Chapter XXVI: Part 26

The apparition of the Army of the Loire beyond Orleans, and its unexpected strength, caused a complete change in the plans of the Germans. It had become evident that a powerful force was in the field for the relief of Paris, and no one knew better than the great commander who guided the movements of the invaders, how necessary it was to interpose an effectual barrier against this foe if the siege of the city was to continue. Paris, too, was showing no signs of submission; the winter was coming on apace; and the position of the besiegers might become critical if they were detained around the capital for months, at an immense distance from their base on the frontier, and liable to attacks from without and within. The battles of the 9th and 10th, in a word, had awakened the able German chiefs to the possible dangers of their situation, and with characteristic energy and consummate prudence they applied themselves to avert or remove them. The corps intended to march northward were kept back and brought nearer to Paris, and the army commanded by Prince Frederic Charles was diverted from the centre and east, and ordered to move as quickly as possible to the Lower Loire and the neighbourhood of Orleans, with the view of checking D'Aurelles' force, and attacking it, should it attempt to advance. At the same time, the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg was kept in communication with Von der Tann along the roads leading from Orleans to Paris, while some of his divisions were turned towards the Sarthe to face the French Army of the West; these arrangements, however, being only temporary until the arrival of Prince Frederic Charles should add largely to the strength of the Germans. In this way a whole series of covering armies were in a short time thrown in an extensive circle around the investing lines, so as to baffle and repel the French; and these would soon become formidable, though, as yet, they were not in sufficient force to render an attempt to relieve Paris beyond the reach of a daring commander. Meanwhile the French had done much on their side, though it cannot be said that their efforts were equally important or as well conducted. D'Aurelles retired to his camp near Orleans, entrenching himself with great care, and meditating ulterior movements, and in a few days he made his entrenchments exceedingly difficult to turn or attack, though their proximity to the Loire, just behind, made them dangerous as a defensive position. At this point, which he had made his base, he awaited his reinforcements for some days, apparently thinking that the addition of these would more than counter-balance Prince Frederic Charles, now hastening forward to arrest his progress--a conclusion utterly false, in our judgment. These reinforcements, however, it must be said, were, in mere numbers, exceedingly great, and at the close of November D'Aurelles' army had more than doubled its nominal strength, being now upwards of 200,000 men, with from 400 to 500 guns; but the organization of these new divisions was, for the most part, imperfect and crude; the recruits were partly young raw lads; the staff and other arrangements were bad; and not only was the second portion of the Army of the Loire inferior to the first, but it did not throw into the scale of France a force even nearly as great as that which, under Prince Frederic Charles, was now reaching the theatre of war.

Such, at the close of November, was the situation of the belligerent armies. By this time Trochu had completed his arrangements for carrying out his plan; had made Paris prodigiously strong; had greatly weakened the besiegers' lines; had organized two armies inside the city; and he now prepared for a gigantic sortie, while D'Aurelles should co-operate from without. That general seems to have been in communication with Trochu by means of balloons and pigeons; and, for the second time, he began operations which had for their object the relief of Paris. His army was very well placed in comparison with that of the Germans, for it was concentrated on a much narrower front, from Chateaudun to Montargis, its centre holding the camp at Orleans, and its wings occupying the main roads to Paris; whereas Prince Frederic Charles was only just in line at Pithiviers and Nemours. Von der Tann, at Toury, was extremely weak, and the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg, thrown westward, was hardly united to his Bavarian colleague. There was thus an interval in the German line immediately in front of the French centre, which offered a favourable mark for attack; and had D'Aurelles been a great general, we think he would have advanced on that point, and very probably have been successful, especially if it is borne in mind that he had a great superiority in numbers--200,000 to about 100,000. But D'Aurelles again displayed timidity, indecision, and want of true insight. He commenced his march on the 28th of November, and attacked one corps of Prince Frederic Charles, stationed near the village of Beaune la Rolande, and though the engagement was indecisive, he made no effort with the rest of his army, and fell back on his camp at Orleans, having thus struck at his enemy's line, not where it was weak, but where it was strong, having delivered his stroke with a small part of his forces, and having only made the Germans aware of his position and movements. Prince Frederic Charles, who now commanded the whole German army to the south of Paris, made immediate preparations for a counter-blow which should overwhelm his timid antagonist. He perceived that Von der Tann and the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg were perilously divided, and he gave orders for a general concentration of the whole forces of these commanders, while he advanced his own to co-operate with them. These movements went on during two days, the German columns drawing together within easy reach of the French general, who, however, lingered irresolutely in his camp, unwilling or unable to attack. On the 1st of December Prince Frederic Charles moved against his foe, with his divisions in hand; and as the French were now disseminated, in comparison with the German front, it is not improbable that, at the decisive points, they scarcely had a numerical superiority. The result was, of course, thenceforward certain. D'Aurelles' centre was pierced through and through; his wings were separated and thrown off in broken and widely-divided parts; the camp at Orleans, too near the Loire, proved a disadvantage rather than otherwise; the Army of the Loire was utterly defeated with a loss of nearly 15,000 men, and the attempt to march to the relief of Paris ended in complete and ruinous disaster.

