“OH monsieur! Oh madame! What happiness! What great news!” With these words Frederick’s valet rushed into our room one day, and the cook after him. It was the day of WÖrth.

“What is it?”

“A telegram has been posted up at the Bourse. We have conquered. The King of Prussia’s army is as good as annihilated. The city is adorning itself with tricolour flags. There will be an illumination to-night.”

But in the course of the afternoon it turned out that the news was false—a Bourse trick. Ollivier made a speech to the crowd from his balcony. Well, so much the better; at least one would not be obliged to illuminate. These joyful tidings of “armies annihilated”—i.e., of numberless lives torn asunder, and hearts broken—awoke again in me too the same wish as Flaubert’s—“Oh that I were with the Bedouins!”

On August 7, news of a catastrophe. The emperor hastened from St. Cloud to the theatre of war. The enemy had penetrated into the country. The newspapers could not give expression hot enough to their rage at the “invasion”. The cry “À Berlin,” as it seemed to me, pointed to an intended invasion; but in that there was nothing to cause anger. But that these eastern barbarians should venture to make an incursion into beautiful, God-beloved France—that was sheer savagery and sin. That must be stopped, and quickly too.

The Minister of War ad interim published a decree that all citizens fit for service, from the age of thirty to forty, who did not belong to the National Guard, should be immediately enrolled in that body. A Ministry of the Defence of the Country was formed. The war loan of 500 millions, which had been voted, was raised to 1000. It is quite refreshing to see how freely people always offer up the money and the lives of others. A trifling financial unpleasantness, to be sure, was soon perceptible to the public. If one wanted to change bank notes one had to pay the money-changer ten per cent. There was not gold at hand to meet all the notes which the Bank of France was authorised to issue.

And now, victory after victory on the German side.

The physiognomy of the city of Paris and its inhabitants altered. Instead of its proud, magnificent, resplendent mood, came confusion and savage indignation. The feeling spread ever wider and wider that a horde of Vandals had descended on to the land—something terrible, unheard of, like some cloud of locusts, or some such natural portent. That they had themselves brought this plague on themselves by their declaration of war—that they had considered such a declaration indispensable, in order that no Hohenzollern, even in the distant future, should even conceive the idea of succeeding to the Spanish throne—all that they had forgotten. Hideous tales were circulated about the enemy. “The Uhlans! the Uhlans!” These words had a fantastically-demoniacal sound, as if one had said “the horde of savages”. In the imagination of the people this kind of troops assumed a demoniacal shape. Wherever a bold stroke was executed by the German cavalry, it was attributed to the Uhlans—a kind of half-men, getting no pay, and therefore bound to live on their plunder. Along with the rumours of terror arose rumours also of triumph. To tell lies about successes is one of the duties of Chauvinism. Of course, because courage must be kept up. The command, to tell truth, like so many other commands, loses its obligation in war time. Frederick dictated to me the following passage out of the newspaper Le Volontaire for my red book:—

On August 20 Count Palikao announced in the Chamber that three army corps which had coalesced against Bazaine had been thrown into the quarries at Jaumont (Bravo! Bravo!). It is true that no one knew what quarries these were, or where they were; nor did any one explain how they could contain three army corps; but the joyous message went round from mouth to mouth. “Have you heard? In the quarries——” “Oh yes! Of Jaumont.” No one uttered a doubt or question. It was as if everybody had been born at Jaumont, and knew these army-swallowing quarries as well as his own pocket. About this time the rumour also prevailed that the King of Prussia had gone mad from despair at the condition of his army.

Nothing but monstrous things were heard of. The excitement, the fever, of the populace increased hourly. The war “lÀ-bas” had ceased to be regarded as an armed promenade. It was felt that the forces which had been let loose were now bringing something terrible on the world. Nothing was spoken of but armies annihilated, princes driven mad, diabolical hordes, war to the knife. I listened to it thundering and growling. It was the storm of rage and despair that was rising. The battle at Bazeilles near Metz was described, and it was stated that inhuman cruelties had been committed there by the Bavarians.

