war made at its own pleasure, nevertheless felt some anxiety lest France and Prussia should settle their differences at Austria's expense; moreover from the victory of Napoleon, assisted in any degree by himself, he could fairly hope for the restoration of Austria's ascendency in Germany and the undoing of the work of 1866. It was determined at a Council held at Vienna on the 18th of July that Austria should for the present be neutral if Russia should not enter the war on the side of Prussia; but this neutrality was nothing more than a stage towards alliance with France if at the end of a certain brief period the army of Napoleon should have penetrated into Southern Germany. In a private despatch to the Austrian Ambassador at Paris Count Beust pointed out that the immediate participation of Austria in the war would bring Russia into the field on King William's side. “To keep Russia neutral”, he wrote, “till the season is sufficiently advanced to prevent the concentration of its troops must be at present our object; but this neutrality is nothing more than a means for arriving at the real end of our policy, the only means for completing our preparations without exposing ourselves to premature attack by Prussia or Russia”. He added that Austria had already entered into a negotiation with Italy with a view to the armed mediation of the two Powers, and strongly recommended the Emperor to place the Italians in possession of Rome.

Negotiations were now pressed forward between Paris, Florence, and Vienna, for the conclusion of a triple alliance. Of the course taken by these negotiations contradictory accounts are given by the persons concerned in them. According to Prince Napoleon, Victor Emmanuel demanded possession of Rome and this was refused to him by the French Emperor, in consequence of which the project of alliance failed. According to the Duke of Gramont, no more was demanded by Italy than the return to the conditions of the September Convention; this was agreed to by the Emperor, and it was in pursuance of this agreement that the Papal States were evacuated by their French garrison on the 2nd of August. Throughout the last fortnight of July, after war had actually been declared, there was, if the statement of Gramont is to be trusted, a continuous interchange of notes, projects, and telegrams between the three Governments. The difficulties raised by Italy and Austria were speedily removed, and though some weeks were needed by these Powers for their military preparations, Napoleon was definitely assured of their armed support in case of his preliminary success. It was agreed that Austria and Italy, assuming at the first the position of armed neutrality, should jointly present an ultimatum to Prussia in September demanding the exact performance of the Treaty of Prague, and, failing its compliance with this summons in the sense understood by its enemies, that the two Powers would immediately declare war, their armies taking the field at latest on the 15th of September. That Russia would in that case assist Prussia was well known; but it would seem that Count Beust feared little from his northern enemy in an autumn campaign. The draft of the Treaty between Italy and Austria had actually, according to Gramont's statement, been accepted by the two latter Powers, and received its last amendments in a negotiation between the Emperor Napoleon and an Italian envoy, Count Vimercati, at Metz. Vimercati reached Florence with the amended draft on the 4th of August, and it was expected that the Treaty would be signed on the following day. When that day came it saw the forces of the French Empire dashed to pieces.

Preparations for a war with France had long occupied the general staff at Berlin. Before the winter of 1868 a memoir had been drawn up by General Moltke, containing plans for the concentration of the whole of the German forces, for the formation of each of the armies to be employed, and the positions to be occupied at the outset by each corps. On the basis of this memoir the arrangements for the transport of each corps from its depot to the frontier had subsequently been worked out in such minute detail that when, on the 16th of July, King William gave the order for mobilization, nothing remained but to insert in the railway time­tables and marching-orders the day on which the movement was to commence. This minuteness of detail extended, however, only to that part of Moltke's plan which related to the assembling and first placing of the troops. The events of the campaign could not thus be arranged and tabulated beforehand; only the general object and design could be laid down. That the French would throw themselves with great rapidity upon Southern Germany was considered probable. The armies of Baden, Wurtemberg, and Bavaria were too weak, the military centres of the North were too far distant, for effective resistance to be made in this quarter to the first blows of the invader. Moltke therefore recommended that the Southern troops should withdraw from their own States and move northwards to join those of Prussia in the Palatinate or on the Middle Rhine, so that the entire forces of Germany should be thrown upon the flank or rear of the invader; while, in the event of the French not thus taking the offensive, France itself was to be invaded by the collective strength of Germany along the line from Saarbrucken to Landau, and its armies were to be cut off from their communications with Paris by vigorous movements of the invader in a northerly direction.