In these engagements we see the difference between vigorous and bad generalship. It is not pretended that the army of the Loire was as well organized as that of the Germans; but numerically it was nearly twice as strong; and had it been commanded by an able chief it might not improbably have been led to victory. But in selecting his point of attack, in advancing with a fragment of his forces, in retreating when it was not necessary, and above all, in allowing his enemy to unite, literally without being molested, D'Aurelles showed want of capacity to command; whereas Prince Frederic Charles gave convincing proof of vigour and skill in these operations. That able commander was seriously alarmed when, on the 28th, he ascertained the strength and positions of the French, and perceived the space in the long line between Von der Tann and the Grand Duke; and had he been in D'Aurelles' place, Europe might have seen the Army of the Loire advancing between the German wings, and forcing its way in triumph to Paris. When, however, the Prince became aware of the real nature of the situation, he displayed talent of a very high order; and the celerity with which he collected his army and bore down on his vacillating foe was quite worthy of the first Napoleon. Meanwhile, a grand but unsuccessful effort had been making by the armies in Paris to break through or turn the lines of the Germans. On the 29th of November two large masses of troops, commanded by Generals Vinoy and Ducrot, covered by a terrible cannonade from the southern and south-eastern forts, attempted to carry the positions of Choisy le Roi and Chevilly, on the road to Orleans, and to storm Ormesson beyond the Marne, these operations being evidently intended to be in concert with those of D'Aurelles' army. On account of the rise in the waters of the Marne, the attack of Ducrot was not pressed that day; but on the 30th it was renewed with imposing forces, and four villages beyond the Marne were seized and occupied by the French, their numbers carrying everything before them. The German lines were now nearly reached, and had the attack been repeated next day, it is not impossible that it might have succeeded, for it is now known that 100,000 men could have been opposed to about 30,000. But Trochu paused at this crisis, resolved not to attempt to do more unless the Army of the Loire was at hand; and, as this force still made no sign, he allowed Ducrot to remain inactive during the 1st and part of the 2nd of December. Meanwhile the Germans had been combining their troops for a decisive effort, and on the morning of the 2nd they assailed their enemy in the positions he had won. Two of the villages were retaken; but, as the assailants advanced further, they were smitten by such a fire from the forts, the guns of which had been unexpectedly strengthened, that they were swept away and destroyed by thousands. The French pushed forward victoriously again. On the night of the 2nd they were once more in overwhelming strength near the investing line; and it may be doubted whether a bold effort would not have forced it at this juncture. But Trochu would not pursue his advantage, and as the army of the Loire did not appear, he soon withdrew Ducrot's army from before the Marne in the wood of Vincennes.

Persons not versed in military science will at once conclude from this brief narrative that Trochu was an incompetent chief. They will say that he ought to have cut his way out at all hazards without a second thought, and that he missed a fine opportunity during any of the first three days of December. They will point also to the means he possessed for concentrating on interior lines, and pouring an overwhelming mass of men on certain selected points; and they will insist that nothing but skill was wanting to France on this occasion. We do not wholly condemn the assertions; but considerations of the gravest kind must be borne in mind on the other side. It is a maxim of the art of war that an invested fortress must be relieved by the efforts of an army without combined with those of the garrison within; for, in the first place, it is extremely difficult for the garrison unaided to break through the entrenchments formed by the besiegers; and, in the second, if the garrison breaks through, it is liable to destruction unless it is received into the arms, as it were, of a friendly force. The case of a great city like Paris is no exception to this principle, or at least only in a slight degree; for it would have been an arduous task for Ducrot to have stormed the German lines in any event; and, if he had, what was he to have done with from 80,000 to 100,000 men, when he had got out in the open country, with scanty supplies, and without a base? There were special reasons also why, in this instance, Trochu should wait for the Army of the Loire, for if it arrived, the Army of Paris would be enabled to make its way out without running any serious risk; and, in that case, combined with the relieving force, it might expect to do the Germans immense injury, as they drew off from the investing circle. In acting, therefore, as he did, Trochu was not the temporizing fool he has been called by certain detractors; and it must be added that he adhered strictly to the recognised rules of military science. Nevertheless, had he been a chief of genius, we think he would have taken the bolder course, and have endeavoured, on the 1st and 2nd of December, to have broken through the German entrenchments. For, in the first place, he could not reckon, with anything even approaching certainty, that the Army of the Loire could reach Paris; and, that being so, he should perhaps have relied upon himself and his army alone. And, in the second place, it so happened that if his army could once sever the lines, it would not be exposed to a want of supplies, even if no assistance came from outside, for had he seized the great German depôts a few miles off on the Strasburg Railway, it would have found everything which it could have needed. Admitting, therefore, all that can be said, Trochu perhaps showed himself too wedded to mere rules and general notions in not having made a great effort with Ducrot at this critical moment; and had he struck with his whole force, that effort might have been successful.

