closing him, to die or open a passage. Hel would certainly have been beaten. But military honour would have been satisfied, and, next to victory, this is the most precious of attainable results." The Archduke Ferdinand actually put himself at the head of the cavalry and a body of infantry, 15,000 in all, and broke through the iron circle inclosing him.

...

66

The excuses and evasions of the Imperial staff are met and swept away by the manly reply of General Wimpffen, addressed to the Independence Belge:

A great many papers have published a letter from the generals, acting as the Emperor's aides-de-camp, to which General Wimpffen sees himself, with regret, obliged to reply.

The note, taken to the Emperor by the captains of the Staff de Saint-Haouen and La Nourelle, ran as follows: "Sire, I have ordered General Lebrun to attempt to cut through the all disposable troops to follow him. I direct enemy in the direction of Carignan, and I cause General Ducrot to support this movement, and General Douay to cover the retreat. Let your Majesty come and place yourself in the midst of your troops. They will make it a point of honour to open a passage for you."

In addressing this invitation to his Majesty, the aim of the General was to spare him the deep grief of seeing himself a prisoner, and to make use of the prestige of his person in the army, in order to bring about a general movement without which the cutting through was impossible.

The Emperor did not agree to this proposal, and caused, unknown to General Wimpfen, the white flag to be hoisted on the citadel, whilst he sent an officer of his household as parlemen

When the news of the capitulation of Dupont with 20,000 men at Baylen (1808) reached Napoleon at Bordeaux, he was stunned by it as by a blow. "Is your Majesty ill?" asked Maret on being has"No." tily summoned. Has Austria declared war?" 66 Would to God it were only that." "What, then, has happened?" The Emperor then related the capitulation, and added: "That an army should be beaten is nothing; the fate of arms is variable, and a defeat may be repaired. But for an army to make a shameful capitulation is a stain on the French name-on the glory of our arms. The wounds inflicted on honour never heal- the moral effect is terrible. . . . They say that there was no other means of saving the army, of preventing the massacre of the soldiers. Well, it would have been better for them all to have perished with arms in their hands-that not one of them had returned." Dupont and the principal officers were tried by a military tribunal and cashiered; the worst charge against him All these acts, which properly belong to the being that he had checked a gallant at- Commander-in-Chief, did harm to the executempt by General Verdel to break through. tion of the last offensive movements. General Lebrun's remark, if he ever It is, therefore, not exact to say that the Genmade it, referred to the last desperate at-eral has not been counteracted in his ideas and tempt when the iron circle had fatally in whatever orders he may have given. A feel. tightened round Sedan. But surely this is the time of all others when the Emperor should have spoken and acted like Lebrun. "I desire no further sacrifice of life for my sake; but if you are going whether I go or not, I will go with you."

taire.

The white flag was maintained, notwithstanding the General's protest and his refusal to negotiate; the enemy's parlementaires were received at the Imperial quarters.

ing of propriety prevented him from specifying motive of his refusal to sign the armistice. He in his letter of resignation that such was the only submitted to accept the part of negotiator after having read the honourable reply of his Majesty.

The generals aides-de-camp are right in affirming that there has never been, between the Emperor and the General, the least altercation, and it was not without great emotion that the General received his Majesty's last embrace.

The only document which General Wimpffen has had drawn up on the operations of the war is the official report on the battle, which has been addressed to the minister, and reproduced, nearly literally, by several papers.

DE WIMPFFEN, General of Division. Cannstadt, Sept. 19, 1870.

A copy of this letter has been sent to General Reille, the Emperor's parlementaire.

All accounts agree that the capitulation originated with the Emperor, and the only question is whether he did not in the first instance mean simply to stipulate for him

self. The King of Prussia reports to the Queen that, on remarking the terrible effect of the bombardment, he sent Colonel Broussart with a flag of truce to demand a surrender:

He was met by a Bavarian officer, who reported to me that a French parlementaire had announced himself at the gate. Colonel von Broussart was admitted, and on his asking for the Commander-in-Chief, he was unexpectedly introduced into the presence of the Emperor, who wished to give him a letter for myself. When the Emperor asked what his message was,

solution is that this sort of phraseology is habitual to him, and has been found to take with the French, who have erected a monunent to Cambronne for his famous mot about the Guards, although they knew that he neither uttered nor acted up to it.

Despite of this crushing evidence, the Imperialists insist that he acted like another Bayard at Sedan; and ample testimonials have been procured from the Germans, who for political purposes have manifested a temporary inclination to set him up. Unluckily these testimonials are inconsistent and contradictory. Dr. Russell, after describing in his animated style the final struggle before Balan, says:

and received the answer "to demand the surrender of the army and the fortress," he replied that on this subject he must apply to General Wimpfen, who had undertaken the command, in the place of the wounded General MacMahon, and that he would now send his adjutent-general, Reille, with the letter to my-served as a private soldier, went with an at

self.