The military organisation of Germany is based on the division of the country into districts, each of which furnishes at its own depot a small but complete army. The nucleus of each such corps exists in time of peace, with its own independent artillery, stores, and material of war. On the order for mobilization being given, every man liable to military service, but not actually serving, joins the regiment to which he locally belongs, and in a given number of days each corps is ready to take the field in full strength. The completion of each corps at its own depot is the first stage in the preparation for a campaign. Not till this is effected does the movement of troops towards the frontier begin. The time necessary for the first act of preparation was, like that to be occupied in transport, accurately determined by the Prussian War Office. It resulted from General Moltke's calculations that, the order of mobilization having been given on the 16th of July, the entire army with which it was intended to begin the campaign would be collected and in position ready to cross the frontier on the 4th of August, if the French should not have taken up the offensive before that day. But as it was apprehended that part at least of the French army would be thrown into Germany before that date, the westward movement of the German troops stopped short at a considerable distance from the border, in order that the troops first arriving might not be exposed to the attack of a superior force before their supports should be at hand. On the actual frontier there was placed only the handful of men required for reconnoitring, and for checking the enemy during the few hours that would be necessary to guard against the effect of a surprise.

The French Emperor was aware of the numerical inferiority of his army to that of Prussia; he hoped, however, by extreme rapidity of movement to penetrate Southern Germany before the Prussian army could assemble, and so, while forcing the Southern Governments to neutrality, to meet on the Upper Danube the assisting forces of Italy and Austria. It was his design to concentrate a hundred and fifty thousand men at Metz, a hundred thousand at Strasburg, and with these armies united to cross the Rhine into Baden; while a third army, which was to assemble at Chalons, protected the north-eastern frontier against an advance of the Prussians. A few days after the declaration of war, while the German corps were still at their depots in the interior, considerable forces were massed round Metz and Strasburg. All Europe listened for the rush of the invader and the first swift notes of triumph from a French army beyond the Rhine; but week after week passed, and the silence was still unbroken. Stories, incredible to those who first heard them, yet perfectly true, reached the German frontier-stations of actual famine at the advanced posts of the enemy, and of French soldiers made prisoners while digging in potato-fields to keep themselves alive. That Napoleon was less ready than had been anticipated became clear to all the world; but none yet imagined the revelations which each successive day was bringing at the headquarters of the French armies. Absence of whole regiments that figured in the official order of battle, defective transport, stores missing or congested, made it impossible even to attempt the inroad into Southern Germany within the date up to which it had any prospect of success. The design was abandoned, yet not in time to prevent the troops that were hurrying from the interior from being sent backwards and forwards according as the authorities had, or had not, heard of the change of plan. Napoleon saw that a Prussian force was gathering on the Middle Rhine which it would be madness to leave on his flank; he ordered his own commanders to operate on the corresponding line of the Lauter and the Saar, and dispatched isolated divisions to the very frontier, still uncertain whether even in this direction he would be able to act on the offensive, or whether nothing now remained to him but to resist the invasion of France by a superior enemy. Ollivier had stated in the Assembly that he and his colleagues entered upon the war with a light heart; he might have added that they entered upon it with bandaged eyes. The Ministers seem actually not to have taken the trouble to exchange explanations with one another. Leboeuf, the War-Minister, had taken it for granted that Gramont had made arrangements with Austria which would compel the Prussians to keep a large part of their forces in the interior. Gramont, in forcing on the quarrel with Prussia, and in his negotiations with Austria, had taken it for granted that Leboeuf could win a series of victories at the outset in Southern Germany. The Emperor, to whom alone the entire data of the military and the diplomatic services of France were open, was incapable of exertion or scrutiny, purposeless, distracted with pain, half-imbecile.