The failure of Ducrot's great sortie, and the defeats of the Army of the Loire near Orleans, were cruel and lasting disasters to France. In another part of the theatre of operations, the balance of fortune hung more evenly, though the ultimate issue was not very different. The discomfited forces of D'Aurelles, as we have seen, were broken into three parts, the centre and wings divided from each other; and even after the battles of the first days of December, the centre and right, driven across the Loire, retreated hastily to Bourges and Nevers, while the left remained on the north bank of the river, clinging to Marchenoir and the adjoining country. The Grand Duke of Mecklenburg and Von der Tann, with about 35,000 or 40,000 men, were detached to destroy this isolated wing, while Prince Frederic Charles pursued the main body, and a series of operations ensued which throw a ray of lustre on the French arms. The commander of the broken French left was a general who, though before unknown, has since given proof of no common talents, and in fact seems to us to be entitled to no mean rank among able captains. Chanzy, in a series of obstinate encounters, confronted and baffled his victorious foes with a force hardly superior in numbers; and after disputing the difficult country between Beaugency and Vendôme, effected at last his retreat to Le Mans, where he joined the friendly Army of the West, and succeeded in obtaining large reinforcements. This retreat was executed with great skill, and was made exactly on the right points; and that Chanzy was able to gain his goal in the face of the Grand Duke and of Von der Tann, and subsequently of a corps of Prince Frederic Charles, moved up from the Loire to overpower him, does honour to his ability and judgment. A lull now took place in the operations along the zone of country to the south of Paris; but from the North an unsuccessful attempt to relieve the beleaguered capital was made. For some weeks the French Army of the North had been in a state of comparative order, and though it had been defeated in November, it had been entrusted to an experienced commander, who had done much to improve its discipline. In the third week of December, General Faidherbe advanced to attack at Pont Noyelles a part of the German Army of the North, his object being, should he win the battle, to press forward and march to Paris. This engagement, however, proved indecisive, and Faidherbe in a few days retired into the chain of fortresses on the Belgian frontier, his antagonist, Von Goeben, holding him in check along the line of the Somme and its affluents. Meanwhile Trochu, doubtless informed from without of the intentions of Faidherbe, had made another effort on the 21st to attack the German lines to the north; but though he achieved a certain amount of success, he again declined to strike more decisively, when it had become apparent that he was not to expect the assistance of a relieving army. The French captured several outlying positions on the great northern and eastern roads, and held them for two or three days; but there being no sign of Faidherbe's approach, they once more retired, having effected nothing.

While these combats had been taking place, the belligerents had been making great exertions to increase their forces and renew the war. The German commanders had discovered that France had developed resources of which they had no previous conception, and that Paris was stronger and better provisioned than they could possibly have imagined; and though as yet they had been victorious, they felt their position to be insecure, bound as they were to the besieged capital, and, in the depth of a severe winter, exposed to the attacks of all the French armies converging on them from every side. In fact, in a strategic point of view their situation was extremely critical; for if a single one of the covering armies were broken through by a relieving force, which thus could reach the line of investment, they might have been compelled to raise the siege, and might, perhaps, suffer a series of disasters. This danger was, therefore, to be averted; and as the covering armies had lost enormously from cold, hardship, and field-service, and the besiegers' ranks had also been thinned, it was necessary to make very large additions to the strength of the invading forces. Vast reinforcements were accordingly despatched across the Rhine to all points of the war; Prince Frederic Charles, the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg, and Von der Tann received thousands of recruits; the armies of Von Goeben and Werder were replenished to a considerable extent, and the corps selected to protect the different lines of the communications were increased by important reserves. In this way about 200,000 men were joined to the armies already in France; and at the same time no pains were spared to accelerate the arrival of siege trains before Paris, in order to open fire on the defences. This task, however, was extremely difficult, on account of the distance from the frontier, and the state of the roads; and though, during more than two months, heavy guns had been gradually sent up, it was not until near the end of December that batteries, more nearly adequate to the purpose, had been constructed and armed. Meantime, the French had been equally energetic, but the results obtained had been very inferior. Recruits, indeed, had been despatched in masses to increase the bulk of the provincial armies; munitions of war were obtained in quantities, and nothing, it must be said, was left undone which patriotism and devotion could accomplish. But though the divided parts of the Army of the Loire, and though the Armies of the North and the East became very formidable in mere numbers, the accession of raw and unformed levies, without proper military organization, did not much augment their real power; and as many of the best soldiers in the force commanded by D'Aurelles had perished in the recent engagements, it is not improbable that the strength of France was hardly greater towards the end of December than it had been three weeks previously, whereas that of Germany had increased to a degree that made the German generals masters of the situation in all its aspects.

