Chapter XXVII: Appendix: I (1)

My Paris Diary of 1870

The fragment of Diary here printed was begun by me at Paris in the early summer of 1870, a few weeks only before the rupture of relations between France and Prussia. I already knew Paris well, having been a member of the British Embassy there in Lord Cowley’s time, and I had remained in pleasant personal relations with my successors on the Embassy staff, and so found myself in close touch with all that was going on diplomatically. There were few days when I did not see one or other of my Embassy friends. I had only just left the diplomatic service, and now on my marriage I had come to Paris with my wife, meaning to make our temporary home there, before settling down finally to country life in Sussex. I had a romantic feeling about the great capital of the world’s pleasure and was deeply interested in all that concerned France when the war broke out, and was fired with a corresponding sympathy when it resulted in her unlooked for overthrow.

Of Germany, too, her adversary, I had had experience. Among the many posts I had filled as attaché and secretary I had been twice at Frankfort, a place at that time of first diplomatic importance as capital of the Germanic Confederation and seat of the Diet, and had made there my apprenticeship in Central European politics. When I was first appointed to Frankfort in 1860, Bismarck, though already noticed as leader of the Junker party at Berlin, was still at the outset of his political career. The old King Frederick William was still King of Prussia, and Bismarck was not much in his good graces. His place at Frankfort had just been taken by his rival, Count d’Usedom, who was in better favour at Court. Usedom was a highly intellectual man, a leading member of the Liberal party in Prussia, and his sympathies were with the movement for a United Germany, then a Liberal movement having for its acknowledged head the Duke of Saxe Coburg, elder brother of our English Prince Consort, nor was it till Frederick William’s death that Bismarck’s power with the Hohenzollerns found its opportunity.

With Usedom I was intimate, spending most of my time at the Prussian Legation, where I held in some sort the position of child of the house through the favour of Madame d’Usedom, the good-natured Scotchwoman who figures in Bismarck’s memoirs under the name of Olympia as his _bête noire_, the subject of his unsparing jests. Both she and Usedom were too outspoken to please the Bismarckian ideas of diplomacy; and in their society, though I took little interest as yet in the great world’s politics, I learned much that I have not forgotten of Berlin policy and of the hopes and fears of German patriotism in which the Hohenzollerns under the old King had as yet refused to play a part. I remember a visit paid to Frankfort by the Crown Prince of Prussia, afterwards Emperor William I, and his accession a little later to the Prussian throne, which set Bismarck securely in the saddle and began that intrigue which resulted in the war with Denmark over Sleswig Holstein, as to which Usedom was daily eloquent.

I have dreamlike memories, too, of many hours—some pleasant, some wearisome—spent in attendance on the Princes and Princesses of the Royal and Electoral Houses to whom we at the English Legation were accredited, including Princess Alice of Hesse Darmstadt, our Queen Victoria’s daughter, and a vast number of cousinly allied royalties assembled one summer at the family château of Rumpenheim, where I had the privilege of paying an early court to our future Queen Alexandra while she was still a girl of seventeen, and her sister, afterwards Empress of Russia, pretty but plainly dressed maidens of no acknowledged importance, though we at the Legation had been secretly apprised of the intended marriage of the elder with our Prince of Wales.

All these incidents were unconscious elements in my diplomatic education. My thoughts, however, at the time ran more on poetry than politics, and what interest I took in German thought lay rather in the direction of science which was beginning to perplex me, for Darwin’s “Origin of Species” had only just been published.

My second appointment in Frankfort found the Bismarckian policy in full swing. After three years’ absence at other posts—Madrid, Paris, and Lisbon—I had returned in 1866 in time to witness the great duel in the Diet between Prussia and Austria shortly after to be decided at Sadowa, which displayed Bismarck as the leading force of his generation.

Of the great man himself I have but a single personal recollection, that of a couple of hours spent in his society at tea alone with Lady Malet. He was then still an object of dislike and even ridicule at Frankfort, but already recognized by Lady Malet, a very clever woman, to whom he had paid a certain court while at the Frankfort Legation, and who already saw in him the man of genius he was soon to show himself. My memory of him is of a tall, distinguished personage, still slight in figure, who, having been told about me by our hostess favourably as having some faculty of verse, talked pleasantly and well on literature and science in excellent English for a couple of hours, affecting a certain Anglomania, where he touched on politics. He showed himself thus at his best, and left me with a feeling of the heroic such as a young man gives to one already beginning to be famous and who had been kind to him.

All this, however, had failed to give me when I left Frankfort after Sadowa any enthusiasm for Germany, and when the war of 1870 broke out I was strongly anti-Prussian. My connection with the Paris Embassy in the days of the Napoleonic glory had made me a partisan of France, and I had come to look upon Germany as intellectually the home of barbarism given up to the grosser forms of social life and clumsy in its politics as in all else.

With these few words I leave my diary to tell its own story.

“_Paris, 27th May_, 1870.—I have taken the first floor of No. 204, Rue de Rivoli, at 8,000 francs rent. My proprietor is M. Desfontaines, one of Louis Philippe’s councillors. He is an old man who lives at Noissy, and his house is managed by his concierge, whom we call the _faux bon homme_. He sits with his wife all day under the arcade, and the people of the quarter dislike him because he has made 100,000 francs. Every Monday morning he brings us from the country a country bunch of flowers.