That the Imperial military administration was rotten to the core the terrible events of the next few weeks sufficiently showed. Men were in high place whose antecedents would have shamed the better kind of brigand. The deficiencies of the army were made worse by the diversion of public funds to private necessities; the looseness, the vulgar splendour, the base standards of judgment of the Imperial Court infected each branch of the public services of France, and worked perhaps not least on those who were in military command. But the catastrophe of 1870 seemed to those who witnessed it to tell of more than the vileness of an administration; in England, not less than in Germany, voices of influence spoke of the doom that had overtaken the depravity of a sunken nation; of the triumph of simple manliness, of Godfearing virtue itself, in the victories of the German army. There may have been truth in this; yet it would require a nice moral discernment to appraise the exact degeneracy of the French of 1870 from the French of 1854 who humbled Russia, or from the French of 1859 who triumphed at Solferino; and it would need a very comprehensive acquaintance with the lower forms of human pleasure to judge in what degree the sinfulness of Paris exceeds the sinfulness of Berlin. Had the French been as strict a race as the Spartans who fell at Thermopylae, as devout as the Tyrolese who perished at Koniggratz, it is quite certain that, with the numbers which took the field against Germany in 1870, with Napoleon III at the head of affairs, and the actual generals of 1870 in command, the armies of France could not have escaped destruction.

The main cause of the disparity of France and Germany in 1870 was in truth that Prussia had had from 1862 to 1866 a Government so strong as to be able to force upon its subjects its own gigantic scheme of military organisation in defiance of the votes of Parliament and of the national will. In 1866 Prussia, with a population of nineteen millions, brought actually into the field three hundred and fifty thousand men, or one in fifty-four of its inhabitants. There was no other government in Europe, with the possible exception of Russia, which could have imposed upon its subjects, without risking its own existence, so vast a burden of military service as that implied in this strength of the fighting army. Napoleon III at the height of his power could not have done so; and when after Koniggratz he endeavoured to raise the forces of France to an equality with those of the rival Power by a system which would have brought about one in seventy of the population into the field, his own nominees in the Legislative Body, under pressure of public opinion, so weakened the scheme that the effective numbers of the army remained little more than they were before. The true parallel to the German victories of 1870 is to be found in the victories of the French Committee of Public Safety in 1794 and in those of the first Napoleon. A government so powerful as to bend the entire resources of the State to military ends will, whether it is one of democracy run mad, or of a crowned soldier of fortune, or of an ancient monarchy throwing new vigour into its traditional system and policy, crush in the moment of impact communities of equal or greater resources in which a variety of rival influences limit and control the central power and subordinate military to other interests. It was so in the triumphs of the Reign of Terror over the First Coalition; it was so in the triumphs of King William over Austria and France. But the parallel between the founders of German unity and the organizers of victory after 1793 extends no farther than to the sources of their success. Aggression and adventure have not been the sequels of the war of 1870. The vast armaments of Prussia were created in order to establish German union under the House of Hohenzollern, and they have been employed for no other object. It is the triumph of statesmanship, and it has been the glory of Prince Bismarck, after thus reaping the fruit of a well-timed homage to the God of Battles, to know how to quit his shrine.