Such, about Christmas, was the relative strength and condition of the belligerent armies. At this moment, Prince Frederic Charles, Von der Tann, and the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg, held a central position between Orleans and Chartres, having Chanzy in advance of Le Mans, and the remainder of the Army of the Loire rallied by Bourbaki at Bourges and Nevers; Faidherbe was held in check by Von Goeben; to the east Werder, who had been told off after the fall of Strasburg to overrun the south, was confronted by the French Army of the East, with an irregular force under Garibaldi; and, as we have seen, the vast circle of the covering armies was more formidable than it had been at any preceding time. In this state of things an extraordinary scheme was formed for the French provincial armies, and ultimately for the relief of Paris, which we can only describe as the extreme of rashness. Werder had for some time invested Belfort, while part of his forces lay in Franche Comté; and as he had not more than 50,000 men, and Bourbaki was at no great distance with perhaps not less than 120,000, an opportunity seemed given to strike a blow, which it was hoped might crush this foe, and even change the aspect of the contest. If Bourbaki were to assail Werder from Bourges and Nevers, he would probably destroy him; and if so, he could relieve Belfort, and furthermore, by a bold advance on Nancy and Luneville, fall upon the great line of German communications from Strasburg to Paris along the main railway. But a stroke of this kind would in all probability compel the siege of Paris to be raised, for the Germans could not so easily subsist if their supplies were cut off or even interrupted; and if they were obliged to retire, the paramount object of French strategy would be attained by this single operation. The movement of Bourbaki, too, was not only promising in itself, for it was difficult to imagine that he would not crush Werder, which, being done, all the rest would follow; but, properly conceived, it need not endanger the French armies in other parts of the theatre. Let it be granted that the withdrawal of Bourbaki would relieve Prince Frederic Charles of an enemy, would the Prince, Von der Tann, and the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg turn round and fall in full force on Chanzy? And, even if they did, would not Chanzy, with his large army in position at Le Mans, be strong enough to baffle their efforts? And even supposing Chanzy defeated, how little was to be thought of a defeat provided Bourbaki relieved Paris by seizing and cutting the German communications? Besides, was it not very conceivable that Prince Frederic Charles would pursue Bourbaki, in which case that commander would escape him, and that he would not think of attacking Chanzy?

Such was their plan, and, we repeat, it was, under the circumstances, simply insensate. No one will deny that to overwhelm Werder, to effect the raising of the siege of Belfort, and to sever the communications of the Germans, were desirable objects for the French; and had Bourbaki reached in force the main railway from Strasburg to Paris, this might have caused the relief of the capital. But, in the actual state of the French armies--raw, ill-provided, and ill-disciplined--a movement like this was extremely difficult, and far from likely to be at all successful, even as regards the mere reaching Belfort; and it was open to the decisive objection that it enabled Prince Frederic Charles to oppose all his forces to Chanzy and overwhelm him, in conjunction with his German colleagues. The scheme, therefore, exposed the French on one side to certain disaster, and, on the other, was really far from hopeful; and it not only made it almost impossible to expect the relief of Paris, but it might lead to terrible results should Bourbaki fail or prove a bad General, In an unfortunate hour for France, however, this reckless project was adopted; and in the first days of January, Bourbaki broke up from Bourges and Nevers to reach Franche Comté, and made his way to his first point, Belfort. The operations that ensued were just such as might have been foreseen. The instant that Prince Frederic Charles had ascertained that Bourbaki's army was on its way to the distant east, he turned rapidly upon Chanzy, and directed his own reinforced corps, with those of Von der Tann and the Grand Duke, to converge without delay on Le Mans and overwhelm his French antagonist. The movement began in the first days of January; and as the united German armies were probably 140,000 strong, whereas Chanzy was hardly superior in mere numbers, and had little but undisciplined levies in his ranks, the issue was not for a moment doubtful. Chanzy, who had made a feint forward, and had threatened the Prince before Vendôme, found himself pressed by an irresistible enemy, and fell back at once on Le Mans, not having been, we believe, informed of the project which had detached Bourbaki. His retreat was conducted with marked ability, his German foes closing in on all sides, and endeavouring to cut him off from his point; and nothing save his judicious foresight enabled him to save even a part of his army. Chanzy had fortified a strong position before Le Mans, on the river Huisne--so strong that it has been compared to Torres Vedras by an eye-witness--and he succeeded in making a stand on this, and even baffling his enemy for a time. The contest, however, was too unequal; his lines were turned on the night of the 11th; Le Mans was captured the next day; and Chanzy's army, beaten and demoralized, lost, it is said, 20,000 prisoners.