“Do you believe that?” I asked Frederick. “Do you believe that of the gentle Bavarians?”

“It is quite possible. Bavarian or Turco, German, French, or Indian, the warrior who is defending his own life, and lifting up his arm to kill another, has ceased for the time to be ‘human’. What has been awakened in him and stirred up with all possible force is nothing else than bestiality.”

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Metz fallen! The news resounded in the city like some strange and overpowering cry of terror. To me the news of the taking of a fortress was a message which brought rather a relief; for I thought, “Well, that is decisive”. And it was only for this, that the bloody game might be over, it was for this, only this that I longed. But no, there was nothing decisive in it—more fortresses remained. After a defeat all that is to be done is to pick yourself up again, and strike out again at them twice as hard. The chance of arms may change at any time. Ah yes! The advantage may be now on this side, now on that. It is only woe that is certain—death that is certain—to be on both.

Trochu felt himself called upon to arouse the spirit of the populace by a new proclamation, and in it appealed to an old motto of Bretagne, “With God’s help for our fatherland”. That did not sound new to me. I had met with something like it before in other proclamations. It did not fail to have its effect. The people were inspirited. Now, the thing was to turn Paris into a fortress.

Paris a fortress! I could not take in the idea. The city which V. Hugo called “la ville-lumiÈre,” which is the point of attraction for the whole world of civilisation, riches, the pursuit of art, and the enjoyment of life—the point from which radiate splendour, fashions, esprit—this city is now to be “fortified”—i.e., become the point at which hostile attacks are to be aimed; the target for shot; to close itself against all intercourse, and expose itself to the danger of being set in flames by bombardment, or starved by famine! And that is done by these people, de gaietÉ de coeur, in the spirit of self-sacrifice, with joyous emulation, as if it was a question of carrying out the most useful, the most noble work! The work was proceeded with in feverish haste. Ramparts had to be erected on which troops could be placed, and shot holes cut in them; also trenches dug outside the gates, drawbridges erected, covering works repaired, canals bridged over, and protected by breastworks, powder magazines built, and a flotilla of gunboats placed on the Seine. What a fever of activity! What expenditure of exertion and industry! What gigantic expense in labour and money! How exhilarating and ennobling all that would have been, if it had been expended on works of public utility; but for the purpose of working mischief, of annihilation—a purpose which is not even one’s own, but only a move on the strategic chess-board—it is inconceivable!

In order to be able to stand a siege, which might possibly be a long one, the city was provisioned. Up to the present time, according to all experience, no such thing as an impregnable fortification has been known, capitulation is always only a question of time. And yet fortresses have always been erected anew, and provisioned anew with necessaries, in spite of the mathematical impossibility of protecting oneself against the duration of a blockade.The measures taken were on a great scale. Mills were erected, and cattle parks laid out, and yet at last the moment must come when the corn will give out and the meat be consumed. But people do not carry their thoughts so far—by that time the enemy will be driven back over the frontier, or annihilated in the country. Now the whole people are joining the army of the fatherland. Every one offers himself for the service, or is pressed into it; and all the firemen in the country were called in to join the garrison of Paris. There might be fires in the provinces, but what of that? Such little accidents disappear when a national “disaster” is in question. On Aug. 17, 60,000 firemen had already been enrolled in the capital. The sailors too were called in, and new troops of soldiers were formed every day under various names—volontaires, Éclaireurs, franc-tireurs.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Events followed each other in ever-hastening movement. But now only military events. Everything else was suspended. Nothing else was any more thought of around us except “mort aux Prussiens”. A storm of savage hatred collected: it had not yet broken out, but one heard it rumble. In all official proclamations, in all the street cries, in all public transactions, the conclusion was always “mort aux Prussiens”. All these troops, regular and irregular, these munitions, these work-people pressing to the fortifications with their tools and barrows, these transports for weapons, everything that one sees and hears means, in its every form and tone, in all its lightning and bluster, in all its flame and rage, “mort aux Prussiens”. Or in other words, and then indeed it sounds like a cry of love and warms even the softest hearts, it means “pour la patrie,” but in essence it is the same.

