How the Generals Rated each other.

While General Reille, who performed his part with so much modesty and dignity, rode back over the Meuse, the Emperor still awaited, in the Sub-Prefecture, the advent of General de Wimpffen, who was fretting and fuming at the Golden Cross within the walls. According to his own confession he had become convinced that the refusal of his sovereign to head a sally from Balan had delivered over the Army to the mercy of the Germans, and violent despair had taken possession of his soul. For had not the Comte de Palikao sent him to overbear Napoleon III. and the set who surrounded him, and had he not failed to bend the monarch to his will? Twice, he repeats, with pride, “I obstinately refused to obey” the Emperor’s invitation to treat with the enemy; and because Napoleon III. had authoritatively interfered with his command he sent in that letter of resignation which the Emperor refused to accept. At first he seemed inclined to resist as well as resent the conduct of his master, who had presumed to consult others and, by hoisting the white flag, to take, as the General haughtily says, “a decision contrary to my will.” Let the Emperor sign the capitulation. Such were the first thoughts of a man whose temper was imperious, but whose better nature was not insensible to reason. He quelled his wrath and threw off his despair, moved, as he says, by the feeling that in defending the interests of the Army he would be rendering a last service to his brave companions in arms, and to his country. So he went from the Golden Cross to the Sub-Prefecture. Still angry, he loudly asserted as soon as he entered the room that he had been vanquished in battle because, addressing the Emperor, “your Generals refused to obey me.” Thereupon Ducrot started up, exclaiming, “Do you mean me? Your orders were only too well obeyed, and your mad presumption has brought on this frightful disaster.” “If I am incapable,” retorted De Wimpffen, “all the more reason why I should not retain the command.” “You took it this morning,” shouted Ducrot, also a violent man, “when you thought it would bring honour and profit. You cannot lay it down now. You alone must bear (endosser) the shame of the capitulation.” “Le General Ducrot était très exalté,” he says in his narrative, and he calls on his brother officers who were present to testify that he used these brave words, which, in substance, appear in De Wimpffen’s account; but the latter adds that he threw back the accusation, saying, “I took the command to evade a defeat which your movement would have precipitated;” and that he requested General Ducrot to leave the room, as he had not come to confer with him! What the quiet and well-mannered Emperor thought of his two fiery and blustering Generals is nowhere stated. The calm language in the pamphlet attributed to Napoleon III., which shows, nevertheless, how deeply he was vexed by De Wimpffen’s selfish wish to shirk his responsibilities at such a moment, takes no note of the quarrel, and simply tells us how “the General understood that, having commanded during the battle, his duty obliged him not to desert his post in circumstances so critical.” Thus, when General Reille returned with King William’s letter, he found De Wimpffen in a reasonable frame of mind and ready to perform, with courage and address, the hard task of obtaining the best terms he could for the French Army from the placidly stern Von Moltke, in whose heart there were no soft places when business had to be done.

The Generals Meet at Donchery.

Late on the evening of September 1st a momentous session was held in Donchery, the little town which commands a bridge over the Meuse below Sedan. On one side of a square table covered with red baize sat General von Moltke, having on his right hand the Quartermaster-General von Podbielski, according to one account, and Von Blumenthal according to another, and behind them several officers, while Count von Nostitz stood near the hearth to take notes. Opposite to Von Moltke sat De Wimpffen alone; while in rear, “almost in the shade,” were General Faure, Count Castelnau, and other Frenchmen, among whom was a Cuirassier Captain d’Orcet, who had observant eyes and a retentive memory. Then there ensued a brief silence, for Von Moltke looked straight before him and said nothing, while De Wimpffen, oppressed by the number present, hesitated to engage in a debate “with the two men admitted to be the most capable of our age, each in his kind.” But he soon plucked up courage, and frankly accepted the conditions of the combat. What terms, he asked, would the King of Prussia grant to a valiant Army which, could he have had his will, would have continued to fight? “They are very simple,” answered Von Moltke. “The entire Army, with arms and baggage, must surrender as prisoners of war.” “Very hard,” replied the Frenchman. “We merit better treatment. Could you not be satisfied with the fortress and the artillery, and allow the Army to retire with arms, flags and baggage, on condition of serving no more against Germany during the war?” No. “Moltke,” said Bismarck recounting the interview, “coldly persisted in his demand,” or as the attentive D’Orcet puts it, “Von Moltke was pitiless.” Then De Wimpffen tried to soften his grim adversary by painting his own position. He had just come from the depths of the African desert; he had an irreproachable military reputation; he had taken command in the midst of a battle, and found himself obliged to set his name to a disastrous capitulation. “Can you not,” he said, “sympathize with an officer in such a plight, and soften, for me, the bitterness of my situation by granting more honourable conditions?” He painted in moving terms his own sad case, and described what he might have done; but seeing that his personal pleadings were unheeded, he took a tone of defiance, less likely to prevail. “If you will not give better terms,” he went on, “I shall appeal to the honour of the Army, and break out, or, at least, defend Sedan.” Then the German General struck in with emphasis, “I regret that I cannot do what you ask,” he said; “but as to making a sortie, that is just as impossible as the defence of Sedan. You have some excellent troops, but the greater part of your infantry is demoralized. To-day, during the battle, we captured more than twenty thousand unwounded prisoners. You have only eighty thousand men left. My troops and guns around the town would smash yours before they could make a movement; and as to defending Sedan, you have not provisions for eight-and-forty hours, nor ammunition which would suffice for that period.” Then, says De Wimpffen, he entered into details respecting our situation, which, “unfortunately, were too true,” and he offered to permit an officer to verify his statements, an offer which the Frenchman did not then accept.

