FRANCE BEFORE EUROPE.
BY
JULES MICHELET.
TRANSLATED FRO0fM THE FRENCIH.
" LES JUGES SERONT JUGS."'
BOSTON:
ROBERTS, BROTHERS.
1871.








CONTENTS.
CHAP.                                                                                                   PAG 
To   my   TRANSLATOR...........................................   P
To MY TRANSLATOR......... V
PREFACE   TO  THE   FIRST   EDITION.....................................   ii
PREFACE   TO   THE   SECOND   EDITION........................................    XX
I.    THE   ILLUSIONS  OF  BIARRITZ.    1865-6..................................                        1
II.  FRENCH  SYMPATHY AND HOSPITALITY.  1867...............                                             7
III.    HATRED   OF  FRANCE;........................................             17
IV. THE AUTHORS OF THE WAR.-GERMAN ESPIONAGE.....  26
V.   ENGINES  OF  WAR..........................................                                      39
VI.   CORRUPTION   OF  THE  EMPIRE.......................................    46
VII.  THE EMPEROR AND SEDAN........................................                                        55
VIII.   THE. UNCONQUERED   SPIRIT   OF  FRANCE...................................                            59
IX.    VANDALISM..............................................................................................   65
X.   STRASBOURG...........................                                   72
XI.    GERMANY.....................................                                                       79
XII.   POSITION   OF  RUSSIA...........................................................................   85
XIII.   FRANCE  AND   EUROPE.......................................................    94








TO MY TRANSLATOR.
Florence, February 26th.
IT is a great pleasure for me that the translation
of a book, which is of some importance in my eyes,
should have been undertaken by so enlightened a mind
as yours, and one who has so well and clearly caught
my thought and the form in which I express it. The
correction of the proofs by one whom  I value and
esteem, makes this translation unique and precious in
every point of view to me and to all.
J. MICHELET.








PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
WHEN the Emperor of Russia received the news of the
battle of W6rth (our first defeat), he could not repress
his transports of joy. He was at dinner, and to relieve
his feelings, he tossed off, in old German fashion, a
great goblet of wine, and then threw it up to the
ceiling, whence it fell and shivered to atoms. The
tumbler out of which he had drunk at such a moment
could not be defiled by further use.
This barbaric joy is the synonym of the serious
phrase made use of by the German workmen in their
petition for peace. The Czar thought their prophecy
was already accomplished. " This war will result in
the victory of Russia over Germany."
Over Europe and over the world! Germany, by
exhausting itself in destroying France, opens a royal
road to the Tartar Russian legions.
The report of this toast, and of this broken tumbler,
was not agreeable to Russia's friend. Count Bismarck
sighed.  His ingenious operation  of chloroforming
England while he executed France might be disturbed




viii       Prefacce to the First Edition.
by the sound. England, anxious about Turkey, might
suddenly be roused, and thus guess the secret treaty,
which the said Bismarck had signed with the Czar in
July against English  interests in the East.  The
cracked glass would make a slit or opening through
which light might dawn on the English Government; it
must be, therefore, immediately corked up-calked,
patched over. To succeed in this what flatteries must
be made use of to the gentlemen and officers with the
Prussian armies, to the newspaper correspondents, and
what compliments, what confidences, what dinners to
the reporters! At last, all the right-thinking, and even
all the dangerous-thinking, classes were sufficiently
acted upon, and England fell asleep again for two
months more, till the 1st of November.
Russia, which, in time of peace, has an army of
700,000 men, doubled her artillery last July. In that
boreal realm of snow and silence there are no sounds
or echoes —at least, at the commencement of events you
hear nothing.
But what is not generally known is, that Russia, after
a fashion, is a popular government. It understands
how, by the application of certain violent goads, its
barbarous masses can be stirred up. After Sedan, after
Metz, the Czar thought it right to make an appeal to
his people. The white bear opened its'huge throat,
and obtained an awful roar, as echo from that human
sea. That race is as mobile as the ocean. Our workers
of the West are sedentary races, the Russian is a




Preface to the First Edition.         ix
vagrant. It is only the weight of an iron yoke which
forces him to be a labourer; he would from choice be a
boatman, a coachman, a travelling carpenter, or a pedlar.
The monotony of the climate and of the landscape make
him anxious to change the scene. This desire for change
was felt in'53; there had been an intention to go south
for the anniversary of the fall of Constantinople (1453),
but instead, the Russian was taken to Poland, although
Poland had been already devoured as dry as a bone.
Some day he will be led into Germany.
To encourage the enthusiasm of his people, the
Czar informed the journalists of St. Petersburg, and
of Moscow, "Prussia is Russophile; Prussia is with
me " (10th November).
This statement displeased Europe, saddened M. de
Bismarck, but was a subject of rejoicing in Russia
itself. A concert of wild beasts arose as in a menagerie
at feeding-time. From the furious Katkoffs to the most
charming damsels, there arose a cry, "Long live the
Czar! "  Innocent girls wrote to their companions,
"How  delightful —how great is the Emperor! at a
bound all Russia has risen to her feet. What an
admirable sight! Glory to God!"
The shouts which reached our ears through these
truthful voices spoke of invasion, and warned Europe,
but they disturbed Bismarck so much that, through his
dear correspondents and his world of newspapers, he
dared make a counter-statement in reply as strange as
it was facetious.  "Russia has adopted a peace policy;
b




x          Preface to the First Edition.
Russia is disgusted with standing armies, is envious of
the results of the German landwehr, and will in future
only think of defensive armies." Only defensive?
500,000 young men were called out in January'71, to add
to the 700,000 soldiers she had before. In all 1,200,000
or 1,300,000: that is the number stated in a quasiofficial Russian newspaper. But, as this newspaper is
also often made use of to deceive Europe, I trust yet
more to private letters, which all speak of an impending
general movement in Russia. Russia, they say, is
armed and ready to march. Where?  Who knows?
Is it for poor weak Turkey, or for an occupation of the
Wallachian Provinces? Who can believe eitherrumour?
No, Russia is on her march westwards.
In his note of the 1st November, the Czar, giving
a flourish of trumpets to rouse Russia, even more than
to startlelEurope, proclaimed that he considered himself
no longer bound by the Treaty of 1856 guaranteed by
all Europe. He asserted the liberty of doing what he
pleased. England opened her eyes, and remonstrated
against this slap in the face. "Be so good as to tell me
why you thus attack mne, an entirely inoffensive person?"
"I will tell you in London," said the Czar, meekly;
adding, jocosely, "I will tell you what it is: Turkey is
armed to the teeth, and so strong that at any moment I
might be attacked in  the Black  Sea, and-I am
afraid."
V Where is France? - Where is the sword which, in the
Crimean war, according to the acknowledgment of an Eng



Preface to the First Edition.         xi
lish nobleman, saved England three times?  To-day
England is alone, and behind her are the piratical privateers of the United States, which, like a swarm of gnats,
will harass and sting English commerce in all the seas.
There is Austria, to be sure.  The other day,
according to Beneclek, it had a million of soldiers. ZBut
Bismarck is beforehand: he manipulates that invalid
empire.  The Diet refuses funds for the war, and
listens to the magic utterance, " The Danube is German
-the Danube must belong to Austria."
But what of Russia and all the Slaves on the shores of
that river? How will Bismarck settle the question? To
how many people has Bismarck promised the Danube?
First and foremost, he placed Prussia there as a
sentinel.  A  Hohenzollern  at Bucharest, near the
famous mouths of the Danube! Before Sadowa,'he
said to German patriots, " The Danube is yours-it
is Germany."  In 1870 he mesmerized England by
saying that Turkey was the watchman and guardian of
that gate of the Danube. To Russia what did he say?
That he would support Russia in the East, in the Black
Sea. But, as regards that Sea, the question is, who is
there to hold the key of Europe?  WYho will be the
keepey of the gate to open and shut the Danube —to
conne Germany, which is always seeking an ontlet there?
Russia, with its masses, rises up to-day to confront
Bismarck, and to recall to him their agreement.
1ussia deserves well at his hands.  She has served
him as Napoleon III. (fool) served him before Sadowva.




xii        Preface to the First Edition.
She said, " Go; you are safe. Throw all Germany on
France,-I am responsible for the rest of the world."
To put Bismarck at his ease, Russia has intimidated
Italy and Denmark, and has barred their way.
Now, however, Russia appears-makes claims. How
will Bismarck satisfy this giant mendicant?  Can he
say, " Come again, at a more convenient season? " His
methods are always the  same.  He mystified  the
Emperor in 1866, England in 1870,-doubtless Russia
in 1871.
The German patriots, the German professors and
literati, that estimable learned but chimerical class, who
have so imposed their opinion on Germany, have
neglected no means to alarm nations, and to warn them
they aspire to universal empire. From Holland to Switzerland, from Copenhagen to Bucharest, all is, or will be,
German.  Courland, Livonia, abandoning Russia, will
make the Baltic German.  This is their Utopia, to
which, on November 26th, at the opening of their Diet,
they immolated to Bismarck the liberties of their
country,-yet more, the mourning and the tears of
Germany, exhausted by its victories.
These profound politicians answer those who say
that Bismarck deceives the whole world, "Yes; the
whole woild, but not us. You will see. He is quick,
agile in his movements. Look at his clever trick at
Vienna, how sharp! and his back-handed thrust at
England. What a wall against Russia! Yesterday he
was half-Russian, to-day he is wholly German." How is




Preface to the First Edition.        xiii
it you so blind yourselves? You see without seeing,
you know without comprehending. Do you forget the
terrible marriage between Prussia and Russia? It is so
close, that between them treaties are unnecessary. The
league of July 10th was superfluous.
Prussia, half-Slave, was the State that, in the last
century, proposed the Thyestian banquet, at which
Poland was devoured, and her blood was drunk. Will
she be able to sever herself from that fatal communion?
She has always been faithful to it,-she has found her
share hard to swallow, bitter, and indigestible. Her
enemy is within her. She needs Russia too-especially
when the hour comes (perchance to-morrow) when Germany will wake, and come out of her dream-the dream
of her present intoxication, in which the idea of being
united as One has made her forget all else. But to be
united, one must first Be. The day when she wills To be,
her tyrant Prussia will appeal to Russia. Austria is too
tottering to give her support. Through Prussia alone,
Russia will hold down her Slaves, silence her Germans.
Even now, while France is yet struggling, how
coolly Prussia treats Germany. The Prince of Saxony,arrested, the German correspondent at Versailles driven
to suicide: do not such facts reveal from what feudal
heights Prussia looks at Germany.   The arrest of
Jacoby, the bastard constitution violated from the first
by the imprisonment for two years of its free-speaking
deputies:-does not that attest what I say?
To me, you German professors, you are, I assure




xiv         Preface to the First Edition.
you, a wonderful anomaly. You live in a magic world
of proud and learned dreams. Seeing you so civilized,
so industrious, and in every way so fruitful in comparison
with that barren and iron Prussia, you say to yourselves,
" Great Germany will absorb Prussia, as Italy absorbed
Piedmont. What is Prussia but a military organization?
Without us she is nothing. The genius which illumines
Berlin is of the Rhine, Suabian, Saxon. Even in militarism, the Prussians live on borrowed intellect.  Their
great commander is a Dane.  We surround, we overwhelm Prussia with the power of arts and of civilization.
If she thinks, if she governs, it is by us."
Vain and fallacious hope!  It is just because
Prussia is inferior and barren, dry, unyielding, that
her rough kernel will never be assimilated or absorbed
by Germany.
You speak of Prussia as if there was an individual
Prussia to be grasped, as if it had life, and as if your
life could exist and act with its life.  But what is
Prussia?  Are there Prussians?  I doubt it.  Their
names are all Slave, Swedish, Danish, Swiss, Russian.
It is an absorbing frame, a stomach and claws like a
polypus;: but it has no body.
In this solemn and serious moment, while Russia
is on her march, while Germany is worn out and
exhausted by her victories, while England deliberates
(paralysed or betrayed), while Austria is powerless to
arm, while kings veil their faces not to see the coming
storm, farewell, ye monarchies-arise, ye people!




Preface to the First Editiont.        xv
A  workman  appeals to all the workers in the
world, -and adjures them to form the armed league of
peace.
That which the German craftsman says wisely, the
English workman manifests by his monster demonstrations.  At this moment of danger in which we are
placed by the Prusso-Russian militarism, it behoves the
great class of workers, the laborious, industrious, productive nations to arm, not for France alone, but for
themselves-for all who are producers against all who
are destroyers-Life against Death.
Let us look down on this bloody Europe. What do
we behold? In the west are looms, workshops, factories,
the great agricultural manufactures, the men who produce,
the creators of the universal wealth of the world. From
the east come the men who destroy.
But we, say the Germans, are here. Poland was once
a barrier against Russia, but now it will be Germany.
The unity of such a nation would in truth be a great
power. But is it a sincere unity?  Is unity union?
Is Hanover German with all her heart? How reluctantly
has Bavaria been forced into this unity.
Germans, do you know how the Slaves hate you?
Your inveterate hatred against us has made you overlook or forget it. But he who runs may read it. The
long utilisation made by the Germans (in Courland) of
the Russian people has sown the seed of a deep and
bitter hate. The stewards of the noblemen, the officials
of the Czar, are generally German.  It is an unfailing.




xvi        Preface to the First Edition.
proverb that, if a man is flogged in Russia, the stick is
held by a German.
Do you think you can trust to these people for
gratitude?  Can you trust to the faithful ally of your
greatest enemy?
Your civilization, your industrial progress, your
superiority in the arts of peace, are precisely what in a
war with Russia will make your inferiority.  She fights
with men of such slight individual value that she can be
lavish of their lives. What is-the value of an European, an
Englishman, a Frenchman, a German? Much, if you
consider what he can produce-what he can earn. How
much does a Russian peasant produce? how much does he
earn? Russia has but a poor stake to risk-and you?
An industrious people, devoted to peaceful occupations, to produce and to create, can tear itself away from
them  in a great popular movement, such as we have
lately seen. But it is against the grain. And if the
war is a long one, it weighs heavily on it. Are you not
wearied of this one?
It is true you have been dazzled. An impious
whisper was muttered to you. Destroy France. But
that is impossible. France can never be destroyed.
One of our men said the other day: " The war will
begin in the spring."
When you have crushed Paris (whlich is yet doubtful)
there will always remain France.
Pillage and requisitions have roused the peasant.
He is now aware that whether he fights or whether he




Preface to the First Edition.      xvii
yields he is ruined. Yesterday's harvest, the vintage,
his much loved cow, his oxen, have all been taken from
him. He who loses all this, finds,-can you guess
what?-that which had been lost for a time, the warlike instincts of his fathers, the soldiers of liberty.
The peasant has been ruined at the moment when
he was being enriched by the new outlets of the south
and the west, when he was hoarding money and
acquiring land. In August, 1870, he was absorbed in
this work. It would be folly to think he desired war.
Had it been even a victorious war, it would have disturbed
and, perchance, arrested his progress in proprietorship.
Our frontier departments were, it is true, irritated
by the insults of the Prussians, who, since Sadowa were
full of bravado and defiance. I have never seen men more
arrogant. The very earth seemed to them unworthy
of them. I heard them in Switzerland, in 1867, say
over and over again: " After Sadowa, Paris: next year
we will take it." After the Great Exhibition, when we
had received them with our best hospitality, they took
away with them drawings of our fortifications, and
printed a Military and Topographical Manual of how
to undertake the siege of Paris.
The Emperor Napoleon had shamefully endured the
swallowing up of Hanover, Hesse, Nassau, Frankfort,
in Prussia, and had been deaf to their cries. But
Prussia defied him  beyond all bounds. He had at
least striven to shelter Bavaria, Wiirtemberg, and to
prevent their sliding down into the bloody gulf with




xviii      Preface to the First Edition.
the rest of Germany. What says Bavaria now? and
her thirty thousand bereaved families, and twenty-nine
thousand widows?
For us, for our part we have always desired the real
unity of Germany, a real voluntary unity, not this
savage, violent, forced unity.  A  war to obtain her
liberties would have been approved as just by us; a
war which would have had freedom for its object. If
we were indignant at the war, it was because we felt.we had been swindled.  Our Government had extorted
a vote on the plea of assuring peace, and when it had
been obtained, war was declared. We knew that all
the industrial part of the nation was averse to it, and
even more; was, in an economical sense, quite contrary
to it.  I was the first, I think, who published a letter
in the newspapers to protest against the snare which
had been laid for us.
Now, the peasant who was yesterday but an ox
amid  his furrows, is a lion.  Twenty-six  million
peasants.  To these add ten million craftsmen, and
brave ones, if we may judge by Paris workmen. Of this
agricultural population of twenty-six millions, twenty
millions are landholders: four millions of families,
and therefore twenty millions of individuals. It is the
widest basis a nation ever had. A thousand years of
struggle will not exhaust its blood. A peasant on his own
land, and rooted to it by a thousand ties, is renewed, reinvigorated on it, increases a hundredfold in strength and
persistence, and will be firm and invincible in its defence.




Preface to the First Edition.      xix
Happily for Europe it is so.  In the future impending war Europe needs France.  Europe will
rejoice to see France is so tough, and to find her
grown greater through this fierce strife, and to know
she is so warlike and will be so formidable against the
coming barbaric invasion.
This, in two words, is the subject of this book.
Workers, creators, indefatigable producers, stand
together as one people. Preserve for the world the
sacred source which produces all its-wealth.
I appeal and invoke, in an European congress, all
men who work, all men who rise to work, as I do
before  daylight as I  write  this  to-day, 1st of
January, 1871.  I appeal to Englishmen, Frenchmen, Belgians, Dutch, Swiss. I appeal to Germans.
I invoke both worlds. I appeal to young America.
Let her justify our hope and be deaf to all petty
interests, free from all mean revenges, vowed to the
great cause of human progress, closely allied to the
civilized West and to the cause of freedom, for which
but yesterday she so nobly fought and conquered.
I speak for the world more even than for France.
France will save herself. But will the world be saved
while it hesitates and is divided?  At this supreme
moment I call on all to unite for defence and to arm.
The enemy is on us.




PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
I HAD finished this book at the end of December. How
much has happened in a month! What cruel tragedies
have darkened this pitiless January. And at the end of
it, what a blow!... But we are not overwhelmed.
The bitterest winter which has been known for
years intensified the war, and made it more intolerable. The cold was nineteen degrees below freezing in the
Vosges. Our enemies, almost countless in number, and
so infinitely superior to us in resources of all kinds,
and well fed, took a rude advantage of the season, of
our destitution, and of our numberless miseries. Instead
of success softening them, it irritated them into fury.
How many "franc-tireurs " have they not shot! We
have all heard of their attacks upon peasants, of the
burning of villages, and of the outrages upon ambulances
and the killing of French surgeons. All this has been
proved by a regular inquiry, so circumstantially, that
they cannot themselves deny it.
Hitherto, the world has seen nothing like this. It
has been beheld by all with horror and loathing. The




Preface to the Second Edition.       xxi
very excess of our sufferings, the heroism of our
resistance, have surprised and touched all. What a
revulsion of public feeling in Europe! I can dare to say
now,-No more neutrals in Europe. An American said
to me this morning, " Yesterday, we were Germans; today, we are all French."
A great city of two millions of souls, which it was
impossible to feed, where the duration of the provisions
had been calculated, and were known to be at an end,
was wantonly bombarded at the very moment that
famine obliged it to surrender.
And in what manner was it bombarded?  With the
same science of terrorism which has been so ably
followed in this war, sparing the walls, aiming at the
inhabitants. The German maps of Paris, drawn in'67,
directed them admirably. Numberless shells were fired
on the portions of the city occupied by schools, colleges,
and hospitals. The peaceful Paris, of children and
professors and of learned men, the Jardin des Plantes,
and the Institute, is as a world apart from the world of
action. I remember, in 1815, the respect with which
Alexander of Russia, and the other kings, guided by
M. de Humboldt, visited the Institute and the Jardin
des Plantes. To-day, it is a different kind of visit. A
shell fell on the venerable houses of Cuvier, Geoffroy
St. Hilaire, close to his widow's bedside, a woman
eighty-four years of age. And why all this? Paris was
eating the actual seed reserved for this next year's
sowing, the public authorities were selling it in the




xxii      Preface to the Second Edition.
market, the end was approaching, and every one knew
it. There had been no firing during this terrible
winter. Bercy had been burned, and with it all the
wine. Nothing was left to oppose to the cold, nothing
remained with which to animate or restore courage and
ardour. But Paris was in this moment truly great. In
the future let us never forget it.
The neighbouring heights which command its forts
had not been occupied in August by the Regent; in
September, the enemy took them, and during four
months armed them at his leisure, and connected these
positions with good batteries, which were covered,
walled, and casemated, from whence he could fire in
all security. A terrible girdle, which was built slowly
and securely, while Paris was preparing itself and
arming for her defence. In December and in January,
that girdle was closely clasped with double and treble
clasps. Behind it an emperor was made. Behind it,
according to that part of the Times which is edited at
Versailles, the Prussian can grin and defy the Parisian.
Is not the latter in truth in extremis. Lions themselves are weakened by the privation of food, by vigils,
by febrile agitation. An increasing starvation must
have disarmed and exhausted the city. Well, on the
19th of January, this people march on Versailles.
These inexperienced novices, these unformed legions
of artists, literati, artist workers, a total of men with
little muscular strength, accustomed to the arts of
peace, rush at the stronghold and best guarded portion




Preface to the- Second Edition.     xxiii
of Versailles. They wished to see that Emperor with
their own eyes, and for that purpose sought to penetrate that enormous "carapace" of stone, iron, and
fire.  At one spring they take St. Cloud and its
thundering  batteries.  For nine  hours  they  keep
possession of it beneath its storm of balls; it is taken
and retaken: there was great alarm felt at Versailles,
and Marly was attacked.  It was during that deadly
struggle that the news came of the defeat of Le Mans,
when our generals put an end to all.
If the stone walls were harder than human breast,
the effort was no less a sublime one. It was a struggle
of spiritual against material powers.
Learn, ye nations, from such a spectacle in what
consists true greatness, and revere France!
I have read many histories. But I have never read
of so brave, yet humane a revolution, so generous
towards its barbarous enemies, and shewing such
clemency even to treason.
Above all so unanimous.  That is its great feature.
For if a small number of fanatics desired (contrary to
all good sense or possible hope) to rush and fight again,
that could not be called a division in the principles of
the camp. On both sides were firm Republicans.
It is this which Europe has seen and which decides
her award.  All hearts speak now for us.  Our enemy
knows that he has lost the moral victory.  Bruised and
mutilated France is still unconquered. She yet remains
France, formidable, strong, and greater than before.




xxiv       Preface to the Second Edition.
But this strength, cannot it be employed against
herself? That is the last hope of the enemy.
The bitterest trial, it is true, has yet to be undergone. The Elections, while the victor still occupies the
country, amidst traitors, or what is worse, cowards.
Those who, from error or weakness, in voting " yes"
brought on the war, and who without foresight have
ruined us, those will now have been taught better, I am
sure.  They are warned.  Altogether let us be only
One.
Feb. 1, 1871.




FRANCE BEFORE EUROPE.
CHAPTER I.
THE ILLUSIONS OF BIARRITZ.
1865-6.
THE historians of the future will find a difficulty in
making themselves believed as to a matter which, though
it seems ridiculous, is still perfectly true. In this nineteenth century the most important events of the world
-those which were, in fact, its destiny-were treated,
discussed, negotiated, on a basis as fantastic and unreal
as the adventures of the Arabian Nights.  Serious
affairs of statesmanship, in their most critical phase,
were set adrift and floated between the romantic glitter
of the mines of Mexico and the Fata Morgana of the
Rhine.
It certainly was a great triumph of state-craft to
induce Napoleon, worn, aged, and more undecided and
fanciful than ever, so repeatedly to leave the capital
where he might have retained a little good sense, to go
1




2              France before Europe.
and dream on the isolated shores of Biarritz, near the
castles in the air of the land of Cervantes. Those
domestic influences which weigh so masterfully at the
decline of life had, of course, a great deal to do with it:
the faithful remembrance which some persons have of
the home of their youth, and the pleasant and natural
opportunities of occasionally returning to it, which
were offered by Biarritz.
Biarritz is famous for shipwrecks of all kinds.
Sailors who have been round the world say they have
never seen anything like the terrible swell of the sea
which from the N.W. rolls into a gulf of unfathomable depth at that point, and th'en rises high to strike
St. Jean de Luz, half drowned as it already is.  The
Basques of this shore are a wild, giddy, adventurous
race. It was one of their games, during their feasts and
holidays, to make their boats skim and dance onr this
foaming whirlpool.  The coast is nicknamed "The
Coast of Lunatics."  The wives of these Basque
mariners, more extravagant than their husbands, often
during their voyages north, were wont to celebrate
on the sandy plains at home the witch-revels of the
middle ages, when Sabbat was held to consult the
Evil One.
WVeirdly-shaped hills of strange outline indicate
how near is Spain-that country so rife in falsehoods,
and which shines with a pseudo-lustre from its golden
past, from its mines, its famous galleons, and the
tawny glitter derived from its lost provinces. In the




The Illusions of Biarritz.           3
evenings of Biarritz, with their glowing sunsets, how
easy to revive these ancient visions, and restore Spain,
Mexico, Vera Cruz. To make the dream more utterly
wild and intangible, the idea was evoked of establishing
an Austrian nMontezuma in  a resuscitated Mexican
Empire. What a strange house of cards! It is more
than probable that one of the architects was that fairy
Austrian who was the delight of that court by her
singular and fantastic whims.
But the house of cards began to totter in 1865.
The Mexican-Austrian was oblivious of his maker;
his pretty young bride had irritated Biarritz.  It
was a fortunately chosen moment, therefore, when
the incarnate Spirit of Craft, coming from the north,
appeared on the scenes to plot against Austria.
"False as water," says Shakspeare.  How admirably those words suit the two who are conversing on
that beach. One is from the Baltic, with its deep and
deceitful quicksands deserted by the sea, but where it
is possible to sink and be drowned on dry land; the
other comes from the dull low tides of Holland, with
its treacherous earth, and reminds one of its sad seagulls by his leaden mournful look.
What are they speaking about?  Each hopes to
deceive the other. Nothing is written down in black
and white; but it is folly to think the tempter offered
nothing, promised nothing, or that he did not bait his
hook. It is certain now that he did promise much.
The Emperor, whatever may since have been said,




4             France before Europe.
was free to act as he pleased. He could have checkmated his antagonist. He had not more than 28,000
men in Mexico; for France that was a trifle: he was
sure of England by the free-trade treaty: the United
States were still occupied in their great war. To atone
to France for his Mexican blunder, he wished to obtain
some advantage on the Rhine.  The Wizard of the
North made him believe that he held the Rhine in his
hand, and tempted him with Cologne and Coblentz.
" But what will Germany say?"
" Sire, have I not the German patriots on my side?
That is the best of it. I led them to Schleswig; I will
throw them on the Danube. The Danube must become German; it must be open to the Black Sea and to
the East.  I will intoxicate them  by a victory over
Austria, and they will let go the Rhine." All this was
spoken freely, frankly, with the open honesty of a
straightforward German, of a rough and ready soldier,
with the military out-spokenness which belongs to a
diplomatic Cuirassier. Add to this the easy, confidential
footing inseparable from a seaside life and the trust
which one invalid reposes in another. The Cuirassier is
in' bad health, so is the Emperor. Bismarck would die
if it were not for Biarritz; but every year he goes
there for the baths and to attend to his health. There
only is he really well; there only does he forget his
state cares. There, if one could get at him, one would
find "by Jove " he sincerely says all he thinks. Deuce
take diplomacy! he is as open as the day; he wears




The Illusions of Biarritz.           5
his heart on his sleeve. His rude soldierly aspect
speaks for him; how would it be possible for him to
deceive?  His rough visage is an invaluable mask for
the incomparable actor.  It is the more so because,
in addition to its ugliness, it is humorous, has a certain
caricatured resemblance to a fire-eater about it, which
delights King William  and his junkers.  The studied
photographs lately taken of him  partly conceal this
aspect beneath the vizor of his spiked helmet; but
the earlier ones, more truthful, reveal him better in the
vigorous grotesqueness which is so useful to him, with
eyes upraised to heaven, where he sees a transcendent
vision-the German Fatherland, a Germany which absorbs the entire world.
Why not?  Teutons in their credulity find this
expansion natural and simple. What is- not the German fatherland?  Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, England, France are included in it; the Baltic
and the Black Sea are German; does not the Black Sea
receive the Danube, which is a German river? The
United States, by the progress of emigration, are
German. In Europe three sentinels answer for it, three
Hohenzollerns; one at the mouth of the Danube, one by
the Straits of Gibraltar, one by Kehl on the Rhine.
The Cuirassier is a poet. What a vast poem! what
a genius for fiction! And all this was readily swallowed
by him whose covetous greed blinded him to realities.
With him how easy was the task of deception.  Forwards, bold guardsman, forwards in the realm of fiction.




6             France before Europe.
Be the Ossian of Berlin, the Ossian of Biarritz. King
William sees himself a modern Barbarossa; Napoleon
wears the glory of Napoleon the Great.
The Great! but which is the Great-the uncle or
the nephew?  After all, the uncle did little.  "The
Rhine, which I give you here, is but a commencement.
Your eagles will alight first on Coblentz, will then take
wing from thence towards Antwerp, Amsterdam, London.
Their beaks will be sharpened there-it will be the
revenge of Waterloo. But one hemisphere is not enough.
This Europe is so small. America shall yield too; is
not Liberty wounded to death in her great republic?
You and I, by a common effort, will crush everywhere
our common enemy-Revolution."
We all know how these promises were kept after
Sadowa, after the shameful service which the Emperor
rendered  towards Prussia, in  abandoning  Austria,
and in accepting without a murmur the annihilation of
Hanover, Hesse, Nassau, Frankfort, as well as Schleswig.
Nothing now was concealed.  The very day when a promise was made to respect the south (Bavaria, Wiirtemberg), they were forced to sign a military treaty which
gave their armies to Prussia.
France was daily defied and insulted; drunken
Prussians outraged us at Strasbourg. It reminds one
of the poems of Renaud, where a successor of Charlemagne is profoundly asleep on the throne of France,.and a stranger with a torch shaves him.




(7)
CHAPTER II.
FRENCH SYMPATHY AND HOSPITALITY.
1867.
FRANCE rejoiced at the victory of Sadowa. We were
delighted to confront our old technical soldiers, the
soldiers by profession, with praises of a success which
was partly due to the citizen Landwehr. We would
not, or could not, understand the great part taken in
these victories by the permanent army of Prussia, a
caste entirely devoted to war; the troops trained to
the use of special arms, skilfully organized; in short,
that great machine which, more than any other in the
world, represents the predominance of militarism in
European politics.  We supposed it was simply a
victory of the people conquering its unity. The lists
published of the wounded of the Landwehr-lists in
which were names from all civil professions: lawyers,
physicians, professors, mechanics-strengthened our illusions. We were quite touched by it. We were struck by
the victory of Protestant culture over barbarous Catholicism. We would not listen to those who said that the




8              FIrcance before Europe.
true conqueror was the needle-gun; that without that
instrument and its terrible rain of fire, which suppresses
all struggle, the citizen of the north would never have
overcome the Austro-Hungarian army, so brave, so warhardened, which we had learned to know by its hardfought battles in Italy. We did not know that Austria
left its army destitute and wretched, and without food
for three days. We did not remember that the Italian
alliance with Prussia retained a third, at least, of the
Austrian army to guard Venetia and the Quadrilateral.
We, unawares, had co-operated strenuously in this war.
How  much we did, apparently doing nothing!  If
Prussia needed only a small detachment to overpower
the great masses of Bavaria and the west of Germany,
it was because of the strange absence of our soldiers on
the Rhine-the mysterious inaction of the Emperor
unnerved their courage and their arms. Prussia herself
avowed it in her solemn thanks to the Emperor.
What is most striking about this war is, that
Germany conquered in spite of herself. She cursed the
unquiet, adventurous spirit who plunged her in these
dangerous enterprises. What misery at partings, as
the soldiers joined their corps! what indignation, even
in the officers whom we met in the trains! This great
industrious country, every year more industrial, left,,
with intense difficulty, its occupations, its affairs, and
its well-ordered life.  The irritation and discontent,
were such that in the college where M. de Bismarck's
sons were studying, their comrades, with the rudeness




French Sympathy and Hospitality.        9
of their age, overwhelmed them with the invectives and
reproofs which they overheard applied to their father
at their homes.
The Germans call the French fickle, but how rapidly
and lightly they changed after Sadowa. What a contrast! what a noisy awakening! In their hotels, their
clamours, their loquacity, their bravadoes were such
that English and French insisted on dining at tables
apart from them, where would come also Hanoveriansmen from Frankfort and the other free-towns-who saw
in the Prussian victories the eternal downfall of the
liberty of Germany. The great majority had forgotten
this. They were blind, they were intoxicated with a
passion-a most natural and legitimate one, it is true
-the love, the rapture, the triumph of their unity.
All people have these moments of divine delirium,
and then they are blind. Italy has had hers. This
frenzy, this fury of unity, has mastered her and led her
to the limits of actual crime. For the sake of unity,
the Ghibeline Dante appealed to the foreigner, and in
Guelph Florence, Machiavelli would, to obtain this end,
have accepted any aid, however monstrous, even that of
the fiend, Cmesar Borgia. At such moments in the
unity of one's country one would embrace the unity of
the world. So Italy and Germany, through Rome and
the Holy Empire, in their dreams absorbed all. And
as these German dreamers drink deep of every cup,
they always obstinately evoke two shadows-Charlemagne, who from the Rhine governed the Empire and




10            France before Europe.
France; and Frederic Barbarossa, who, they say, with
Germany, held Rome and Lyons-the kingdom of Lombardy, and the kingdom of Burgundy. But why confine
ourselves to this limit?  Does not the German Fatherland extend itself wherever German or its dialects is
spoken?   Holland, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland,
Anglo-Saxon England, are they not all provinces of
Germany?  This mental insanity-an actual diseaseis especially perceptible in the learned portions of
society, professors, students, &c. I have in my handcl
at this moment an article in a journal of Berlin, which
is headed, " Down with Schiller! "  Schiller committed
the unpardonable sin of immortalizing William Tella miscreant who dared to revolt against the supremacy
of Germany.
Drunkenness leads to wickedness, even when it is
patriotic drunkenness. German patriots had astonished
us by their extreme violence against Denmark. It was
then they commenced making themselves blind beasts
of burden, to draw the cannons of Prussia, and to subordinate Germany to Prussia. They knew, but they
persisted in not knowing, the wide barrier which separates them from the Scandinavian states, as well as from
Holland and England. A faint identity of language
matters little in a question of nationality. The Alsatian
speaks a German patois, but does not understand
German spoken a league beyond his frontier, and
is not German.  And if there is a country in all
the world hostile by its lively individuality to all




French Sympathy and Hospitality.       11
notions or customs which may be called German, it is
Lorraine.
How prosperity alters people. Before Sadowa the
old resentments of the Napoleonic invasions seem to
have died out among people whose forefathers had twice
invaded France, and who have entered twice into Paris.
The one wiped out the other. But after Sadowa they
forgot 1814 and 1815, and only remembered Jena:
that is to say, if we would speak truly, that old feuds
and hatreds of race must, after all, sooner or later,
rise up with a fury, a jealousy which may be hidden
for a time, but which explodes at last in those wild
and  causeless  animosities which we call German
quarrels.
M. de Bismarck, with his usual cynical frankness, in
his last State Papers, takes the ground that between
France and Germany, an eternal hatred will ever
subsist, and that all good policy must always be
grounded on that fact.
This atrocity would shock me less, if I did not see
the care with which this hatred is taught to, and cultivated in, the young generation. Their school-books
contain all which can most irritate Germans against
France.  Children are taught to hate and curse that
which they do not even know.  The other day a,
charming child, a little German girl of five years old,
when told that her cousin was French, flushed with
anger, and, stamping her tiny feet, exclaimed, —"No,
not French-never French," with a shudder of horror.