“To-day I went with my cousin Francis Currie to the other side of the Seine for furniture. We went to one Recapet’s, a bric-à-brac dealer, and having to ask the way I inquired of a shopwoman in the faubourg, a dealer in religious prints, the road to the ‘Passage Marie.’ ‘The Passage Ste Marie,’ she answered, correcting me. There is still religion in France! Yesterday Francis Currie saw a dead man fished out of the river near the Pont Royal. A woman in the crowd asked what it was all about. ‘A naked man,’ my cousin answered. ‘If it is only that!’ said the woman. I afterwards drove with my wife to the Jardin des Plantes, and back through the Faubourg St. Antoine. Coming home we saw the carriages of ‘Le Singe’ as they call their Sovereign.

“_30th May._—We drove down on Saturday to Chantilly by the old Royal Road passing through St. Denis and Luzarches. There are some fine views on the way, but the road is still paved nearly the whole distance. In the Forest we noticed two large oaks on the boundary between Oise and Seine. These are the only trees more than twenty [_sic_] years old. The races on Sunday were pleasant and the weather fine. A horse called Bigarreau won the principal stakes.

“_2nd June._—To Fontainebleau to play tennis. Our party was Frank Lascelles and his wife, Henry Wodehouse and Mr. and Mrs. Fred Ricardo. Lascelles and I played from two till half-past six. The _paumier_, Garcin, is eighty-three years old. In his time he has played tennis with Wellington and others of the Waterloo heroes. ‘Napoleon Bonaparte,’ he told us, ‘played in the tennis court at Fontainebleau, but did not show much aptitude. Il n’avait pas même des dispositions. Quant à Wellington, il ne faisait que s’y amuser, il venait de gagner la bataille de Waterloo.’ (The old man hobbled into the court to play us a _chouette_, supported by a granddaughter, who picked up and handed him the balls. He pretended at first not to be able to send the ball over the net, but with five francs on the set he soon recovered his skill and won his money. Anne made an excellent drawing of the court while we were playing.)

“_3rd June._—Two great fires have taken place, the one at Fontainebleau, which destroyed a large part of the Forest, the other at Constantinople, a thousand houses burnt at Pera, including the English Embassy.

“People in Paris seem to be becoming aware how grossly they have been cajoled in the matter of Liberal reform. I myself thought three months ago that it was sincere, and I was only surprised that so long-sighted a policy should have been adopted by the Bonapartes, who have always held by small expedients. For the future of the dynasty there could have been no greater folly than a sham conversion to constitutionalism and a repetition of the old trick of the plebiscite. Another such victory and the dynasty is lost. They complain already that Ollivier is nothing else than Rouère over again, and that personal government is precisely what it was last year. I care nothing for all this, not being one of the Singe’s subjects.

“_8th June._—We dined last night at the British Embassy, thirty covers. Amongst the guests were some of the new French Ministry—Grammont, Mège, Richard, also Monsaud, Under Secretary at the Affaires Etrangères. Lord Lyons keeps great state at the Embassy, with Sheffield managing the household, and Edward Malet for Private Secretary. They all three go out driving in a barouche every afternoon in the Bois de Boulogne, with a dog named Toby on the fourth seat. The Parisians mock at it calling Malet ‘le petit brun,’ and Sheffield ‘le petit blond.’ The Duke and Duchess of Montmorency were at the dinner. He is the hero of a rather mean adventure. Being by birth a Perigord, he solicited through his wife, who was an Aguado and partly Spanish, one of Empress Eugénie’s set, a grant of the Duchy of Montmorency, the direct line of the Ducs de Montmorency having failed, though there were still collaterals. One of these, the Comte de Montmorency, who now represents the family, scratched out the new Duke’s arms from the panel of his carriage the first time he drove up in it to the Jockey Club. It led to a duel in which the Comte was slightly wounded, and the Club, indignant at the affair, expelled the Duke from their house. On this the Duke appealed to the Court, the Empress happening to be Regent at the time, and the police received orders to close the doors of the Jockey Club if they persisted in the expulsion. The Club succumbed, and so the matter ended. [I was constantly in and out of the Chancery at our Embassy during all this time, having through my former official connection with the Embassy still many friends there, Lascelles, Malet, Saumarez, Claremont, and Atlee, thus I heard the news pretty regularly as the Embassy heard it.]

“The ‘Figaro’ has published a _charge_. Villemessent, the editor, begins by announcing that he has sold his paper to the Irreconcilables, and articles and letters follow, signed by the chiefs of the revolution. The best is a piece in verse, purporting to be by Victor Hugo in which his style is well imitated. Half the town has been taken in by the hoax.

“_11th June._—There is news from Lisbon of disturbances, Saldanha being the hero of these. I used to see this curious old Field Marshal very frequently during the summer I spent at Cintra in 1865. He was a _poseur_ of the first water, and nature had given him a head and figure exactly suited to the part of _ancien militaire_, which he had been playing ever since the day of the Peninsular War. He is now eighty-five. Twenty years ago he made a revolution in Portugal very like the present one. He got a few regiments together, and when the King marched out against him with the rest of the Portuguese army these at once joined the Marshal, and the King had to gallop back alone with his A.D.C.’s to Lisbon. Saldanha had no political principles, but being a restless, vain old man, could not bear to be forgotten. I saw him again at Rome in 1867, on his way in uniform to the Jesuit church in Easter week, his whole coat, front and back, a mass of stars and orders. He is the most completely decorated personage in Europe. Also he has the pretension of universal knowledge, and has written a book or pamphlet on every possible subject from Pisciculture to the Immaculate Conception. At Cintra he had a garden of acclimatisation. His wife, the widow of a British navy surgeon, was a worthy Englishwoman on whom he imposed absolute silence in society so as to conceal her defects of education.