While these events had been in progress, Bourbaki had been making his way across the rugged and hilly country which divides Burgundy from Franche Comté. The cold of the winter was intense; and his divisions, composed of young recruits, ill-clothed, ill-fed, and ill-disciplined, suffered cruelly, and were half demoralized before they saw even the face of an enemy. At Dijon he obtained reinforcements drawn from the French Army of the East, and with a force, nominally 140,000 strong, with from 300 to 400 guns, he proceeded through the intricate defiles, between the rivers Ognon and Doubs, which lead to the hills around Belfort. The march of his weak and untrained columns, confined to a single narrow route, was necessarily extremely slow; and it is decisive against Bourbaki's generalship that, at a time when speed was of the greatest importance, he did not advance by four or five roads, and thus make expedition possible. The French army, worn out and harassed, and especially wanting in staff officers, moved at the rate of four or five miles a day only, and the result was that it completely failed to cut off Werder, as had been expected, and that that general was enabled to retreat leisurely and cover Belfort. A rear-guard engagement took place at Villersexel, on the 6th of January, and it was not until the 14th that Bourbaki reached the Lisaine--a tributary of the Doubs in front of the fortress--where he found Werder's army drawn up in entrenched positions, and awaiting its foe. A series of combats ensued, in which the raw and bad French troops, although numerically three to one, were unable to gain any success; and, on the 18th, Bourbaki retreated, having lost from 8,000 to 10,000 men, and having met nothing but heavy disaster. His army, baffled and half starving, began to disband and go to pieces; and, as he retreated by the narrow defiles by which he had before advanced, he did not reach Besançon till the 22nd. Meanwhile Von Moltke had been directing a terrible and decisive stroke against him. As soon as the great German commander had become aware of Bourbaki's movements, he massed a force of some 50,000 men between Auxerre and Chatillon-sur-Seine, and launched it across the hills of Burgundy upon the flank and rear of the Frenchman, while Werder, pressing forward from the Lisaine, advanced against him through Franche Comté. By the 24th of January, four German divisions had passed Dijon and reached Dôle on the Doubs, to the south of Besançon, while a large part of Werder's forces were threatening Bourbaki from the north; and thus the unfortunate French army was already almost completely hemmed in by its vigorous and indefatigable pursuers. The disgrace of a second Sedan flashed across the mind of the French commander, and in a paroxysm of despair he shot himself, unable to brave the impending peril. His army, a mere dissolving mass, rolled out helplessly from Besançon, and endeavoured to make its way southward, but finding all the roads occupied, it turned aside and crossed the Swiss frontier. There the starving mob of disbanding fugitives was obliged helplessly to lay down its arms.

Such was the end of the expedition, ill-planned and still worse executed. The detachment of Bourbaki to the east caused the overthrow of Chanzy at Le Mans, by setting Prince Frederic Charles free; and the bad state of Bourbaki's army, and even more, his deplorable conduct, led to the catastrophe we have described. What, indeed, could have been more unwise than to have moved in a single column only, when celerity was the first consideration; and what could have been more shameful than the management of the retreat to Besançon, and the rash act which left an army at that place without a commander? These things are simply without excuse; yet it must be added that the condition of Bourbaki's troops made it very improbable that he could, under any circumstance, have accomplished the task which he undertook, at least that he could ever have reached the great line of the German communications; and accordingly, even when it seemed most promising, the whole enterprise cannot be justified. The result might have been very different if the forces of Bourbaki and Chanzy had been concentrated for a vigorous attack on Prince Frederic Charles and his colleagues on the line between Orleans, Vendome, and Chartres. Had this been done the French would have largely outnumbered their foes, and even had they failed and been defeated, they would have been able to make good their retreat without incurring a terrible disaster. The more we study the operations of the French armies in the month of January, the more we see how ill-devised they were; while, on the other hand, the strategy of the Germans--of Werder, in the stand he made on the Lisaine, and of Von Moltke in surrounding Bourbaki--is deserving of the highest admiration; and, though no one would think of comparing the young French troops with their veteran foes, it is not the less true that the final issue was decided in the main by generalship. Everywhere else in the theatre of war, while these disasters were taking place, the fortunes of France were in calamitous eclipse. The German Army of the North was taking the fortresses on her north-eastern frontier without difficulty by a brief bombardment, the old bastions of Vauban's time being useless against modern heavy guns, and the triple barrier of Louis XIV. was thus broken down from within, and the Northern Departments laid open. Faidherbe had fought two battles in a vain attempt to resist the invaders; but, though he gained some success at Bapaume, over a small part of Von Goeben's army, he had been unable to follow it up, and soon afterwards he was defeated with great and ruinous loss at St. Quentin--an ominous name in French annals. After this disaster the French Army of the North was no longer able to keep the field. Faidherbe took refuge in Lille and Cambrai, and the tide of German invasion flowed irresistibly to the borders of Artois and Hainault.