12             France before Europe.
What an  education!  In the arms of a gentle
mother, on- the breast of a good nurse, they breathe in,
they suck enmity and hatred! In France there is
nothing of the kind. Even after the bitterest, longest,
most intense struggles, France feels no bitterness.
France always acknowledges the merit of her adversaries. It is a memorable fact, but it is no less a
fact: twenty years of bloody warfare, culminating in
Waterloo, have not engrained a lasting hatred against
the English.   Even in 1816, France loved Walter
Scott, hailed the advent of Byron. What ties of friendship, business, speculations, family connections, marriages between French and English. The greatness of
the English Empire, which was first upraised, in 1763,
on the ruins of France, has not bequeathed to us either
envy or regret.
This is the fault, the short-coming of France. She
is social, and she likes, and is interested in the outer
world. She finds excellent reasons for loving, esteeming, admiring all these great nations. These manias
which she manifests periodically for each and all (and
which are ludicrous in their exaggeration), have, however, one good point. Each of these nations represents
some excellence, some superiority in the human soul.
Never did this universal good-will so display itself as
after Sadowa, at a time so pregnant with trouble and
defiance. I speak of the Great Exhibition of'67. That
festival we gave Europe. What a welcome we gave our
guests! What trust! what blind hospitality! No inn,




French Sympathy and Hospitality.       13
no hotel would have sufficed for that affluence.  We
opened wide our houses-our hearths.  We crowded
ourselves in our small Parisian rooms; the master of
the house would give up his best rooms to his visitors
from the provinces, as from other countries, and content
himself with a corner, a hole in it for himself. We
suppressed doors-we would have knocked down walls,
so as to enable one town to contain every oneto comprise the world. This gush of fraternity caused
a great writer to say, "No more boundaries —all
humanity is a brotherhood-come in all, this town is
yours."
How were these advances received?  I own they
may have seemed odd and excessive. They were
accepted dubiously, equivocally, almost ironically. Here
were millionaires, Russian Princes, or English Peers,
who deemed they could hire Paris as one hires an hotel,
a place of entertainment, careless of all that which it is
impossible to pay for, the gracious and sympathetic
welcome with which Paris receives foreigners. What
did they see of the town? the Boulevards, the theatres.
Did they even guess at the surging fruitful Paris, that
glowing manufactory of so many arts, of which Europe
accepts the produce without a word. Other foreigners,
poorer, more malevolent, more prying, looked at all the
wonders with a forced smile, tried to be indifferent, but
in spite of themselves were livid with envy.
It is dreadful to think of, but it is no less true, that
these searching observers whom we led everywhere,




14             France before Europe.
were all the while observing and drawing our fortresses,
our walls, the weak points of our fortifications. In
December'67 our guests, after their return to Berlin,
published a military manual, which gives in the greatest
detail the topography of the suburbs of the town, its
approaches, and the easy infallible method of bombarding it.
Nothing was neglected by which this military fever
could be excited to frenzy.  Bismarck boasts (grotesque
but astute flatterer of popular passion) that he was
resolved to enter Paris, armed with his pointed helmet,
and he did so. This carnival entrance, in a friendly
city, seemed heroic to the fanatical Germans.  This
strange head-dress symbolized the helmet of Arminius.
By the Prusso-Russian alliance it is the helmet of Attila.
We Parisians, according to our wont, smiled and jested
at this, but remained faithful in our sympathies.  Mine
has never varied. That very year, 1867, as I concluded
my most important work, the History of France, and
in the Preface recapitulated the labours and studies
iwhich have filled my whole life, I enumerated. with
pleasure the various influences I had received from
Germany, in my progressive mental growth, the student
and literary passion —no weaker word will serve to
express my feelings-with which that strong sister of
our French culture had inspired me.  I particularly
loved its primitive genius, its virile accent, the stirring
vibration of its ancient tongue, its popular wisdom in
the traces which we possess of its weisthiimer, of its




French Sympath7y and Hospitality.      15
judges, who, like the Israelites of old, found and learnt,
under the great shadow of elms and poplars, so much
of humanity.  This mania carried me so far that I
undertook the enormous task (difficult and insane as it
was) to translate Grimm's book on the Antiqnities of
German Law. Grimm himself upheld, encouraged, and
praised my work. How I profited by this study, and
how much it developed my historical acumen, I have
said and repeated in my yet unpublished Preface to my
Hiistory of France.  That Preface will be a surprise
after late events. God forbid that I should efface or
curtail one word of it. I would not diminish by a single
word all I feel I owe to Germany, to the great and good
Grimm. Would I could myself add a stone to the
national monument which his nation owes him, and
which it will erect to him one day.
Not I alone, not we alone, students and literati felt
these emotions. I have said in my book called Our
Sons, with what universal sympathy on the festival of
the 4th of March, 1848, we saw amongst the flags
hoisted before the Madeleine, by the deputations of
the exiles of all countries, the great flag of Germany,
that noble tri-colour, red, black and gold; the banner
of Luther, Kant, and Fichte, Schiller, Beethoven; and
beside it the graceful green tri-colour of Italy. How
we welcomed them! How we prayed for the unity of
those countries! God grant, we said, that we may live
to see a great united Germany, an united powerful
Italy. The federation of the world will be imperfect,




16            France before Europe.
incomplete, subject to the cruel whims, and to the
unholy wars of Kings, while these two great peoples
are not represented there in their majesty, adding their
quota of wisdom and grace to the fraternal equilibrium
of the world.




17  )
CHAPTER III.
HAIRED OF FRANC-E.
WiiY is it that the nation which hates least is hated
most?  It is a knotty problem. Among many, this
hatred is the bitterer and more incurable because it is
without actual cause, but is the mere effect of a difference of race, humour, and temperament. " I hate them
because I hate them;" or they may say, " In no country
am I so agreeably situated, no country is pleasanter to
live in; but, nevertheless —I cannot help it-I hate the
country and the people too."
"What a changeable, fickle, mobile race they are?
they are like women and children." That is the form
of reproof which is most usual towards France. But
who is not fickle? In'58 divided Italy sought to remain a federation, each town wished to be independent.
In'59 Italy was unitarian, crazy for unity.  Grave,
solemn Germany changed in one day. There were two
entirely opposing Germanies before and after Sadowa:
the first cursing Bismarck, the second licking his feet.
As to France, every one is so anxious to decry her
2




18            France before Europe.
that the very persons who call her fickle are always reproaching her for not being fickle enough, of being too
long-suffering under unworthy rule; they blame us for
having endured our last Government for twenty years.
This is a deserved and serious blame. Yes, France
has been too patient. She has given us all an unheardof example of patience; but there were reasons for it,
which may explain though not justify it, and there are
extenuating circumstances. I will try to say one word
about them.
France has great aspirations; she wings her flight
very high, often so high that a fall is inevitable.  She
sees a lofty aim, but it is an aim too far removed for the
path to it, or for the means to take that path, to be
accessible. She fails, and is discouraged. " Qumsivit
ccelo lucem, ingemuitque reperta." The world is then
pitiless. It was so to Icarus. The wretch who fails
must always be stoned.
The lightning gleam of'89-that legislative formula
of all the dreams which a great epoch had of Libertydisappears for a while in the immense war made on us
by Europe. The yet fairer gleam of February,'48universal suffrage-that effort to obtain absolute justice,
by which poor France appeals magnanimously to all
classes to decide her fate, seems lost for ever. The
world jeers; and yet the idea is a fact, and is so substantial that our enemies themselves make use of it and
invoke it. Prussia has only been able to delude credulous Germany by beguiling her with an empty and




Hatared of France.               19
hollow simulacrum of this new right, of this sure ideal
of future civilization.
Let us congratulate those who have not these precocious and sublime impulses, nor these recoils and
failures. An even mediocrity, often flat, and stale, and
subject to the follies of the past, is at least more consistent, and as such imposes on all, and inspires esteem
and respect. Absurdities are cloaked by a dignified
attitude of external composure. May we be permitted
to say, If you seem more logical, it is that in reality you
are less so; you are not impeded like France by the
difficulties caused by the search after, and the exigencies
of, absolute justice.  Moreover, there is this reason for
the halting step of France-she is like all well-organized
creatures, dual, and her parts being diverse, balance and
sometimes contradict each other.
France is a nation having two orders: the peasant
and the workman.
It is certain that if one of these classes disappeared
by a revolution, France would be: more uniform, more
in harmony with herself.  The world says to her often,
Look at wise England-how consistent she is! - With
her the mechanic is dominant, the looms of Manchester
prevail.  The peasant has perished.I Two millions of
labourers (by no means peasants) who cultivate the
earth weigh nothing in the balance against an industrial
population of fifteen or twenty millions. God keep us
from  such unity!  We have twenty-six millions of
peasants, and ten millions of workmen.. These two




20            France before Europe.
elements are, of course, a care to France. But then
what national strength is manifested in having firmly
maintained this old rural France, in which four millions
of families (twenty millions of individuals) have a vested
share in the property of the country. The conservatism
of the peasant, the progress of the workman, cause between them an alternate advance and recoil which ends
in a crisis; but the restless impatience of the workman
is fastened to a strong cable, to an anchor, for the son
of the soil is only too immoveable.  France does not
emigrate like England and Germany. All our social
questions are agitated in the heart of the nation, and
are illumined and corrected by experiences which are
not always happy for us, but which, at least, are
instructive to the world. They profit by our failures.
They improve on them. They blame us, but they
follow us.
It is this duality, and not an inherent love of
tumults, that caused the misfortune of our fatal 2nd of
December. The workmen of Paris, who often see the
future more clearly than the present, insisted that the
people should be the only army, and the army was
composed of the peasants and sons of peasants. The
sons out of revenge, the fathers evoking the legend of
1814, as to the defence of the country, exhumed
between them a mythic Napoleon, and re-elected him
Tyrant.
They thought (by some fetish process of thought)
that it was the same Napoleon, and were, therefore,




Hatred of France.              21
somewhat surprised at what they had done. This one,
who was such a contrast in word and speech to the
other, thought himself all the more bound to prove
his family origin, by re-establishing militarism. And
yet how changed, how diverse were the circumstances.
France, laborious France, pre-occupied with her internal
organization, her transits, her roads, her railways, did
not dream of war.
We are always considered, be it complimentary or
otherwise, as the inventors of the scourge of this century,
militarism. Observe, however, that the technical warterms, the costumes, the uniforms, are for the most
part German. The type of war, in 1780, was Prussia,
and the France of Louis XVI. imitated it awkwardly.
Prussia, who was the first to propose the dismemberrment of Poland, entered with eagerness into the idea of
the dismemberment of France, and invaded it in 1792.
All Europe threw itself on France as a prey. That is
the origin of the wars with which we are reproached.
France was peace itself in'89, but in'93 it had 749,000
men in arms. How was such an army to be fed?
Having repulsed Europe, the Directory tried the
dangerous experiment of discharging 300,000 men.
This act ruined the Directory and created Bonaparte.
The 300,000 retired soldiers acclaimed him.  The
600,000 starved soldiers, who remained over and above,
were fed by him in an offensive war. I recall with
horror a period of which I only saw the end. France,
in ten years only, 1804 to 1814, lost 1,700,000 soldiers.




22             France before Europe.
That is the official figure.  Shall we reproach Napoleon
the First alone?  No. It is but right to acknowledge
that such an earthquake having commenced, or been
impelled, it was not easy to stop it.  War engendered
war. But who commenced it? Answer ye foes, answer
ye accusers, who began it:? You!
Sprung from such a source, from such a tradition
of blood, the Second Empire was ominous to Europe.
What would it do?  What was the silent one plotting?'What stroke of policy would the morrow reveal?  It
was impossible to fathom. Neither the man himself,
nor his circle of followers, were attractive or inspired
confidence. And yet let us remind Europe, which condemns us for our patience, that her long suffering, her
submission, her homage to this false phantom of war,
was more admirable still. Russia, which had conquered
Napoleon the Great, humbled itself to this man. All
humbled themselves. At the Tuileries there was a
Court composed of kings, as his uncle at his shows had
had a "pit of kings" ("un parterre de rois "). Foreign
nations yoked themselves to his chariot. With what
delirious frenzy the Italians thronged after him at
MIilan! Htow all of these reproached us, as the irreconcilables, because we did not rally round the favourite of
fortune! The proud English, how did they receive
him? And, in spite of her natural shrinking, did not
their Queen appear beside him at Cherbourg? He was
the only monarch in Europe who seemed to sit on the
throne with a solid basis. Was he not one (as it was




-Hatrhed of France.             23
believed) with that vast nation of labourers, who are not
fickle or quick to doubt, and who lent Ihim their formidable support?
But what did he do meanwhile for.them?. He was
ungrateful and variable.-undecided between them and
the shopkeepers.  This inconsistency did:not justify his
name of the "Rural Emperor."  For more than ten
years, against the farming interests of the country, he
let loose the Stock Exchange speculations, created
credits without funds, towards which flowed the checked
capital of agriculture. Agriculture would therefore have
languished had not a great industrial progress, which
had been commenced for years, and which developed
itself to the incalculable advantage of the new reign,
enriched the whole farming portion of France. The
chief work of the period-the -net-work of railroadscreated numberless carriage roads, and these roads
were reached by millions of country by-roads.  This
was an Herculean effort, which occupied France twenty
years.
But what one cannot lay too much stress on is thisthat this work, which absorbed the peasants and farmers,
and made them forgetful of their political liberties, was
a great step towards social liberty. The peasant of the
south and west, loaded with debt under Louis Philippe,
burdened with mortgages, serf of the proprietor, or
the money-lending citizen, was able, in a measure, to
liberate himself,-to strike the earth on which he stood,
and say, "It is mine."  How was it?  By a miracle —



24            France before Europe.
though a simple one. Until then, the man, his land,
and the fruit of his land, were prisoned and confined.
They produced, but did not sell. France was a solid,
inert body, without any circulation.  Circulation was
established. Now the produce of the south goes to the
north and is sold at a great price in Paris and everywhere up to St. Petersburg. There are no more seasons
now. The north eats during the spring the fruits of the
summer and of the autumn.
Then came what none expected. England, rich and
fond of travelling, learns to appreciate and to desire a
new species of food.  She leaves off her old beverage,
which is so monotonous and so tasteless. She asks for,
she buys, she imports our western produce. Ships are
freighted with it.  How many peasants, how many
farmers, by that commerce alone have made their
-fortune.
Those who reproach the French peasant for being too
easily bribed by this reward for his labour, are unfeeling. Are they ignorant of how much he has suffered
for centuries-nay, until recently?  The poor wretch,
starving for so long, found himself, by a concourse of
fortuitous circumstances, happy enough to be able to eat.and thrive.
Now do you understand why the Empire lasted
so long?  The peasants (the great majority of the
country) were not impatient to change this new state of
ease, this genuine liberty, which freed them from the
farmers and small landholders. They could understand




Hatred of France.              25
and value this liberty better than political liberty, about
which they comprehended little. They were not aware
that political liberty includes all others. They were
ignorant of the abyss into which their faithless and
unsteady guide was about to plunge them.
The mass of the nation-especially the agricultural
masses —were so far from desiring war, that when the
Government, confronted by the enormous armament of
Germany, decreed the institution of the Garde Mobile,
it could not carry out the decree. While labour-wages
rose so high, the peasant could not deprive himself of
his natural help, his son, to hire a labourer. Deputies
were elected on their swearing to vote for peace. The
prefects wrote to the Emperor that peace was the desire
of the whole country. The pl6biscite was obtained only
by this atrocious lie.  It was to ensure peace. I have
before me now the engravings which were then circulated
by millions. Here are two columns-the Noes, underneath which are sketches of the pillage of the reds, of
the war party burning cottages and flaming harvests.
And under the Yes —the amiable, smiling figure of
Peace, which the Emperor guaranteed, harvests, vintages,
full barns, and overflowing cellars. They voted Yes for
Peace, and they obtained War.




26            France before Euro6pe.
CHAPTER IV.
THE AUTHORS -OF THE WAR-GERMAN
ESPIONA GE.
IT has been proved, stated, acknowledged, certified-it
is a fact as universally known as that the sun is in the
sky-that during three or four years Prussian spies have
been among us for the purpose of observing a country
which had no suspicion of them-a hospitable land
which received them admirably -welcomed them, and
concealed nothing from them.
Who says it?  The Prussians themselves.
They had already boasted, in 1866, that they had
observed, studied closely, Austria, while she was their
friend and ally. They arrived at Sadowa, knowing perfectly the Austrian plan of the campaign-the lists of
their armies to the very last soldier. What marvellous
prescience! It is clear that all these precise details had
been simply purchased in the government offices at.
Vienna.
But their dealings with France differed widely front




The Authors of the War-German Espionage. 27
this. What patient, persistent artifice; what a betrayal
of confidence  What disguises which have been now
revealed, acknowledged-what lies; what a frightful
abuse of human speech I
It is easy to understand that these Prussian spies;
these draughtsmen, photographers, engineers, &c., who
came -to sketch our fortresses, our mountain passes,
would have only been able to send their external -outlines, and would not have so thoroughly learned that
which is only acquired by time-the interior of localitiesif they had not cross-questioned the Germans who for so
many years have been domiciled in our country. From
these trustworthy sources they derived, not, as in Austria,
actual military statistics and figures, but all that can be
known about such a town, such a village, such a farm,
such a house, confided by the host seated at the hearth
to those who had dwelt with him  in domestic intimacy,
as familiar friends. All that could be made use of by
the invaders was thus learned: they could count the
grain, the cattle which their host could furnish, and
could note at a glance what could be carried off.
You will exclaim and say, "What exaggeration!"
No. The Prussians - are proud of this, and boast of it
with a cynical pride. The Germans, with their broad
laugh, say, "Yes, it is all true. We were very artful,
very cunning; we are a clever people."  They appear
in the places where they had been received and fed.
"It is I!" calls out the mason from ]Baden; "It is I! "
says the brewer of Metz,' or the tailor of the Loire.




