Paris Surrenders to Bismarck

This is the second half of German Siege of Paris
our selection from The Story of France by Charles F. Horne published in 1914.

For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Previously in German Siege of Paris.

Time: 1871
Place: Paris

There was no longer any question of apathy among the provinces. If Paris would really fight, they would not be behind her in heroism. France responded as one man to Gambetta’s appeals. At one time he had probably a million and a half of volunteers under arms. But alas, armed men are not armies! These raw recruits, undrilled, lacking proper weapons, half starved, and, as time went on, half naked, proved no match for the German troops. There were armies of the North, armies of the South, and armies of the West, attacking the invaders furiously all over France. But the brave peasants sacrificed their lives in vain. They met only repeated defeats. Not one genuine French victory brightens the record of this disastrous and one-sided war.

Most notable perhaps of these feeble yet glorious armies was one gathered on the Loire and placed under the command of General de Paladines. A plan was formed for him to advance toward Paris from the south, while the Parisians were to make a sortie to meet him; and at the same time Marshal Bazaine was to break out of Metz, and threaten the Prussian rear.

Bazaine, however, instead of liberating his enormous army, surrendered it bodily (October 29th). About one hundred seventy-five thousand troops, most of whom, at Gravelotte, had proved themselves worthy of better things, were yielded, without further effort, to a foe not greatly outnumbering them. The case is without a parallel in history! After the war Bazaine was tried as a traitor. He pleaded that his provisions were exhausted, that a battle would have meant only useless sacrifice of life, and above all that he was a servant of the Emperor, that no legal government had superseded Napoleon, and hence he knew not what or whom to fight for. “There was still France,” was the noble answer of the Duc d’Aumale and the court judges condemned Bazaine to death. His sentence was reduced to imprisonment, and he afterward escaped.

His surrender of Metz prostrated the last hopes of Frenchmen. It brought a long succession of evil consequences in its train. During the siege of Paris one of the most serious difficulties of the Provisional Government was the controlling of the lower classes of the populace. The majority of these were “Red Republicans” or anarchists; and their leaders, hoping to seize upon power for themselves, took advantage of every fresh disaster to rouse the ignorant multitude to tumult.

The news of Bazaine’s surrender stirred the Red Republicans to indiscriminate fury. A mob assailed the Government for the National Defense and threatened its leaders with instant death. Favre and the others sat calmly in their seats awaiting the inevitable. Someone showed General Trochu a way of escape, but he declined it, saying, “Friend, a soldier dies at his post of duty.” Warning of the perilous situation of the Government finally reached the regular troops; and they hastened to their chief’s defense and suppressed the tumult. Its consequences they could not suppress. Negotiations for peace with Prussia had been once more under way; but at news of the rioting in Paris, Bismarck broke them off, on the old plea that here was still another government, and he knew not with which to deal. Doubt less he felt that if the jarring factions meant to destroy each other, he could make better terms with the exhausted remnant.

Another evil which sprang from the disaster at Metz was that the huge German army was left free there, and these troops hastened to reinforce their brethren before Paris, who were in urgent need of help. The French army of the Loire under General de Paladines had performed its part in the general plan, by attacking the invaders from the south. At the same time the Parisians sallied out upon them repeatedly, in force. There was severe fighting all through November.

The arrival of the second German army upon the scene made the struggle hopeless, yet it was persistently maintained. A body of fifty thousand troops under General Ducrot fought their way out from Paris as far as Champigny, on the farther shore of the river Marne. They had three days of sickening carnage, during which more Frenchmen fell than the armies of Napoleon III had lost at Woerth or Gravelotte. The besiegers also lost heavily. But the army of the Loire was defeated and scattered; so Ducrot and his men fell back upon Paris to await the end.

The defenses of the metropolis were strong — impregnable, her newspapers had once boasted; and the most difficult problem of the sorely harassed Government became the feeding of the vast multitude within the walls. These soon stooped to mule meat, next to fancy foods from their zoological gardens, antelope steak and elephant trunk, and then to dogs and cats, and even vermin. The suffering became intense. “Poor little babies,” says one who was among them, “died like flies.” The German engineers pushed their lines of entrenchments ever nearer to the doomed city. Shells began to fall upon its houses; and a regular bombardment opened, which could result only in the capital’s complete destruction.

Desperate sallies were made again and again all through January, but never with more than momentary success. At last the Government for the National Defense gave up in despair. There seemed no longer any hope for Paris or for France. Favre was again commissioned to confer with Bismarck, and to secure the best terms he could for the surrender of the city. The siege came to an end January 29, 1871.

One of the arrangements of the capitulation was that there should be a truce long enough to permit the election of a free French Assembly, which could with some show of legal authority negotiate a final peace, whose terms would thus become binding upon all France. The truce did not, however, include the last and only remaining one of those pathetic “armies of the provinces” which the genius of Gambetta had raised. This force, under General Bourbaki and the Italian hero Garibaldi, was struggling against the Germans in eastern France, trying to get around their armies and invade Prussia itself.

The effort failed. The weather was intensely cold, and Bourbaki’s half-naked troops suffered all the tortures of freezing and starvation. They were half surrounded, their leader shot himself, and finally the perishing remnant of the men was compelled to retreat into Switzerland. There, as they had invaded a neutral country, they were disarmed — probably much to their own relief — and the active operations of the war came to an end (February 1, 1871).

Meanwhile the Assembly for which the capitulation of Paris had provided was elected. It met in February, chose Thiers as its President, and deputed him to settle terms of peace with Bismarck. Favre assisted him. It was a terrible trial to both of these patriots thus to aid in tearing apart their beloved country, and Thiers, a man of more than seventy years, broke down frequently in the course of the long negotiations.

Considering how complete had been Prussia’s victory, the final terms seem not over-severe, though of course bitterly humiliating to the proud Frenchmen. Alsace, which had been French for two hundred years, whose people spoke French and were devoted to the country, was given up to Prussia. So was about one-fifth of Lorraine; and an enormous money payment, nearly a billion dollars, was to be made to the victors as quickly as possible. Until the money was delivered, the French for tresses were to be held by German troops.

The treaty was laid before the Assembly and finally accepted, March 2, 1871. On the same day thirty thousand German troops were paraded through the streets of Paris, as a visible sign of her surrender and captivity. Then they withdrew, and the war was at an end.

More information on the German Siege of Paris here and here and below.

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