At the end of July, twelve days after the formal declaration of war, the gathering forces of the Germans, over three hundred and eighty thousand strong, were still some distance behind the Lauter and the Saar. Napoleon, apparently without any clear design, had placed certain bodies of troops actually on the frontier at Forbach, Weissenburg, and elsewhere, while other troops, raising the whole number to about two hundred and fifty thousand, lay round Metz and Strasburg, and at points between these and the most advanced positions. The reconnoitring of the small German detachments on the frontier was conducted with extreme energy: the French appear to have made no reconnaissances at all, for when they determined at last to discover what was facing them at Saarbrucken, they advanced with twenty-five thousand men against one-tenth of that number. On the 2nd of August Frossard's corps from Forbach moved upon Saarbrucken with the Emperor in person. The garrison was driven out, and the town bombarded, but even now the reconnaissance was not continued beyond the bridge across the Saar which divides the two parts of the town. Forty-eight hours later the alignment of the German forces in their invading order was completed, and all was ready for an offensive campaign. The central army, commanded by Prince Frederick Charles, spreading east and west behind Saarbrucken, touched on its right the northern army commanded by General Steinmetz, on its left the southern army commanded by the Crown Prince, which covered the frontier of the Palatinate, and included the troops of Bavaria and Wurtemberg. The general direction of the three armies was thus from northwest to south-east. As the line of invasion was to be nearly due west, it was necessary that the first step forwards should be made by the army of the Crown Prince in order to bring it more nearly to a level with the northern corps in the march into France. On the 4th of August the Crown Prince crossed the Alsatian frontier and moved against Weissenburg. The French General Douay, who was posted here with about twelve thousand men, was neither reinforced nor bidden to retire. His troops met the attack of an enemy many times more numerous with great courage; but the struggle was a hopeless one, and after several hours of severe fighting the Germans were masters of the field. Douay fell in the battle; his troops frustrated an attempt made to cut off their retreat, and fell back southwards towards the corps of McMahon, which lay about ten miles behind them. The Crown Prince marched on in search of his enemy, McMahon, who could collect only forty-five thousand men, desired to retreat until he could gain some support; but the Emperor, tormented by fears of the political consequences of the invasion, insisted upon his giving battle. He drew up on the hills about Worth, almost on the spot where in 1793 Hoche had overthrown the armies of the First Coalition. On the 6th of August the leading divisions of the Crown Prince, about a hundred thousand strong, were within striking distance. The superiority of the Germans in numbers was so great that McMahon's army might apparently have been captured or destroyed with far less loss than actually took place if time had been given for the movements which the Crown Prince's staff had in view, and for the employment of his full strength. But the impetuosity of divisional leaders on the morning of the 6th brought on a general engagement. The resistance of the French was of the most determined character. With one more army-corps-and the corps of General Failly was expected to arrive on the field-it seemed as if the Germans might yet be beaten back. But each hour brought additional forces into action in the attack, while the French commander looked in vain for the reinforcements that could save him from ruin. At length, when the last desperate charges of the Cuirassiers had shattered against the fire of cannon and needle-guns, and the village of Froschwiller, the centre of the French position, had been stormed house by house, the entire army broke and fled in disorder. Nine thousand prisoners, thirty-three cannon, fell into the hands of the conquerors. The Germans had lost ten thousand men, but they had utterly destroyed McMahon's army as an organised force. Its remnant disappeared from the scene of warfare, escaping by the western roads in the direction of Chalons, where first it was restored to some degree of order. The Crown Prince, leaving troops behind him to beleaguer the smaller Alsatian fortresses, marched on untroubled through the northern Vosges, and descended into the open country about Luneville and Nancy, unfortified towns which could offer no resistance to the passage of an enemy.

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 passes 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.

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 circumstance 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 accumulated 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.

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 assailant 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 passage 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.

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 passed 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.

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 principally 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 assailant'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. 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.

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 mass, 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 passing 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. 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 north­eastwards in the direction of Montmedy.

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 passage 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 passed. 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 passages 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 mass 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 shells 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 passed 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 Cassel.

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 surpassing the worst anticipations 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 assembled in the dead of night; Jules Favre proposed the deposition of the Emperor, and was heard in silence. The Assembly 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 Assembly should be held as soon as circumstances 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 assuming the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Gambetta that of the Interior. No hand was raised in defence of the Napoleonic dynasty or of the institutions 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 dishonor 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”.

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 pronounced 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 Ferrières 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 Assembly 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.

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 assault 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 organize 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 passed 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 passion 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.

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 Besançon. 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 arsenals 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 Besançon. 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.

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 assist 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 passed 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, passed into the hands of the Germans.

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 circumstances 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’état 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.

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 reconstituted, and dispatched 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 passed 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.