“Another revolution is an absurd one at Monaco, where the _Prince héritier_, who married Lady Mary Hamilton last spring, has slapped his wife’s face, and asks for a divorce. The late Duke of Hamilton, her father, so well known here at Paris as the Empress’s cousin and intimate friend, with many faults of conduct, was a grand seigneur. His worst folly was his marriage with a Baden Princess who despised his Scotch nobility and gave him a heavy set of German heirs. He met his death by slipping down the narrow stairs of the Maison Doreé where he had been supping with Henry Howard and a couple of women after an opera ball. The Empress learning what had happened hurried to his rooms and was with him till he died.

“Déjazet is retiring from the stage on which she has been popular for nearly seventy years, having begun as an infant prodigy at the age of five.

“Yet another scandal has been one in the Spanish Royal Family. The ex- King’s pension has been left unpaid, and he sues the ex-Queen Ysabel for arrears.

“I have bought a pair of horses of Mrs. Lyne Stevens for 4,000 francs. She was on the stage, and her husband dying left her an immense fortune which Claremont, our military attaché here, manages for her at a salary of £1,000 a year.

“_26th June._—The Orleans princes have addressed a letter to the French Parliament demanding their readmission into France. Courbet, the painter, has refused the legion of honour. The Paris papers consider the refusal a miracle of virtue.

“_28th June._—The claim of the Orleans princes has been refused through fear, probably, that they should go on to demand their property in France confiscated by the Republic. The Chantilly Estate is said to be worth 280,000,000 francs. Among the wills and bequests I see that this Estate, bought of the Duc de Nemours, has just been left by Sir Edmund Antrobus to his son, held I suppose fictitiously for the Orleans family.

“Yesterday morning died Lord Clarendon, our Secretary for Foreign Affairs. I met him four years ago when I was staying with the Usedoms in the Villa Capponi at Florence, a sleek white little old man, with a pulse, it was said for some years at forty, and an agreeable old- fashioned manner. His brother, Charles Villiers, I met several times at the Malet’s at Frankfort in 1860, a very brilliant talker, who was kind to me, and interested in my young man’s chatter. Their mother was the Mrs. Villiers of the Byron correspondence.

“_1st July._—To Versailles to see whether the historic tennis court there was in a fit state for play. A nice little girl in charge of the place told us that an order had just come from the Ministry for its restoration. The court is miserably out of repair, the floor chipped, and the plaster falling from the walls, the brass plate commemorating the oath of 1789 was taken down by Dalmand the _paumier_ some years ago, and _remise à neuf_. The court had not been used for four years, and there are but a few rotten old balls to play with, but the court was played in this summer.

“Queen Ysabel has signed her abdication publicly of the Crown of Spain, and the Prince of Asturias, her son, becomes King Alphonso XII. On the same day a rival Prince of Asturias was born to Don Carlos at Geneva. The Pope has sent his blessing to them both. I well remember the Court of Queen Ysabel, and the _besa manos_ ceremonies in which the little Prince Alfonso figured with his parents, set in a tall gilt chair, having his hand kissed fast asleep. He had in those days a most beautiful little Andalusian pony, a miniature horse, but only twelve hands high, with silky mane and tail sweeping the grounds, legs fine as a gazelle’s. When the revolution came which drove the Bourbons from Spain, Prim gave the pony to his son. I met General Prim in the summer of 1863 at the baths of Panticosa, a pale, ugly little man, with no kind of distinction, suffering from an internal disease which gave him constant pain, half his political energy, they said, was caused by this. General Prim was the leader then of the Progresista Party. He was at the baths for his health with his aide-de-camp, General Milans del Bosch.”

The abdication here mentioned of the exiled Queen of Spain was the occasion of the quarrel between France and Prussia a week or two later, which resulted in the disastrous war, the capitulation of Sedan and the overthrow of the Napoleonic dynasty. I was, at the time of writing, strongly anti-Bonapartist, a reader of the “Lanterne” and other journals of that type, more than my diary shows. In this I shared the general view of the Parisian mob, and even of the _bourgeoisie_ who were sick of the Empire. The gossip of the Paris streets was retailed to me daily by my old _bonne_ Julie, who had a curious faculty for gathering news as she was constantly wandering about the streets where she had become a well-known character by reason of her kindness to birds and beasts, and sufferers of all kinds. With the sergeants-de-ville of the Tuileries quarter she was a favourite, for she was always ready to help in cases of sickness, or accident, coming within their province. A Bretonne peasant by birth, (she had had an uncle a priest, massacred during the great Revolution on the steps of the altar, while he was celebrating mass). Her political prepossessions were strongly Orleanist, as became one who had been in their domestic service, for she had been housemaid in her young days under Louis Philippe in the Château, as she called the Tuileries, and knew every room in it from cellar to garret. Another informant of the same class was my cousin, Francis Currie’s _bonne_ Julienne, a pendant of my Julie. She had a German husband, waiter in a restaurant, and brought us gossip from the German point of view, also an amusing woman. To these two may be added our man-servant Desiré who appears from time to time in the diaries.