Meanwhile the progress of the great siege had been tending to its inevitable conclusion. On the 27th of December, the German batteries commenced the reduction of the outwork constructed by Trochu on Mont Avron, and in two days it was silenced and destroyed, the defences being feeble and incomplete. This roused the spirits of the besiegers; and as, by this time, their siege trains had come up in considerable numbers, fire was opened on the southern and eastern forts, and for some weeks was kept up with vigour. The distance, however, of the attacking batteries from the defences of Paris was very great, nor was their artillery powerful; and it cannot be said that they succeeded in making a serious or lasting impression. In fact, the forts, and even the ramparts, were armed with rather stronger ordnance, and they maintained a combat at least equal to that of the heavy guns that were directed against them. The bombardment of the city was next attempted, and shells were poured into its streets and squares; but as the extreme range of the German guns extended only to one bank of the Seine, no great damage, fortunately, was done, and, as often has happened in other cases, the effect on the spirits of the population was rather to stimulate than to alarm. 'You might as well have pelted Paris with bottles,' was the remark of an intelligent eye-witness, and there can be no doubt that the active siege of the capital was a complete failure. Meantime, however, famine was doing the work which fire and sword could not have accomplished. The city had been amply provisioned, but, at the end of four months and a half, it was reduced to the extreme of misery. For many weeks horseflesh had been the only animal food of the population; the bread doled out in scanty rations was a vile compound of bran and rye; the mortality among the old and young was appalling; the supply of fuel had fallen short, and that in the depths of a fearful winter. On the 19th of January, Trochu made a last effort against the besiegers' lines, but, as might have been anticipated, it failed, his troops having lost all courage and worth. By this time all hope of relief from the provincial armies had been frustrated, and at last, on the 130th day of the siege, the proud capital was subdued by famine. The line of the defences was almost uninjured; and, unquestionably, Paris would have held out for months, nay, perhaps might have proved impregnable, had the citizens possessed the means of subsistence.

The fall of Paris brought to a close the internecine strife between France and Germany. The extraordinary disasters of January, indeed (especially the ruin of Bourbaki's army), had made resistance no longer possible; and, in all probability, had the war gone on, the vanquished country would have been overrun. Those who, like ourselves, were of opinion that the expected surrender of the capital need not necessarily terminate the struggle, could not have anticipated the fatal strategy which annihilated the provincial armies of France in futile movements and desperate efforts. We believe the National Assembly was right in accepting the conditions of the Germans, harsh and relentless as these were; and we applaud the patriotism of M. Thiers in bowing before the doom of fate, and offer him our respect and sympathy. Our space has been already outrun, and we cannot make any general remarks on the mighty conflict which has just closed.

As regards its consequences, we can only hazard two or three anticipations of the future. Those who believed in the moderation and civilization of the gigantic power of which Bismark has been the creator must have been disappointed at the German terms; but as we are not among the credulous, we cannot say that we have been surprised. The annexation, however, of Alsace and Lorraine against the will of two millions of the brave inhabitants of those provinces, the dismemberment of France, and her spoliation, and, above all, the evident understanding between the autocrats of Russia and Germany, are simply the triumphs of brute force--perpetual menaces to the peace of Europe. As regards France, her destiny is uncertain; and it remains to be seen whether, as of old, she will rise superior to misfortune, or whether, like Spain, she will henceforth decline and sink into an inferior power. If, as we think, the first alternative is that which history will yet witness, France certainly will renew the combat, and endeavour to regain from her pitiless foe, not only her strategic position, but the conquered territories. To effect this purpose she will avail herself of any alliances, however abnormal--and for this she is not to be condemned. From this point of view, also, the prospect for England is not reassuring. France, however, if she would renew her strength, must first learn self-government, and to combat anarchy and revolution; and, deeply as we sympathise with her, she would, we believe, achieve more if she were to attain these great ends than if she were to avenge Sedan by a second Jena, and march once more in triumph to Berlin.

ART. VIII.--_Professor Fraser's Edition of Bishop Berkeley's Works._

(1.) _The Works of George Berkeley, D.D., formerly Bishop of Cloyne._ Collected and Edited, with Prefaces and Annotations, by ALEXANDER CAMPBELL FRASER, M.A., Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in the University of Edinburgh. 3 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1871.

(2.) _Life and Letters of George Berkeley, D.D., formerly Bishop of Cloyne, and an Account of his Philosophy; with many writings of Bishop Berkeley hitherto unpublished._ By ALEXANDER CAMPBELL FRASER, M.A., Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in the University of Edinburgh. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1871.

The English people have not treated their great philosophers well. They have profited by them, made use of their results, and embodied in political, social, and religious life the principles which men like Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume have laboriously thought out and sent forth to enrich the common stock of human knowledge; but they have not sufficiently honoured their intellectual guides. They have not striven to obtain a clear and consistent conception of the whole of each great man's life, nor have they cared to estimate the full sweep of his influence upon the thought of his fellows. They have been content to sum up the result of life labours in the meagre formula, Hobbes, who was the father of Locke, who was the father of Berkeley, who was the father of Hume. They have measured the ingathering influence of the lake by the amount of water carried into it by the stream coming from the lake above, its outgoing action by the amount of water which the river bears away to the lake beneath. The thousand rills which trickle down from the hills and neighbouring highlands are forgotten, the constant unseen action of air and heat and light bearing away the myriad waterdrops to store them in the clouds of the firmament, ready to hear when the corn and the vine call to the earth, and the earth calleth to the heavens, and to answer in life-bringing showers, is left unremembered. Until Cambridge gave us Bacon's Works, edited by Messrs. Ellis and Spedding, England had not one good annotated edition of her great philosophers. Oxford has now given us Berkeley. We have only hope to trust to for Locke and Hume, the greatest and most powerful of all. And English philosophy pays the penalty of the neglect in the one-sidedness, superficiality, and inadequateness which have to some extent characterized it. It is with great pleasure, therefore, that we welcome this beautiful, complete, and carefully-edited edition of the works of Bishop Berkeley, and thank the authorities of the Clarendon Press for what we hope is only the first fruits of a series of our great philosophers.