After the fall of Amiens, Manteuffel moved upon Rouen. This city fell into his hands without resistance; the conquerors pressed on westwards, and at Dieppe troops which had come from the confines of Russia gazed for the first time upon the sea. But the Republican armies, unlike those which the Germans had first encountered, were not to be crushed at a single blow. Under the energetic command of Faidherbe the army of the North advanced again upon Amiens. Goeben, who was left to defend the line of the Somme, went out to meet him, defeated him on the 23rd of December, and drove him back to Arras. But again, after a weeks interval, Faidherbe pushed forward. On the 3rd of January he fell upon Goeben's weak division at Bapaume, and handled it so severely that the Germans would on the following day have abandoned their position, if the French had not themselves been the first to retire. Faidherbe, however, had only fallen back to receive reinforcements. After some days' rest he once more sought to gain the road to Paris, advancing this time by the eastward line through St. Quentin. In front of this town Goeben attacked him. The last battle of the army of the North was fought on the 19th of January. The French general endeavoured to disguise his defeat, but the German commander had won all that he desired. Faidherbe's army was compelled to retreat northwards in disorder; its part in the war was at an end.

During the last three weeks of December there was a pause in the operations of the Germans on the Loire. It was expected that Bourbaki and the east wing of The Armies of the French army would soon re-appear at Orleans and endeavour to combine with Chanzy's troops. Gambetta, however, had formed another plan. He considered that Chanzy, with the assistance of divisions formed in Brittany, would be strong enough to encounter Prince Frederick Charles, and he determined to throw the army of Bourbaki, strengthened by reinforcements from the south, upon Germany itself. The design was a daring one, and had the two French armies been capable of performing the work which Gambetta required of them, an inroad into Baden, or even the re-conquest of Alsace, would most seriously have affected the position of the Germans before Paris. But Gambetta miscalculated the power of young, untrained troops, imperfectly armed, badly fed, against a veteran enemy. In a series of hard-fought struggles the army of the Loire under General Chanzy was driven back at the beginning of January from Vendome to Le Mans. On the 12th, Chanzy took post before this city and fought his last battle. While he was making a vigorous resistance in the centre of the line, the Breton regiments stationed on his right gave way; the Germans pressed round him, and gained possession of the town. Chanzy retreated towards Laval, leaving thousands of prisoners in the hands of the enemy, and saving only the debris of an army. Bourbaki in the meantime, with a numerous but miserably equipped force, had almost reached Belfort. The report of his eastward movement was not at first believed at the German headquarters before Paris, and the troops of General Werder, which had been engaged about Dijon with a body of auxiliaries commanded by Garibaldi, were left to bear the brunt of the attack without support. When the real state of affairs became known Manteuffel was sent eastwards in hot haste towards the threatened point. Werder had evacuated Dijon and fallen back upon Vesoul; part of his army was still occupied in the siege of Belfort. As Bourbaki approached he fell back with the greater part of his troops in order to cover the besieging force, leaving one of his lieutenants to make a flank attack upon Bourbaki at Villersexel. This attack, one of the fiercest in the war, delayed the French for two days, and gave Werder time to occupy the strong positions that he had chosen about Montbeliard. Here, on the 15th of January, began a struggle which lasted for three days. The French, starving and perishing with cold, though far superior in number to their enemy, were led with little effect against the German entrenchments. On the 18th Bourbaki began his retreat. Werder was unable to follow him; Manteuffel with a weak force was still at some distance, and for a moment it seemed possible that Bourbaki, by a rapid movement westwards, might crush this isolated foe. Gambetta ordered Bourbaki to make the attempt: the commander refused to court further disaster with troops who were not fit to face an enemy, and retreated towards Pontarlier in the hope of making his way to Lyons. But Manteuffel now descended in front of him; divisions of Werder's army pressed down from the north; the retreat was cut off; and the unfortunate French general, whom a telegram from Gambetta removed from his command, attempted to take his own life. On the 1st of February, the wreck of his army, still numbering eighty-five thousand men, but reduced to the extremity of weakness and misery, sought refuge beyond the Swiss frontier.