“_4th July._—The ‘Constitutionel’ publishes the news that Prim has offered the Crown of Spain to one of the Hohenzollerns, a brother of Prince Charles of Roumania, and that the candidature is accepted. On this a general outcry from all sides. A Hohenzollern, it is said, at the Escurial will complete the wild beast show of Europe. We have already seen a Bonaparte at Fontainebleau, a Savoy at Venice, a Hapsburg in Mexico, to-day the rage is for German Kings, the most wonderful phenomenon of the age. Yesterday we drove to St. Germain with a mixed company of Americans, French, Jews, and Brazilians, to dine there on the terrace. The event of the day was Grammont’s speech in the Chambers. He declared that if the candidature of Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern was not withdrawn ‘France would know how to act without hesitation and without weakness.’ This being considered a declaration of war with Prussia was tumultuously applauded by all parties in the House. The move is considered an excellent one for the Bonapartists, who need a show of energy to cover their humiliations of the past four years, for the first place in Europe is every day becoming more plainly Prussian. Whether the Germans are beat in the war, or the Emperor Napoleon, I shall feel some satisfaction. St. Germain looked lovely as it always does.”

Though my diary does not record it, I remember well the excitement there was among us that evening at the news which had been brought down by Frank Lascelles, or some other diplomatist of our party, and how in the beautiful summer’s night we walked upon the terrace after dinner, and looked across the river towards Paris, and how someone suggested, though we none of us had much misgiving as to the fortunate issue of the war, the possible trouble there might be for the fair city which we loved. Our imagination for a moment encircled it with a girdle of armed men, and a gulf seemed opened suddenly at our feet of unknown adversity. Yet, as I have said, none of us, not even those who ought to have known it, had a suspicion of the unreadiness of France for a serious campaign. There had been a comparative lack of interest in the Paris newspapers at the first announcement of the Hohenzollern candidature, which was treated by them as only another rebuff for the Imperial diplomacy, and it was not till Grammont made his valorous speech, and after him Ollivier that a cry, _à Berlin_, began to be raised.

“_8th July._—There has been a report that Prim has abandoned his Hohenzollern, but this is not true. The German papers affect not to treat the French menace as serious. At Madrid the Cortes are to assemble for the vote on the 20th. If the present candidature is not withdrawn before that date the position of France will become less simple.

“To-night I start for Southampton to meet my brother Francis, leaving Anne here. He is returning from Australia via the Cape and Madeira.”

[A fortnight’s break occurs here in my diary caused by my absence from Paris.]

“_27th July._—I have been more than a fortnight in England, and my journal has been interrupted, but I will recapitulate the events which have led to the declaration of war. In answer to the French demand of a withdrawal of Prince Leopold’s candidature Prim denied the right of France to interfere. At first all previous knowledge of the candidature was denied in Prussia, but it soon appeared that King William had given his assent to the Prince’s acceptance. But on the matter being pressed by the French Government William withdrew his consent, not as King, but as head of the Hohenzollerns, saying at the same time that if Spain still chose to elect the Prince he would not as King of Prussia interfere. Nevertheless France insisted on a formal disavowal of the plan by the Prussian Government. Things being in this position, to the astonishment of all, Prince Anthony, Leopold’s father, writes to the Spanish Government withdrawing his son’s candidature, Leopold himself remaining silent, and the Prussian Government professing not to know even where he is. In France Leopold is thought to have gone incognito to Madrid, as his brother Charles in like circumstances went incognito to Roumania. I have no doubt in my mind that some such stroke was contemplated by Bismarck, as Usedom has often told me that Prince Charles’ expedition was sanctioned by the Prussian Government, and that it was Bismarck’s policy to raise up anti-French influences in every corner of Europe, in Greece, in Italy, and in the Turkish Provinces. In England it was very generally believed that Prince Anthony had settled the matter, and the ‘Times’ sang a Te Deum of peace, the stocks rose prodigiously in London, and two days after, Sunday the 16th of July, as I was sitting in the balcony after dinner in Belgrave Square (number 44, my cousin Percy Wyndham’s house), I heard the news hawkers bawling out, ‘Declaration of War.’ A story had appeared in the ‘Times’ that morning, relating that M. Benedetti the French Ambassador at Berlin had accosted King William contrary to etiquette in the Public Garden at Ems, and had there again urged the claims of France, and that the King turning on his heel had told his aide-de-camp to inform the Ambassador that he had no more to say to him. This story has since been denied, but it has been made use of both in France and Germany to inflame popular passions. On Monday morning the ‘Times’ announced the war, and declared that the French Emperor had committed the greatest crime Europe had witnessed for thirty years. The ‘Times’ has since persisted that the war is one of aggression on the part of France with the Rhine Provinces for object, but I have never met for years past a Frenchman who has not laughed at the idea of taking possession of the Rhine, or who would have given a fig to annex. People expected a battle would be fought at once, but ten days have passed, and no blow has been struck.

“This morning the ‘Times’ gives us a new surprise, the draft of a treaty between France and Prussia (undated) in which the annexation of Belgium and Luxemburg by France is agreed on if necessary by force of arms. The draft has no appearance of authenticity, its style being unlike that usual in treaties, and the French used is poor. Some such scheme may have been talked over between the French Emperor and Bismarck, soon after the late war (the war of Sadowa), but I cannot conceive its having been thus put on paper. I expect the French Government to deny the authenticity of the document, and perhaps ultimately they may make a counter-charge against Prussia of designs on Holland. Feeling in England is pretty well balanced between France and Prussia, but people fail to see that France is in reality fighting for her existence. This is no war of Government against Government, but of race against race, of France the last of the great Latin nations against Germany. If Germany is beaten she will recover, if France she will go the way of the other Latins. The Radical Party in England side with Prussia because they see in it a triumph of atheism and socialism in Europe. France after many years goes forth to the Rhine singing the Marseillaise in the cause of order and religion. It is strange.