I asked Frederick: “You are of Prussian extraction, how does all this unfriendly feeling, which is now finding loud expression, affect you?”

“You said the same to me before, in 1866, and I answered you then as I do to-day, that I suffer from these expressions of hatred not as the subject of any country, but as a man. If I judge of the opinions of the people here from a national point of view I cannot but think them right, they call it la haine sacrÉe de l’ennemi, and that motive forms an important element in warlike patriotism. They are now occupied with this one thought, to liberate their country from a hostile invasion. That it is themselves who provoked this invasion by declaring war, they have forgotten. Indeed it was not they who did it, but their Government, which they believed on its word; and now they lose no time over reproaches or reflections, as to who called down this misfortune on them: it has come, and all their force, all their enthusiasm must be spent on turning it aside again, or else uniting with unthinking self-sacrifice in a common ruin. Trust me, there is much noble capacity for love in us children of men, the pity only is that we lavish it on the old-world tracks of hatred.... And on the other side, the hated ones, the invaders, ‘the red-haired eastern barbarians,’ what are they doing? They were the challenged; and they are pressing forward into the country of those who threatened to overrun theirs—‘À Berlin, À Berlin’. Do not you recollect how this cry kept pealing through the whole city, even down from the roofs of omnibusses?”

“And now these are marching ‘Nach Paris’. Why do the shouters of ‘À Berlin’ attribute that as a crime to them?”

“Because there cannot be any logic or justice in that national sentiment whose foundation is the assumption that we are ourselves, that is the first, and the others are barbarians. And this forward march of the Germans from victory to victory strikes me with admiration. I have been a soldier also, and I know with what a magical power victory fastens on the mind, what pride, what joy are contained in it. It is in any case the aim, the reward for all the sacrifices made, for the renunciation of rest and happiness, for the risk of life.”

“But then why do not the conquered adversaries, since they too are soldiers, and know what fame accompanies victory, why do they not admire their conquerors? Why is it never said in an account of a battle by the losing party: ‘The enemy has obtained a glorious victory’?”

“I repeat, because the war spirit and patriotic egotism are the denial of all justice.”

So it came about—I can see it from all our conversations entered in the red books in those days—that we did not and could not think of anything at that time except the result of the present national duel.

Our happiness, our poor happiness, we had it, but we dared not enjoy it. Yes, we possessed everything that might have procured for us a heaven of delight on earth—boundless love, riches, rank, the charming, growing boy Rudolf, our heart’s idol Sylvia, independence, ardent interest in the world of mind; but before all this a curtain had fallen. How dared we, how could we taste of our joys while around us every one was suffering and trembling, shrieking and raving? It was as if one should set oneself to enjoy oneself heartily on board a storm-tossed vessel.

“A theatrical fellow, this Trochu,” Frederick told me—it was on August 25. “Such a coup de theÂtre has been played off to-day! You will never guess it.”

“The women called out for military service?” I guessed.

“Well, it does concern the women; but they are not called out. On the contrary.”

“Then are the sutlers discharged? or the Sisters of Mercy?”

“You have not guessed it yet, either. There is something of dismissal in it to be sure, and as to sutlers, too, in the sense that these ladies minister the cup of pleasure, and in a sense the ladies dismissed are merciful too; but in short, without more riddles, the demimonde is exiled.”

“And the Minister of War has taken that step? What connection——?”

“I cannot see any either. But the people are in ecstasies over the regulation. In fact they are always glad when anything happens. From every new order they expect a change, like many sick folks who greet every medicine which is given them as possibly a panacea. When vice is driven out of the city—so think the pious—who knows whether Heaven, now evidently angry, will not again extend its protection over the inhabitants? And now, when people are preparing for the serious time of the siege, with all its privations, what have these silly, wasteful women of pleasure to do here? And so most people, excluding those concerned, think the regulation a proper, moral, and besides, a patriotic one, since a great number of these women are foreigners, English, Southerners, nay even Germans, some of whom may perhaps be spies. No, no; there is only room in the city now for her own children, and only for her virtuous children!”