28            France before Europe.
I could quote hundreds of such,-ex-intimates, exservants, who have returned as Uhlans.
I have read many histories, but none like this one.
Never in the history of the whole world has such a
thing happened, such a plan pursued for so long on such
a wide scale, —one may say by a whole nation of hospitably-received travellers, and, what is worse still, by a
whole people of former guests, our tradespeople, our
merchants, our workmen, our servants; in short, all
that tribe of persons who are usually considered as
friends.
The corollary would be a sad one if we deduced it
literally. Beware of being hospitable. If you see a
stranger in peril or in need at your gates, you must
bolt your doors and load your guns. Take care he has
no arms; but if he becomes acquainted with the spot, if
he notices a rickety shutter, a broken blind, he will
probably return to-morrow with a host of armed companions.  A  wolf comes —no matter; but a man.
Good heavens! a man! that is a far more ferocious
animal. Woe to you, if it be a man —
It is the first explosion of indignation which thus
expresses itself. But we must cast aside all the counsels of a base prudence.. It is more becoming to a man
who possesses a mind and a heart to examine these
phenomena, and the singular, and, thank God, rare.
causes which have induced such a perversion of human
nature.
To understand it, we must put ourselves in their




The Authors of the War —    German Espionage. 29
place, and try to comprehend  the  smoke-distorted
visions which fill a German brain between his stove,
his tobacco, and his beer.
" Elsewhere there is a morality; but there is no
morality in France; therefore there is none to be used
towards France. Against France everything is permissible."
" France is hideously corrupt.  I do not know
much about it, but look at French novels; and then,
in'67, when I was in Paris, what a fast life I led;
were not those Anonymas I amused myself with
French? No matter, I have a right to say that France
is corruption itself."
"She is still the revolutionary, infidel, Voltairian
Sodom, that recognizes no authority and possesses no
faith.  She waits the scourge she has deserved; a
merited chastisement dealt by God, a great expiation.
That scourge I will become. Something whispers to
me,'Return. That guilty land, which is so wealthy,
so fertile, which has such abundant cellars of burgundy
and champagne, deserves to be visited.'"  The visit of
the Lord was once used as a touching pietistic phrase.
It reminds me of what an English correspondent wrote
last August to the English, in favour of the Germans
and against France, " The Germans, as a rule, are a
Christian people."
That they should have thirty systems, at least, more
or less atheistic, no matter; that they should believe in
nihilism, in negation of negation, never mind, the




30             France before Europe.
party opposed  to the Pietists will say-all that is
nothing.  With German gemiith, a certain Germanism,
so to speak, we have, moreover, a religious sentimentality which is Christian, perhaps more than Christian,
which calls upon us to reform impious and corrupt
France.  To do that, all means are good.  To spy,
which in any other case would be odious, is to use an
allowable weapon here. A thinker observes, a patriot
observes, the enemy.  He is yet our friend, but tomorrow he may be our enemy!
Observe!  It was very easy to observe France.
*France is open. There are no gates here. All strangers
enter it at once. That which costs money elsewhere,
in the schools and museums, with us is gratis.  We;suffer from this, but we persist in it.  We educated the
clever man who stopped us so long before Sebastopol.
We educate our enemies.
In all places of trust the Germans are more favourably received by us than any other strangers.  Their
application, their persistency, make them preferable to
persons of even greater ability.  Their scientific attainments enable them to reach the ihighest professorships.
The Institute has received them  with solid titles of
honour: M..  Hase and M. Mohl have very justly and
fairly become French.
In all inferior arts and trades, what a crowd of
Germans.*   Tailors and boot-makers are often real
* The expulsion of the German workmen was unnecessary
in certain provinces in which they could not act as spies, and




The Authors of the War —German Espionage. 31
artists, who make an attentive study of the human
form, and evince great facility in making their art
adapt itself to its irregularities, and in even rectifying
them.  The best of these are often Germans.
Many persons  now-a-days seek  as nurses and
nursery-maids German women, to teach German to
their children. Even when there are no children in
the family, they are preferred  for another reason.
What can be more gentle than a German woman?
She has milk, instead of blood, in her veins.  She
seems born to obey; and, as a lady said once to me,
speaking of her German bonne, "her docility seems
personal devotion and tenderness. If you give orders
to an English girl, she has certain little obstinate
notions in her small head, this or that, which she considers a dogma or a principle, and it is a question if
she obeys you; but if I tell my German what to do or
leave undone, everything melts into its place, all is
honey and oil, beyond even what I could anticipate.
Every time I return home from a walk or a visit, I can
scarcely prevent the poor devoted creature from kneeling
down to take off my shoes. She used to say she would
never leave me; but, after all, one fine morning she
disappeared, and I find her now engaged in a family
they were regretted there. In the Eure et Loir, one of my
female relatives has often interfered on behalf of their families
who had been expelled also.  Her husband employed 590
Germans and Prussians in his manufactory, and would have
willingly kept them.




32             France before Euro pe.
who are no friends of mine. Still, one likes German
servants better than all others. I do not know why."
It is easy to explain. German men and women
have, besides, a natural docility of character, another
quality which is inherent in their race-a respect for, or
instinctive worship of, authority, no matter of what
kind. Manners, which in other races would seem servile and would repel us, only make us smile, and are by
no means displeasing in the Germans; they are so
impregnated with a sentiment which appears almost
filial.  This enables them to endure harsh words and
even ill-treatment from their superiors, the bullying
of their officers, and a military discipline which would
degrade any other race.
The idea of class among the Celts is, that the chief
is merely a relative. In the ancient Germanic tribes
the chief is a father, and possibly a severe one. That
patriarchal notion subsists even now. The Emperor
Francis, that old bigot, who was so ruthless to his captives at Spielberg, was not less to the people he received
every week, " our good Franz."  The curious fact is,
that the representatives of the Imperial authority, down
to its very lowest degree, successfully appealed to this
popular sentiment. " In the name of the good Franz,"
they extorted from the peasants, the soldiers, the ignorant, the details which were useful to their police.
" What, would you not have confidence in your father
the Emperor, and in us, who speak to you in his
name? "




The Authors of the War-German Espionage. 33
When Madame Teleki, one of the Hungarian martyrs, was imprisoned for so many years with her devoted
friend, Madlle. Clara Lovei, at the castle of Kiisstein,
the Italian and Hungarian soldiers who had them in
custody were so touched by their misfortunes, that they
served them with the utmost zeal, carrying their letters,
performing their errands, at the peril of their lives,
without revealing anything to their officers. When one
regiment left, they bequeathed their tender duty to their
successors. In spite of the rigorous surveillance of
the Austrian officers, they could not extort a syllable
from them. Would such fidelity have been found in
Germans? Would it not have been imposed on them
as a duty, to observe the prisoners who were the enemies
of their father-emperor? This infantine obedience, this
absolute faithfulness even in indelicate requirements, is
a barbaric virtue. We understand it, as we understand
the coarse goodfellowship which in certain parts of
the south draws together the officer and the soldier.
But how does it exist in the north, where authority
assumes so haughty and arid an aspect; where it
proceeds from a pride both of caste and rank, and is
represented by that poor, half-ruined gentry, of an
incredible insolence naturally, and whom  a military
education of the most pedantic kind has rendered
ruder and harder than the Russians themselves? A
soldier thus drilled, can he maintain, under such severe
discipline, that old German sentiment of allegiance
which preserved him from becoming degraded? He
3




34             France before Europe.
will be brave before the enemy, doubtless; but- he will
not be brave before his chief if he chooses to exact from
him things which are scarcely military, such as police
duties and others, which would be.equally dishonourable
to a soldier.
Gill, one of our cleverest caricaturists, was very far
from the truth when, in August, 1870, he drew the spy
as a hideous mendicant or loathsome Jew, whose scared
and hypocritical mien seemed to say, " Arrest me!
hang me! I am a spy!"
A spy is far oftener a blonde youth with rosy cheeks
and an innocent voice, who comes from the University
quite fresh with his pockets full of letters of recommendation. An eminent writer said to me many years
ago, "You see that cherub who has just left me, who
has noted so well my lodging, and has showed me
such respect: he has made me speak on a subject
which is both delicate and dangerous. You will see he
is going to attack me in an article in the Gazette
d'Augsbourg."  That was twenty-six years ago. Now
if the young man observes, it is less for his newspaper
than for the military police.
What a surprise it would be for Fichte, for Jalm,
for the patriots of 1813, if they could see that the
student they had so austerely educated had been refined,
civilized, and (by means of at least three metaphysical
systems) passed through the dialectic sieve of doubt and
irony, until he had learned to concentrate all his philosophy into this cynical phrase of Goethe's: "I have




The Authors of the War- German Espionage. 35
always found it served me well to be the friend of
tyrants."
I could wish I had the time to write the Sentimental
Journey across France made, I suppose, in 1867, by
some young observer, spy, philosopher, poet, writing
his letters every evening, sometimes to his betrothed,
sometimes to M. de Moltke.  A student of books and
scholastic rule, how little he will understand a country
of infinite spontaneity, lights and shades, and of which
the best part cannot be described. What mistakes, what
follies he posts off! But the figures extracted for the
staff will have their use. He will point out the resources
the invasion will find in each town, in each house, in
the very house he has just come from. Who could
distrust him! He looks as innocent as the girl he
accompanies on the piano. The more timid, the more
awkward he is, the more he will inspire confidence, the
more he will be able to betray.
And how easily spies can now circulate! The suppression of passports, the world-wide incognito, the
confused throng of the crowds at the railroads, everything helps and favours the iniquitous system.
As a tourist or as a tradesman, he could see, he
could mark everything. Engineers dressed in blouses,
and who looked like peasants, made drawings and photographs of the passes of the Vosges and of our fortifications. In one of the mines of the Eastern provinces
many Prussians engaged themselves as miners, and




36            France before Europe.
during many months could study all the environs-describe them at their leisure. Sometimes they acted strange
little dramas, with which they beguiled confidence. Two
persons had left MIontpellier and wished to return to Paris
(an eminent surgeon and M. Daly, the well-known
architect), and had found, with a great deal of difficulty, a coachman at Chartres, who promised to attempt
to get them through.  These gentlemen, as they set off,
were followed by a respectable-looking man, plunged in
grief, who entreated them to permit him to accompany
them. He was a merchant of Paris, settled at Bucbarest,
anxiously expected in Paris by his family, his wife, and
his little children.  They allowed him  to share the
carriage, and talked openly before him. At ten leagues
from Paris they halted for awhile, and, missing him for
a moment, came up to him as he was explaining, in
good German, all about them to a Prussian officer.
They were obliged to turn back and return to Montpellier.
But the travelling spy could not have gathered
together so much minute and precise information if he
had not been aided by the spy in the household, who
naturally is acquainted far more thoroughly with everything. Therefore, to obtain complaisant answers to his
questions, the former, you may be sure, addresses himself to his own countrymen, to the Germans domiciled
in the place, and at the beershop where one goes to
drink, and which has for its customers the best families




The Authors of the War-German Espionage. 37
in the town. The tailor, seated cross-legged on his
table, is only too happy to chatter and reply to questions.
The gossips of the neighbourhood usually gather round
him, he knows the slightest detail, and can speak of
numberless little peculiarities which reveal the whole
district. The officers who came later to make requisitions, had no need to see the lists of contributors or of
tax-payers. They knew perfectly well what each village
could pay.
People were surprised that at Ablon, on the Seine, it
was known that a certain farm had twenty-five cows,
instead of twenty. But they would have been still more
surprised if it could be published, how much these
invaders knew  of internal, domestic, and apparently
useless details.  Their insatiable curiosity was also
amply, and, without much  effort, satisfied  by our
German servants; the good creatures are only too
glad to talk to an honest compatriot.  If he is young
their confidence is simply limitless.  It was a very
clever trick of the Prussians in the last century to
make use of their handsomest men to flirt with the
favourite maids of their great Viennese ladies. Fauche
Borel, the celebrated spy of Prussian Neufchatel, was as
fair as a girl, and his beautiful face gave him access
everywhere.
A German of great good sense, who has looked at
these events from a high point of view, has said, " You
must not say yVe victis! but VYe victoribus!  The
defeated is only ruined. The victor is degraded."




38            France before E urope.
If this state of things were to become permanent, it
would be necessary to erect a tomb, a sepulchral monument, to the antique German virtues now buried. The,
hero now is not Roland, but the man who betrayed him,
Ganelon de Mayence. The hero is no longer Siegfried,
but the traitor Hagen.
Sleep, Honour, sleep, Good-faith, beneath this
tomb; sleep, plighted word, truthfulness, noble simplicity, who have charmed us so long!




( 39 )
CHAPTER V.
ENGINES OF TWAR.
THE valour of Cortes, who all but singly undertook the
conquest of an empire of a million of men, is a
celebrated fact.  But we cannot deny that his weapon
had a great deal to do with his victories. It was the
musket which won them.
So let us not deny the merit of the Prussians, who
risked their lives in invading France with their million
of men, and the strategy of whose captains is as praiseworthy as their courage. But it is certain that their
weapon, the field cannon of long range, has had its
share in their victories.
Their bulletins rarely fail in telling us that they owe
their successes especially to their " admirable artillery."
But they do not always acknowledge that in the decisive
moments of an engagement, at Sedan for instance, their
range was so great, that our guns could not even reach
them.  There was, therefore, no struggle, consequently
no victory. Men were superfluous, the cannon did it
all. There was no defence possible.  Who were the




40            France before Europe.
Germans engaged at Sedan?  The Bavarian Landwehr
for the most part.  Their loss was not heavy.  They
were safely sheltered behind that circle of at thousand
cannons, into the midst of which our armies were
driven and crushed.
" Our soldiers," says a reliable witness, " were firebound within a certain distance.  They, the Germans,
shot at ranges of five hundred or a thousand metres
further than the French. We could fire tremendous
volleys, but we had not the comfort of even hitting them.
I could see them with my glasses, quietly making their
coffee or boiling their soup behind their batteries."
This is entirely confirmed by the Prussians themselves,
who were proud of their success and of the art and
calculation which had given it them. They boasted of
these far more than of their gallantry and courage.
They said often, "We do not require even to see
vour soldiers' faces, but we know we must inevitably
defeat them."  Sometimes they added exultingly, " It.
is all settled: it will be over by Christmas or the New
Year. It is a mathematical certainty." The surprise of
Sadowa, where the solid army of Austria and the brave
Hungarians were bewildered, thunderstruck, by a new
weapon, ought to have been a sufficient warning. It was
easy to guess what rapid progress would be made in the
years which followed Sadowa-that after the improvement in guns, cannon would be remodelled. Machinery
progresses continually. It does not advance by a sudden
leap of miraculous genius, but by the gradual and suc



Engines of War.                 41
cessive perfecting of parts: each step onwards, however
slight, leads to another, and so on. We see this in
industrial-a far more complicated affair than militarymachinery.
The progress of machinery is the characteristic of
the age. It is a great power, peculiar to modern times,
and pregnant with awful possibilities for good or for
evil. The last century, in stimulating individual
dexterity, has educated the workman. This century
has created the iron workman and the iron soldier —
in short, machinery.  During the first fifty years,
machinery devoted itself to the arts of peace. For the
last thirty years it has served war, and has transformed
it. The various arts which were combined in machinery
have been more and more applied to purposes of destruction.
The history of machinery is curious and suggestive.
HIow recent it all is. Watt died, it seems, but yesterday. Between 1776 and 1840, the scope of machinery
was a benevolent one.  The factories manufactured
cloths and tissues, which clothed, adorned, and warmed
all mankind-civilized beings as well as savages. Its
forges provided at the cheapest rate the tools which are
the necessary implements of art. Aided by steam, it
accelerates and multiplies locomotion a hundred-fold.
We poor loiterers, who hitherto had crawled on the
earth and on the capricious wave, have now sure and
speedy wings. We can now say with certainty, "c We
shall arrive on such a day, at such a minute."  What




42            France before Europe.
thanksgivings  have been  sung in honour of this
blessing!
But is this all?  Alas! this great, imperturbable
and ruthless force will lead to other results.  Children
and ignorant people are afraid of them. Are they
wrong?  Is not their antipathy prescience?   Sixty
years ago my parents took me to see the steam-pump at
Chaillot, and the great Museum of machines at Rue St.
Martin.  I was stunned, overwhelmed at the giant
enigma of these new forces, of these metallic workmen,
of these impersonal persons, of these brass and steel
hands. The Chaillot machine was as yet imperfect and
rude; but as its revolutions made the walls shake, it
seemed rather the foe than the servant of man. Its use
was proudly pointed out to me. But I felt an instinct,
rooted deep within me, which obstinately whispered what
strange fatalities might exist in these unknown agents.
These creatures, developed and begetting like by a mathematical progression, which was inevitable, might they
not in the long run, after having gone through a phase
of production, enter another of destruction? Might they
not themselves destroy, or become instruments of extermination?
In the engines of war, there is the same murderous
progress. One form of gun supplants another. Delvigne was destroyed by Dreysse.  Dreysse was shot
down by Chassepot.  The same with cannon.  The
incomparable Paixhans was dismounted by Armstrong.
Armstrong by Krupp, the hero of 1870.




Engines of War.                43
The double - barrelled pistols, early invented by
France, the American revolver, are the parents of an
infinite number of similar weapons. A friend of mine
from Geneva, saw in 1839, in the arsenal of Strasbourg,
the type of a breech-loader which fired eight rounds a
minute, and which in'66 was to triumph at Sadowa. Our
African army had rejected it as too cumbersome. The
indubitable " marvels " of the chassepot had not dazzled
us. All sensible persons knew that the perfection of
the gun as a weapon, would be useless (especially in the
great plains of the North) before a perfected artillery at
long range, which would not permit guns to approach.
The monstrous Krupp cannon, which was exhibited
in Paris in 1867, was grotesque from its ponderous
massiveness, and appeared to be useless except as a
bastion or rampart defence. We were ignorant of the
enormous manufacture of cannons of the same kind,
only light and moveable ones, which went on at Magdeburg and all Prussian arsenals. The " mitrailleuse,"
which was the Emperor's favourite invention and hobby,
which he never exhibited, but covered up with a kind
of jealous mystery, was known universally in Prussia,
manufactured, multiplied, but as a second-rate fieldpiece which could not act everywhere, and which could
be rendered useless by long-range cannons.
Inventions which are conveyed from one country to
another, and of which it is impossible to keep the
monopoly or the secret, yet inspire a confidence and a
pride in men which is quite unreasonable.  We imagine




44             France before Europe.
too credulously that it is a new limb we acquire, an arm,
a hand, a hundred hands, that it makes us equal to
Briareus. A wealthy ingenious people, who up to a
certain time have been ignorant of some machine or
other, once put on the track soon learn to imitate it,
often to surpass it, or to invent a superior one. This
kind of improvisation took place at Paris and on the
Loire.  Light cannons were cast instantly, and Paris
was soon armed with a formidable artillery.
Who shall prevent barbarians from using machinery?
She is the offspring of civilization, but may turn against
it and  rend  it.  The  Russians, through America,
through England itself, will obtain the same powerful
artillery of which the Prussians are so proud, and which
I hear is already surpassed in America, both as to length
of range and lightness.  Arrived at this point the
mechanism of Death might meet a rival yet more murderous and fulminating. Chemistry, which is seeking
to develop itself on that side, will have its turn. What
a horrible struggle of sciences and arts for the service
of Death!
A thoughtful friend of mine was saying, " But after
all these victories of machinery, which apparently are the
triumphs of brute force, are actually the result of thought,
invention, intellect; they are therefore the result of
progress." Agreed; but this new art of killing a people
at 5,000 metres' range, without any personal risk, without being even aware of the terrible consequences of
the fire; does it not involve an impassiveness, a ruth



Engines of War.                45
lessness, which could not belong to former wars? It is,
to say the least of it, cold-blooded murder. That which
was formerly the atoning grace of war, and ennobled it,
was the equal peril, the self-devotion, the spirit of
self-sacrifice. Men are now so wise, they calculate to
such a nicety the power of matter, and trust so little to
their own strength, that they all but omit it in their
summing up of chances. Will they not, therefore,
eventually fail in heart and spirit? The mechanician
will be all; the hero nought.
When Frenchmen opposed bayonets to powderbayonets which bring foes face to face, dazzle the eyes
and chill the nerves-they were courageous, and acted
as brave men. " We shall see," they exclaimed, " who
stands calm and firm before the flash of steel." They
would have felt disgraced to attack an enemy, as is
done now, after having battered him  with a storm of
shells.
When Gustavus Adolphus, with 30,000 Swedes,
fell on Germany, and threw such dismay on the great
armies of Europe, he employed no machinery. He even
put aside the heavy arms, the ponderous iron corslets,
which were then used. He wore but his buff jacket.
He perished, but what matter, he won. He made the
cause of liberty triumph, and through his heroism the
Treaty of Westphalia was imposed on his enemies.




