The Romance of Modern Sieges

“Here, my man, send that to the mother, and let her know it comes from your Queen.”

It seems that the Germans had quite mistaken the amount of provisions existing in Paris. According to their calculations by the middle of December Paris ought to be feeling very hungry, on salt rations at the very best. They had not yet prepared for a bombardment with siege guns, hoping that Lady Famine would drive the Parisians to surrender. But they made no sign.

Down at Argenteuil, on the north-west of Paris, there was the crackling of the chasse-pot from over the river, and yet most of the population had come back to their shops. They gossiped in the streets with French gaiety and unconcern, while the bullets sang overhead pretty freely. The steeple of their beautiful church made a good observatory, though its sides were riddled with holes made by shells. The French peasants drove their carts into the market-place below the church and sold eggs and butter full merrily; yet somehow, if a German stood at a window to gaze out, the French sharpshooters would aim at him. At Lagny there were generally 1,000 prisoners a day passing through to Germany. Some were so ravenous with hunger that they stooped to pick up turnip-tops and bones from the gutter, until the British Society organized a relief with stores of preserved meat and bread. And there was no hospital for the wounded! the poor creatures were dumped down in sheds, vans, the station-rooms, the church, the mairie. In one day there arrived 1,800 wounded. They were bestowed – frozen, hungry, hopeless – in the cold comfort of the church. Madame Simon, the lady superintendent of the Saxon ambulance, did noble things day and night – a most devoted woman. There were feats of quiet bravery done every day. There was a colporteur of the English Bible Society who used to drive his waggon on a road between Gonesse and Aulnay, a road exposed to shell-fire more than most.

“Yes,” he said, “it is a good time for the men to read good words when they are standing with the shadow of death hanging over them.”

There is a story of a boy Lieutenant, von Schramm, who found himself suddenly in a crowd of Frenchmen. He leapt from his horse and hid in a house, in the hope of escaping by the back-door; but his pursuers caught him, and were taking him towards St. Denis, which lies to the north of Paris. In going through the park of Le Bourget the officer who carried von Schramm’s sword was shot and fell. The boy made a dash for his own sword, grasped the hilt and cut down the man on his other side, rushed for the small lake, dived to avoid pursuing bullets, and swam safely across to rejoin his regiment. The strange thing was that he had been on the sick-list before his winter ducking, but now he was blessed with a boy’s appetite.

It spoke well for the German besiegers that they got on so cordially with the villagers round Paris. These were mostly of the humbler sort; or servants left behind to take care of their master’s house. There were lovely country houses inhabited by a few German officers, and, were it not for the rents made by shot and shell, the owners would not have grumbled much at their condition when they returned to them, though, of course, there were cases where the boisterous fun of German Lieutenants played havoc with ormolu and gilding. I remember hearing1 of a grand piano which gave forth reluctant sounds when the notes were pressed down. It was discovered that the strings had been plentifully smeared with jams and sweetmeats! But these jests were the exception.

The bombardment by the big guns had begun late in December with much excited wonder on the part of the Germans. Surely in a few days the Parisians will have had enough of exploding shells! Now here was almost the middle of January, and no effect visible. But the forts round Paris had no living population: no houses to be burnt, no women and children to mutilate. They had to be battered to bits, if possible; and Paris was behaving very heroically now. By the middle of January she was living very poorly indeed, but she endured yet another fifteen days longer.

As for the German soldiers, they began now to feel bored to death, as so often happens in a long siege. The first excitement evaporates; each day’s unlovely duties recur with abominable sameness – and the Germans could find no beer to drink. A German is used to drink plenty of beer, and can carry it without ill effects; but when Fritz took to drinking rum, schnapps, or arrack, he began to reel about the village streets and look rather disreputable.

It was a strange sight to mount some hill and get a view of Paris surrounded by its fifteen forts, and in a yet wider circle by the German lines. The foam of white smoke surged up all round; the thundering roar of cannon, the dull echo of distant guns made dismal music to the ear. The air of Paris is so clear compared to our English cities that all was quite visible; and now that wood was scarce and fires few, it was easy to mark the outlines of the larger buildings, though above them hung a brown pall of smoke, caused by exploding shells or houses that had caught fire.

Day after day there were rumours of this or that fort having been silenced. Now it was St. Denis, on the north side; now Valérien, on the west; now Vincennes, on the east; but the respite was only given to cool the guns or renew the emplacements, and all was as it had been. Besides this there was the daily fear of a new sortie, as Issy or Ivry broke out into fierce clamour on the south-west and south-east. Then troops would be hurriedly transferred along frozen or sometimes muddy roads, while splinters of shell were whizzing about rather too familiarly.

It was calculated that on a fierce day of firing the Germans shot away 10 tons of powder, and nearly 200 tons of heavy matter – iron and steel – were hurled upon the forts and city in twenty-four hours.

There is a story of the Crown Prince of Prussia which illustrates his kindness of heart. In the 3rd Würtemberg Dragoons was a certain Jacob, who had an aged and anxious father. This father had not heard from his son Jacob for so long a time that the old man, in his rustic simplicity, sat down and laboriously wrote a letter to the Crown Prince, asking, “Can Your Highness find out anything about my son?” The old man knew his son had fought at Wörth and at Sedan, but nothing later than Sedan. The Crown Prince did not throw this letter into the waste-paper basket, but sent it to the officer commanding the 3rd Würtembergers, requesting that the old man’s mind should be set at ease. Jacob was sent for by his commanding officer and asked why he had not written home.

