Chapter XXIV (3)

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 Elysées 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.

[German Unity.]

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 Wörth 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 Würtemberg to its side, and orders were sent to the envoys of Würtemberg at Versailles to act with the Bavarians in refusing to sign the treaty projected by Bismarck. The Würtemberg 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.

[Proclamation of the Empire, Jan. 18.]

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 Commune of Paris.]

[Troops withdrawn to Versailles, March 18.]

[The Commune.]

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 Clément Thomas, was put to death. A revolutionary Central Committee took possession of the Hôtel 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 Valérien, 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.

[Second Siege--April 2, May 21.]

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. Courts-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.

[Entry of Italian Troops into Rome, Sept. 20, 1870.]

[The Papacy.]

The material losses which France sustained at the hands of the invader and in civil war were soon repaired; but from the battle of Wörth 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 fulness 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.