“_28th July._—We drove this morning to St. Cloud to see the Emperor and his son start for the war. He went off by the back door, and nobody saw him go. The flag was pulled down exactly at ten o’clock. The Emperor has his headquarters at Metz.

“_29th July._—It is decided that the French garrison is to leave Rome. M. Visconti Venosta, the Italian Foreign Minister, has engaged to protect the Holy See from the Garibaldians; the Pope, however, is I am sure quite able to take care of himself at Rome. The Foreign Legion is, or was, when I saw it in 1866 as fine a body of men as any in the south of Europe, they did not need the French _chassepots_ to beat the Garibaldians at Montana; however, we shall see. The announcement of the new dogma of Papal infallibility has passed almost unnoticed after all, though there are rumours of a schism in Germany.

“_30th July._—To-day we have a full explanation of the projected treaty [that published in the ‘Times’ of the 27th, about Belgium and the Rhine provinces]. Benedetti writes to the official journal, stating that soon after the war of 1866, being one day with Bismarck at Berlin, and talking as they had often talked of proposed territorial changes in Europe, Bismarck said: ‘What is the good of always talking, why not put our ideas in writing.’ Thereupon giving Benedetti a pen and paper, he dictated the famous draft and kept it, as he said, to show the King, a stroke worthy of the golden age of diplomacy. I know positively from Usedom, who was in the thick of affairs in Prussia during the war of 1866, that Bismarck promised the Rhine provinces, or, at least, those south of the Moselle, to France as the price of her neutrality, but never with the intention of keeping the promise. Benedetti must have been a great donkey to be gulled by Bismarck in this way, but the story he gives of the transaction bears the impress of truth. It explains what was so odd in the draft, namely, that in quoting the names and titles of the high contracting parties the King of Prussia’s name stands first. Bismarck is the most wonderful man of his age, but he has outwitted himself as well as Benedetti here. Public opinion in England is veering round from Prussia; and Belgium, which is most interested, acquits France in the matter.

“A skirmish has taken place on the frontier, where strangely enough an Englishman in the Baden service was killed, the first victim of the war, his name Winslow. The addresses of the Emperor and the King to their troops are both published. The King appeals to God the Emperor to Glory, quite in the old style.

“Yesterday we drove to Versailles through the Forest of Meudon, a lovely old deserted road, never used apparently since Versailles became a royal residence and the new high road was carried through Sèvres.

“Lascelles tells me the true history of the message sent by King William to M. Benedetti ‘Allez trouvez son Excellence,’ the King said to his aide-de-camp, ‘et priez le de venir baiser mon c—l.’ He also related an anecdote of Bismarck illustrative of his equally Rabelaisian style of humour.” [This anecdote is omitted as unprintable.]

“_Aug. 2nd._—Went last night to the Opera to hear ‘Masaniello.’ Between the third and fourth acts the stage represented the French camp, and Faure in the uniform of the Garde Mobile sang the ‘Rhin Allemand’: Nous l’avons eu votre Rhin Allemand. The Marseillaise was then called for and Marie Sasse came forward with the tricolor and gave it amid great enthusiasm. It was the most emotional thing I ever saw on the stage. Faure afterwards was called for and sang the Marseillaise in his turn, kneeling down at the last verse, and wrapping himself in the flag. All the house stood up while it was being sung. The effect was lessened to me by the uniform and by the tricolour having on it a little gilt eagle, but in spite of this I have seldom been so touched. [The Marseillaise was then being sung for the first time in Paris, after having been proscribed there for twenty years.]

“_3rd Aug._—It is officially announced that a division of the French army has captured the heights above Saarbruck and driven the Prussians out of the town, Saarbruck being just over the frontier. The Emperor and the Prince Imperial were present and under fire.

“_5th Aug., 9 p.m._—Learned at the Embassy that the Prussians had taken Vissembourg yesterday and that General Douai had been killed, one gun captured. They told me a battle was being fought to-day, the news hitherto rather unfavourable to the French. MacMahon had 80,000 men under his command, so it should be a great battle. [This proved to be the battle of Worth.] I have arranged in case of a defeat to send my wife and Miss Noel [her cousin Alice Noel who was staying with us] to Havre with the carriage and horses. I shall stay here myself. Paris has been very silent this evening. I told Julie at dinner that the Emperor had been killed. ‘Quant à cela,’ she said, ‘si je vois aujourd’hui passer son enterrement je ne dirai que tant mieux.’ The weather since noon has been sultry with an attempt at thunder. There is a heavy black cloud over the sky to-night.

“_6th Aug._—Last night at half-past ten, hearing that something was happening on the boulevard I went out. Bands of men were marching up and down singing patriotic songs, the boulevard crowded, people talking in knots. There was the rumour of a defeat. (According to the ‘Times’ the French had been driven out of Vissemberg, one gun taken and 500 unwounded prisoners, also the French camp taken. Vissembourg is a few miles from Rastadt, where the Prussian Crown Prince has his headquarters.) I sat down outside Bignon’s to read the ‘National,’ and was joined there by Malet and Lascelles. They are both staunch Frenchmen. They considered it looked very bad there being no news. They knew a severe battle was being fought that afternoon. I dreamed all night of Prussians and their victories. God rot them!