The war was now over. Two days after Bourbaki's repulse at Montbeliard the last unsuccessful sortie was made from Paris. There now remained provisions only for another fortnight; above forty thousand of the inhabitants had succumbed to the privations of the siege; all hope of assistance from the relieving armies before actual famine should begin disappeared. On the 23rd of January Favre sought the German Chancellor at Versailles in order to discuss the conditions of a general armistice and of the capitulation of Paris. The negotiations lasted for several days; on the 28th an armistice was signed with the declared object that elections might at once be freely held for a National Assembly, which should decide whether the war should be continued, or on what conditions peace should be made. The conditions of the armistice were that the forts of Paris and all their material of war should be handed over to the German army; that the artillery of the enceinte should be dismounted; and that the regular troops in Paris should, as prisoners of war, surrender their arms. The National Guard were permitted to retain their weapons and their artillery. Immediately upon the fulfilment of the first two conditions all facilities were to be given for the entry of supplies of food into Paris.

The articles of the armistice were duly executed, and on the 30th of January the Prussian flag waved over the forts of the French capital. Orders were sent into the provinces by the Government that elections should at once be held. It had at one time been feared by Count Bismarck that Gambetta would acknowledge no armistice that might be made by his colleagues at Paris. But this apprehension was not realised, for, while protesting against a measure adopted without consultation with himself and his companions at Bordeaux, Gambetta did not actually reject the armistice. He called upon the nation, however, to use the interval for the collection of new forces; and in the hope of gaining from the election an Assembly in favour of a continuation of the war, he published a decree incapacitating for election all persons who had been connected with the Government of Napoleon III. Against this decree Bismarck at once protested, and at his instance it was cancelled by the Government of Paris. Gambetta thereupon resigned. The elections were held on the 8th of February, and on the 12th the National Assembly was opened at Bordeaux. The Government of Defence now laid down its powers. Thiers-who had been the author of those fortifications which had kept the Germans at bay for four months after the overthrow of the Imperial armies; who, in the midst of the delirium of July, 1870, had done all that man could do to dissuade the Imperial Government and its Parliament from war; who, in spite of his seventy years, had, after the fall of Napoleon, hurried to London, to St. Petersburg, to Florence, to Vienna, in the hope of winning some support for France,-was the man called by common assent to the helm of State. He appointed a Ministry, called upon the Assembly to postpone all discussions as to the future Government of France, and himself proceeded to Versailles in order to negotiate conditions of peace. For several days the old man struggled with Count Bismarck on point after point in the Prussian demands. Bismarck required the cession of Alsace and Eastern Lorraine, the payment of six milliards of francs, and the occupation of part of Paris by the German army until the conditions of peace should be ratified by the Assembly. Thiers strove hard to save Metz, but on this point the German staff was inexorable; he succeeded at last in reducing the indemnity to five milliards, and was given the option between retaining Belfort and sparing Paris the entry of the German troops. On the last point his patriotism decided without a moment's hesitation. He bade the Germans enter Paris, and saved Belfort for France. On the 26th of February preliminaries of peace were signed. Thirty thousand German soldiers marched into the Champs Elysees on the 1st of March; but on that same day the treaty was ratified by the Assembly at Bordeaux, and after forty-eight hours Paris was freed from the sight of its conquerors. The Articles of Peace provided for the gradual evacuation of France by the German army as the instalments of the indemnity, which were allowed to extend over a period of three years, should be paid. There remained for settlement only certain matters of detail, chiefly connected with finance; these, however, proved the object of long and bitter controversy, and it was not until the 10th of May that the definitive Treaty of Peace was signed at Frankfort.

