Chapter IX: The Black Sea Treaty--The Commune

I.

In September, 1870, shortly after the Siege of Paris had begun, the Russian Chancellor, Gortschakof, intimated to the Powers that the Tsar proposed to repudiate that article in the Treaty of Paris which declared the Black Sea neutral, forbade Russia to build arsenals on it, and limited her fleet there to six small vessels. [Footnote: Treaty of Paris, July 13th, 1856 (Hertslet's _Treaties_, vol. xiv., p. 1172).] This particular article had been specially demanded by England; and when France, desirous of closing the Crimean War, spoke of yielding to Russia's resistance, Palmerston had declared that without this stipulation England and Turkey must carry on the war alone.

Sir Charles, on this matter as on many others, inclined to the Palmerstonian tradition, which was certainly neither that of Mr. Gladstone nor of Lord Granville. But Lord Granville gave him introductions for his projected second journey to Russia, and charged the young Liberal member with the task of representing the Cabinet's views:

"In talking to Russians I hope that you will say that we are about the
most peaceable Ministry it is possible for England to have, but we are
determined not to put up with any indignity. On the other hand, we
greatly regret any stop to increasing good relations between the two
countries, and shall be glad to make them even more cordial than
before if we are properly treated."

He added the request that Sir Charles would write him first-hand impressions of the situation in Russia.

From St. Petersburg Sir Charles, in November, 1870, went to Moscow, where he lived with the Mayor, Prince Tcherkasky, 'who afterwards became Governor of Bulgaria, and died at San Stefano, just after the signature of the Treaty.' He was thus brought into touch with 'the political intrigues' of the moment:

'The Imperial Prince, who was afterwards Alexander III., was no
stranger to them. Alexander II. was, like his grandfather Alexander
I., a German and a dreamer, as well as melancholy mad. His son, the
Imperial Prince, like his grandfather Nicholas and like Paul, was both
violent and sulky; but he was patriotic, and had at this time the
sense to put himself in the hands of the Moscow men.'

"It is satisfactory to know that the antagonism of an heir-apparent to the reigning Sovereign docs not depend on race or climate," was, says Sir Charles, Lord Granville's comment on this description.

'It was an interesting moment, and no foreign residence of my life was
ever more full of the charm which attaches to the development of new
political situations. The Emperor Alexander II. had fallen back from a
most brilliant early part of his reign into its second period, which
saw the rise of his unpopularity and the birth of Nihilism. He had
become frightened, had not perhaps lost all his good intentions, but
become too terrified to escape political reaction. His son, afterwards
Alexander III., was, as often happens in despotisms, glorified by a
popularity which he afterwards did not retain. When I saw the heir-
apparent at his palace he seemed to me to be a hard-working, stupid
man, and I never afterwards was able during his reign to divest myself
of this first impression.

'Of all those that I met in Russia, the ablest were the two brothers
Miliutine. The General, I think, survived his brother by a long time,
and continued to be Minister of War for years after his brother's
death; but the brother, the Miliutine of the reorganization of Poland
after the last Polish insurrection, who was when I knew him half
paralyzed in body but most brilliant in mind, struck me as being more
full of ideas than any man I have ever met. His inferior brother was,
though inferior, nevertheless a good Minister of War.

'The Miliutines were Liberals. The leader of the high Tory party of my
time was an equally remarkable man, Count Tolstoi, the iron
representative of iron Toryism, of perfect honesty, in whom energy and
strength were not destroyed by prejudice. He was the most ideal
minister of despotism that autocracy has produced, representing the
principles of order and authority with more ability than is generally
found in leaders of his type. He was intensely hated by the
Universities and by most of those, chiefly Liberals, with whom he
lived. But although he is said by his terrorism to have created
Nihilism, I am far from being convinced that any other course was
possible to the Russian Empire, and if this course was to be taken, he
took it well. In modern times there never was so unpopular a Minister,
and when, in after years, Alexander III. recalled him to power as
Minister of the Interior, one could not but feel that the break
between the principles acted on by this Sovereign as Emperor, and
those which he had honestly professed when heir-apparent, was
complete.

'I not only well knew Jomini, but I had made the acquaintance in 1868
in London (and renewed it at a later date) of his colleague Vlangali,
at that time as truly brilliant and as supple as Jomini himself,
though as silent as Jomini was talkative; ... and between them and
their marvellous subordinates, Hamburger the hunchback Jew, and his
head of the Asiatic Department, Westmann, I do not wonder that two
stupid men, the vain Gortschakof and the drill-sergeant de Giers, were
able successively to pretend to rule the Foreign Office without the
policy of the country suffering.