46             France before Europe.
CHAPTER VI.
CORRUPTION LOF THE EMPIRE.
PRUSSIA must first thank her weapons, secondly, the
perfect knowledge she had obtained (most unscrupulously) of the country; but most of all she ought to be
grateful to the French administration, to our military
commissariat, which yielded up our army to our enemies, starved and defeated, beforehand.
We gave Germany the respite of fifteen days, which
were necessary to her, to mobilise her troops. And in
spite of that delay all preparation on our part was
omitted.   It is a known fact, that at Wirth, the
cuirassiers who made that famous charge, at the close,
had not eaten for thirty hours. It is stated that at
Sedan our army, which was being thrust forward from
Chalons by forced marches, had only provided one small
piece of bread a day for each soldier.
This is not wonderful when one considers the corruption of the Imperial Government. It was rottenness
itself.




Corruption of the Empire.           47
It sprang from gamblers and adventurers-Morny,
Magnan, &c.  But the further back we go, all the
Bonapartist party (that long conspiracy) had but one
wisdom —chance; one fixed idea-their star.
Louis Napoleon was born, so to speak, in a lotteryoffice, nursed on the knees of Josephine, his Creole
grandmother, who, with  her coloured  servant and
Madame Lenormant, was always having her fortune
told, and consulting the cards which were to reveal her
destiny. It is well known that when she married the
great warrior she gave him a black ring, on which was
engraved on one side, "To Destiny."  Beneath were
characters which time only revealed. (Waterloo.)
Belief in the improbable, the absurd, the miraculous,
and the contempt of all right reason, were but the
natural results of the reign of Napoleon the Great. It
was forgotten that the most fabulous absurdity and folly
were scarcely to be counted such by one who had
received from the Revolution its enchanted, infallible,
weapon. I mean that prodigious army which could
commit faults because it knew how to repair them,
by sheer force of courage and fire of blood. Women
were infatuated about that army; Queen Hortense
found in it her chief agents.
Josephine's fetish belief in fate, in chance, in her
star, with the false notion that the Napoleons possessed
or inherited some right bestowed originally by the
people, were the religion of the party.
The hero who was being nurtured for these high




48            France before Europe.
destinies, and who, it was whispered, was the son of
Napoleon, was the eldest and most manly of Hortense's
sons.  Louis was a fair, dreamy, lymphatic youth,
obedient and quiet, and who, under his preceptor's
care, the erudite Le Bas, would have been a scholar or
at least an archaeologist. To have written " Cesar"
would have been the task of his whole life; but the
brother died, and it was necessary to make Louis a
hero. He was well drilled in all bodily exercises, but
he could not be made into a soldier.
He was like a racquet-ball under the hand of his
party. He was sent on at Strasbourg and Boulogne; he
risked nothing in the mad enterprises into which he was
thrown by the giddy and needy fools, who staked on
him  their chances and their hopes, because he was
bucklered by the name of Napoleon. He was born to be
imprisoned, and he was resigned to it. He was more
at leisure there for his chosen studies. He had a somnambulistic look, which made one think that in that pentup life, where waking and sleeping are blended in one, he
indulged in the enervating dreams produced by opium.
He was so habitually mute that people could interpret him as they chose. His silence was a weapon.
In'48 he succeeded because he never spoke. The
gamblers, the desperadoes, who were his companions,
risked everything, and had audacity for him and for
themselves. We are assured that he hesitated on the
2nd December, and did not desire the massacre. In a
cautious note, now published for the first time, he




Corruption of the Empire.         49
throws the blame on Morny, who had changed his
orders, and added the words " Shoot them."
Such an act, however, which roused the indignation
of the whole world, caused him to be surrounded by
the gang who had perpetrated it. These were men of
a merely subordinate kind for the most part, by no
means prepared for the role which they were about to
play. It is certain that St. Arnaud, when entrusted
with the great task of the Crimean war, had no idea of
the geography of those countries, but sent for some
maps from  the shops in the Quai Voltaire. He was
entirely ignorant that in our War Office we had the best
drawn maps in the world.
In'59, when we went to Italy, we had never studied
the country which we went to free, while the Austrians
knew it by heart. The Moniteur makes the following
confession four times, "We have been surprised."
MacMahon at Magenta, Niel at Solferino, saved, it is
said, the Emperor. The army saved itself, the soldiers
repaired the faults and the astonishing carelessness of
their generals.
The Emperor has a quality which is equally dangerous in war as in politics.  He advances boldly,
becomes alarmed, and retreats. This accounts for so
niany miscarriages. The affair of the Crimea had in
it a certain grandeur; but he could not carry it out
to the end by rousing Poland. To liberate Italy was
well; but to be complete, he should have stirred up
Hungary.
4




50            France before Eumrope.
Between Kossuth and Austria he leaned towards
Austria.  As to Italy, he did not desire Italy to be
strong; he wished it to be divided; and he gained the
implacable hatred of the Italians, whom he came to
save.
His own indecision, his own fear of the Revolution,
might have made him commit these faults; but his fatal
surroundings-the influence of his brother at the beginning, of his wife at the end, of his career-weighed
unworthily on him.  Without the first he had not
probably persisted in his murderous deportations; without the second he would not have thwarted and finally
alienated Italy for the sake of the Pope, and the folly of
the Mexican enterprise would never have taken place.
His own opinions are vague and fickle. While he
granted M. Duruy a revolutionary power, which might
have ruined our aristocratic colleges, and made each
student a workman, he made our military schools essentially aristocratic and clerical; the officers were chosen
only among the well-born, the rich, or the sons of the
high officials, who had been educated by Jesuits and
friars for the Polytechnic schools, for Saint Cyr, &c.
France, under this Spanish and priestly influence,
would have lost that which has been the making of our
glorious armies —the principle of equality; the soldier
would have been discouraged, the subaltern would have
been arrested in his career, there would have arisen
that Junkerism which makes Prussia so odious and so
intolerable to Germany.




Corruption of the Empire.         51
But what a light suddenly flashed on him at the
close of his reign, and how startlingly both the system
and the man were revealed.
There never was such a sudden shock as that of
1869; the Emperor was worse than dethroned, he was
branded, pilloried.
The indignation felt by France at having slept so
profoundly and so long, at having ignored so much and
borne so much, made the awakening an implacable
Nemesis.  He was literally anatomised, not by the
scalpel, but by a piercing light which revealed the inward
man entirely-entrails, nerves, all. No man has ever
been subject to such minute exploring of his whole being.
The secret-service money, the bribes, the affairs of
Morny, had very much degraded the empire. Mexico,
which was nothing but a swindle, had been revealed in'67, by the abrupt scene at St. Cloud, when the furious
and insane Charlotte told the Emperor and the Empress
the same terrible truths which posterity will utter.
Maximilian was abandoned and perished. And as one
ghost recalls the memory of other ghosts, all those of the
2nd December reappeared, evoked by the book of T6not.
What availed it to deny them? The authority of the
3Mloniteur itself triumphantly sums up the murders and
massacres of the period, and draws up the indictment
for them.  All those pale witnesses arise in their
shrouds, and defiling silently by, point out the pages
where the murderers accuse themselves and mark themselves out for eternal condemnation.  All shuddered




52,France before Europe.
who saw, but only one spoke. An heroic gamin, who
was careless of the enormous power which crushed us,
broke the spell. Nothing can be more characteristic of
France. Let historians remember that in June, 1869,
a youth, then but little known, did that which no one
dared to do in Europe. All the monarchs of Europe
were bowing to the man at the Tuileries, and styling
themselves his cousins and brothers. They revered in
him the master of an army of 500,000 men. But this
youth laughs at him. As power against power he
declares war, and signs his name Rochefort.
From thence proceeded an entire literature. The
mourning of these late months cannot make one forget
the brilliant escapades of the Rappel, and so many of
the provincial journals, full of wit, fire, and anger. We
old men gave welcome to this gay outburst of youth.
" Are there still young men? Are there still talents
and promise in France? Does France yet exist?"  The
patience of the Imperial spectre was both surprising
and alarming. He remembered that his silence had
succeeded in'49.  To let this eruption, this fire of
straw, go out, was the plan. Meanwhile he called up a
mask to act a vain comedy of parliamentary institutions.
It was the best mask he could select; for the masker
was genuine, and believed in himself. His name was
Olivier.
That Napoleon should change his nature,-that he
should forswear the Napoleonic legend of blood and
roguery,-that the wolf should become a dog, a good




Corruption of the Empire.          53
shepherd's dog, who could hope it? One morning he
takes off his dog's skin, and reappears as himself. He
calls to his peasants, to the great, credulous, uneducated
country which he had already deceived.  Everything
was changed. Light was dawning. To obscure all
things, to steal the voice of the people, nothing was
spared. It was an enormous crime. Official manifestoes, programmes, journals, the horrible engravings I
have mentioned, to alarm the rural masses, to brutalise
them, audaciously marked out the Reds and appealed
to a social conflict.  The Reds, it was said, are
precipitating France towards war, towards perdition.
The Reds burned the farms, the people were told,
and paid those they hired to do so 600 francs, so one
of my friends was told not far from Cherbourg. The
accidental. rick-burnings which often follow a great
drought were thus explained; and my young friend,
the son of Dr. Bertillon, narrowly escaped death for
arson.  Since, in the Dordogne, the peasants have
burned alive a man who was considered a Red.
It is curious to reflect how large a portion lies have
had in the events of this wonderful year 1870.
In France and in Germany two panics have swept
everything before them. Panics artfully arranged and
kindled.
In France the boldest possible lie deceived the
country. It voted, appalled by the fear of war, anarchy,
fire; and strong through this vote for Peace, our Sovereign declared War.




54           - France before Europe.
On the other hand, how did M. de Bismarck carry
off Germany-those -kingdoms, so lately reunited, yet
so agitated; the South, so uncertain, so reluctant?
How did he seduce a mass of a million of men, —a
number which has never been gathered together since
the Crusades, the old barbaric invasions.  By fear,
by a well-considered and scenic panic, a phantasmagoria, which shocked and drew them on at once. " Here
they come, the Algerians, the Zouaves, the Turcos!
Save your wives, your children! "
Bavaria paused.  They were told a falsehood —
" The French have passed the Rhine! "
Here was a surprise on both sides. Bismarck had
been preparing his for three years; for he felt that without war and its maddening fever he could never muzzle
Germany. By the war he escaped the ultimate resistance, the dying breath of German liberty.
The Emperor thought he had no shelter but war
against the awful uprising of French liberty, and its
revenge. Paris terrified him; and when he was in the
arms of his good brother King William, he said (very
aptly, it must be confessed), "We have both the same.
enemy."




( 55 )
CHAPTER VII.
THE EMPEROR AND SEDAX.
Is Louis Napoleon a Frenchman? What is his country?  His native language is German. He spoke it in
Switzerland and in the college at Augsbourg.  His
government was a foreign government presided over by
a German and a Spaniard. A thousand petty details
could prove how ignorant he was of France, and how
impossible it was for him to be acquainted with her,
not having the innate tact or the wit peculiar to our
nation.
His proclamation after Warth (a first defeat, and
certainly therefore not of paramount importance,) caused
every one to exclaimn: " He is no Frenchman! "  A
Frenchman might have anticipated evil, but he would
have had too much cleverness and too much presence
of mind to betray it so thoroughly.
He heard of that defeat the next day fortuitously
(what an administration!) by a photographer and two
escaped newspaper writers, and he lost his head so
completely, that with such large forces still left, he had




56            FFrance before Europe.
not the forethought to defend the defiles of the Vosges.
They were left so defenceless that the Prussians would
not believe it possible, and were afraid at first of entering them. They feared some snare or stratagem. In
that first desperate proclamation the Emperor called on
all for aid.
" On all! All meant France." And he was more
afraid of France than of anything else.
He called to arms, and yet he refused arms. He
did not even arm Alsace, which was in such danger.
He gave them out some old useless firelocks. There
were abundant chassepots in our arsenals, but they were
incomplete; and for fear of the people getting hold of
them, one essential portion of the weapon was deficient
in each.
The Emperor, the man of the people, for whom the
people had voted, feels himself insecure in that direction, and will be saved by the army alone. The army
has been cut in two and is shut up in Metz. To attempt
to relieve it with too small a body of troops is to perish.
MacMahon, a true soldier, feels this. He knows that
the only chance of safety is in retreat towards Paris,
giving the new army that support and confidence which
the vast resources of such a city could command.  He
was overruled by Palikao. I am not an historian here.
Others may follow day by day, step by step, this prodigious and terrible drama.
At Metz, Bazaine, who might still with his 150,000
men have cut his way out, so says Changarnier, allowed




The Em)peror and Sedan.           57
himself to be permanently surrounded, hoping (was it
through the messages of Bismarck? or of the Emperor?)
that, with his excellent army, he would be the, arbiter,
the mediator of the situation.
The letters of General Wimpffen, 11th and 19th
September, and letters from many other officers, have
firmly established as a fact, that the Emperor refused
every offer which was made to cut a way through the
Prussians. It is true that the murderous artillery I
have before mentioned surrounded the army from the
heights. But would the troops which occupied them
have resisted a final, desperate, and furious attack?
would they have stood by their guns? Very reliable
witnesses- Swiss, surgeons, Geneva-cross-men from
both camps-assure us that the majority of these troops
were the Bavarian landwehr.
The Emperor forgot he was no longer the commander-in-chief, and hoisted the white flag without the
knowledge of Wimpffen. He sent one of his household
to the King of Prussia.
The infamy was accomplished. The surrender was
without conditions.
But that which has most improved the cause of the
victors is, that according to the testimony of the Swiss
who were there, no one dared to tell our soldiers what
had befallen them. They feared the frenzy of their
despair. I read in the Journal of Geneva (not friendly
to the French) a letter from its correspondent, 8th October: "This is what I have been told, not by ten or




58           n France before Europe.
fifteen,: but by more than two hundred prisoners, in
different hospitals and barracks, where there could have
been no possibility of collusion between them.'We
were only told to lay down our arms, and that we could
go away. A squadron accompanied us to the gate of
Sedan, and instead of our being allowed to go free, we
were driven into a kind of marshy island.'... There
they were left to starve for several days."
The King of Prussia became quite softened to the
Emperor. IHe had rendered him  a great service, he
spoke German, and more than all, kings make common
cause together. He felt that the Emperor was quite
sincere when he said, "We have the same enemy."
"But this war?"
"It was France, not I, who wished it."
If ever a falsehood was uttered it was this.
It was a solemn and a memorable scene. It recalls
that in the beginning of Genesis; where Adam in his
cowardly terror stammers forth, "The woman gave
unto me, and I did eat."




(59)
CHAPTER VIII.
THE UNCONQUERED SPIRIT OF FRANCE.
IT is strange that great nations should ignore each
other so absolutely as they do.  Humanitarians are
fools to believe that the walls, hedges, barriers, which
were between them of old, are done away with. On the
contrary, a few antiquated prejudices may have died out;
but a growing personality separates more and more
nations and individuals.
The Germans, for instance, since Sadowa, for three
years and more, have, with an earnest, attentive, methodical study, observed France.  Every optical aid has
been employed.  Using the magnifying-glasses given
by passion, hatred, envy, and fanaticism, the young
devout missionaries of Teutonic mania came among us,
to examine everything and send home accurate statistics
about everything.  These military and other details,
concentrated under the strong glasses of the old strategist who inspires the whole machinery of war with his
steel nerves and iron soul, resulted in combinations,
which formed a new astrology. He could calculate it




60            France before Europe.
all, like a problem in mathematics, and marked with his
strong finger on the calendar of 1870 the day of the
death of France!
The solution was erroneous. France still lives!
Vanity of science! emptiness of human knowledge!
Germany, with its Gemiith, its great moral pretensions,
knew nothing, calculated nothing but mechanical forces.
Oh, land of ideality, thou didst ignore the soul!
The men of erudition, the learned antiquarians, the
philologists, had said to Germany, that Alsace and
Lorraine would hasten to meet their brethren-the men
in the long black vests of the time of Charlemagne, the
women in their red dresses, singing the old German
lieds; that no defence would be made, the only
difficulty would be to check the Teutonic enthusiasm.
They might in their new loyalty suffocate their beloved
monarch! Beyond the frontier there would be less
resistance still. It was well known and noticed at
the suppers of'67, during the Great Exhibition, that
France was corrupt to the core, in a state of flagrant
decomposition.   The only dangers (beware, young
men!) are those enormous cellars of champagne, where
you might be overcome by those heady wines.  The
sixty leagues of vines which, on the hill-sides of Burgundy, upreared on their poles, look like the files of
an army, may also be dangerous to you, and cause you
shipwreck; but that is all.
These ideas were naturally confirmed when Germany
found in the Emperor a man educated in Germany,




The unconquered Spirit of France.       61
and who fraternised with her, and yielded up his armies
to her.  But it was not over.  France had lost her
armies, her cannons; but she had her two arms, her
breast, and the fire of her heart, with which to confront
the enemy.
That people who were so corrupt, it was said, and
also so enervated, and apparently in a state of dissolution, are here before us, actually standing upright,
opposing us. Is it possible?  What a surprise! Do
you think Germany will own she was mistaken? By
no means. No; she shakes her head, and says piously,
"How sad it is when a sinner will not submit to his
punishment, or thank the rod, but struggles, and rages,
and rejects all expiation! It is necessary, therefore, to
increase the castigation and not to spare the Bismarck
prescription-steel and fire!"  Steel! Yes, steel is
the thing! What a powerful stimulant to feel in one's
flesh so many cruel spurs! Acupuncture is an efficacious though cruel remedy for all inertia and languor of
organisation! Thanks, executioners!
What virtues have been wakened! How the fire has
purified, exalted, ennobled men's souls! Let us open
the Golden Legend, and write in it the names of the
Government of the National Defence. Has it not been
admirably loyal, faithful, true? What obliged some of
its members-aged, wealthy, already rich in all the
glories of talent-to accept the immense responsibilities
and risk the fatal ingratitude usually experienced by the
saviours of a people?