France had made war in order to undo the work of partial union effected by Prussia in 1866: it achieved the opposite result, and Germany emerged from the war with the Empire established. Immediately after the victory of Worth the Crown Prince had seen that the time had come for abolishing the line of division which severed Southern Germany from the Federation of the North. His own conception of the best form of national union was a German Empire with its chief at Berlin. That Count Bismarck was without plans for uniting North and South Germany it is impossible to believe; but the Minister and the Crown Prince had always been at enmity; and when, after the battle of Sedan, they spoke together of the future, it seemed to the Prince as if Bismarck had scarcely thought of the federation of the Empire or of the re-establishment of the Imperial dignity, and as if he was inclined to it only under certain reserves. It was, however, part of Bismarck's system to exclude the Crown Prince as far as possible from political affairs, under the strange pretext that his relationship to Queen Victoria would be abused by the French proclivities of the English Court; and it is possible that had the Chancellor after the battle of Sedan chosen to admit the Prince to his confidence instead of resenting his interference, the difference between their views as to the future of Germany would have been seen to be one rather of forms and means than of intention. But whatever the share of these two dissimilar spirits in the initiation of the last steps towards German union, the work, as ultimately achieved, was both in form and in substance that which the Crown Prince had conceived. In the course of September negotiations were opened with each of the Southern States for its entry into the Northern Confederation. Bavaria alone raised serious difficulties, and demanded terms to which the Prussian Government could not consent. Bismarck refrained from exercising pressure at Munich, but invited the several Governments to send representatives to Versailles for the purpose of arriving at a settlement. For a moment the Court of Munich drew the sovereign of Wurtemberg to its side, and orders were sent to the envoys of Wurtemberg at Versailles to act with the Bavarians in refusing to sign the treaty projected by Bismarck. The Wurtemberg Ministers hereupon tendered their resignation; Baden and Hesse-Darmstadt signed the treaty, and the two dissentient kings saw themselves on the point of being excluded from United Germany. They withdrew their opposition, and at the end of November the treaties uniting all the Southern States with the existing Confederation were executed, Bavaria retaining larger separate rights than were accorded to any other member of the Union.

In the acts which thus gave to Germany political cohesion there was nothing that altered the title of its chief. Bismarck, however, had in the meantime informed the recalcitrant sovereigns that if they did not themselves offer the Imperial dignity to King William, the North German Parliament would do so. At the end of November a letter was accordingly sent by the King of Bavaria to all his fellow-sovereigns, proposing that the King of Prussia, as President of the newly-formed Federation, should assume the title of German Emperor. Shortly afterwards the same request was made by the same sovereign to King William himself, in a letter dictated by Bismarck. A deputation from the North German Reichstag, headed by its President, Dr. Simson, who, as President of the Frankfort National Assembly, had in 1849 offered the Imperial Crown to King Frederick William, expressed the concurrence of the nation in the act of the Princes. It was expected that before the end of the year the new political arrangements would have been sanctioned by the Parliaments of all the States concerned, and the 1st of January had been fixed for the assumption of the Imperial title. So vigorous, however, was the opposition made in the Bavarian Chamber, that the ceremony was postponed till the 18th. Even then the final approving vote had not been taken at Munich; but a second adjournment would have been fatal to the dignity of the occasion; and on the 18th of January, in the midst of the Princes of Germany and the representatives of its army assembled in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, King William assumed the title of German Emperor. The first Parliament of the Empire was opened at Berlin two months later.

The misfortunes of France did not end with the fall of its capital and the loss of its border provinces; the terrible drama of 1870 closed with civil war. It is part of the normal order of French history that when an established Government is overthrown, and another is set in its place, this second Government is in its turn attacked by insurrection in Paris, and an effort is made to establish the rule of the democracy of the capital itself, or of those who for the moment pass for its leaders. It was so in 1793, in 1831, in 1848, and it was so again in 1870. Favre, Trochu, and the other members of the Government of Defence had assumed power on the downfall of Napoleon III because they considered themselves the individuals best able to serve the State. There were hundreds of other persons in Paris who had exactly the same opinion of themselves; and when, with the progress of the siege, the Government of Defence lost its popularity and credit, it was natural that ambitious and impatient men of a lower political rank should consider it time to try whether Paris could not make a better defence under their own auspices. Attempts were made before the end of October to overthrow the Government. They were repeated at intervals, but without success. The agitation, however, continued within the ranks of the National Guard, which, unlike the National Guard in the time of Louis Philippe, now included the mass of the working class, and was the most dangerous enemy, instead of the support, of Government. The capitulation brought things to a crisis. Favre had declared that it would be impossible to disarm the National Guard without a battle in the streets; at his instance Bismarck allowed the National Guard to retain their weapons, and the fears of the Government itself thus prepared the way for successful insurrection. When the Germans were about to occupy western Paris, the National Guard drew off its artillery to Montmartre and there erected entrenchments. During the next fortnight, while the Germans were withdrawing from the western forts in accordance with the conditions of peace, the Government and the National Guard stood facing one another in inaction; on the 18th of March General Lecomte was ordered to seize the artillery parked at Montmartre. His troops, surrounded and solicited by the National Guard, abandoned their commander. Lecomte was seized, and, with General Clement Thomas, was put to death. A revolutionary Central Committee took possession of the Hotel de Ville; the troops still remaining faithful to the Government were withdrawn to Versailles, where Thiers had assembled the Chamber. Not only Paris itself, but the western forts with the exception of Mont Valerien, fell into the hands of the insurgents. On the 26th of March elections were held for the Commune. The majority of peaceful citizens abstained from voting. A council was elected, which by the side of certain harmless and well-meaning men contained a troop of revolutionists by profession; and after the failure of all attempts at conciliation, hostilities began between Paris and Versailles.