On August 28 occurred something still worse. Another banishment. All Germans had to quit Paris within three days.

The poison, the deadly, long-abiding poison, which lay in this regulation those who wrote the decree possibly had not in any way suspected. The hatred of Germans was awakened by it. For how long a time even after the war, this misfortune was to go on bearing its terrible fruit, I know at this day. From that time forward, France and Germany, those two great, flourishing, magnificent countries, were no longer two nations whose armies had fought out a chivalrous conflict; hatred for the whole of the opposed nation pervaded the entire people. Enmity was erected into an institution which was not restricted to the duration of the war, but ensured its continuance as “hereditary enmity,” even to future generations.

Exiled. Obliged to leave the city within three days. I had occasion to see how hardly, how inhumanly hardly, this command pressed on many worthy, harmless families. Among the business people who were supplying us with goods for the decoration of our house, several were Germans—one a carriage-builder, one an upholsterer, one an art-furniture manufacture—settled from ten to twenty years in Paris, where they had got their domestic hearth, where they had allied themselves in marriage with Parisians, where they had the whole of their business connection; and now they had to go out, out in three days—shut up their house, leave all that was dear and familiar to them, lose their fortune, their customers, their inheritance. The poor creatures came running to us in consternation, and told us of the misery that had fallen on them. Even the work which they were on the point of delivering to us had to be put aside, and the workshops closed. Wringing their hands and with tears in their eyes, they complained of their sufferings to us. “I have an old father an invalid,” said one, “and my wife is looking for her confinement any day; and now we must go in three days!” “I have not a sou in the house,” another complained; “all my customers who owe me money will be in no hurry to meet their obligations. A week hence I should have completed a large order which would have made me comfortably off, and now I must leave all in confusion!”

And why, why was all this misery brought on these poor people? Because they belonged to a nation whose army did its duty successfully, or because (to go further back in the chain of causes) a Hohenzollern might possibly have allowed it to enter into his mind to assume the Spanish throne if offered to him? No; this “because,” too, has not arrived at the ultimate reason. All this is only the pretext—not the cause of that war.

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Sedan! “The Emperor Napoleon has given up his sword.”

The news overwhelmed us. Now there had really occurred a great, an historical catastrophe. The French army beaten, its leader checkmated. Then the game was over, won triumphantly by Germany. “Over! over!” I shouted. “If there were people who have the right to call themselves citizens of the world they might illuminate their windows to-day. If we had temples of Humanity yet, Te Deums would have to be sung in them on this occasion—the butchery is over!”

“Do not rejoice too soon, my darling,” said Frederick in a warning tone. “This war has now for some time lost the character of a game fought out on the chess-board of the battlefield. The whole nation is joining in the fight. For one army annihilated ten others will start out of the earth.”

“But would that be just? It is only German soldiers who have forced themselves into the country—not the German people—and so they ought only to oppose them with French soldiers.”

“How you keep on appealing to justice and reason, you unreasonable creature, in dealing with a madman! France is mad with pain and rage; and from the point of view of loss of country, her pain is pious, her rage justifiable. Whatever desperate thing she may do now is inspired, not by personal self-seeking, but by the highest spirit of sacrifice. If only the time were come when the powers of virtue, which is the essential thing that binds men together, were diverted from the work of destruction and devoted to the work of felicity! But this unholy war has again thrown us back a long distance from that goal.”

“No, no! I hope the war is over now.”

“If it were so (and I despair of it) there would be sown the seeds of future wars, and it could only be the seed of hatred which is contained in this expulsion of the Germans. Such a thing as that has an effect far beyond the present generation.”

September 4. Another act of violence, an outbreak of passion, and, at the same time, a remedy tried for the salvation of the country—the emperor is deposed. France proclaims herself a republic. Whatever Napoleon III. and his army may have done matters not. Mistakes, treachery, cowardice, all these faults have been committed by individuals, the emperor and his generals; but France has not committed them, she is not answerable for it. When the throne was overturned, the leaves in France’s history, on which Metz and Sedan were inscribed, were simply torn out of the book. From this time the country itself would carry on the war, if, at least, Germany dared to continue this infamous invasion.