62             France before Europe.
- What is most striking in this Government of Paris
is, not only its calm courage, but its gentleness, its
humanity, its loyal modesty, and, may I say it, its
youthful sincerity. Do not smile at my words. The
memorable interview between Jules Favre and Bismarck
will live for ever. It is folly to think that the first,
because he was agitated, was the least clever of the two.
His warm heart, his patriotic tears, drew from the other
that acknowledgment which is his condemnation1st, that he expects no voluntary submission from
Alsace and Lorraine, that he intends to use force and
make them  German in spite of themselves; 2nd, that
between France and Germany there will exist henceforth eternal hatred, and that he acts in that sense.
But then two Provinces are not sufficient. From
the Rhine to the Alps and the Pyrenees one must
have a cleaver to hack —to chop France-that we may
sell and distribute our booty, and make Europe partake
of it. Open the Bismarck shop-a bloody shambleswhere he can say to the nations, "Who wishes to
devour France?"
No, that conversation was an instructive one, and
the cleverer of the two was the one who wept.
This dismemberment, this portioning off, is the
true Prussian method, so ably carried out in Poland.
By it Prussia is linked for ever to Russia against
Germany itself. M. de Bismarck's face is that of a
Russian general, and I have not deceived myself in
thinking so.




The Unconquered Spirit of France.      63
The investment of Paris, which took place the
19th of September, had a strange effect on Europe.
So much warmth and light emanate from Paris, that
there was less light, less animation, fewer echoes in the
world. It is a sublime but odious struggle.  Here
again the duel is between machinery and man. Our
enemies do not deny that their principal force is in
their artillery, and it is with that iron ring that they
have girt us round.
Their great hope was in our dissensions-our
interior divisions.  But there were none.  All were
agreed. None were discordant, but some were impatient.
They were heroes, who wished to rush on the enemy.
They did not understand the great and arduous necessity for disciplining, forming, drilling those brave but
confused masses of men, who would have perished
at the first blow from their blind zeal, their headlong
valour.
On looking the other day at a plan of this heroic
city, bound with its red girdle of flaming forts, I saw in
my mind's eye the black swarms of beings, who, on all
sides, like ants, were piling up at a distance mountains upon mountains, of earth, to surround and overwhelm it. I was reminded of Roland the Brave, whom
Ganelon de Mayence took care, not to attack singly as
man to man, but who was betrayed into an amphitheatre of rocks, in the Pyrenees, where he found himself in the midst of menacing heights.  From these
heights rocks could be hurled down on him. With his




64             France before Europe.
flashing sword he clove first one mount, then two more,
as one may still see. Then he blew his magic horn
and called for aid. tie perished, but who dares confess
he slew him. His own mighty effort destroyed him.
His passionate appeal for help to the nations-deaf
then, alas! as they are now.




( 65  )
CHAPTER IX.
VANDALISM.
A SENSIBLE German lady said to me, "I would have
given my life so that the war had ended at Sedan."
She was right. German honour was then safe.
All wrong was veneered over by the deceptive glosses
employed by Bismarck.  " The French began, the
Germans are victorious, and have taken no undue
advantage of their victory."  Europe would have been
deceived. Englishmen, who lived in the camp and at
the table of Bismarck, guaranteed German gentleness,
moderation, prudence. An English nobleman, at the
commencement of the war, writes like a simpleton.
" Rob? Why, they would not take a pin."
But the sad reality has now been displayed-an undercurrent of brutality and of unexpected barbarism. Moreover, they have evinced a cynical surprise, which is a
disgrace to them-a surprise that any one should resist
them. Brave men appreciate brave men, and honour
the indomitable valour of an enemy. Let me mention
here an anecdote told me by some Hungarians: "In
5




66             France bejbre Europe.'98, the Hungarian cavalry had decimated ours, but
finally ours retrieved themselves, and drove the others
before them to the edge of a precipice.  But they would
not surrender, and were falling into the abyss. The
French, full of generous admiration at such valour,
called out,'Cease firing.'"
Besides the prodigious respect which Germans feel
for force, their worship of authority makes them pitiless
towards the valour which resists Might, consecrated by
Success, and which does not acknowledge the judgment
of God.  "What! dare resist all these Kings-these
Ilighnesses in person, who are doing them the honour to
sack and:bombard their towns?  What audacity! what
blasphemy! Yes; they are the true sons of iniquity and,of anarchy, that accursed race, born of the teeth of the
revolutionary dragon! If God's thunder does not crush'them, let the cannons of our kings annihilate them."
"It has been a very great surprise to us," said
a judicious young man, a cool and impartial spectator,
a Swiss surgeon; ".we have always thought, considering
their  famous universities, their learned men, their
literature, that the Germans were superior to us in
everything."
One thing is indubitable now, and which hitherto
we were all unconscious of, that this great nation,
placed so loftily in certain respects, is inferior to other
nations, in the low vulgarity of certain classes, and yet
more so, in these bastard branches of her nationality,
which Germany projects out of herself.; in her far-off




Vandalism.                   67
emigrations, where the best part of a nation becomes
effaced, and even more in those nearer countries which
she utilises by a covetous trade, or over which she
tyrannises through her officials, stewards, clerks, &c.I speak of Russia.
Our -southern peasants and the Italians are, in the
very lowest classes, courteous -and polite.  They might
pass for disguised gentlemen. In their language and
in their manners there is even a certain elegance.
Newspaper correspondents, who were scarcely friendly
to us, made this remark in visiting our prisoners (a
whole nation of soldiers), which such a monstrous
chance has thrown into Germany.  The Germans in
France are quite  different.  Away from  their own
hearths, where they are excellent, forced out of their
daily: habits, out of that domestic idyllic life which
deceives: so many persons, they become at once rude
and coarse.  Thrusting them into a position, in which
the inherent barbarism of their race, hitherto latent,
has revealed itself, has been a great injury to them in
public opinion.  That which was below  rose to the
surface and was seen in its native hideousness.  Oddly
enough, it was not the soldiers who behaved worst; it
was the landwehr; those peaceful citizens and fathers
of families torn away from home and hearth by those
French scoundrels so obstinately bent on defending
themselves. It would appear that these good Germans
would not have been guilty of such a folly. An English
newspaper has cleverly and justly marked out that the




68            France before Europe.
most shocking part of the picture is that the rapacity
was in proportion to the domestic affections. " I should
like that watch for my son, who is at college; that gold
chain would become my little daughter; what a beautiful
silk dress! it would suit my wife; I will take it."
During the morning hours there may be lucid intervals,
but at night, after having been drinking all day, what
is likely to be their condition? " We could never
speak to the officers after five o'clock," said one, who
had been with these armies; "they would not have
understood us." This explains those requisitions of
champagne by tipsy men in provinces where there is
none to be had. They would insist upon having it,
and be furious if it were not forthcoming.
All this was the repetition of 1815, which was as
cruel, but less wantonly wicked. Then it was the
revenge of all Europe on Napoleon I., the reprisals
for so much blood shed by him. But there was no
reason for it now. Had not the two people been at
peace for fifty-five years? Another contrast is this. In
1815, it was the invasion of a people, a great national
movement, a sincere and spontaneous and natural outburst. In 1870, all was foreseen, combined, prepared,
directed by a cold but firm hand. All was arranged to
inspire a vile terrorism.
Another innovation has taken place in this war,
which makes it different from  all others. It is the
first time open towns have been bombarded; that
houses beyond the ramparts have been aimed at;




Vandalism.                  69
leaving the soldiers untouched, but destroying the
inhabitants, the families, the children, the women, so
that their terrors should unnerve the soldiers and cause
the surrender of the town. Bombs, shot, shells are
not powerful enough for the conflagration. It must be
stirred up and rendered inextinguishable by throwing
on all the wood-work, the doors, the windows, the
rafters, petroleum, which burns and spreads flames
far and wide.
Europe, says an Englishman, seems to have retrograded several centuries. According to the code of
civilized nations vessels in peril were aided and rescued
even in foreign countries. Here the perilous voyages
of balloons have met with no consideration or humanity.
Their dangers have been terrible. One was lost in the
ocean. Another carried by a whirlwind was caught on
the peaks of St. Baume.  That is not sufficient risk.
They are fired upon. If the wretched aeronaut falls he
is a prisoner. They do not fear to die, but to fall upon
the soil of Prussia. " Heu, fuge crudeles terras; fuge
littus avarum."
It is not war. It is destruction. From the point
of view confessed by M. de Bismarck, it is not enough
to conquer or to break, nothing must be spared, all
must be destroyed.  The privates acknowledge they
could not have gutted everything so scientifically, they
could not have been so thorough in pillage, so complete
in devastation, but from their orders. Their officers have
been told to teach them the Russsian method. The




70            France before Europe.
Russians are masters in this art.  Every part of the
booty is arranged most methodically, in bags, boxes,
trunks, and numbered to be sent off in such and such
carts. In Poland, in the last century, the orders to
carry away everything were so precise that three
waggons were once found loaded with fragmentary
dolls, which had been found in the houses of the
wealthy. In 1849, the Russians in Hungary carried
away everything down to morsels of broken mirrors.
They had a line of carts which moved in one unbroken
file from Pesth to the heart of Russia.
Do you think there is no account to be rendered for
this? Do not think so. This is but the beginning.
" War will begin next spring," said one of our soldiers
the other day.
In one town our enemies experienced the energy
given by despair.  The imbecile municipality had
disarmed the people.  The town was nevertheless
brutally assaulted by the outposts of an advancing
battalion.  An old judge died of fright.  But the
workmen, unarmed as they were, fell on the Prussians,
and made tllem  prisoners.  The Prussian regiment
arrived the next day, but the general so respected this
heroic fury, and was so anxious it might not spread,
that he obliged his men to pay for the pillage.
A Prussian officer said to a friend of mine,-a distinguished foreigner, whom I could name if necessary,"We are resolved to succeed. And all is arranged and
provided for us, to be three to one."




Vandalism...             71
A cynical confession! Cannot you do better than
that? Well, here, you will find men, and one to three
will be enough.
Let me recall only this.  In old days, when we
invaded Prussia (men they were, without our modern
weapons) our watchword was, " One to three."




72            France before Europe.
CHAPTER X.
STRASBO UBRG.
NOTHING more clearly displays the spirit of revenge in
the invasion, and its design of planting the seeds of undying hatred between the nations, than the employment
of the Baden army for the destruction of Strasbourg.
This barbarous work, actually executed by their nearest
neighbours, makes Baden and Alsace mortal foes, and
employs Baden as a Prussian gaoler, who has a personal
interest created by his own crimes to hold fast his
captive. But there is another consequence which has
not, natural as it is, been provided for. The ditch
between Alsace and Baden is, owing to this, immeasurably widened.  The Rhine becomes, through
these hatreds, fathomless.  Between Strasbourg and
Kehl at present it is not a river that flows; it is a gulf
deep as an abyss, broad as the ocean.
How everything is changed now! We, in our blind
sympathies for Germany, thought of Baden as such a
pleasant holiday excursion. We considered the two
shores identical, and many Frenchmen lived from




Strasbourg.                  73
choice on the German side, spent their money there,
and lived there in those woods, on those heights, a
calm, still, German life. All Europe came to it.  It
was like a neutral country, and agreeable to all. Here
it seemed all nations could meet at the same table,
shake hands together, and be friends. I remember that
when this war commenced, a person who had been the
first to protest against it wrote to the newspapers in
favour of this pretty spot, the garden of Europe, being
declared neutral.
For me, I have again and again returned to those
fair Rhine cities, especially its free towns-so well
named free, and so dear to the friends of mental
freedom. There is an amiability and sociability in
them; they have not the heavy close atmosphere that
belongs to the other towns of Germany. They are
exuberant with light and warmth; they were bound to
the free cities of Switzerland by the bond of a close
fraternity. They were so friendly with each other, so
neighbourly, these Swiss and German towns, brought so
near by the " exulting and abounding river," that there
is a homely proverb well known there, that "a dish
baked in Switzerland is still hot when it reaches
Strasbourg." Their connection with Holland and the
Hanseatic towns is as intimate as with  Switzerland.
On every side Strasbourg, Frankfort, &c., were peacemakers between the nations. They had been the benefactors of the world by that great modern revelation, Printing.
Their literature, light, sparkling, and satirical, is very




74            France before Europe.
diffeirent from the German. Miirner was a source of
great amusement to me, and I am not surprised that
the great Goethe, though born at Frankfort, pursued
his studies at Strasbourg.
What an admirable place to live in was Strasbourg!
Abundant in all commodities, in books, fulfilling all our
needs. Studies, commerce, military life, were all blended
there into animated and earnest existence.
The good old King of Bavaria, who was fond of the
French, and received them hospitably, used to relate, in
the early part of this century, what happy days he had
passed at Strasbourg. It was a gay, warm-hearted' kind
of place, to which the frank simplicity, peculiar to
Alsace, gave a primitive charm. But all was dignified
and exalted by the warlike importance of its position,
and by the lofty thoughts inspired by its monumentsthe works of those great builders who have been
imitated by the whole world. Here Goethe and Victor
Hugo, poets, antiquarians, and artists, would come to
draw inspiration and knowledge.  The art of the Rhine
is a school of itself.
If Alsace was stolen, as the Germans say by the
French, they must acknowledge that she was stolen with
her own consent, and was charmed to be so taken.
There never was a more faithful marriage.  How dare
they divorce her so brutally! Let them  consult her
wishes on the subject! Alsace is France, and something
more and better. The noble manufacturers of Alsace
have occupied themselves more than has been done in




Stlrasbozury.              75
any other part of France about the condition of the
workman.
With its surprising power of production, Alsace has
not occupied itself wholly with materials, but with man
also. It has cared for human life. In war Alsatian
heroes manifest the humanity which we think belongs
to peace only.  How touching are those notes written
night by night by Kleber in the dreadful war of la Vendee!
How much heart, how much human sympathy, we find
in them!
But there is one stronger, more decisive proof of the
filiation of Alsace to France, than any other; the great
war-cry of France, which is called, I do not know why,
La Marseillaise, originated here, struck out amid the
burning national watch-fires which blazed on our frontiers,
before the eyes of the enemy. This chant was composed at
Strasbourg, and he who sang it was dumb after he left
Alsace.
How generously Alsace welcomed that mass of German
workmen, who were continually arriving here from their
own country.  20,000 masons at least came every year
from Baden to Mulhouse, Colmar, Strasbourg. They
marked and observed the whole province, but were not
friendly to us. They were enemies of the country which
received them so well. The small cathedral of Friburg
was jealous of that incomparable spire, which, from
the Vosges to the Alps, points out the Queen of the
Rhine.
The Duke of Baden, who was so cruel to his prisoners




76             France before Europe.
in 1849, hated in them: the friends of France, as well as
the martyrs of liberty. It was not his fault that Floccon,
our illustrious friend, did not perish for having betrayed
the secrets of his prisons, sunk below the bed of the
Rhine.  His life was saved by the heroism  of two
Strasbourgers-his printer who gave him shelter and
concealed him, and the agriculturist, M. North, who
saved his life at the peril of his own. May that name
live for ever!
General Uhric is now immortal. Abandoned, without artillerymen, having only infantry soldiers and a few
Turcos, all know how he resisted the besiegers.
The King of Prussia's son-in-law, the Baden Duke,
and General Werder, were cruelly inveterate.  Even
when the Swiss, sent by their cantons to entreat that
the women, the sick, the old people, might be allowed
to leave, these admirable missionaries of fraternity had,
it is said, to enter Strasbourg exposed to the brunt of
fire and ball, to fulfil their charitable task.
They obtained permission for a few of the inhabitants
to leave; but the bombardment of the town went on, not
so much of its walls and its citadels as of its most
populous districts. Every one has deplored the irreparable loss of the library, and of so many other
monuments. The damp unhealthy cellars of Strasbourg received a crowd of women, trembling under
the rain of fire which, at night especially, fell on the
roofs of the neighbouring houses with a terrible sound.
The terror was at its height when the roof of the




Strasbourg.,                77
cathedral, an immensity of zinc, melted, and red and
seething, illumined suddenly the whole town, giving to
it and all the adjacent country an effect like a scene in
the Last Judgment. This venerable monument, the
loftiest in the whole world, sublime from the genius of
its hero, Erwin de Steinbach, is dear to the people,
because it was built by the people-millions of pilgrims,
who each contributed their stone for the salvation of their
souls. In its innumerable sculptures, it presents us
with a complete world-angels, beasts, men, nature,
and humanity. It marks a succession of ages. Near
the choir, which is of Charlemagne's time, is the
famous clock, a wonderful specimen of contemporary
science, where the future revolutions of the planets are
described. The statues on its portal suggest an infinity
of thoughts. There are the foolish virgins in which we
see the spirit of the old romances. There are also two
strange figures sculptured by the daughter of Erwin:
one is Christian Law, imposing and awful; the other
Jewish Law, once so persecuted. The whole is the
concrete medieval life, the accumulated history of the
world and of Strasbourg. These stones are an aggregate
of human lives, piled up one over the other-human
lives! nay, human souls!
In'93, during the Reign of Terror, these buildings
were respected. The destructive impiety of kings was
needed to attack this wonderful relic.
What is most extraordinary is the silence of the
whole world as to these atrocities.  The poor Swiss




78             France before Europe.
above mentioned, who exposed their very lives in the
work of charity, excuse these deeds as well as they can.
Others have done more. What seems admirable to
them is the attack, not the heroic resistance.
Fortunately, witnesses-earnest, single-minded, disinterested witnesses-abound.  The most appalling fact
is one related by a lady, who tells me (18th of October)
something which had been passed over by all, as too
shocking for belief. She asserts that these wretches,
when they found their shot failing, maddened with
their fury, to feed their guns, snatching up whatever
they could lay their hands on, fired on the town keys,
locks, weights, but above all stones, stones from the
churchyard, the tombs of Strasbourg!  They seized
them from the cemeteries, and the terror-struck women,
who fled from this ghastly hail, thought they had been
struck by human bones.
Mly son, who died at thirty years of age, was buried
at Strasbourg, in that friendly city.  When shall I
return there?  Where shall I find his ashes?  I know
not. If they have been scattered about in that cruel
chaos of marbles, corpses, biers, with which an impious
fury thought to overwhelm us, it is well, those ashes
will one day or another fall on the enemies of France!