There is wisdom in the selection. Bishop Berkeley, of all English thinkers, is most easily misunderstood when detached portions of his writings are studied by themselves apart from their relation to the whole, and when his philosophy is criticised by those who have no knowledge of his life. How many of those who know and have discussed Berkeley's theory of vision, his nominalism, and his sensationalism, are aware that the theory of vision was only the first step in the exposition of a comprehensive theory of causality,--that his nominalism was only the denial of the conceptualist doctrine of universals, was suppressed in his latest writings, as if he had felt it to have been too sweeping, and was supplanted by a doctrine of realism almost akin to Plato's,--and that his sensationalism, inherited from Locke and bequeathed to Hume, was only one moment in a Platonic idealism, which he had learnt in his youth from More and Norris, in his old age from Plotinus and the Neo-Platonists, and which he left to be developed by Kant. The truth is, that in Berkeley we have the meeting-place of two distinct streams of thought, both of which had already received distinct but inadequate expression in England. He inherits the intellectual wealth of the Cambridge Platonists, as well as the clearer, though less profound results of Hobbes and Locke. He has been misunderstood and misrepresented because his double position, inadequately expressed, and not uniformly maintained, has been unknown to so many of his readers, Berkeley, the disciple of Locke, the Nominalist, the amiable, unconscious sceptic, is familiar to most students of philosophy. Berkeley, the Platonist, the Realist, the idealist combatant of scepticism, who found in Miss Forster the mystic and the disciple of Fénélon and Madame Guyon the lady 'whose humour and turn of mind pleased him beyond anything that he knew in her whole sex,' is not so well known.

The great value which this edition of Berkeley's philosophical writings will have is that it presents us with the whole of his philosophy, and by some pregnant annotations enables us to trace the unity of the principle which binds them into a more or less consistent whole. Professor Fraser, in preparing this edition, has kept the following objects chiefly in view:--

'(1.) To revise the text of the works formerly published,
and to present them in a satisfactory arrangement.

'(2.) To help the reader to reach Berkeley's own point of
view in each work, by means of bibliographical and
analytical prefaces, and occasional annotations or brief
dissertations, in which the author might be compared with
himself, and studied in his relations to the circumstances
in which he wrote.

'(3.) To collect and publish any hitherto unpublished
writings of Berkeley which might illustrate his opinions or
character.

'(4.) To offer a comprehensive conception of his implied
philosophy as a whole.'