“This morning I went to the Embassy to volunteer my services to the Chancery, as they have more work there than they can do. They seemed to think that after all there had been no fighting yesterday. At half-past two Julie rushed into the room telling me that a great victory had been won, the Prince of Prussia and 20,000 prisoners taken. It was too good to be true, but flags were being put up everywhere in the streets. I ordered out the carriage and drove down the Rue de Rivoli eastwards and on round the boulevards. The Faubourg St. Antoine and all the east end of Paris was a mass of flags and excitement. After the Boulevard des Italiens, however, on our way back these thinned and at the Madeleine all was bare as on ordinary days, till on arriving at the Embassy, we found that the whole thing was a gigantic _canard_. Somebody had posted up a telegram with this news at the Bourse, and in a couple of hours the excitement had reached every corner of Paris. In the afternoon an attack was made by the mob on the Bourse and its frequenters. The man who had posted up the telegram was nearly torn to pieces, and the Jews and other rascals who were there had the coats torn off their backs.

“_7th Aug._—This morning the news seems bad. The ‘Figaro’ says that it is a time for calm and dignity.

“_4 o’clock._—MacMahon has been defeated in a great battle at Reichshoffen [Worth]. He has retreated on Nancy; his communications with Metz were cut, but seem now to be restored. On the same day yesterday General Frossart was driven out of Saarbruck. The Emperor in his bulletin says that great sacrifices must be made by the country. There is great depression in Paris. A band of respectable people came past our house shouting ‘_La patrie en danger! Des fusils! A la frontière!_’ At this moment a great crowd is collecting round the Tuileries. Julie has gone out to see what the news is. Claremont says the French have been outnumbered, that they had not 200,000 men in the field. The Empress is at the Tuileries. People begin to talk ominously about the present dynasty. Dalmand at the Tennis Court [he was third _paumier_ to the tennis court of which I was a member close by in the north-east corner of the Tuileries Gardens] says he has only one wish, to die by a Prussian bullet!

“Yesterday a mob assembled at the Place Vendôme and forced Ollivier to make a speech from his balcony. He promised the news should be placarded every two hours. Paris is declared in a state of siege. I have ordered the carriage for ten o’clock to-morrow to drive to Nantes, whence Anne and Miss Noel will go on to Deauville. I shall return by train. I am afraid of the horses being seized for the war.

“_5 o’clock._—Julie has come back to say that the Emperor’s despatch was that he did not know where MacMahon was. This looks very bad.

“The battle where Frossart was beaten was Forbach. MacMahon’s they call Freshvillers. If MacMahon has been cut off we may expect the French centre to be attacked on both sides and probably beaten somewhere in front of Metz.

“_8th August._—No news this morning. MacMahon seems to have joined the main army before Metz. The Parisians are rapidly becoming demoralized, the Bonapartists blaming the Republicans, the Republicans the Bonapartists, and both blaming Fortune. All parties seem inclined to lay down their arms directly the army is beaten. I was not wrong in believing that twenty years of Cæsarism had destroyed virtue in France. It is well to talk of 1792, but the Republicans then were other men than now, and when their army was beaten the people fought on. To-day French patriotism is limited to killing the enemy. Nobody cares to be killed. Paris will probably open her gates to the Germans, and having consented to a disgraceful peace she will then settle matters with her rulers. I have sent Anne, Miss Noel, and the horses to Deauville to wait till events declare themselves. There were no particular disturbances last night. The English are flying from Paris. I believe Paris to be impregnable if held by a sufficient force. It is also too large to invest. If the remains of the army after a defeat were to throw itself into the capital it might form a nucleus for the whole nation. Let them proclaim a Republic if they will or take one of the Orleans princes for king, but let them continue the war. France can never make peace on her defeat or she must perish. The windows of the Tuileries were lighted all last night. It is remarkable that not a word of sympathy with the Empress Eugénie can be heard.

“_7 o’clock._—It is reported, but not officially, that King William crossed the Rhine last night with 120,000 men at Colmar. I have been playing tennis with Lascelles. He takes a brighter view of things than I do. He thinks that a defeat would not end the war, but that a Republic will be proclaimed under Gambetta or Jules Simon and the war be carried on. He thinks that if the Prussians enter Paris they will find a Republic there, and will place the Comte de Paris on the throne, but I am certain no Orleans Prince would accept the Crown at such hands. Perhaps Napoleon will put himself in the hands of the Prussians. Who knows, perhaps Bismarck might re-seat him on his throne. All the foreign Ministers have been to Lord Lyons to ask what they shall do in case a Republic is proclaimed. Metternich (the Austrian Ambassador) has sent his Pauline (Mme. de Metternich) to Calais. As we came out of the tennis court we saw Persigny driving past in his Victoria towards the Tuileries.

“_12 o’clock (midnight)._—Dined on the Boulevard. Great crowds of people. Saw a carriage attacked by twenty or thirty people, a man standing up in it looking very pale and waving his arms. A troop of dragoons came down the Boulevard and people cried, ‘_A la frontière!_’ This is because they think no troops should remain at Paris. The dragoons trotted on to the Louvre and are now in the Carrousel.