( 79 )
CHAPTER  XI.
GERMANY.
Is it true that there are already 29,000 widows in
Bavaria?
It is certain that in this war the Prussians have
largely made use of the blood of their neighbours.
During the first terrible fight of W6rth they sent
forth their Poles of Posen. At Gravelotte they again
put forward their Poles to receive the first fire, and
then called up their Swedes (I mean Pomeranians).
In the combats of the Loire, it was the blood of the
Bavarians which was shed.
This is the result of the military treaties which they
were all so hasty to sign in 1866 with Prussia; at the
very moment when France was arresting Prussia on the
Main, and was endeavouring to save South Germany
from  the pit into which  Hanover, Hesse, Nassau,
Frankfort had fallen.
But the unity of Germany? It had been more
genuine and more true if Bavaria and the South had
united in. stipulating for themselves and the others




80            France before Europe.
sufficient guarantees. Poor deluded patriots! you who
have betrayed the South, you who have cast it under the
wheels of that chariot of iron which will ultimately
grind your bones, learn one thing-unity may be the
reverse of union. Do you call unity a grotesque alliance
of conflicting elements within an iron circle, which
binds, chokes, and smashes all?
But if not, you say, France would have destroyed
us. What an astonishing ignorance of the times, the
circumstances of 1866! Germans, Germans, ye who
are so learned, are ye also so ignorant? Your eyesight
is keen enough to distinguish, to specify the elements
of the planets and teach us what are the metals in Mars
or Saturn, but what is under your noses, what is so
important to you, you do not even suspect it. France
not only did not desire the war, but, as I have before
proved, in the astonishing progress of her new sources
of wealth, would have done anything rather than check
the golden flow.
An aged infirm  emperor, almost worn out with
disease, was too preoccupied with his miserable Mexico
to think of Europe. A resolute vigorous man would
probably have gone, the day after Sadowa, into Germany,
for the sake of German liberty, and to save Hanover,
Hesse, and those wretched Bavarians. In that case,
poor widows! you would not have lost your husbands.
But one thing was necessary-the utterance of that
magic word Liberty,-" Freiheit "-although he speaks
German so well-could not be spoken by him.




Germany.                    81
He waited, he procrastinated: a very prudent manNiel-told him that before any action it was necessary
to reform the army. Niel worked hard at it, but died
in the middle of his task.  His prudence and wisdom
were, however, sheer folly. In spite of their needleguns, the Prussian artillery had not been remodelled;
and France, aided by Austria, by a sudden attack
might have surprised the victors while they were plunged
in their intoxication of success, could have snatched
Hanover from them, saved Frankfort, preserved Bavaria
and Suabia. In this case your poor wives, Germans of
Munich, would not be all in mourning?  And those
black flags which I see at the windows, even during the
illuminations in honour of your Emperor, would not
sadden the eye and heart.
The mourning is in both countries: but there is this
difference-yonder are husbands, here sons. Their loss
is not in itself less dreadful; but, at all events, they
leave no orphans.
Cruel result of ignorance and credulity; one word
has maddened them —the word " Invader." But there are
two invaders: before you is France, but behind is Russia.
And besides, Prussia is, after all, so little Germanit is, in fact, a Slavonic state. Prussia, bound by a terrible
tie with Russia, is the advanced-guard of Russia; your
artisans have told you so.
Another lie of Prussia's to dazzle and fascinate
Germany is this: " You are young, but they are old."
The Latin race is effete, worn out; it has had its day.
6




82             F;rance before Europe.
This is the new birth of Germany, it is the day of
Teutonia.
The Russians say precisely the same thing: "We
are young, the Germans are old. Latin races and
Teuton races are passed away; Slaves, it is, the turn of
Moscovia."
Germany is old, they say.  Her enormous emigration proves it: she willingly leaves a worn-out land.
She has shone fifty years through genius, literature, art;
from Frederick to Beethoven, who died in 1827.  Since
then she has absorbed herself in erudition, in natural
science, where methods are definite-where the line is so
clearly draiwn, that a mediocre capacity finds it possible
to make discoveries.  Tobacco, beer, and music have
mesmerized them.  Their literati, with their systems
and discursive methods, are old. It is very necessary
that our Prussia should wake them to actual life, and
train them to those wars which will finally destroy
Europe, and leave my path free. What they are now
doing in France under our Prussian whipper-in, what
they will do (in Austria, in Italy?) prepares our Europe.
It is what in our science of destruction' (the model of
which has been Poland) we call the first operation.
This is an idle dream of Russia's.  Neither France
nor Germany are old. These great people have varying
moments, ebb and flow, but infinite resources by which
to renew themselves.*
* One word more about that folly so often repeated about the
Latin races. Those who speak idioms derived from the Latin,




Germany.                      83
Who is young, and who is old?  All these forms of
language, borrowed from individual life, are absurd
when they relate to nations. England was very old
under James II., and older still under the Walpoles,
and it was very young at the end of the eighteenth
century, when it took possession of all the seas, made
a vigorous start in industry and productions, and
multiplied a hundredfold man's strength by steam  and
machinery.
France under Guizot was old.  Afterwards, in spite
of our bad government, she was young, full of promise
and life, youthful in the Crimea, youthful in Italy.
Yesterday she was becoming old again; but the sting of
Germany has given her a new and ardent youth,
terrible and full of rage. Paris displays it to-day, and
all France to-morrow.
How  blindly is Germany  deceived!   After the
Prusso-Russian treaty betrayed by Russia (from the Ist to
the 10th November), on the 26th the German Parliament
voted for Bismarck, for the bloody dictatorship which
now decimates Germanv, and which will harness her tomorrow (junientuin insipiens) to the cannons of Russia.
are by no means Latin on that account. The majority of the
French are Celts, with few Roman elements in them.  The
Spaniards are Iberians and Moors with the same scarcity of the
Roman elements in them. Language deceives, it does not indicate
race. The English are called Anglo-Saxon from their language,
but they are a varied mixture in which there is much Breton,
and still more Flemish and Dutch owing to emigration from 1200
to 1500.




84            France before Europe.
Does not the insolence of Prussia, the arrest of your
deputies, of Prince George of Saxony,-does not that
prove your servitude? This bastard constitution, where
those elected by universal suffrage have no power for
peace or war, or for the fate of Germany. Is that
enough? You have had five years of dictatorship, are
you going to arm again the Russo-Prussian —arm him
with the sovereign right of taking, without even asking,
your purse and your children?




( 85 )
CHAPTER XII.
POSITION OF.RUSSIA.
IN 1851 a similar threatening cloud lowered blackly on
us from the East. A chill and unhealthy shadow
weighed on Europe. The government of that period,
while preparing the 2nd of December, submitted itself
in the most dastardly manner to the Czar. The Russian
Ambassador had his seat in our Council Chamber. A
friend said to me with intense indignation: "The
Russian Empire reaches to Calais.  I must go to
America."
I steadily gazed at the monster which was approaching us, and I published a book, in which I expressed at
once, my horror of Czarism, and my sympathy for these
good, but unfortunate Russian people, who are like souls
in purgatory, horribly enchanted in that Devil's empire,
which has robbed them of life and development.
Those who could burst such a sepulture, break such
an accursed spell, were heroes indeed.  I have the
sincerest worship for the martyrs of Russia, the Pestels,
the Ryleiefs, the warmest fellowship with those intrepid




86             F2rance before Europe.
writers, Herzen, Bakounine, Ogareff.  Where shall I
find a more ardent spirit than I-Ierzen's (that genuine
Iskander) whom I lost last year? What a brilliant
mind! what light shone from him! He was the terrible
truth-teller, who revealed Russia to us, sincere, not
exaggerated in his testimony, perfectly agreed with the
most earnest observers, the solid Haxthatisen and all
the most trustworthy witnesses. His paper, the Kolokol,
an admirable specimen of true patriotism, manifests the
noble illusions he sought still to cherish. Death struck
him midway.  New facts shattered his patriotic hopes.
He has himself asserted, with an incomparable eloquence
and fire, speaking of Pouschkin and others, what a power
of extinction is possessed by Russia: how she kills every
spring of life which flows towards her.  How  many
people has she not extinguished.  As a destructive
force Russia is truly great. With how many lugubrious
monuments, with how many sepulchres of nations has
she covered the world. Poland will gradually be interred in Siberia, in those fortresses surrounded by the
tumlti, which Peter the Great erected from  the bones
of the Swedes.  The Caucasus, whose people were the
chief of the white race for beauty and energy, is now a
tomb.  This exterminating frenzy, this fury of creating
deserts (even without interest or aim) is so strong in
-the Russians, that in a space of a thousand leagues,
it has swept away all those poor hunting-tribes who.gave some life to the shores of the Arctic Sea. I have
read this in the travels of two Russian engineers.  All




Position of Russica.             87
that side of our planet has become like the moon, an
empty, barren, deserted world.
The worst of Czarism is that it is a religion.  What
a monstrous blasphemy to adore a living man. How
did it arise?  By the strong and terrible concentration
it was necessary to oppose to the great deluges of
Tartaric hordes.  The fury of unity evoked an atrocious
Messianism  which  deified  a monster  (Ivan  4th).
Horrible incarnation of murder, hideous worship of
death!  It was sincere, though extravagant.  We all
have heard of that minister of Ivan's whom he impaled,
and who, throughout his long agony, called out nothing
else but " God save the Czar."
The Czar only is named in their form of worship.
Loyalty to the Czar sums up their religious education.
It is curious that Russia, in her opposition to Turkey,
should say boldly, "I am  Christian; " or that she
should say, "I am  a Greek against the barbarous
Osmanli."  How much would Prussia lose in passing
nder the Russian yoke. How much would the Slaves
of the Danube lose also.  The fearful recruitino of the
Russian Empire must of itself give all nations a horror
of this Moloch of the North.  How much greater is the
rule of Asia over her legitimate races than this Asia
bastardised  by its German bureaucracy, where two
tyrannies are blended, that of the East and of Europe.
All true observers, Russians, and all, have said
Russia is a Janus, a Proteus, a changing mask, an
immense lie, a world in which everything has a false




8'3            Ffrance before Euzrope.
sparkle. The celebrated emancipation of the serfs is an
aggravation of Czarism. It is singular how Americans
and others have been deceived in this.
This faith of Czarism had lost a good deal of its
prestige after the Crimea. The god had sunk very low,
and was deeply in debt. A great stroke of fanaticism
re-enshrined him  and  repaired  his finances.  The
240,000 men who make the Russian nobility (minus
the women, children, and old men, for then there are
900,000) are officials, or sons of officials, ancient dignitaries of the empire.  A decree of Peter the Great's
father, who made the peasant a serf, created the property
of these officials. Peter made it, Alexander in'61 unmade it. He suppressed the screen (this pseudo-nobility)
which these puppets of the Czar held between him and
the serfs. It was a great scenic clap-trap. The Czargod, who hitherto had dwelt on high, comes down upon
the altar, and says, "I am  here."  This living god
says to the serfs, to those 50,000,000 corpses, "Arise!
Live! " If this nobility yet exists and keeps half its
lands, a certain primacy, as it were, it possesses this
primacy for the sole purpose of being odious to its
inferiors, so that the Czar can always pose as the
protector of the serf.
Our good Czar, who defends us, who bestows on us
our land, how can one bless him sufficiently. Remark
two things, however, that in relieving the peasant from
the claims of his landlord, the Czar charges him with an
equivalent burden to increase his own imperial revenue.




Position of Russia.              89
IHe has more than doubled  the direct taxation
(vide Wolowski). The twenty million of peasants who,
for a long time since Alexander I., had been made free,
and styled the free peasants of the crown, found the
imperial functionary much harder than the landlord had
been. This functionary at this moment has power
throughout the empire to elect or confirm the mayor
(starost) of the commune. In proclaiming with a great
flourish of trumpets the free commune of Russia, it is
not added that the Czar, after all, is absolute over it,
for this starost, elected and chosen by him, is his
puppet.
Herzen! Ogareff! My dear friends, what a blow was
this fact to all your poetical dreams. Herzen, with his
admirable and warm-hearted enthusiasm, said, " Our new
symbol is bread." The landlord will no longer eat the
bread of the poor peasant. That is true, but it is
the Czar who eats it, doubling, trebling the tax on it.
The false purveyor of the people, the socialist tyrant
whom I have so often pointed out in the cities of
antiquity, returns to us here with his mask. It is a
vast comedy, which makes the admiration of the world.
" The commune is re-established, free elections are reestablished, the jury, the provincial parliaments-there
is nothing wanting; England, America, are nothing
beside it."
Do you think this can hardly be? I swear to you
these are their phrases.
Alas! when I find that in England elections are




90            France before Europe.
bribed, purchased, the sifted jury of France such an
idle mockery, you would make me believe that the
Russian peasant, degraded during two centuries, that
man whose own wife and daughters were not absolutely
his, that man who could be beaten like a hound, could
be changed at once into a free elector!
Elector? he will elect whomsoever the functionary
of the Czar chooses. Trial by jury? the functionary
will tell him whom to absolve, whom to condemn. All
is an idle ceremony. The true title of this new liberty,
is tyranny.
The error which we in Europe commit, is to suppose
that against this internal revolution, a certain stifled
resistance on the part of the nobles can occupy,
embarrass, or paralyze Russia. It is an erroneous
supposition.  This imperceptible people of nobles is
null in action, senseless fiomn fear. It lives, if it lives
at all, as a grace, on its knees.  Does it live?  No.
The only living person in Russia is the Czar, in whom
is concentrated the strength of all the masses below
him —fifty or sixty millions of human beings, who are
nought in themselves, but who live only on him! Will
they ever be men?  Possibly! But now they are only
a huge force, a steam-engine.  Can they be permitted
to repose?  That fearful unity which they acquired
yesterday, must it not be employed?
Of herself, Russia gravitates to the west and the
south. That is her natural motion.  She is most
mobile. She has been delayed, but she will recoin



Position of Russia.             91
mence her march.  Through Bohemia and its party of
fools, she will have a door open into Germany. On the
other side, Prussia, in spite of its little passing attempts
at enfranchisement, will only be able to keep down
Germany by opposing to its recriminations and its
claims, the fear of Russia.
The destruction of France, which struck the blow of
the Crimea, the destruction of Austria, which had
shown, timidly enough it is true, some disposition to
favour Poland, is the one thought of Russia. To accomplish this, M. Bismarck has been a most excellent
instrument.
During the Sabbats of Biarritz, when the tempter
obtained from the sick man a bond against himself,
Russia stood by, observing her agent. That sepulchral
spirit, whose eyes, hidden by impenetrable glasses, have
never been seen-that Spirit named Gortschakoff,
watched the other at his work.
Did he not manipulate too well? The victory, the
violence, through which Frankfort, Hanover, so many
more provinces, were crammed into a bag with outcries
so vehement, shows the double position of M. de
Bismarck.  To silence the Germans, he promised them
the Baltic and gave them his favourite toy, universal
suffrage, and a constitution without guarantees.  To
console his king and satisfy Russia, he proved how
easily and without any danger he could lend himself to
the farce. " The Baltic? those ports? that navy? Do
you believe, my dear friends, I am serious?"




92            France before Eturope.
A stranger who, at that time, dined with Bismarck
and the Russian Ambassador, witnessed a curious scene.
There had been, up to this time, a cloud between the
two diplomatists, but that had passed away, and they
had drawn together again. Such reconciliations, even
when secret, are always agreeable. But this went on
before numerous witnesses, and there were soft and
meaning glances interchanged, covert yet tender allusions; in short, it was quite a diplomatic idyll. The
observer felt that under all this there must be some
new agreement; that such a mutual understanding
threatened some horrible misfortune to the rest of the
world. He did not breathe a word to any one, but he
shuddered.  Attila was fond of jokes. History has
preserved  some of them.  There is a recent one
(November, 1870) which is not a bad one, according to the taste of a Hun, and is, besides, seasoned
with a leaven of half hypocrisy, or rather mockery,
which gives it additional zest.  The Czar admires
Germany excessively. He aspires to a citizen army,
to possess patriot soldiers.  His ideal is the landwehr, "'a good defensive army."   Therefore, to his
700,000 men, he adds a pretended landwehr of
500,000 more.
All this is to make a promenade towards the Bosphorus to the mouths of the Danube. Here he will
find a Prussian.  Then it will be seen if the Danube,
according to the vain promises of Bismarck to his
patriots, is a German river.




Position of Russia.            93
That which the Russian people hate most in the
world is a German.
Against France and the West, Holland, England,
an agreement has been made which is now revealed.
But a compact with death is not without its
dangers.  How will M. de Bismarck settle with his
fearful ally?
At the final catastrophe of the Sabbat, Satan, who had
promised to his children all the good things of this
world, and this world to each, to fulfil his word, had one
decisive method. He disappeared in a flame of fire..
Ask the smoke, the air, what had become of him!




94            France before Europe.
CHAPTER XIII.
FRANCE AND EUROPE.
I HAVE written this little work in the darkness of December,
while a shroud of snow covered all Europe. A gloomy
winter, in which the old glacier period seems to have
again fallen upon us. Few or none of the nations who
were our friends have raised their voices for France.
Are they asleep? We might believe it. Paris closed
and dumb since September, has since then known nothing
of the living world. Its noblest voices have been heroically closed, walled in by themselves. It is the oldest,
perchance the weakest of them all who now speaks. He,
at all events, has been enabled to see and observe.
One fact has struck him very much, the indefatigable
pains which have been taken to hide the struggle in
night, or at least to conceal it with false lights. It was
a bold plan, by which the victors sought to win over
and to intimidate the European press.
It was a species of chloroform, through which, by
means of cheap newspapers, countries which thought
themselves most wide awake were set to sleep. By a




France and Eurolpe.              95
certain drowsiness it is easy to detect the commencement of that disease which I will call the PrussoRussian-influence. It is like the cholera.
On the principal routes, on the Rhine, on the great
thoroughfares of the world, a vast net-work of police
was organized to detect and check all communication.
The effort was vain.  What Russia in her Cimmerian
darkness could do to her prey, Poland, was not to be
done in the broad light of Europe.
Now, on this Ist January, the day dawns. In spite
of all, certain warnings are heard on all sides.
They seek to keep us in the dark.  I will try to
bring the light. In spite of themselves they shall see.
The Prussians are entirely ignorant of France. The
false details of their innumerable spies flattered them
into thinking they would find in France an easy prey.
How often they have been deceived!
After all, nothing is more foolish or more deceitful
than a police report. In'53 the Emperor Nicholas
found himself caught by one. His principal spy, the
old and clever Princess L ——, was consulted on the
question, "Will France dare to make war?"  She consulted some doctrinaire high priest, who answered,
"France dares not."   From  this answer arose the
senseless bravadoes which brought down on Nicholas the
great rebuff of the Crimea.
This time their inquiries, their secret emissaries,
all their police, their treachery, sedulously employed for
four years, gave them a thousand exact details; but a




96            France before Europe.
collective view, which, as a whole, was entirely false.
The kings who came to the great Exhibition of'67,
believed in the moral dissolution of France, and took
their own private advantage out of it.  They judged it
by the actresses and the farces of Offenbach, to which
they themselves were so eager to hasten. In'69, seeing
the political storm, noting our sudden uprising, they
said, "Now is the moment."
My dear friends, you reasoned badly.  At such
moments of waking, whatever may be the partial dissensions, whatever may be the government, be it the worst
in the whole world, a people is very much to be feared.
Learn that in'69 France was overflowing with lifewas rich in strength, in full-blooded emotion, in a fierce
tumult of joy, which centupled that life. The Socialist
movement, which gave yoiu hope, was entirely local, and
confined to certain populous centres. Our dissatisfied
workmen were not the less, as you can perfectly well see
for yourselves to-day, ardent citizens, and, if needed,
intrepid combatants for the unity of France.
How is it that you ignored on what a mighty anchor
rested that ship which seemed to you so tempestuously
agitated? The great peasant people-at once our anchor
and our cable-never had a stronger basis than now,
having recently, especially in the South and West,
become proprietors-independent proprietors.  This, of
course, binds them to the status quo of Peace; but that
very fact also makes them firm, proud, and invincible,
when the soil of France is touched.