'In Katkof I was greatly disappointed. The man was very powerful under
two reigns, and with the exception of Count Tolstoi, he was the only
man who was so, since otherwise all the adherents of Alexander II.
were in disgrace during the reign of Alexander III.; but I could see
nothing in Katkof except strength of will and obstinacy. He was
entirely without judgment or measure or charm. The two Vassiltchikofs
were men of what is called in Russia a "European" type, or
"civilized." There was nothing specially Russian about them, but they
were far pleasanter than as a rule are able Russians, and this was
also the case with Madame Novikof's brothers, the two Kiriefs. In
general it may be said that in the Moscow chiefs of the Slav
Committees there was more European give and take, and less obstinacy
or pig-headed Toryism of Russian character, than among any other set.
One of the Vassiltchikofs had an art collection, and afterwards
became, I think, Art Director at St. Petersburg, while the other, who
was the greater Slav, and who was the son-in-law of Prince Orlof
Davydof of St. Petersburg, who sent me to him at Moscow, was chiefly
given to good works in Moscow. I think, if I remember right, that my
hostess, Princess Tcherkasky, with whom I lodged, was their sister.

'I saw a good deal of Peter Schouvalof, known as "all-powerful," of
whom I afterwards again saw a great deal when I was at the Foreign
Office and he was Ambassador in London. He was the bitter enemy of
Count Tolstoi all through life; but his complete fall, and it may even
be said utter destruction, during the reign of Alexander III., was, I
think, not owing to this fact, but because he was easygoing and had
made friends with the morganatic wife of Alexander II. in his last
years. Alexander III. never forgave anyone who had shown this
disrespect to the memory of his mother, although as soon as his son in
time succeeded to the throne, the members of the Imperial family
visiting France, who had never acknowledged the existence of the
Princess during all the years of Alexander III.'s reign, immediately
began to revisit her at Biarritz or in Paris.

'Peter Schouvalof represented the French Regency in our times, with
all its wit, with all its half-refined coarseness--the coarseness of
great gentlemen--with the drunkenness of the companions of the Regent,
and with their courage. At the time that I knew him in St. Petersburg
he was as much hated as his enemy Count Tolstoi, but that was because
he held the terrible office of head of the Third Section or Director
of the Secret Police, with the power of life and death over everyone
except the Emperor. It was a somewhat sinister contrast to find, in
one who used to the full the awful powers of his office, the greatest
gaiety that existed in mortal man, unless in Gambetta.

'K. Aksakof was in Moscow the superior in power even of Tcherkasky the
Mayor, even of the two Samarines, even of Miliutine of Moscow, the
brother of the General. He was not in reality so strong a man, but he
had the ear of the heir-apparent, and I cannot but think, from a good
deal which came to my knowledge at the time, that there was some
secret society organization among the Slavophiles, of which he was the
occult chief. Some think that had he liked he would have continued to
rule Alexander III. after the latter ascended the throne, but my own
impression is that he would have ended his days in Siberia. His
brother John, who survived and had influence, was a very different
man, and held other views. His influence for a time was enormous,
although I could more easily have understood the dominance in the
party of Miliutine or of Samarine. Katkof retained his influence
because he was above all of the despotic party. Aksakof would have
failed to retain his, because, although he held, as an article of
faith, that reforms must come from the Emperor to the people, yet he
desired that the Emperor should be a Russian Liberal--a very different
thing from a "European" Liberal, but still something different from
Alexander III. or from Count Tolstoi's ideal of a Russian autocrat....

'Among those I knew' (says a later note) 'was the pretty little child
of Count Chotek of the Austrian Embassy, the bosom friend of Prince
Henry VII. of Reuss, the Prussian Ambassador. The child's mother,
Chotek's wife, was Countess Kinsky. She became the wife of the
Archduke Francis Ferdinand, and the birth of her son, in 1902, was
hailed by the Magyars as that of an heir to the throne of the dual
monarchy, and may lead to civil war in Austria some day.' [Footnote:
It was the assassination of this Archduke which preceded the Great War
of 1914.]

Sir Charles continued to correspond with Lord Granville about the international complication. The Foreign Secretary wrote in December of the proposed Conference of London that--

"It would not be a bad result that each side should imagine it had had
a victory. There would remain the public opinion of Europe, and as we
are neither of us popular, that may be tolerably impartial."

The Russian point of view had been put to Sir Charles before he left England in a letter from Baron Jomini, who complained that attempts to revise the Treaty of Paris by a European Congress had repeatedly failed, because England had always made it a condition that at such "a Congress the Eastern question should not be raised." What, then, was open to Russia--since "all the world privately admitted that the position created for her by the Treaty of 1856 was inequitable and an obstacle to good understanding" but to show the signatory Powers the impossibility of her remaining any longer in a false position?

The view which Sir Charles formed at the time was in strong condemnation of Lord Granville's action. In his opinion, Great Britain, by consenting to a Conference (proposed by Russia's friend; Prussia), consented to negotiate upon an act of repudiation by which her own rights were infringed; and this surrender seemed to him wholly unnecessary. Later knowledge only confirmed him in his opinion.