Here it was, according to Bavarian reports, that the Emperor, declaring that he only

tacking column, composed of the remnants of It was seven o'clock when Reille and various regiments, to drive out the Bavarians. Broussart came to me, the latter a little in ad- But the artillery on the heights above the river, vance; and it was first through him that I and the cross-fire from the heights above the learned with certainty the presence of the Em-road, were too much for troops shaken by inperor. You may imagine the impression which this made upon all of us, but particularly on myself. Reille sprang from his horse and gave me the letter of the Emperor, adding that he had no other orders. Before I opened the letter I said to him, "But I demand, as the first condition, that the army lay down its arms." The letter begins thus: " N'ayant pas pu mourir à la tête de mes troupes, je dépose mon épee à votre Majesté."

An earlier telegram from the King, containing a brief summary, will make the matter clear:

A capitulation, by which all the army have been made prisoners in Sedan, has just been signed with General Wimpffen, who has taken the command in place of MacMahon, who is

wounded.

The Emperor, not having the command, and abandoning all to the Regency of Paris, has only made to me the surrender of his person. After speaking to him in an interview to take place immediately, I shall fix the place to which he is to repair as a temporary residence.

If he only sent a parlementaire to stipulate for his own person, leaving the army to their fate, we at all events get rid of the incongruity of his resuming the command for the sole purpose of capitulating. But then what are we to understand by the phrase, N'ayant pas pu mourir à la tête de mes troupes, when he never put himself at their head, and adopted the most decisive steps to avoid dying with them? The only

There are five or six versions of this missive and that given by the King in his telegram differs from that in the official report.

cessant fighting and frightful losses. Shell and shot rained fast about the Emperor, one of the former bursting close to his person and enveloping him in smoke. The officers around entreated him to retire, and the Bavarians quickly following occupied Balan, and engaged the French on the glacis of the fort.

This attacking column, composed of the remnants of various regiments, was the his last desperate attempt. one with which General Wimpffen made That the Emperor was not in the fight before Balan at an earlier stage is proved by the aidesde-camp, who state that he met the General coming from Balan between nine and ten o'clock, and asked how the battle was going at that side. Dr. Russell states that the Emperor got on horseback at half-past nine (the battle having begun at daybreak, and MacMahon having been wounded at 6 A.M.), so that this was probThe Prussian ably his first appearance. official account of the battle states: "It is a fact that Napoleon, when he became aware of the probable result of the battle, for four hours stood the fire of our grenades near the village of Isges." This village is between two and three miles from Sedan, on the opposite side from Balan where the Bavarians were engaged; and the same official account states that the French fell back from it before twelve, within two hours after the Saxons and Prussians were closing upon them.

According to the Journal Officiel: “The Emperor got on horseback at half-past six A.M. and rode towards the gate of Balan,

where he remained an hour and a half. Seeing the troops recoil, he turned back about nine, making the tour of the citadel and passing over the bridge which leads to the gate of Paris. By midday the enemy had effected a junction: our troops beat a retreat on the town, which they entered exhausted with fatigue and short of ammunition. By four o'clock resistance had become impossible. Generals Douay, Castelnau, Reille, Vaubert de Genlis, had set out for the Prussian head-quarters commissioned by the Emperor to treat. General Wimpffen could not make up his mind to sign a capitulation.'

no doubt fancied that, when the fated hour came, he should not be found unequal to the long-meditated part.

Few things are calculated to leave a more unfavourable impression of the exEmperor's demeanour and tone of mind under reverses than his attempt to throw off the responsibility of the war; when by fixing it on the French nation he was obviously weakening their protest against the hard terms about to be imposed upon them. "Me, me, adsum qui feci," should have been his cry. This attempt was not confined to the reported conversation with the King, which Count Bismark has hastily pronounced to be pure invention, although currently circulated at the Prussian head-quarters. In the official report of his own interview, Count Bismark says: "In reference to the political situation, I, on my part, took no initiative, nor the Emperor either only in so far as he lamented the misfortunes of the war, and declared that he himself had not wished for the war, but that he had been compelled to make it by the pressure of French public opinion."

This account of the Imperial movements is confirmed by M. Jeannerod, the trustworthy correspondent of Le Temps, who states that, when the town was girt with fire, he himself saw the Emperor ride down from the citadel where his Majesty was said to have been pointing cannon "feeble imitation of Montereau - and saw a shell burst at his horse's feet, "producing no change in those impassive features.' This is the shell of which so much has been made by Dr. Russell as scattering wounds and confusion among the escort; No one supposes he wished for the war. and a very important shell it was, for it His incapacity for leading armies had probably accelerated the capitulation. It broken upon him in the most disagreeable also dispensed with the necessity of refer- manner during his Italian campaign, whilst ring the unscathed condition of the staff his personal bearing at Magenta and Soland escort to Divine agency as at Solferi- ferino (he was not under fire at either) no, where none of the Emperor's suite, betrayed none of that fiery ardour which covering more ground than a troop of cav- induces warlike monarchs to seek excitealry, having received a scratch, the Mo-ment in the battle-field. What he wished niteur announced, "La protection dont Dieu was to remain Emperor of the French; l'a couverte s'est étendue à son état-major.” * and for this purpose he was content, by At the same time we incline to think his own showing, to indulge the civium arthat the Emperor's eagerness to capitu- dor prava jubentium—to sacrifice the true late, instead of joining in a rush, was not interests of the nation to its worst pasaltogether owing to want of nerve. He sions or its weaknesses. French public preferred being a prisoner in comfortable opinion was divided and wavering, as he quarters and so prolonging the Impe- knew what really swayed him was the rial state he loved, to re-entering Paris growing dissatisfaction of the army; and with the shattered remnant of his army, it was by dwelling on this that Lebœuf had he succeeded in breaking through. and the war party carried their point. He has ordinary courage, but not he- Whatever his motives, personal governroic courage not enough for the "he- ment, as interpreted and acted on by him, roic tasks" he sets himself. He was involved personal responsibility to all inwont to say that, where the first and great- tents and purposes. He decided his own est of his race failed, was in not heading policy: he chose his own means and inthe last desperate charge at Waterloo; struments: he took what money he and (such is the force of self-delusion) he wanted: he allowed no minister to have an independent opinion: and M. Ollivier, who alone pretended to have one, turned