“But how if Napoleon had conquered?” I asked, when Frederick communicated this to me.

“Oh, then, France would have taken his victory and his glory as the country’s victory and glory.”

“Is that just?”

“Cannot you get out of the habit of putting that question?”

I had soon to see my hopes, that the catastrophe of Sedan would put an end to the campaign, vanish. All around us seemed as warlike as ever. The air was laden with savage rage and hot lust of vengeance. Rage against the enemy, and almost as much against the fallen dynasty. The scandalous talk, the pamphlets which now poured down against the emperor, the empress, and the unfortunate generals; the contempt, the slanders, the insults, the jests—it was disgusting. In this way the uncultured masses thought they could lay the whole burden of the defeats of the country on the shoulders of one or two persons, and, now that these persons were down, pelted them with dung and stones. And this was the beginning of the time when the country was to show that she was invincible!

The preparations for intrenching Paris were carried on zealously. The buildings in the fighting area of the chief enceinte were abandoned or taken down entirely. The suburbs became deserts. Troops of men kept coming from outside into the city with all their belongings. Oh, those sorrowful trains of carts and pack horses, and laden men, who were trailing the ruins of their desolated hearths through the streets! I had already seen the same thing once in Bohemia, when the poor country folk were flying from the enemy; and now I had to look on the same picture of wretchedness in the joyous, brilliant capital of the world. There were the same frightened, sorrowful visages, the same weariness and haste, the same woe.

At last, God be praised, once more a good piece of news! On the proposal of a mediation on the part of England, a meeting was arranged at FerriÈres between Jules Favre and Bismarck. Now surely they would succeed in coming to an agreement—in making peace!

On the contrary, it was not till now that the extent of the gulf was seen. For some little time before this there had been some talk in the German papers of the annexation of Alsace and Lorraine. A desire was shown to incorporate once more the land which had formerly been German. The historical argument for the claim on these provinces appearing only partially sustainable, the strategic argument was brought forward to support it—“indispensable as a fortress in future wars which may be expected”. And it is well known, of course, that the strategic grounds are the weightiest, the most impregnable; and that in comparison with them a moral ground can only reckon as secondary. On the other hand, the war game had been lost by France; was it not fair that the prize should fall to the winners? In case they had won, would not the French have seized the Rhine provinces? If the result of a war is not to have for its consequence an extension of territory for one side or the other, what good would it be to make war at all?

Meantime the victorious army made no halt in its onward march. The Germans were already before the gates of Paris. The cession of Alsace and Lorraine was officially demanded; to which came the well-known reply: “Not an inch of our territory, not a stone of our fortresses”—(“Pas un pouce—pas une pierre”).

Yes, yes—thousands of lives, but not an inch of ground. That is the rooted idea of the patriotic spirit. “They wish to humble us,” cried the French patriots. “No! sooner shall exasperated Paris bury itself under its own ruins!”

Away! away! was now our resolution. Why should we stay in a beleaguered foreign city without any necessity; why live among people full of no other thoughts than those of hate and vengeance, who looked at us with sidelong glances and often with clenched fists, when they heard us talking German? It is true, we could no longer leave Paris, or leave France, without difficulty. One had in all directions to pass over war districts, the railway traffic was frequently suspended for private travellers. To leave our new building in the lurch was unpleasant, but this was of no consequence, for our stay was impossible. In fact we had already stayed far too long. The events which I had experienced recently had shaken me so much that my nerves had suffered grievously from it. I was seized often with shivering, and once or twice also with crying fits.

Our boxes were all ready packed, and everything prepared for departure, when I had another attack, and this time so violent that I had to be carried to bed. The physician who was sent for said that either a nervous fever or even an inflammation of the brain was commencing, and for the present it was not to be thought of to expose me to the fatigues of travelling.