Beaten off the military ground, De Wimpffen sought refuge in politics. “It is your interest, from a political standpoint, to grant us honourable conditions,” he said. “France is generous and chivalric, responsive to generosity, and grateful for consideration. A peace, based on conditions which would flatter the amour-propre of the Army, and diminish the bitterness of defeat, would be durable; whereas rigorous measures would awaken bad passions, and, perhaps, bring on an endless war between France and Prussia.” The new ground broken called up Bismarck, “because the matter seemed to belong to my province,” he observed when telling the story; and he was very outspoken as usual. “I said to him that we might build on the gratitude of a prince, but certainly not on the gratitude of a people—least of all on the gratitude of the French. That in France neither institutions nor circumstances were enduring; that governments and dynasties were constantly changing, and the one need not carry out what the other had bound itself to do. That if the Emperor had been firm on his throne, his gratitude for our granting good conditions might have been counted upon; but that as things stood it would be folly if we did not make full use of our success. That the French were a nation full of envy and jealousy, that they had been much mortified by our success at Königgratz, and could not forgive it, though it in nowise damaged them. How, then, should any magnanimity on our side move them not to bear us a grudge for Sedan.” This Wimpffen would not admit. “France,” he said, “had much changed latterly; it had learned under the Empire to think more of the interests of peace than of the glory of war. France was ready to proclaim the fraternity of nations; and more of the same kind.” Captain d’Orcet reports that, in addition, Bismarck denied that France had changed, and that to curb her mania for glory, to punish her pride, her aggressive and ambitious character, it was imperative that there should be a glacis between France and Germany. “We must have territory, fortresses and frontiers which will shelter us for ever from an attack on her part.” Further remonstrances from De Wimpffen only drew down fresh showers of rough speech very trying to bear, and when Bismarck said “We cannot change our conditions,” De Wimpffen exclaimed, “Very well; it is equally impossible for me to sign such a capitulation, and we shall renew the battle.”