“The Prince Imperial has come back and it is said the Emperor was also there (in the Tuileries); some think he is there now. Ollivier is also supposed to be in hiding at the Palace, though a cordon of police guards his house in the Place Vendôme at night. Julienne’s husband, who is head waiter at the Hôtel Meurice, told Julie that the Comte de Paris was there five days ago. I believe he will be in Paris again as President or King before a month is out. Sedition is talked openly and by respectable persons of all sorts. The ‘Soir’ used guarded but very plain language to-night and I believe it is certain that the deputies of the Left signed a document requesting the Bonaparte family to withdraw from France. If the French can get rid of this incubus they may find heart to fight their battle out. The Emperor has shown himself in this crisis what I have always held him to be, an irresolute man, incapable of any great sustained policy. I believe him to have permitted Grammont’s original speech on the Hohenzollern question with the intention and full expectation of the matter being compromised, but the country carried him away and he was obliged to follow. He has been carried fairly off his legs; even a great victory could now hardly keep him on his throne. _Il a gêné la patrie_.” [What I did not know at the time of writing this was that Napoleon III was incapacitated from playing the difficult part demanded of him in the crisis by an attack of the stone, which caused him great suffering. The decision, therefore, between peace and war had been left practically in the Empress’s hands, to whom the blame of the decision rightly belongs.]

“I am more hopeful of the National honour to-night. The army beaten, the French ought still to have heart to win the campaign, holding as they do the sea [Prussia at that time had almost no navy]. They can in time starve the enemy out. As I sat at dinner the poet Morin came to speak to me. He was very earnest in asking my candid opinion on the state of France. He seemed much _émotioné_, but I noticed that he ate a capital dinner.

“_9th August, 12 o’clock (noon)._—At the Embassy they talk of a Republic under the dictatorship of General Trochu. I confess I never heard of him before. The Chamber opens to-day. Great bands of blouses have marched there, and a great band also of police. They say the Opposition will demand the immediate arming of all the citizens of Paris inscribed on the Electoral Roll. This morning Julie came in to me with my little dog Rachael dying in her arms.

“Something must have happened to the Emperor; he has either run away or abdicated or been shot. These ideas pass through one’s mind. No one ever mentions him.

“_2 p.m._—They are shutting the Tuileries garden gates.

“_6 p.m._—I ran out and found the gates shut, but at the Tennis Court gate by saying I was a _sociétaire_ they let me in, and looking over the balustrade of the terrace, saw some thousands of people collected in the Place de la Concorde and on the Bridge in front of the Corps Législatif. Biboche and Sérafin and Dalmand, the three _paumiers_, are absurdly impressioned by the course of events. Biboche is a Bonapartist, Dalmand a patriot without colour, Etienne, the marker, fancies the Republic, and Sérafin has _tout simplement_ a wife at home with the scarlet fever. All look upon France as lost. At three o’clock we were turned out of the Tennis Court, and the garden was cleared of nurses and lovers. I went and sat in the Place de la Concorde for an hour, till driven in by a thunderstorm, which stopped any revolution, if such was intended.

“A band came by our house just now, singing, with a ridiculous young negro marching in front flourishing a wooden sword. I am beginning to tire of the crisis. General Lebœuf has resigned his command, Bazaine becomes Commander-in-Chief. [It was Lebœuf who, when the Emperor asked him whether the army was completely ready for war, answered ‘_Jusqu’au dernier bouton_.’]

“_12 p.m. (midnight)._—On a motion by Jules Favre for the organization and arming of the National Guard throughout France the Government have been beaten by 243 to 21. A second proposal for the formation of a Committee of National Defence in the House was also thrown out. In consequence of the first vote the Ministry has resigned. Count Palikao (General Montauban) is charged with the formation of a new Ministry. This is considered as being virtually an overthrow of the Empire. It is expected that the new Ministry will declare the House the supreme authority, and that the Imperial Family will be invited to leave France. Marshal Bazaine has accepted the command in chief. General Changarnier the Republican has been received by the Emperor at Metz and has appeared in public with him. [Changarnier had been a rival candidate to Louis Napoleon when they stood for the Presidentship of the Republic in 1850.]

“I dined with Lascelles and met M. de Hübner (the Austrian). He is a violent hater of Prussia, but declares that she must crush France. I cannot think that if only Frenchmen will be true to themselves, if the army can throw itself into Paris, all may yet be well. Austria, Denmark, and even England may think it the moment to intervene; Prussia cannot support a long war with all her ports blockaded. But if the French accept the terms offered on a defeat they will be lost for ever. Imperial France has no virtue to fall back upon; a Republic is their best chance; it is the only name that has a power to rouse.