There were in the ranks of those who fought for the Commune some who fought in the sincere belief that their cause was that of municipal freedom; there were others who believed, and with good reason, that the existence of the Republic was threatened by a reactionary Assembly at Versailles; but the movement was on the whole the work of fanatics who sought to subvert every authority but their own; and the unfortunate mob who followed them, in so far as they fought for anything beyond the daily pay which had been their only means of sustenance since the siege began, fought for they knew not what. As the conflict was prolonged, it took on both sides a character of atrocious violence and cruelty. The murder of Generals Lecomte and Thomas at the outset was avenged by the execution of some of the first prisoners taken by the troops of Versailles. Then hostages were seized by the Commune. The slaughter in cold blood of three hundred National Guards surprised at Clamart by the besiegers gave to the Parisians the example of massacre. When, after a siege of six weeks, in which Paris suffered far more severely than it had suffered from the cannonade of the Germans, the troops of Versailles at length made their way into the capital, humanity, civilisation, seemed to have vanished in the orgies of devils. The defenders, as they fell back, murdered their hostages, and left behind them palaces, museums, the entire public inheritance of the nation in its capital, in flames. The conquerors during several days shot down all whom they took fighting, and in many cases put to death whole bands of prisoners without distinction. The temper of the army was such that the Government, even if it had desired, could probably not have mitigated the terrors of this vengeance. But there was little sign anywhere of an inclination to mercy. Court martial and executions continued long after the heat of combat was over. A year passed, and the tribunals were still busy with their work. Above ten thousand persons were sentenced to transportation or imprisonment before public justice was satisfied.

The material losses which France sustained at the hands of the invader and in civil war were soon repaired; but from the battle of Worth down to the overthrow of the Commune France had been effaced as a European Power, and its effacement was turned to good account by two nations who were not its enemies. Russia, with the sanction of Europe, threw off the trammels which had been imposed upon it in the Black Sea by the Treaty of 1856. Italy gained possession of Rome. Soon after the declaration of war the troops of France, after an occupation of twenty-one years broken only by an interval of some months in 1867, were withdrawn from the Papal territory. Whatever may have been the understanding with Victor Emmanuel on which Napoleon recalled his troops from Civita Vecchia, the battle of Sedan set Italy free; and on the 20th of September the National Army, after overcoming a brief show of resistance, entered Rome. The unity of Italy was at last completed; Florence ceased to be the national capital. A body of laws passed by the Italian Parliament, and known as the Guarantees, assured to the Pope the honours and immunities of a sovereign, the possession of the Vatican and the Lateran palaces, and a princely income; in the appointment of Bishops and generally in the government of the Church a fullness of authority was freely left to him such as he possessed in no other European land. But Pius would accept no compromise for the loss of his temporal power. He spurned the reconciliation with the Italian people, which had now for the first time since 1849 become possible. He declared Rome to be in the possession of brigands; and, with a fine affectation of disdain for Victor Emmanuel and the Italian Government, he invented, and sustained down to the end of his life, before a world too busy to pay much heed to his performance, the reproachful part of the Prisoner of the Vatican.

CHAPTER XXV

EASTERN AFFAIRS