'We knew' (he writes in the Memoir) 'that Austria, the original
proposer of the neutralization, had on November 22nd stated that she
would join us in a war with Russia if we declared war upon the
question, and Italy had already declared that she would act with
Austria and ourselves. On the other hand, we now know (1906) that the
British Cabinet of 1856 did not contain a member who thought the
neutralization worth anything, or that it could be maintained beyond
"the first opportunity." Gladstone, in 1879, returned to the question,
and said that even Turkey had been willing to agree in 1870 to what
had been done; but from a despatch to Lord Granville, dated November
24th, 1870, which has been published, it is clear that Austria, Italy,
and Turkey would have gone along with us. Under these circumstances no
fighting would have been wanted. All that we need have done would have
been to have declared that we should take no notice of the Russian
denunciation, and to have sent our fleet into the Black Sea, and the
Russians could have done nothing but give in, as a platonic
declaration that they were free would not have enabled them to launch
a ship. Then we might gracefully have yielded; but as it was, we gave
in to a mere threat of force.'

Acceptance of the Conference, moreover, seemed to Sir Charles a betrayal of France. France, who had been England's ally in the Crimea, one of the signatory Powers to the Black Sea Treaty, saw her capital beleaguered by the Prussian friends of the Power which repudiated the Treaty, and could not even send a representative to the Conference to protest.

It was natural, then, that at the opening of Parliament in 1871 the member for Chelsea should raise this question. But to do so involved the bringing forward of a motion tantamount to a vote of censure on the Government, which Sir Charles Dilke himself supported; and Mr. Gladstone contrived to put his too critical supporter in a difficulty.

The Queen's Speech inevitably contained reference to Prince Gortschakof's action, and in both Houses there was considerable comment upon this in the debate on the Address. The Prime Minister referred to the opportunity for fuller discussion which would be afforded by Sir Charles's motion, but, when pressed to name a day for the motion, deprecated discussion while the Conference was sitting. Frequent questioning led finally to the intervention of Mr. Disraeli, who raised the whole question of Conference and Treaty in a speech, and was answered by Mr. Gladstone. When after all this Sir Charles still persisted in his motion, the purpose of which was not to discuss either the methods or the results of the Conference, but to deplore the Government's action in having entered on it at all, Mr. Gladstone declared that Government could spare no time, and would give a day only if it were taken as a direct vote of censure, which they must in honour meet; adding that the day could only be found by the postponement of a Licensing Bill which had much support in the Liberal party. Sir Charles persevered, and made a very able speech, to which no serious answer was given. He entirely destroyed the pretence that the Conference had met without a "foregone conclusion," and stigmatized the indecent haste which could not wait to secure the presence of France even as an assenting party to this acceptance of an act of repudiation. But the House was dominated by dislike for anything which seemed to hint at opening up a new European war at the moment when a settlement of the existing conflict was expected. The Tories, 'would only speak, and would not vote'; while Sir Charles's Radical associates, such as Mr. Peter Rylands, welcomed anything done under pretext of avoiding war.

'An attempt was made by Sir Henry Bulwer, the cynical and brilliant
brother of Lord Lytton, by Mr. Horsman and Mr. Otway, to use my motion
for their own purposes. Otway had resigned his Under-Secretaryship of
Foreign Affairs on account of his strong opinion upon the question,
and was distressed to find that his resignation had fallen flat.
Horsman was always discontented, and Bulwer wanted to be a peer.
[Footnote: Sir Henry Bulwer was afterwards created Lord Calling; Mr.
Horsman had been a conspicuous Adullamite in the previous Parliament.]
I used to tell Bulwer up to his death that I gave him his peerage, for
he received Gladstone's offer of the peerage just in time to prevent
him from speaking for my motion. Bulwer, whom I had known as
Ambassador at Constantinople, Sir Andrew Buchanan, whom I had known as
Ambassador at St. Petersburg, Horsman, and Otway came and dined with
me, and we made a great plot, and thought we were going to upset the
arrangement with the Russians. But Gladstone succeeded in taking away
Goldsmid, who was one of our very few Liberal supporters, made Bulwer
a peer, and left me only with Otway, Gregory, afterwards Governor of
Ceylon, and Horsman....

'I ought to have divided, even if I had been in a minority of one, for
the proposal to withdraw my motion brought a hornet's nest about my
ears, and was a parliamentary mistake.'

Michel Chevalier, the celebrated French Economist and Free Trader, wrote thanking Sir Charles. He had spent, he said, thirty years of his life in advocating an Anglo-French understanding, and now he would not know how to look his countrymen in the face were it not for the courageous utterances of a few friendly Englishmen to which he could point as evidences of a good-will that had not forsaken France in her evil day.

II.