I lay in bed for long, long weeks. Only a very dreamy recollection of that whole time remains with me. And strangely enough, a pleasant recollection. I was, it is true, very ill, and everything in the place where I resided was unceasingly mournful and terrible; and yet when I look back on it it was a singularly joyful time. Yes, joy, perfectly intense joy, such as children are in the habit of feeling. The cerebral affection which I was suffering, and which brought with it an almost continuous absence, or at least only half-presence of consciousness, caused all thoughts and judgments, all reflections and deliberations, to vanish out of my head, and there remained only a vague enjoyment of existence, just like that which children experience, as I said just now, and especially those children who are tenderly watched over. There was no want of tender watching for me. My husband, thoughtful and loving and untiring, was with me day and night. He brought the children also often to my bedside. How much my Rudolf had to tell me! For the most part I did not understand it, but his beloved voice sounded to me like music, and the babbling of our little Sylvia, our heart’s idol, how sweetly that began to charm me! Then there were a hundred little jokes and intelligences between Frederick and me about the tricks of our little daughter. What these jokes were about I have quite forgotten, but I know that I laughed and enjoyed myself quite unrestrainedly. Each one of the customary jests seemed to me the height of wit, and the oftener repeated the more witty and more precious; and with what delight did I not swallow the draughts given me—for every day at a given hour I took a glass of lemonade. Such nectar I have never tasted during my whole life of health; and how entirely refreshing was a medicine with opium in it, whose softly soothing action, putting me into a conscious slumber, sent a thrill of happy calm through my soul. I knew all the while that my beloved husband was by my side, protecting me and watching over me as his heart’s dearest treasure. Of the war, which was raging at my door, I had now hardly any cognisance; and if, for all that, some remembrance of it flashed on me sometimes, I looked on it as something situated as far away and as completely without any concern for me, as if it was being played out in China or on another planet. My world was here, in this sick-room, or rather in this chamber of recovery; for I felt myself getting better, and all tended to happiness.

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To happiness? No. With recovery, understanding came back too, and the perception of the horrors that surrounded us. We were in a beleaguered, famishing, freezing, miserable city. The war was still raging on.

The winter had come in the meantime—icy cold. I now, for the first time, learned all that had taken place during my long unconsciousness. The capital of “the brotherland,” Strasbourg—the “lovely,” the “true German,” the city “German to its core,” had been bombarded, its library destroyed. One hundred and ninety-three thousand seven hundred and twenty-two shots had been poured into the town—four or five a minute.

Strasbourg was taken.

The country fell into wild despair—such a despair as issues in raving madness. People began to hunt in Nostradamus to find prophecies for the present events, and new seers began to put out fresh predictions. Still worse, possessed folks came forward. It was like falling back into a ghost-night of the middle ages, lighted by the fire of hell. “Oh that I could be among the Bedouins!” cried Gustave Flaubert. “Oh that I could be back in the half-conscious dreamland of my illness,” cried I, weeping. I was well again now, and had to hear and comprehend all the terrible things that were going on around us. Then began again the entries in the red books, and I have lit on the following notes:—

December 1. Trochu has established himself on the heights of Champigny.

December 2. Obstinate fight around Brie and Champigny.

December 5. The cold is becoming constantly more powerful. Oh! the trembling, bleeding, wretched wights, who are lying out there in the snow, and dying. Even here in the city, there is terrible suffering from cold. Business has fallen to nothing. There is no firing to be had. What would not many an one give if there were only two little pieces of wood to be had—even the certainty of the throne of Spain!

December 21. Sortie out of Paris.

December 25. A small detachment of Prussian cavalry was saluted with musket shot (that is a patriotic duty) from the houses of the villages of Troo and SougÉ. General Kraatz commanded the punishment of the villages (that is a commander’s duty) and had them burnt. “Set them on fire,” was the word of command, and the men, probably gentle, good-natured fellows, obeyed (that is the soldier’s duty), and set fire to them. The flames burst up to heaven, and the poor homesteads fell crashing, on man, wife, and child—on flying, weeping, roaring, burning men and beasts.