France and Europe.               97
You are beginning to learn it, and you will learn it
more and more.
I am wonder-struck to see how utterly France is misunderstood and unknown.
That some of her special faculties should be ignored,
a certain electricity which is at times her saving grace,
and at others causes those fiery outbreaks and unexpected
recoils which are each mighty enough to shake the world
-that these should be ignored, I can understand. I
know that the most illustrious geniuses of other nations
have not the least idea of them.  But what is a simple
fact, which he who runs may read in five hundred
histories, law books, statistics,-even almanacks,-how
did you come to overlook it, ye Germans, with all your
wisdom, reputed so great?
Go to your books of natural history, of physiology,
and endeavour to grasp for once the meaning of these
words,-Organic Unity.
It is the unity of one nation,-of France.
It is the unity of a people incapable of being dismembered; —of a national body whose  circulation
throughout is so rapid and complete that no separation
of its parts can take place.
In this respect all that you have still to seek for, we;
already possess.  We possess identity of law  from
Flanders to the Pyrenees; and this not at the period
of the actual legislation, but by a process of concretion
going on slowly but inevitably for centuries-the work
of legal science.  We possess administrative unity,
7




98             France before Euroye.
that instrument of Colbert, imitated, though clumsily,
by so many nations, and which, though occasionally
ill-used, has been only too powerful with us, and serves
as a guarantee for a national personality not easy to
change. We posses a unity of circulation, solely the
work of these last twenty years, —not only by means of
railways, but of roads, and a thousand other ways altogether new; —so that the life-blood of Languedoc or
Provence may in a moment be found coursing through
Alsace. Cut out this? Good heavens! you might
just as well try to cut out the veins and arteries of the
human frame. Dismemberment signifies death!
A matter of extremely old date, and one altogether
peculiar to France, is the singular completeness with
which the fusion of its races has been accomplished and
-its various populations intermixed and welded together.
IHow far away is Germany from this yet! How many
-years will it take to convert that fiction of unity which
you have been trying to vamp up within these last few
years into a unity like ours! Tell me when will the
Prussian be loved by the Bavarian. I will answer you"Never."  The great memories of the past, the grand
traditions held in common, the military esprit-de-corps
which pervades all France, have drawn more closely and
strongly our ties. Our forefathers have fought, suffered,
and often perished together. The same spirit animates
their sons.
One very singular fact in it all is this, which also
proves, how in material, moral unity is included, the




France and Europe.              99
Provinces, which seem  at first sight to  have been
inhabited by different races, and who speak dialects
which are not French, are precisely those which are
most French at heart. (Brittany, which has a language
of its own, is not the less the rock, the primitive islet
on which France is built.  Lorraine, through Joan of
Are, is our sword; through many others also of our
brave soldiers, need I name him who covered with his
body the retreat from Moscow?
It is (Alsace, our valiant Alsace, great both in
industry and war; it is Strasbourg, as I have before
said, which inspired that glorious hymn in which dwells
the true soul of France, generous, peace-loving, magnanimous in the fiercest strife.
That is our Unity, let us see that of others.)
Suppose the Fenians succeeded to-morrow in snatching Ireland from England, will any one say that owing
to that the English Unity would be broken?
Suppose that Catalonia was separated from Spain,
I should regret it for the sake of that fair realm of
loosely-bound provinces, but it would be more like
breaking a bundle of rods than severing an Unity.
The glorious Unity of Poland was genuine in that
sacred Empire which has so often saved the rest of
Europe.  Yet when the Cossack province broke away
from  her, it did but follow the natural tendencies
inherent to it.  Lithuania itself, which gave to Poland
so much genius, through which the spirit of Poland has
revealed itself to the whole earth, —dreamy Lithuania,




100            France before Europe.
had a life of her own, which set her somewhat aside
from her brilliant sister.
At the same time, moral unity, however imperfect,
seems to me priceless in all nations. I have never
wished that that fatal left bank of the Rhine should be
added to France.  Though Germany is so little homogeneous, though to-day her cruel link of iron is but
union, I should think it impious to make the Frankfort
of Goethe, the Bonn of Beethoven, French. They are
essentially German.
But let our neighbours permit me to say to them
one earnest and sincere word.
To dig out Alsace and Lorraine from a living body,
from the strongest organic unity which has ever existed,
to dig out these viscera with a knife, to cram them into
a body like Germany, which is in a state of formation,
would be a strange surgery.  Oh self-deceived, why
would you spread slavery, give serfs to Prussia, the ally
of Russia, the advanced guard of Russia? Leave those
men to France, you will need her soon.
In 1815, in spite of the Prussians, Europe had
rejected the idea of the dismemberment of France, but
in 1870 was not at all averse to it, and found it natural
that Prussia should seize her Eastern Frontier, that
France of Alsace and Lorraine, without which the
exposed centre is thoroughly insecure.
In 1815 Europe was comparatively moderate, after
so many evils, so much bloodshed, which must have
exasperated her. In 1870, after fifty-five years of peace,




France and Europe.             101
she approves at once of the strange claims, the inexplicable fury of Germany, who had suffered nothing from us
as yet, and yet who affirmed without a shadow of pretext:-" I will tear away a limb from that trunk, I will
cut my pound of flesh near to the heart."
These enormous reprisals for the wrong which
France might have done, but had not done, seemed
just and natural to our neighbours and friends, to whom
we had just opened our markets, who lived on our commodities, and for whom France is a milch cow. The
small states, menaced by the neighbourhood of a military
government, and vexed by its police, like Geneva, were
much more excusable. But in general in all the nations
the hatred was more in proportion to the jealousy and
envy they felt for France, than relative to the injuries
France might inflict, which she had not done as yet, but
of which they were constantly afraid.
Every one said, " It is the fault of France, she began
it;" no one would remember the violated engagements,
the continual provocations of Prussia during four years,
the military espionage, the officers, the engineers, detected taking the plans of our fortresses, &c.
Poland was sad. I am assured that the Poles of
Posen showed a great reluctance to fight against France.
Therefore they were sent to W6rth, to Gravelotte,
wherever the fire was most murderous.
Denmark was sad.  She remembered that France
had stipulated for her that Schleswig was to vote freely.
A stipulation which Prussia trod under foot.




102            France beforge Euro2pe.
Switzerland was at first favourable to Germany, but
was not the less admirable in her wisdom, her charity,
her disinterestedness.  She refused the aggrandisement
which Bismarck offered her generously at our cost.
He offered portions of France to all the world. He
sought accomplices everywhere. Italy refused him also,
justly embittered as she was against those who had so
long deprived her of Rome.
There was the same resentment in America, on
account of the secret understanding of the Empire with
the Confederates.  America recognized the Republic,
but injured it by sending some of her great generals to
the enemy's camp.
America and England had been cleverly operated
upon.  The latter, at the moment of our disaster,
offered a strange spectacle. Her ministers took refuge
in the country (as well as the Queen, whose sympathies
are pardonably Prussian of course), that they might not
know anything, might not have to answer anything.
In England there was a good deal of methodistical
bitterness among the higher classes against Voltairian
France.  It was piously expressed by an English writer
in the Pall Mall Gazette, 15th December, " What a
revolting sight," he said, "to see criminals who have
been conquered, refuse expiation." They do not thank
Prussia for chastising them and helping on their salvation, and are so hardened and ferocious," added he,
"that the poor Germans might be assassinated if they
should enter Paris."




France and Europe.             103
The correspondents of Bismarck, who travel with
him and dine with him, exaggerate these animosities by
cowardly sneers, fabulous news, giving the most sarcastic pictures of Paris which they could not see, and
which from the 19th September was invested and closed.
Suddenly there comes a lightning flash-the Russian
note of the 1st November, a dry sharp sound is heard,
such as is made by a mitrailleuse, and " Jean qui rit"
becomes "Jean qui pleure."  What a grimace! what a
grotesque and demoniacal play of muscles in the abrupt
and spasmodic laughter caused by this note.  But
England herself was not with these buffoons.  She
paused. She did not smile. She seemed to wake, and
saw herself facing the white Bear, alone. She called
out, "Where is France?"
At such a moment how strongly one feels that each
of these great nations is necessary to the world, and
what an awful eclipse it would be if one perished. What
would be the desolation, the horror of the rest of the
world, if one morning we heard England was wrecked,
submerged!  Even that rabid Germany itself, who
against her own interests is so inveterate against us, if
the Baltic overflowed her, how deeply we should mourn.
The European sentiment is gradually rousing itself.
Those who thought they did not like us, who were afraid
of the Empire, or jealous of France, now experienced a
sudden and fraternal reaction.  This was especially
manifested by the warm-hearted Belgians, and in a,
most tender and touching way.




104            France before Europe.
We can scarcely read, without tears, the zealous,
violent transports of charity which they evinced in
seeing our wounded, and in receiving, almost disputing,
for their possession. The surgeons had never seen anything like it, and will never see it again. Neighbours
quarrelled which should receive the wounded. One said
to the other, "While I was away you robbed me of my
wounded guest. Give him  back, if not-"   And
they would actually fight, as to which should retain the
mutilated man.
There is one hero in Europe. One. I do not know
two. His whole life is a legend. As he has the greatest
reason to feel animosity towards France, one knows at
once that with his nature, that man is going to devote
himself to France.  He is a great man. My one hero.
Loftier than any present fortune, how his sublime
pyramid of glory grows towards the Future.
How fine a history will be written one day of the
noble Italian hearts who made so many efforts to follow
him! Neither the sea, nor the horror of the Alps in
mid-winter, arrested them.
What a winter! Never was a more severe one. In
a snow-storm which lasted several days, and obstructed
all the passes (at the end of November), one of these
heroes would not be turned back. Through the horrible
deluge he obstinately ascended, from station to station.
The thunder of the avalanches could not arrest him.
He pursued his way, opposing to the snow, which was
freezing him, the vital forces of his passionate, invin



France and Europe.              105
cible heart. Pierced through and through with the
cold, covered with icicles, by the time he had scaled
the height, he was one mass of crystal. The tempest
was over, and all was over for him also.
He had passed away. He was frozen to death under
that blue arch from which one sees France. There he
was discovered. No clue was found by which he could
be traced. All the newspapers mentioned him, but
none knew his name. I can reveal it. He who so nobly
rushed to France in the hour when all had deserted her
was called-Italy.
Let us here, however, mention some of the generous
words which have been spoken for us by the English at
this moment, and which forcibly declare to their nation
what help she owes her suffering ally.
The illustrious Lord Russell and a number of Englishmen have, in their different newspapers, spoken
admirably for us and for their own country, which is so
deeply interested in our fate. But no one has expressed
himself with so much force, vigour, and logic as
Mr. Frederic Harrison, in a memorable article (Fortnightly Review),-an article which I consider an important national fact, and which remains as a written
witness of the profound communion which exists between
the two great nations of the West.
In it he deplores the retrograde strides which Prussia
in this war has forced upon Europe. Europe has been put
back fifty years. The war has a character peculiarly its
own. The wars of the first Empire were wars of impulse




106            Fgrance before Europe.
and headlong courage, rash, and not coldly premeditated. He acknowledges, what few will acknowledge, that
the unexpected defence of France is something striking,
heroic, such as no nation has made under such reverses.
"What she has lost in material influence, she will
gain in moral. Around her will gather the peoples, all
the Republicans of Europe.  Her sufferings will give
a new impetus to the cause. Henceforth we feel that
the French people, even in the eyes of the German
Democrats, bear the banner of Progress."
The same writer affirms, which is also proved by
their great meetings, that English workmen have felt
the greatest agitation at this noble spectacle presented
by France, and they display their sympathy, in spite of
the efforts made to neutralise its effect. They do so in
spite of so many unworthy journals, on whom Prussian
and aristocratic influences weigh so heavily; in spite of
the moneyed classes, so infatuated with peace, that they
would insist upon it were war in London itself; in spite
of their own interests at stake, the lowering of wages,
these operatives judge, with much good sense, that if
England loses her place as a power, her trade will not
merely suffer, it will be lost.
Moreover, there is a natural perspicacity in the
English, which makes them often thoroughly just.
Every one must have been struck by this in the cotton
famine of the American war. In their meetings they
always voted for absolute justice, in the teeth of their
own interests.




France ancl Europ2e.           107
If the honest artisans of England had, like those of
Germany, some prejudices against France, they have
now abjured them.  They have seen that, under an
apparently trifling exterior, there are in us both moral
force and true dignity.  Where has one seen at such a
violent crisis suchl a revolution, uniting so much gentleness to so much grandeur? In Paris, in that multiform  ocean of two millions of men, no bloodshed,
no violence.  The socialist agitation, the ardour for
battle, which caused one day's outbreak, were not the
less humane. At Lyons, one man perished. It was a
great misfortune, for it gave an excellent excuse for the
abuse of our enemies. One man! It is, of course, too
much: but when one has traversed, as I have done, an
entire history, so many bloody revolutions among the
calmest peoples, it is all but miraculous to find that
only one man perished in the tempest! One only,
during all the violent exasperation in which we were
thrown by our miseries! One only, among the many
known traitors and spies!
What a power has this republic obtained immediately and without effort, for security of persons and
property! The civil power commands; the military
power obeys. It is a strong frugal government, which
costs the people nothing.  With what regularity the
taxes necessary for the armies engaged to save it are
paid by this people!
All these facts will make English workmen and
people of all countries reflect when they contrast them




108           France before Eu6rope.
with the patent treasons of monarchy. In France, it
betrayed the army.  In England, how often, in times
past, it has betrayed the honour and safety of the
people.  Dynastic alliances and relationships make
kings and queens an ominous family, whose interests
are apart from, and often against, those of their
subjects. This is why Charles I., the kinsman and
friend of the enemy, refused to interpose in the Thirty
Years' War. He forgot the claims of English honour,
and looked coldly at the death of two millions of men.
The Crown and the Shop have acted in harmonious
agreement: their organ, Mr. Gladstone, says to the
people, " Mind your own business."  "But Russia
insults us; our vessels are fired on; nay, the letters of
our Government are not forwarded, but detained at the
pleasure of Bismarck."  "Mind your own business."
"Is not the safety of the country the business of the
greatest importance; and when we have let go Holland
and Belgium, and when Prussia has the iron-clad fleet
of France, —when you see them land,-where will our
shops be? "
It is certain that Paris by her long resistance has
saved, in one way, France, and that France, by resisting, saves Europe. The marvel is how, with those new
legions, so young and ill-prepared, it has been possible
to retard and thwart those great experienced armies,
the standing army of Prussia, that deluge of a million of
men which Prussia poured on us. That our Mobiles,
leaving the plough, the loom, the counter, the office,




_ France and Europe.           109
should have marched against this nation of soldiers,
even though they have been defeated, is utterly admirable. Defeat like that, under such circumstances, is
of itself a gain. It has made Europe reflect. Heroic
defeats on the path to victory!
Yes, Europe has admired; Europe has been touched
at the unequal struggle. Those sublime boys, marching
against those old soldiers, against those engines of death,
so wonderfully constructed and so minutely calculated to
do their work, —marching, and being defeated and killed.
The earth is younger for their blood. It has bloomed
anew.
It also speaks of our divisions. Where are they?
Some think-friends and enemies- that we are weakened
by dissensions on social problems, that we are verging
on civil war. That is a mistake-our very excitement
makes us not weak but formidable.  The passions of'69, the rages which burst forth on us, popular ferment,
all have taken a new course, and with a power which
a people not stirred up beforehand had not found in
itself.
Now, the awful scourge which evoked that strength,
serves and increases it. How?  It is as in'93. We
are lighter; we are purged. We have cast out Imperialism and its systems. We have put aside the old
Adam, profligate expenditure, idleness, a great assemblage of costly vices, which were uppermost yesterday.
The workman is armed, the peasant is armed. Emulation is universal. No distrust. Let me explain why.




110          _France before Euroqpe.
With the equilibrium she has, France can face the social
question.
Our intelligent workmen know the situation perfectly. They see beside them their natural balance-a
million of peasants.  "Respect the peasant," said
Bakounine, in his recent pamphlet; "respect his field,
his orchard. If you touch them, you perish.  The
agricultural majority, at the least fear on that head,
would elect, ten times over, your tyrant."
Our workmen know France, and with France, Europe.
It is a benefit for her that they see her as a whole and
on all sides. They, like the German and English workmen, had very acutely judged the question of the war.
They will judge equally well the commercial question.
Knowing perfectly the European market, the price at
which each people can produce (under risk of losing the
capital), they will only desire that which is possible.
That sense of fraternity which in these late events has
so revealed itself in them leads me to think that they
will become more and more co-operative, and that their
co-operations will enable them to produce more cheaply,
making competition day by day less useful and rarer.
Therefore, the social question touches us, but does not
alarm us. The new revolution will simplify it. That
will happen which always happens after such overthrows,
that in the enormous activity which succeeds them work
and workmen obtain a sudden increase of value. Capital
is in search of Labour, as Mr. Harrison says well.
The rich man, who has only his wealth, and who runs the




France and Europe.              111
chance of its remaining useless and unproductive, depends on the man of true wealth-I mean him who has
the handicraft and the productive mind, on him who
creates. The capitalist, in other words (by an admirable
reversing of ordinary society), is the client of the creator
-the banker is the client of the workman.
A great lesson is taught by this vast shipwreck.
The social question must harmonise with the higher,
nobler question of freedom, or all will perish alike. Our
country itself, preoccupied by the first question, and too
much absorbed by it, we slipped into the abyss. Our
fall was watched.
But the more deeply we fell, the more buoyantly
France, as she touched the ground with her feet, upraised herself and again ascends.
It is a blessing for all. She alone, by her singular
strength of equilibrium, planted on her strong basis,
can await the tempest, and, organizing the world of
labour, defend even her enemies, by arresting the march
of yonder giant masses which are darkening the horizon.
THE END.




1LONDON:
PrFINTED BY SMIITH, ELDER AND CO.,
OLD BAILEY, E.C.