Kinglake's History of the Crimea, 4th edition, vol. i. p. 516. Mr. Kinglake, who has been persist-out no better than a tool. ently misrepresented, says: "The Emperor did not so give way to fear as to prove that he had less selfcontrol in moments of danger than the common run

Whatever amount of credence we may attach to M. Pietri's denial that the Emof peaceful citizens; but he showed that, though he peror had invested so much as a centime had chosen to set himself heroic tasks, his tempera-in foreign funds or securities, he is cerment was ill fitted for the fever of battle and for the crisis of an adventure."

tainly better off in a pecuniary point of

IN one respect it is impossible for youth, even by means of the most sympathetic imagination, to be in complete sympathy, or rather in complete harmony, with nature. To know nature fully, as a wife and not as a mistress, it is necessary to have lived long enough to become a little callous about time: to have come to feel the recurrence of the seasons only as a different form of the sequence of the hours, and years to be nothing more than days. To the young, and to those who live among men, a quarter of a century is not only metaphorically speaking a lifetime: but to the old, as to all the sanctuaries of nature in which her spirit takes refuge from the insatiable attempts of mankind to drive her from the world, it seems, and really is, but an hour.

:

And a nation, which, after all, is not an abstraction, is in this respect, as in all others, subject to the same law as the men and women of whom it is composed. In the first quarter of the present month or, to speak after the manner of men, of the present century-the nation called France had lived through what seemed ages of youth men had come and gone, in a ceaseless whirl that prolonged a condition of things in which every day had destroyed something old and brought about something new, so far as there may be any new thing under the sun. He who had lived through this period beyond the sea would on his return have found all things changed. But there were some things that were not changed, simply because they were unchangeable. To the hills, to whom a thousand years is but a day, twenty-five years had not been an hour not a minute. Summers and winters, storms and sunshine, are not revolutions: they are nothing more to these than are its waves to the sea: the varying conditions of what in itself knows no change.

did not think so, simply because he was beginning to grow old, and to sympathize with the hills in sight of which he had lived all his days.

The carriage in question was a great post-chaise that had been taken at the Hotel de la Sirène at Besançon. It was sound, if not easy, upon its springs, and thoroughly safe, if proportionally heavy. The meagre horses were well up to their work-that is to say, they galloped through villages at full speed, went at a foot-pace along the level roads, and crept at that of a funeral up the hills: and the no less meagre postilion was well up to his that is to say, he cracked his whip bravely when there was any one to admire his performance, and paid more attention to the safety of his equipage than to the speed of his employer, when, as was most often the case, there was no one to admire him but the crows. For the rest, the day was cold enough, but, as there was no wind, not unbearably so, and the ground was covered with untrodden snow, though none was falling, and though that which had already fallen was not sufficient to block the road. On the contrary, the sun was shining full upon the dazzling white domes that lay to the left, and more especially upon one that rose in the distance like that of a cathedral among those of lesser shrines. It was altogether, for winter time, a rather exhilarating day for a traveller who was well provided with furs.

Such was the case with him or her-for the provision was so complete as to conceal both sex and age. who sat alone in the closed and heavily-piled carriage. The equipage proceeded quietly and slowly until it arrived at a place where a narrower road turned up-hill to the left between two lines of closely-cut trees, and where the main avenue crossed a narrow river that just here issued from a valley on its way to join the Doubs, the Saone, or the Ain. It was along the slope of the hills that formed one side of this valley or mountain-pass that the branch-road lay, So might have thought a traveller in the so that it followed the upward course of recesses of the Jura who had not revisited the stream, over which it hung, higher them till the year 182- after an absence and higher in proportion as it led farther of five-and-twenty or thirty years. But and farther among the hills. At the fork so did not think the postilion of a carriage of the two roads stood a direction-post drawn by two horses that was passing with three arms, on one of which, among along the highroad from Besançon to other information as to distances, and as Lons-le-Saulnier in the month of January to its standing in the department of Doubs, in that year—yes, in the month of Janu- was written "To Besançon," an another ary, for the gods of nature, like nature "To Lons," and on the third, which pointherself, live for ever, and the barbarous ed along the branch-road, "To St-Félixname of Nivose was known no more. He des-Rochers."