'Immediately after my return to England in the middle of the winter of
1870-1871, which had already been the severest ever known in Russia, I
again started for the scene of war. I first visited the army of
General Faidherbe, which was gallantly fighting in the north, and I
was present at one of the engagements near Bapaume, in which the
French took prisoners sixty sharpshooters of the Prussian Landwehr--
splendid soldiers, towering above our little Frenchmen, to whom it
seemed incredible, whatever the odds, they should have surrendered. I
never saw so wretched an army to look at as Faidherbe's. His cavalry
were but a squadron. He had one good regiment of foot Chasseurs and
two good regiments of marines; and the gunners of his artillery
(escaped men from Sedan) were excellent, and the guns were new; but he
had for his main body some 20,000 second-skim of the National Guard,
the cream from the north having been sent south to the Army of the
East under Bourbaki, with whom they were driven into Switzerland.

'Ours were what schoolboys would call second choice. Oh, such men! and
without boots, without overcoats, facing arctic weather in wooden
shoes and old sacks--facing the Prussians, too, with old muzzle-
loading guns; but they fought well, and their leader, a man of genius,
made the most of them. I returned two or three times to England--that
is, to Dover--to eat and buy things I could carry, for I could hardly
get anything at Lille, where, by the way, I heard Gambetta make his
great speech. It was the finest oratorical display to which I ever
listened, though I have heard Castelar, Bright, Gladstone, the Prime
Minister Lord Derby, Gathorne Hardy, and Father Félix (the great
Jesuit preacher) often, at their very best.

'Picking up Auberon Herbert, who was on his way to Versailles to wait
for the surrender of Paris in order to take in food to his brother
Alan, who was serving as a doctor on the ambulance inside, I went to
the siege of Longwy. Like all the fortresses of France bombarded in
this war, with two exceptions, it surrendered far too easily.

'From Longwy we passed on to Montmédy, at which latter place we
witnessed the immediate effects of a fearful railway accident, a
collision in a tunnel between a trainful of French prisoners and one
of recruits for the Prussian Guards. The scene in the darkness and
smoke, with the stalwart, long-bearded Landwehr men, who formed the
garrison of the town, holding blazing torches of pine and pitch, and
the glare from the fires of the upset engines, was one which would
have delighted Rembrandt. When a rush of water, a cataract from the
roof of the lately blown-up tunnel, suddenly occurred, adding to the
horror of the night, the place was pandemonium. Almost the only men
unhurt in the front carriages, which were smashed to pieces, were the
Mayors of the villages on the line, travelling compulsorily as
hostages for the safety of the trains. I made military reflections on
the advantage of blowing up tunnels, as against the practice of
destroying bridges and so forth.'

Sir Charles was one of the first in Paris after the siege (which was raised by an armistice on January 29th, 1871), taking in with him a large quantity of condensed milk, of which he made presents to his Paris friends. The purpose of the armistice was to enable regular conditions to be signed between the conqueror and the conquered. The Imperial Government had declared war on Prussia; but the Empire had fallen and the existing Government was only provisional. It had a branch in Paris, another branch in Bordeaux, and between these the investing army barred all intercommunication. The purpose of the armistice was to allow the holding of elections throughout France to return a National Assembly, which in its turn should appoint Ministers fully authorized to treat for peace. The elections did but emphasize the division between Paris and the provinces, for in Paris an Ultra-Radical representative was returned, while in the country a considerable majority of monarchical deputies were elected. Republican France feared, and not without cause, some attempt to re- establish a dynasty.

When, on February 20th, the new Government, with Thiers at its head, signed preliminaries of peace, a condition was included which stipulated that the Prussian troops should formally enter Paris and remain for three days in possession of all the forts before evacuating the place. The National Guard, refusing to obey orders, entrenched itself in Montmartre; the seat of government was transferred to Versailles, lately the Prussian headquarters; fighting broke out in the streets, and the control of the city was seized in the name of the Commune.

So began the second siege, in which revolutionary Paris stood at bay against those whom they called 'the Prussians of Versailles,' while the real Prussians, still occupying part of the exterior line of forts, looked on, impartial spectators. Sir Charles writes:

'At this time my attention was exclusively turned to foreign affairs,
and immediately after my Black Sea speech I started for Paris. I took
with me an appointment as a Daily News correspondent--not that I
intended to correspond, but only because it would explain my presence.
Having been unable to leave London during the first days of the rising
of March 18th, which developed into the Commune of Paris, I left it
with my brother on April 2nd, and reached Creil at night, and St.
Denis in the morning. From Creil I wrote to my grandmother: "We shall
reach Paris in the morning. It is no use writing, and we shall not be
able to write to you." We drove into Paris, and at once went to the
Hotel de Ville, where we found the famous Central Committee sitting.
We obtained from some Garibaldian officers of the Staff a special pass
to leave Paris in order to see Gustave Flourens, for whom I was
carrying a private letter from a friend of his in London.... The drums
were beating through the streets all day, and great numbers of
National Guards were under arms attempting to march upon Versailles,
and there was heavy fighting, which we witnessed from a distance.