These objects have been so well realized that we are enabled for the first time to survey Berkeley's character and opinions as a whole, to see how his life and philosophy act and react on each other, to view his great principles dimly shaping themselves in his earliest speculation recorded in his student common-place book, and to see how his latest and deepest thoughts are but the more adequate expression of his early musings. Professor Fraser's summary of Berkeley's philosophy, given in the fourth volume, will do much to destroy and render impossible the one-sided criticism to which the opinions of the philosopher have been so long subjected. He has shown that Berkeley's philosophy is not the dried-up intellectual cistern of a solitary thinker of the last century--is not a barren 'subjective idealism' which a breath of 'common sense' can 'for ever render impossible,' but is a living fountain from which our greatest modern English thinkers have not disdained to draw; and he might have shown that it is instinct with the germs of those philosophical principles which under the name of the _Ideal-Realismus_, are leavening modern German thought. We venture to predict that hereafter every historian and critic of philosophy will have to reconsider the commonplace verdict which, first pronounced by Dr. Thomas Reid in this country, by Kant in Germany, and by Cousin in France, has been repeated wearisomely by their successors. At the same time, we would not homologate every statement which Professor Fraser has made about the philosophy of his author. We are inclined to think that he has not sufficiently recognised the historical position of Bishop Berkeley. He has too much regarded him as occupying a unique place in the history of speculation, and neglected some of those facts of English philosophy which serve to explain Berkeley's position and principles. No thinker, and especially no great thinker, can occupy a position historically inexplicable. He is the exponent of the thoughts and feelings of his time, the interpreter of their present meaning, and the unconscious prophet of their future development. And Berkeley was no exception to this rule. It is just because he lived in an age in which two different streams met, and because he alone of the thinkers then living combined them, that he is to be reckoned among the few great English thinkers; and it is because the two tendencies then at work and conflicting with each other contained the undeveloped germs of the living principles now combining that Berkeley's philosophy is not to be thrown aside as a useless relic of the past, but to be studied as the inadequate expression of much that is deepest and truest in the present English and German philosophy.[219] 'England's Antiphon' against the sensational psychology, sceptical metaphysics, and utilitarian ethics, which form the bulk of her contributions to the general stock of philosophy, has usually found expression in her poetry and religion rather than in her philosophy; but there have always been thinkers who have refused to accept the common creed, and to suffer themselves to glide down the stream of popular opinion. Their protest has seldom been loud-voiced. They have generally lived solitary, unheeded lives; but their presence, like a scent unseen, has had its impalpable, invisible influence. English mysticism is a fact, though unrecorded in the pages of the history of her philosophers; and English mysticism was never stronger than in the generation preceding Berkeley. The Cambridge Platonists had but lately passed away. Four or five translations of Jacob Böhmen had showed the popular studies, Norris of Bemerton was so well known that his philosophy could be ridiculed in an elaborate parody, and Tom Brown, 'of facetious memory,' could tickle a not too fastidious public with a caricature of his Platonic love. The influence of Malebranche was felt upon English philosophy. Fénélon and Madame Guyon had their English disciples, and the gross immorality of the times of the earlier Georges had its opposite in the refined mysticism which appears in many of the religious and philosophical writers of the period. By education, training, studies and temperament, Berkeley was fitted to combine this mystical philosophy with the ruder and more practical sensationalism of Locke. He did so; and because he did so, he begins the second period of modern philosophy. However we regard Berkeley--whether as a man, as a Christian philanthropist, or as a metaphysician--we find the same unconscious combination of practical sagacity and of refined enthusiasm, a keen eye for fact, and a deep mind for theory, along with a continual incapacity to combine adequately or express fully, either by action or speech, the double tendency which is the secret of his power. We feel as if Berkeley were always struggling with a great thought which he did not wholly see, and could not adequately express. The young student of Trinity College is labouring to record in his commonplace book a principle which will prove to be the universal solvent, and set right everything that is wrong. The young philosopher has elaborated the principles of human knowledge which are to banish scepticism, re-establish theology, philosophy, and the physical sciences on new and lasting foundations. The missionary has a scheme for transplanting the virtues, arts, and sciences to a new continent, since an extravagant nobility and a reckless and dishonest passion for speculation have impoverished and demoralized the chief countries in Europe. The philanthropic bishop finds that a national bank will redeem his country from all her troubles, and that tar-water is a panacea for every ill the flesh is heir to. Everywhere we find the practical man and the idealist. Everywhere we find the same keen eye for facts not quite comprehensive enough; the same wealth of ideas which, nevertheless, wants the intellectual momentum needed to carry out a great philosophical conception; the same prophetic vision of principles and facts which are afterwards to become plain, accompanied by the inability to clear the way for their present manifestation.

Professor Fraser has given us a beautiful picture of young Berkeley and his surroundings in Trinity College, Dublin. Born at Dysart Castle, in the beautiful valley of the Nore, and educated at the famous Kilkenny School, the Eton of Ireland, Berkeley came up to Trinity College in the spring of 1700, and at once found himself near a whirl of intellectual life, into which he threw himself with ardour. The influence of the discoveries of Newton, Boyle, and Hooke, and the speculations of Descartes, Locke, and Malebranche, was beginning to show itself in the University, and was gradually displacing the old scholasticism; and the bright, clever lad looked with eagerness towards all the new lights which were beginning to shine upon him. An amusing story is told of his fondness for experiment, and his dreamy disregard of consequences. He had gone to see an execution, and returned pensive and melancholy, but strangely inquisitive about the sensations experienced by the unfortunate criminal in the crisis of his fate. He took counsel with an intimate college friend, Conterini, the uncle of Oliver Goldsmith, and

'it was agreed between them that he should himself try the
experiment, and be relieved by his friend on a signal
arranged, after which Conterini, in his turn, was to repeat
the experiment. Berkeley was accordingly tied up to the
ceiling, and the chair removed from under his feet. Losing
consciousness, his companion waited in vain for the signal.
The enthusiastic inquirer might have been hung in good
earnest,--and as soon as he was relieved he fell motionless
upon the floor. On recovering himself his first words
were--"Bless my heart, Conterini, you have rumpled my
band."'

We need not wonder that this incident caused Berkeley to be looked upon as an eccentric by his fellow-students, nor that he had to bear the usual annoyances which befall those who get the name. With all his eccentricity, however, he seems to have been the centre of a company of friends, who thought him a prodigy of learning and amiability; and his college career was very successful.

'He was made a Scholar in 1702. In the spring of 1704 (the
year Locke died) he became Bachelor of Arts. He took his
Master's degree in the spring of 1707. After the customary
arduous examination of that University, conducted in
presence of nobility, gentry, and high officials, he passed
with unprecedented applause, and was admitted to a
Fellowship, June 9, 1707, "the only reward of learning that
kingdom has to bestow," as one of his biographers curtly
says.'