Here Count Castelnau interposed meekly to say, on behalf of the Emperor, that he had surrendered, personally, in the hope that his self-sacrifice would induce the King to grant the Army honourable terms. “Is that all?” Bismarck inquired. “Yes,” said the Frenchman. “But what is the sword surrendered,” asked the Chancellor; “is it his own sword, or the sword of France?” “It is only the sword of the Emperor,” was Castelnau’s reply. “Well, there is no use talking about other conditions,” said Von Moltke, sharply, while a look of contentment and gratification passed over his face, according to Bismarck; one “almost joyful,” writes the keen Captain d’Orcet. “After the last words of Von Moltke,” he continues, “De Wimpffen exclaimed, ‘We shall renew the battle.’ ‘The truce,’ retorted the German General, ‘expires to-morrow morning at four o’clock. At four, precisely, I shall open fire.’ We were all standing. After Von Moltke’s words no one spoke a syllable. The silence was icy.” But then Bismarck intervened to sooth excited feelings, and called on his soldier comrade to show, once more, how impossible resistance had become. The group sat down again at the red baize-covered table, and Von Moltke began his demonstration afresh. “Ah,” said De Wimpffen, “your positions are not so strong as you would have us believe them to be.” “You do not know the topography of the country about Sedan,” was Von Moltke’s true and crushing answer. “Here is a bizarre detail which illustrates the presumptuous and inconsequent character of your people,” he went on, now thoroughly aroused. “When the war began you supplied your officers with maps of Germany at a time when they could not study the geography of their own country for want of French maps. I tell you that our positions are not only very strong, they are inexpugnable.” It was then that De Wimpffen, unable to reply, wished to accept the offer made, but not accepted at an earlier period, and to send an officer to verify these assertions. “You will send nobody,” exclaimed the iron General. “It is useless, and you can believe my word. Besides, you have not long to reflect. It is now midnight; the truce ends at four o’clock, and I will grant no delay.” Driven to his last ditch, De Wimpffen pleaded that he must consult his fellow-Generals, and he could not obtain their opinions by four o’clock. Once more the diplomatic peacemaker intervened, and Von Moltke agreed to fix the final limit at nine. “He gave way at last,” says Bismarck, “when I showed him that it could do no harm.” The conference so dramatic broke up, and each one went his way; but, says the German official narrative, “as it was not doubtful that the hostile Army, completely beaten and nearly surrounded, would be obliged to submit to the clauses already indicated, the Great Head-quarter Staff was occupied, that very night, in drawing up the text of the capitulation” a significant and practical comment, showing what stuff there was behind the severe language which, at the midnight meeting, fell from the Chief of that able and sleepless body of chosen men.

Napoleon III. Surrenders.

General de Wimpffen went straight from the military conference to the wearied Emperor who had gone to bed. But he received his visitor, who told him that the proposed conditions were hard, and that the sole chance of mitigation lay in the efforts of His Majesty. “General,” said the Emperor, “I shall start at five o’clock for the German head-quarters, and I shall see whether the King will be more favourable;” for he seems to have become possessed of an idea that King William would personally treat with him. The Emperor kept his word. Believing that he would be permitted to return to Sedan, he drove forth without bidding farewell to any of his troops; but, as the drawbridge of Torcy was lowered and he passed over, the Zouaves on duty shouted “Vive l’Empereur!” This cry was “the last adieu which fell on his ears” as we read in the narrative given to the world on his behalf. He drove in a droshki towards Donchery, preceded by General Reille who, before six o’clock, awoke Count Bismarck from his slumbers, and warned him that the Emperor desired to speak with him. “I went with him directly,” said Bismarck, in a conversation reported by Busch; “and got on my horse, all dusty and dirty as I was, in an old cap and my great waterproof boots, to ride to Sedan where I supposed him to be.” But he met him on the high road near Frénois, “sitting in a two-horse carriage.” Beside him was the Prince de la Moskowa, and on horseback Castlenau and Reille. “I gave the military salute,” says Bismarck. “He took his cap off and the officers did the same; whereupon I took off mine, although it was contrary to rule. He said, ‘Couvrez-vous, donc.’ I behaved to him just as if in St. Cloud, and asked his commands.” Naturally, he wanted to see the King, but that could not be allowed. Then Bismarck placed his quarters in Donchery at the Emperor’s disposal, but he, thinking, as we know, that he would return to the Sub-Prefecture, declined the courtesy, and preferred to rest in a house by the wayside. The cottage of a Belgian weaver unexpectedly became famous; a one-storied house, painted yellow, with white shutters and venetian blinds. He and the Chancellor entered the house, and went up to the first floor where there was “a little room with one window. It was the best in the house, but had only one deal table and two rush-bottomed chairs,” In that lowly abode they talked together of many things for three-quarters of an hour, among others about the origin of the war which, it seems, neither desired, the Emperor asserting, Bismarck reports that “he had been driven into it by the pressure of public opinion,” a very inadequate representation of the curious incidents which preceded the fatal decision. But when the Emperor began to ask for more favourable terms, he was told that, on a military question, Von Moltke alone could speak. On the other hand Bismarck’s request to know who now had authority to make peace was met by a reference to “the Government in Paris;” so that no progress was made. Then “we must stand to our demands with regard to the Army of Sedan,” said Bismarck. General von Moltke was summoned, and “Napoleon III. demanded that nothing should be decided before he had seen the King, for he hoped to obtained from His Majesty some favourable concessions for the Army.” The German official narrative of the war states that the Emperor expressed a wish that the Army might be permitted to enter Belgium, but that, of course, the Chief of the Staff could not accept the proposal. General von Moltke forthwith set out for Vendresse where the King was, to report progress. He met His Majesty on the road, and there “the King fully approved the proposed conditions of capitulation, and declared that he would not see the Emperor until the terms prescribed had been accepted;” a decision which gratified the Chancellor as well as the Chief of the Staff. “I did not wish them to come together,” observed the Count, “until we had settled the matter of the capitulation;” sparing the feelings of both and leaving the business to the hard military men.