'We counted 160 battalions of National Guards all carrying the red
flag, and saw altogether, as near as we could compute, almost 110,000
men. That all Paris was in the movement at this time was clear, not
only from this fact, but also from the following: that on March 26th
between 226,000 and 227,000 electors voted, a full vote for Paris
considering the great number of persons who, having left Paris before
the siege, had not returned. In the municipal elections after the
Commune, when the Conservatives had come back and made a great attempt
to win, the total number of voters was only 186,000. I noticed at the
Hôtel de Ville that the Parisians had a great many sailors in uniform
with them. These were sailors who had remained in Paris after serving
there during the siege, and my pass was handed to me by a splendid
specimen of a French tar wearing the name of the _Richelieu_ on his
hat. I was one of the few persons not in the insurrection (and these
were mostly killed) who saw the pictures in the Hôtel de Ville so
late--that is, so soon before the fire which destroyed them all--and I
recognized old friends which I had known from 1855, when I was there
at the great ball. Those who showed us from room to room were chiefly
Garibaldian Poles, among them the Dombrowskis, one of whom was killed,
and two of whom I afterwards befriended in London in their exile.

'The next morning we left Paris early by the Vaugirard gate, for no
one could tell us where Flourens was engaged. We had followed the main
line of fighting; his death occurred upon the other line; but so great
was the confusion of these days that we knew nothing of it until the
5th. We thought that to make for Clamart would be the surest course to
bring us to the forefront of battle, and at 8 a.m. we were in Issy. We
then heard heavy firing, and came over the hill between Forts Issy and
Vanves, but there was a dense fog which deadened sound, and it was not
till we were well down the hillside that we heard the crunch of the
machine-guns, when we suddenly found ourselves under a heavy fire from
the other side. Seeing the railway embankment in front of us at the
bottom of the hill, we ran down and got under shelter near an arch at
the corner of a park wall, which may, perhaps, have been the cemetery.
Here we sat in safety while the bullets sang in swarms through the
trees over our heads, while the forts cannonaded the heights, and the
heights bombarded the forts, and while the federal regiments of the
National Guard tried in vain to carry once more the line of hills
which they had carried on the previous day, but had of their own
accord at night abandoned, having no commissariat. They used, in fact,
to go home to dinner. Indeed, many would in the morning take an
omnibus to the battlefield, and fight, and take the omnibus back home
again to dine and sleep--a system of warfare which played into the
hands of the experienced old soldiers--the police of Paris--all ex-
non-commissioned officers, and the equally well-trained Customs guards
and forest guards, by whom they were opposed. General Vinoy, who was
commanding, had, however, heavy work on this day, in which Duval, the
General of the Commune, met his death within a quarter of a mile of
the spot where we were hiding. With this day ended, indeed, the
offensive operations of the Federalists against Versailles, and began
the offensive operations of the regulars against Paris. After sitting
a long time in our corner we found ourselves starved, and ran up the
hill by the park wall, under a heavy fire, to Issy and then walked
into Paris. I have a bullet in my room which struck the wall between
us just as we reached shelter at the top. One of my curiosities of the
time is the official newspaper of April 4th, which was conducted, of
course, for the insurrection, but which played so well at being
official that it announced as good news the telegrams from Algeria
showing that the Arab insurrection was being put down, although the
Government which was putting down this insurrection was the very same
Government which was engaged in putting down the more formidable
insurrection in Paris, to which the journal temporarily belonged.

'On Wednesday, the 5th, my brother went to the fighting at Neuilly
bridge, where the troops from Versailles were beginning to develop a
serious attack, destined, however, to continue for six weeks without
result, for Paris was not entered at this point. I, with a letter from
Franqueville [Footnote: Le Comte de Franqueville, well known to a
large circle of English friends by his book, _Le Gouvernement et le
Parlement Britanniques_ (Paris, 1887).] to the Duc de Broglie,
afterwards Prime Minister, in one pocket, and a pass from the
Insurrection in the other, left Paris at 5 a.m. by the Porte
Montrouge, and walked by Bourg la Reine to La Croix de Berny, and
thence by Châtenay to La Cour Roland, where I met a cavalry patrol of
the regular forces, and then came to an infantry camp. Having shown my
letter, my English passport, and my appointment as a newspaper
correspondent, I was allowed to go on to Versailles. There I slept on
a table, there being a terrible crowd of Paris fugitives in the town.
In the morning I had my interview with the Duke. He was kind to me,
and I saw much of him in London and in Paris in later years. Thiers
was right in alluding to his dull father as "The Duc de Broglie; the
other, _the_ duke." But both were narrow doctrinaires.