“Do you know that His Royal Highness the Crown Prince wants to know why you have not written home for many weeks?”

The man saluted. His purple face was a study.

“Go and write instantly, and bring the envelope to me, sirrah.”

How that story got about among the men! How often has the same experience come to house-masters, when some loving mother appeals for help: “Please make Harry write home.” Both Harry and Fritz need a touch of the spur at times, but how promptly the letter is written when they feel that touch!

The town of St. Denis suffered terribly. The front of the theatre was in ruins. The cathedral, being banked up high with sand-bags, had not suffered so much. The tombs of the kings had all been thus protected, so had the statues, and not even a nose had been knocked off. But the bombardment had shattered many houses and churches, and the shells had ploughed up the streets, or rather hoed them into holes. It was only in the cold and dark cellars that safety could be found. Even there people were not always safe, and when they were pressed to take refuge in Paris they peeped forth shuddering, and swore they would rather die in their own cellars than sally forth through a tempest of shell-fire.

“At nine o’clock on the evening of the 28th of January, 1871, while the Head-quarters Staff of the Maes Army were assembled in the drawing-rooms of the Crown Prince’s château after dinner, an orderly brought in a telegram to the Crown Prince. His Royal Highness, having read it, handed it to General von Schlottheim, the Chief of the Staff. That officer perused it in his turn, and then rising, walked to the door communicating between the billiard-room and the saloon, and there read the telegram aloud. It was from the Emperor, and it announced that, two hours before, Count Bismarck and M. Jules Favre had set their hands to a convention, in terms of which an armistice to last for twenty-one days had already come into effect.”

This startling news meant that Paris was ready to surrender. How many hearts were lighter in both camps next day! War is not all glory and heroic achievement. Those who know what war is pray to God that statesmen and nations may think twice before they rush into so terrible a calamity. In this war of 180 days the Germans had won fifteen great victories, captured twenty-six fortresses, and made 363,000 prisoners.

“Paris is utterly cowed, fairly beaten” – so they said who came from Paris to the German lines, and a few non-combatants, journalists, and philanthropists, ventured to enter the city before the German troops passed in on the 1st of March. They found the streets crowded with men in uniform. The food shops had nothing to sell. There were a few sickly preserves, nothing solid worth eating – some horses’ fat for a delicacy to help down the stuff they called bread. A fowl was priced at forty-five francs; stickleback were fourteen francs a pound; butter, forty francs a pound. Outside the bakers’ shops stood a shivering line of ladies and women, waiting their turn for loaves that tasted like putty, and pulled to pieces like chopped straw.

But there were in side streets many of the roughest, the most cowardly and cruel ruffians of the worst parts of Paris. They were on the prowl, waiting for their prey; so no wonder that Mr. Archibald Forbes, journalist, and several others in divers parts of the city had unpleasant experiences.

Forbes tells us he was walking down the Champs Elysées when he met the Crown Prince of Saxony with his staff riding by. Forbes raised his hat; the Prince returned the salute and passed on. But the dirty gamins of Paris had been looking on. They hustled the Englishman, called him mouchard (spy), sacré Prussien, cochon, tripped him up, hit him on the back of the head with a stick; then, when he was down, they jumped on his stomach with their sabots or wooden shoes. He struggled, as a Scotsman can, got up, hit out right and left; but numbers prevailed, and he was dragged by the legs on his back, with many bumps and bruises, to the police-station. There he showed his papers, and the Prefect released him in a humour that said, “I am mighty glad you Parisians have had a good thrashing.”

Another journalist – so he told me in London a few weeks later – also had ventured to stray away from the German sentries in order to see what Paris thought of a siege. He soon found himself the centre of an angry throng.

Some cried: “He is a sacré Prussien! See his yellow hair!”

“No; I am an English artist,” shouted my friend, still smiling.

“He is a confounded spy! Take him to the Seine! duck him in the river!”

They dragged him towards the river-bank. Out of his eye corners my friend saw several boys pick up stones to help him to sink. He thought his last hour was come. They were close to the river: the water looked very cold. Then there came to his ears the “tuck” of a drum. A company of French soldiers was marching by; a Colonel on horseback rode beside them.

The artist recognized him, for they had once chummed together near Metz. He called to him by name, and the Colonel cried “Halt!”

He spurred his horse through the evil-smelling crowd, and seeing who it was whom the rascals were going to plunge into the Seine, held up his hand and cried:

“Let that English gentleman go. He is no Prussian, but an artist who has drawn my portrait – mine, I tell you – for the London journals. He is my friend – an English friend, like Mr. Wallace.”

This testimony was enough for them. The excitable crowd flew to the opposite extreme. Those who had made ready to stone him like a water-rat now dropped those stones, and rushing up with remorse and even affection in their changed looks, threw fusty arms round his neck, kissed him on both cheeks, sobbed and cried for forgiveness for their little mistake.

Indeed it is not safe to enter too soon into a conquered city.

From “My Experiences of the War,” by Archibald Forbes. With the kind permission of Messrs. Hurst and Blackett.