The Emperor lingered about in the garden of the weaver’s cottage; he seems to have desired fresh air after his unpleasant talk with the Chancellor. Dr. Moritz Busch, who had hurried to the spot, has left a characteristic description of the Emperor. He saw there “a little thick-set man,” wearing jauntily a red cap with a gold border, a black paletôt lined with red, red trousers, and white kid gloves, “The look in his light grey eyes was somewhat soft and dreamy, like that of people who have lived hard. His whole appearance,” says the irreverent Busch, “was a little unsoldierlike. The man looked too soft, I might say too shabby, for the uniform he wore,” phrases which suggest a lack of sympathy with adversity, and severe physical as well as mental suffering. But imagination can realize a picture of the fallen potentate, whose dynasty, crashing down, drew so much with it, as he was seen by the cynical German, talking to his officers, or to the burly Chancellor, or walking alone up and down a potato field in flower, with his white-gloved hands behind his back, smoking a cigarette; “betrayed by fortune” or fate, as he believed, but pursued, as others might say, by the natural consequences of his marvellous adventures, and of a strange neglect of the one source of strength on which he relied, the Army. He had failed in the business upon the conduct of which he prided himself; he was a bankrupt Emperor.

The French Generals Submit.

While one scene in the stupendous drama was performed at the weaver’s cottage, another was acted or endured in Sedan, where De Wimpffen had summoned the generals to consider the dreadful terms of capitulation. He has given his own account of the incident; but the fullest report is supplied by Lebrun. There were present at this council of war more than thirty generals. With tearful eyes and a voice broken by sobs, the unhappy and most ill-starred De Wimpffen described his interview and conflict with Von Moltke and Bismarck, and its dire result—the Army to surrender as prisoners of war, the officers alone to retain their arms, and by way of mitigating the rigour of these conditions, full permission to return home would be given to any officer, provided he would engage in writing and on honour not to serve again during the war. The generals, save one or two, and these finally acquiesced, felt that the conditions could not be refused; but they were indignant at the clause suggesting that the officers might escape the captivity which would befall their soldiers, provided they would engage to become mere spectators of the invasion of their country. In the midst of these mournful deliberations Captain von Zingler, a messenger from Von Moltke, entered, and the scene became still more exciting. “I am instructed,” he said, “to remind you how urgent it is that you should come to a decision. At ten o’clock, precisely, if you have not come to a resolution, the German batteries will fire on Sedan. It is now nine, and I shall have barely time to carry your answer to head-quarters.” To this sharp summons De Wimpffen answered that he could not decide until he knew the result of the interview between the Emperor and the King. “That interview,” said the stern Captain, “will not in any way affect the military operations, which can only be determined by the generals who have full power to resume or stop the strife.” It was, indeed, as Lebrun remarked, useless to argue with a Captain, charged to state a fact; and at the General’s suggestion De Wimpffen agreed to accompany Captain von Zingler to the German head-quarters.

These were, for the occasion, the Château de Bellevue, where the Emperor himself had been induced to take up his abode, and about eleven o’clock, in a room under the Imperial chamber, De Wimpffen put his name at the foot of the document drawn up, during the night, by the German Staff. Then he sought out the Emperor, and, greatly moved, told him that “all was finished.” His Majesty, he writes, “with tears in his eyes, approached me, pressed my hand, and embraced me;” and “my sad and painful duty having been accomplished, I remounted my horse and rode back to Sedan, ‘la mort dans l’âme.’”

So soon as the convention was signed, the King arrived, accompanied by the Crown Prince. Three years before, as the Emperor reminds us in the writing attributed to him, the King had been his guest in Paris, where all the sovereigns of Europe had come to behold the marvels of the famous Exhibition. “Now,” so runs the lamentation, “betrayed by fortune, Napoleon III. had lost all, and had placed in the hands of his conqueror the sole thing left him—his liberty.” And he goes on to say, in general terms, that the King deeply sympathized with his misfortunes, but nevertheless could not grant better conditions to the Army. “He told the Emperor that the castle of Wilhelmshöhe had been selected as his residence; the Crown Prince then entered and cordially shook hands with Napoleon; and at the end of a quarter of an hour the King withdrew. The Emperor was permitted to send a telegram in cipher to the Empress, to tell her what had happened, and urge her to negotiate a peace.” Such is the bald record of this impressive event. The telegram, which reached the Empress at four o’clock on the afternoon of the 3rd, was in these words: “The Army is defeated and captive; I myself am a prisoner.”