'After looking at M. Thiers' reserves, which at this time consisted of
250 guns parked on the Place d'Armes, with no artillerymen to work
them, and a Paris regiment, the 118th, raised during the siege, locked
up in the park to prevent their joining the insurrection, I started
for St. Germain, where I met Major Anson, M.P., afterwards the leader
of "the Colonels" (who resisted abolition of army purchase) in the
House of Commons, and lunched, watching the firing of Mont Valérien on
Paris. I then drove to St. Denis, the Prussian headquarters. Thence I
drove again (the La Chapelle gate of Paris being shut) to Pantin.
After a long parley the Belleville-Villette drawbridge was lowered for
me, and I was admitted to Paris, having been almost all round it in
the two days.

'Major Anson gave me a bag of gold to pay to his brother's (Lord
Lichfield's) cook. This man was in Paris, and on the 7th I called on
him at a house close to the Ministry of the Interior, and to the
Palace of the Elysée. The cook's rooms were at the top of the house,
over the Librairie, still there in 1907. He received the visit of
myself and my brother in bed. "Excuse me," he said, "but I have been
fighting these three days, and I am tired out." I asked his wife what
he was fighting for, and she did not in the least know. No more did
he, for the matter of that. He was fighting because his battalion was
fighting. "The Prussians of Versailles" had taken the place of the
other Prussians; that was all. At this moment 215 battalions of the
National Guard supported the insurrection, having joined in pursuance
of the resolution that, in the event of the seat of Government being
transferred from Paris to any other place, Paris was to constitute
itself a separate Republic. This more than anything else was at the
bottom of the insurrection, and, as M. Jules Simon has said, "many
Republicans who were neither Socialists nor Revolutionists hesitated.
One asked oneself if in fighting on the side of order one was not at
the same time fighting for a dynasty." Then, again, serving in the
National Guard meant pay and food, especially for the working man, for
there was no work to be got in Paris, as business had not been
reopened. Moreover, Paris was writhing with rage at the Prussian
entry, and Parisian vanity was engaged on the side of the
insurrection.

'The insurrection was certainly at this time very far from being a
communistic movement, as from a natural confusion of names it was
thought to be by foreigners. There was a burning jealousy in Paris of
the "Rurals," and a real fear, not ill-founded, that a Royalist
conspiracy was on foot. The irritations of the siege, however, played
the largest part. The National Guard, who had fought very well at
Buzenval on January 19th, profoundly moved by the capitulation, had
carried off their guns to their own part of Paris in February, and it
may be said that the insurrection dated from that time, and was
historically a protest against the peace, for M. Thiers temporized
with the insurrection until the old seasoned soldiers were beginning
to return to him from their captivity in Germany. The fighting began
with the sudden attempt of the Government to remove by force the guns
which had been taken to Montmartre, followed as it was by the murder
of two Generals by the mob. [Footnote: General Lecomte and Clément
Thomas, the Commandant of the National Guard, were shot on March 18th,
1871, under conditions of peculiar brutality.] A number of men threw
themselves into the movement from love of fighting for fighting's
sake, like the Garibaldian Poles. Some joined it from ambition, but
the majority of the men who later on died on the walls or in the
streets in the Federalist ranks died, as they believed, for the
Republic, and had no idea of the plunder of the rich. Ricciotti
Garibaldi was near Dijon "in observation," as he afterwards told me.
He said that he wanted to march upon Versailles with his excellent
little army, which would have followed him, and fought well, and would
certainly have taken the new capital, although it would have been
crushed later on. He telegraphed to Garibaldi, and "Papa" telegraphed
to him not to move, Garibaldi being wiser, perhaps, in his son's case
than he would have been had it been his own, for he was not remarkable
for wisdom. It was a strange moment: the Prussians watching the
fighting from those of the forts which were still in their hands, and
a careless, idle Paris crowd of boys and women watching it from the
walls.

'On the 7th my brother and I were all but killed by a shell from Mont
Valérien which suddenly burst, we not having heard it, close to us in
a garden at the corner of the Place de l'Étoile and Avenue d'Uhrich,
as the Avenue de l'Impératrice had at this time been named, from the
General who defended Strasbourg. During the 7th and 8th a senseless
bombardment of a peaceable part of Paris waxed warm, and continued for
some days uselessly to destroy the houses of the best supporters of
the Conservative Assembly without harming the Federalists, who did not
even cross the quarter. M. Simon has said that Thiers did not bombard
Paris; that he only bombarded the walls of Paris at the two points at
which he intended to make a breach.... All I can say is that if this
was the intention there must have been someone in command at Mont
Valérien who failed to carry it into effect, and who amused himself by
knocking the best part of Paris to pieces out of mischief, for no
artilleryman could have been so incapable as to fire from hill to hill
when intending to fire down into that which, viewed from Mont
Valérien, looks like a hole. In 1841, curiously enough, Thiers had
been accused, at the time of the erection of the forts of which Mont
Valérien was one, of making it possible that Paris should be bombarded
in this way, and had indignantly replied, asking the Assembly if they
believed that after having _inondé de ses feux la demeure de vos
familles_ a Government could expect to be continued in power. But in
1871 he did it, and was continued in power for a time, and that with
the triumphant support at the moment of the very persons whose houses
he had destroyed. The Commune had a broad back, and that back was made
to bear the responsibility of the destruction.'