“When I came home Julie talked of her recollections of the Emperor. She remembered seeing him when he came back to Paris in 1852, and, when kneeling on the steps of the Madeleine, he was blessed by the curé. As he rode from the church and entered the gate leading from the Place de la Concorde into the Tuileries garden, a crown of flowers was let down from the upper part of the grille upon his head, and the people called out for the first time, ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ Three weeks later he was crowned at Notre Dame. She also talked of his marriage, and Julie knew the details because she was in Henry Howard’s service, and he was Mrs. Gould’s lover.[23] Mademoiselle Montijo was taken to Compiègne by Mrs. Gould, though she was not invited, and there the Emperor saw her out riding. She was very beautiful, and had a wonderfully fair complexion. The Emperor, although he knew she was the Marquis d’Aguado’s mistress, had a caprice for her, and wanted to make her leave Aguado, but she said he must marry her and he did so, in spite of his friends and Ministers. He said in his excuse that having, as they told him, done so much for France, France must do this for him. According to Julie, Napoleon and Eugénie made _mauvais ménage_ at first, but the Empress had never been reproached for misconduct since the marriage. The child, the Prince Imperial, was certainly hers, as any one could see by comparing her photograph with the boy’s. People had said that he was not, but this was untrue. Julie has often been with letters from Howard to Mademoiselle Montijo, when she lived with her mother in the Place Vendôme, _un misérable entresol sur la cour_. The house is No. 4, I think she said, in the south-east corner of the square. She and her mother kept two women servants, a cook and a _bonne_. Julie cited as a sign of the _misère_ in which they lived, that these women wore handkerchiefs on their heads instead of caps. Aguado, elder brother of the Comte and Vicomte, kept a one-horse _remise_ for her, and provided for them in other ways. Julie declares that, Eugénie had other worshippers, too, ‘_même des Allemands_.’ Aguado was married to an Englishwoman, who is now remarried to his brother, the Vicomte. He went mad when Mademoiselle Montijo married the Emperor, and afterwards died. She lived on in the Place Vendôme till the week before her marriage, when she was taken to the Tuileries to be married from there at Notre Dame. Such is Julie’s account. Julie and M. Perrier, Howard’s valet, used to talk these over together, ‘_Ce pauvre M. Perrier qui est mort_.’ History is written from such intimate talk.

“My own recollections of the Emperor are not very many. I saw him for the first time in 1851, on the day of his _coup d’état_, when he became President for life. We, my brother Francis and I, with our mother, were passing through Paris on our way to Italy, and we were staying at the Hotel Wagram, only two doors from my present apartment here in the Rue de Rivoli. Francis and I went out with our tutor, Edmund Coffin, to see what was going on in the streets. The Rue de Rivoli was full of people, and there was a cordon of gendarmes between it and the Place de la Concorde. ‘_Liberté, Egalité, et Fraternité_’ was still written up everywhere on the walls. The President rode by close to us with his Staff, and passed up the Rue Royale. This was a very early recollection, before he was Emperor. When I next saw him it was at Biarritz in 1863. He used to walk about there leaning on the arm of his Chamberlain, Tascher de la Pagerie, moving slowly like an old man. I went one evening to a ball at the Pavilion, and was presented to him and the Empress. The Empress reminded me that she had seen me at Madrid some months before, which was true, for I had been to an audience of the Corps Diplomatique when she was paying her visit to Queen Isabella. At the ball the Emperor walked about looking bored, not at all as if he was in his own house. He is a thick-set, coarsely made man (with legs too short for his body), and in his uniform might be taken for a sergeant. He has nothing remarkable in his face, except his cold green eyes, which have a strangely fascinating, but repellent power. They give him a certain distinction. I have since, while at the Embassy, been to balls at the Tuileries, but have never had personal speech with him. I have listened to him, however, talking once for twenty minutes at a time with Lord Cowley, at one of the receptions while the Empress was finishing her _cercle_. They were discussing on that occasion a review there had been of the English and French fleets, and his remarks were the essence of commonplace. He has none of the ease of manner, the lightness of thought, the _esprit Gaulois_ which go so far in France, a heavy, slow- thinking man, talking French with a provincial accent. It is strange that such a man should have ruled the French for twenty years. If he had died a month ago he would have left a great name in history. Now who knows? He may be ranked on a level with Louis Philippe. Such are the chances of a man’s glory.

“_10th Aug._—I have drawn £40 in five-franc pieces for the siege. It is already difficult to change bank notes. The town is quieter to-day. No news from the army. A list of the new Ministry is published, Palikao, La Tour d’Auvergne, Magne, Rigault, Girardin—more Bonapartist than ever. The Chamber supports them for the present. Paris is full of troops, 500 Marines marched past our house this morning on their way to the war, all stout, smart fellows. I take it no troops have ever fought better than the French have done.

“I have been reading Prévost Paradol’s last book, ‘La France Nouvelle,’ published last year. The concluding chapter reads prophetically now. He gives the future of the world to the English race, true enough if it includes our off-shoots, American and Colonial, but he hardly foresees what must happen, the extinction of England herself. England’s political life will be over the day that Holland is annexed to Germany. There is also little sign of the continuance of the intellectual eminence of our race. Literature never long survives a nation’s decline, and in the English speaking off-shoots no sign of intellectual life has yet been given, though America has had a hundred years of independence. The English language, however, is never likely to become a dead one. Her literature will still live, even if it ceases to be productive; in France it is otherwise. French will be a dead language, as dead at least as Spanish is. As for German, which is to become the language of Europe, it shows no sign of producing a readable literature. The only German I can read is Goethe’s, who took the best of his inspiration from Rousseau. Where he is purely German, he is pedantic and wearisome. Germany possesses some good lyric poetry, but romance, tragedy, history, all are dull. What is really meritorious is the scientific writing, but that is owing to the matter rather than the manner. The Volkslieder have the melancholy charm of barbarous poetry, but the serious poets are without humour. German is bourgeois and its literature bourgeois. [This is a poor diagnosis. I ought to have at least excepted Heine, but I left him out, I suppose, as being a Jew living at Paris, and more of a Frenchman than of a German.]