For one day more the fallen sovereign rested at Bellevue to meditate on the caprices of fortune or the decrees of fate. But that day, at the head of a splendid company of princes and generals, King William, crossing the bridge of Donchery, rode throughout the whole vast extent of the German lines, to greet his hardy warriors and be greeted by them on the very scene of their victories. And well they deserved regal gratitude, for together with their comrades who surrounded Metz, by dint of long swift marches and steadfast valour, they had overcome two great Armies in thirty days.

During the battle of Sedan, the Germans lost in killed and wounded 8,924 officers and men. On the other hand, the French lost 3,000 killed, 14,000 wounded, and 21,000 captured in the battle. The number of prisoners by capitulation was 83,000, while 3,000 were disarmed in Belgium, and a few hundreds, more or less, made their way by devious routes near and over the frontier, to Mézières, Rocroi, and other places in France. In addition, were taken one eagle and two flags, 419 field guns and mitrailleuses, 139 garrison guns, many wagons, muskets, and horses. On the day after the surrender, the French soldiers, having stacked their arms in Sedan, marched into the peninsula formed by the deep loop of the Meuse—“le Camp de Misère” as they called it—and were sent thence in successive batches, numbered by thousands, to Germany. Such was the astonishing end of the Army of Chalons, which had been impelled to its woful doom by the Comte de Palikao and the Paris politicians. Directed by General Vinoy, who was an able soldier, the troops brought to Mézières, escaped by rapid and clever marches from the German cavalry and the 6th Corps, and formed the nucleus of the improvised Army which afterwards defended the capital.

The End.

On the 3rd of September the Emperor Napoleon III. departed from Bellevue on his journey to the Castle of Wilhelmshöhe, near Cassel. The morning was wet and gloomy, and a thunderstorm was gathering among the hills of the Ardennes. The Imperial baggage-train had been permitted to leave Sedan, and was drawn up on the road ready to start. Columns of prisoners also were moving out of the fortress and marching towards the peninsula formed by the Meuse. It was a lugubrious scene, and the superstitious might remark that as the sun shone resplendently on the German victory, so his light was obscured when the captive Emperor drove through the muddy streets of Donchery and thence to the northward, wrapped in the sombre mist and thickly falling rain. And as he journeyed, disconsolately, in the forenoon, upon the road to Bouillon, orders went forth from the German head-quarters, where time was never lost, directing the conquering generals to leave the 11th and one Bavarian Corps on guard over Sedan and the thousands of unhappy prisoners, and resume, with all the rest, that march on the capital of France which had been so abruptly interrupted only eight days before. So the victors and the vanquished went their different ways.

The Emperor travelled without haste, and on the evening of the 4th he slept at Verviers. The next morning he learned, in common with all Europe, indeed all the civilized world, that the fires which seethe under the bright surface of society in Paris had once more burst through the thin crust of use and wont, and that the dynasty of the Bonapartes had been utterly overthrown at a blow to make way for the Republic. Like intelligence reached the King of Prussia, also, at his head-quarters, which, on the 5th, were already in Reims. The contrast is painful. The King saw his hopes of an early peace destroyed; but his was a solidly planted throne and he was the leader of irresistible armies. The Emperor knew that his fond dream of founding an Imperial House had been dispelled in an hour by a blast of national wrath; and, being a kindly man, his agony was the keener because, as he pathetically says, “he was separated from his son, and knew not what fate had befallen the Empress.” Racked by such sad reflections, at the very time when his wife was escaping to England, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte went, by railway, from Verviers to Wilhelmshöhe. There, during a luxurious captivity of six months, he had ample leisure to meditate on the causes which led to the catastrophe of Sedan and the surrender of Metz; and to ascertain, if he could, why, after a second trial, ending in the third entry of hostile troops into Paris, the French nation had lost its belief in the saving qualities of a family bearing a name which, if associated with undying “glory,” has also become indissolubly linked with bitter memories of lost provinces and gigantic military disasters.