Sir Charles returned to his duties in London after the Easter recess, but he was back in Paris to see the last moments of the second siege. On May 21st the army had forced its way into the city, though several days of bitter street fighting remained, in which the town was fired, and the Hôtel de Ville and Ministry of Finance were destroyed. [Footnote: Sir Charles writes of the celebrated order, "Flambez Finances": 'the order to burn the Ministry of Finance was an undoubted forgery, as a distinguished Frenchman, signing himself "A Communalist," showed in the _Pall Mall Gazette_. The evidence before the court-martial of the porter of the Ministry of Finance, that the fire was caused by shells, confirms my view, and shows how the events of the moment have been distorted by the passions of writers.'] Sir Charles had foreseen the destruction of these uildings, "because they were behind great barricades in the direct line of the necessary attack," and was also proud of the verification which a minor military forecast received. Alan Herbert, Auberon's elder brother, who for many years practised as a doctor in Paris, was awakened on May 21st by a disturbance in the street, and

'"saw several National Guards and dirty-looking fellows taking counsel
together whether they should raise a barricade opposite my windows,
and they were actually beginning it. However," he wrote to his mother,
Lady Carnarvon, "Sir Charles Dilke, when he was in Paris with Auberon,
came to see me here, and the question being raised as to a barricade
being placed opposite my windows he decided it could not be, as the
only proper place for one would be some doors lower down at the
meeting of the three streets. This recollection was some consolation
to me, and his opinion was quite correct, for an officer arrived,
supposed to have been the General Dombrowski, who made them begin
lower down."'

It was on May 25th that Sir Charles left London to reach Paris, which was known by the 24th to be in flames.

'Crossing by Calais, I reached St. Denis at night, drove to Le
Bourget, got a pass into Paris from the Germans at dawn, with a
warning, however, that it would not bring me out again. By the
drizzling rain I passed unhindered into Paris, all the gates being
open and the drawbridges down, as the Federalists were both within and
without the walls. I reached the great barricade in front of the gates
of the Docks de la Villette at seven in the morning. My road had been
lighted till the daylight grew strong by the flames of the
conflagration of the warehouses. This day, Friday the 26th, was that
of the third or last massacre of hostages--the thirty-seven gendarmes,
the fifteen policemen, the eleven priests, and four other people, I
believe. It was a very useless crime. When I reached the great
barricade at a meeting of roads, one of which I think was called Route
d'Allemagne, fighting had just recommenced after a pause during the
night. At this point the field artillery were bombarding the barricade
from the Rue Lafayette. I stood all day in comparative safety at the
door of a baker's shop in the Rue de Flandre, for the baker was
interested in what was going on sufficiently to keep his door open and
look out and talk with me, though his shutters were up at all the
windows. When evening came the Federalists still at this point
maintained their strong position, and I, of course, knew nothing of
the movements on the south by which the troops had all but hemmed them
in. The baker with whom I had made friends offered me hospitality for
the night, which I accepted, and I might have stayed longer with him
had I pleased; but not knowing how long the fighting might continue, I
determined to make my way into the Versailles lines at dawn.

'Fighting in our quarter had been again suspended at night, and in the
grey light of early morning (it was fine after a long rain) I left my
baker and made my way to the left, the left again, and then down a
long street towards the Eastern Railway. A sentry about two hundred
yards off presented his piece. I stood still in the middle of the
street. He seemed then not to know what to do. I had on the red-cross
armlet which I wore throughout the war, and held a white handkerchief
in my hand. I suppose I looked respectable enough to be allowed to
come nearer, for he let me advance. When near enough I called to him
that I wished to speak with the officer of the post. He called out a
corporal, to whom I made the same statement. They kept me there for a
time which seemed an age, and then brought an officer. I shouted to
him that I was an English newspaper correspondent, that I had an
authorization as such, an English passport, and a Prussian pass into
Paris, and that I was known to the Due de Broglie and to Lord Lyons;
also that I could name friends in the centre of Paris to whom I might
be sent under guard. He let me pass, and said: "Allez! Vous avez eu de
la chance." I went straight to the Arts et Métiers. The dead were
lying thick in the streets, especially at the Porte St. Martin
barricade, where they were being placed in tumbrils. The fighting had
been very heavy; the troops alone had lost 12,000 killed and wounded
after entering Paris. At least as many Federalists were killed
fighting, or wounded and finished, besides the great number shot after
their surrender. I found Tresca, the father, picking up the pieces of
the shells which were bursting in the courtyard, and putting them all
together with wires, to the greater glory of his own particular make.
It was the Federal artillery on the heights which was bombarding Paris
with Tresca's shells. When one burst perfectly into some twenty equal
pieces he would say:" Beautiful; that is one of mine." Any that burst
into one large piece and two or three little ones he set down to the
"génie militaire" of Vincennes.

'After several days I left Paris with Dr. W. H. Russell of the
_Times_, my former opponent at Chelsea at the '68 election, whom I had
last previously seen at Nancy on the day of Mars la Tour, and returned
to London, having for the purpose of leaving Paris a pass from Marshal
MacMahon's Chief of the Staff, which I still preserve.' [Footnote:
This Diary Extract of the War of 1870 was published in the _Nineteenth
Century_ of January, 1914.]

So ends the story. Later in life, during his championship of army reform in the House of Commons, a Tory Colonel interrupted the civilian critic with some bluntness. "I have been on more battlefields," Sir Charles retorted, "than the honourable and gallant member has ever seen." The white ambulance cap, with its black and green peak, which he preserved as a memento, bore on its lining:

"WÖRTH. ORLÉANS.
PHALSBOURG. LONGWY.
MARS LA TOUR. BAPAUME.
GRAVELOTTE. PARIS."

Preserved among Sir Charles's papers, and dated September 30th, 1870, there is this letter from John Stuart Mill:

"If Gladstone had been a great man, this war would never have broken
out, for he would have nobly taken upon himself the responsibility of
declaring that the English Navy should actively aid whichever of the
two Powers was attacked by the other. This would have been the
beginning of the international justice we are calling for. I do not
blame Gladstone for not daring to do it, for it requires a morally,
braver man than any of our statesmen to run this kind of risk."

At the outset of hostilities France, and not Germany, appeared to Sir Charles not only ostensibly, but really the attacking Power, and therefore the true menace to the liberties of Europe. The policy of Louis Napoleon was apparently responsible for the Franco-German War, and as he said in _Greater Britain_: "If the English race has a mission in the world, it is surely this, to prevent peace on earth from depending upon the verdict of a single man." With the fall of Napoleon and observation of the Germans as conquerors, Sir Charles became wholly French in his sympathies, and before long his close study of events preceding the war showed him that it had really been of Bismarck's making. This did not lead him to advocate "alliance," for when alliances between various Powers were constantly advocated, he declared his belief that "the time for permanent alliances is past"; [Footnote: Speech at Chelsea to his constituents, January 24th, 1876.] but his observations in these years made him through life the steady friend of France, the constant upholder of her value to Europe, the advocate of fellowship between her free greatness and that of his own free country. "France," said he, "has in England no stronger friend than I." He lectured and spoke more than once upon the great war and its results, and the passage which ends a Recess speech of 1875 was delivered after one of the critical moments when Germany had shown a disposition to renew attack on France. Someone had spoken of Germany "as the most 'moral' among the nations." Sir Charles replied:

'Not only do I think the conduct of Prussia towards Denmark the
reverse of "moral," but I confess I have the same opinions of her
later conduct towards France.... No doubt the military law presses
hardly on the German people, and no doubt the Prussian Court tells
them that it is the fault of France; but is it true? Do not believe in
the French lamb troubling the waters to the hurt of the Prussian wolf.
Taxes and emigration increase in Germany because, as Count Moltke said
in his place in Parliament, "Germany must stand armed to the teeth for
fifty years to defend the provinces which it took her but six months
to win." But why have taken them? Did not England and Austria at the
time warn Prussia what would be the wretched consequences of the act?
German fears of to-day are the direct outcome of the frightful terms
which victorious Germany imposed on France. She might have had money,
reduction of forces, dismantlement of fortresses, but she would have
the dismemberment of France and her money too. She insisted, in
defiance of all modern political ideas, in tearing provinces from a
great country against their will. France has since that time set an
example of moderation of tone, yet Germany cries out that she will
fight again, and crush her enemy to the dust. Poor German Liberals,
who abandoned all their principles when they consented to tear Alsace
and Lorraine from France, and who now find themselves powerless
against the war party, who say: "What the sword has won the sword
shall keep!"'

He then quoted 'the words of an Alsatian Deputy who spoke before the German Parliament on February 16th, 1874, words which were received with howls and jeers, but which were none the less eloquent and true.' The words dealt with the dismemberment of France, and ended with this passage: "Had you spared us you would have won the admiration of the world, and war had become impossible between us and you. As it is, you go on arming, and you force all Europe to arm also. Instead of opening an age of peace, you have inaugurated an era of war; and now you await fresh campaigns, fresh lists of killed and wounded, containing the names of your brothers and your sons." "The view of this Alsatian Deputy is my view," said Sir Charles: "I do not believe that might makes right.... For our own sakes as well as hers, T pray that France may not be crushed. France is not merely _one_ of the nations. The place of France is not greater than the place of England, but it is different. The place of France is one which no other nation can quite hold."