History of the Commune of 1871. Lissagaray
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he wanting in authority? His colleagues of the council did not even dare to raise their voices; the prefects knew only him; the generals put on the manner of school-boys in his presence. Was a personnel wanting? The Leagues contained solid elements; the small bourgeoisie and proletariat might have given the cadres.
Gambetta saw here only marplots, chaos, federalism, and roughly dismissed their delegates. Each department possessed groups of known, tried republicans, to whom the administration and the part of spurring the Defence under the direction of commissioners might have been intrusted. Gambetta refused almost everywhere to refer to them; the few whom he appointed he knew how to fetter closely. He vested all power in the prefects, most of them ruins of 1848, or his colleagues of the Conférence Molé, nerveless, loquacious, timorous, anxious to have themselves well spoken of, and many anxious to feather themselves a nest in their department.
The Defence in the provinces set out on these two crutches—the War Office and the prefects. On this absurd plan of conciliation the Government was conducted.
Did the new delegate at least bring a powerful military conception? "No one in the Government, neither General Trochu nor General Leflô, no one had suggested a military operation of any kind."[51] Did he at least possess that quick penetration which makes up for want of experience? After twenty days in the provinces he comprehended the military situation no better than he had done at Paris. The capitulation of Metz drew from him indignant proclamations, but he understood no more than his colleagues of the Hôtel-de-Ville that this was the very moment to make a supreme effort.
With the exception of three divisions (30,000 men) and the greater part of their cavalry, the Germans had been obliged to employ for the investment of Paris all their troops, and they had no reserve left them. The three divisions at Orléans and Châteaudun were kept in check by our forces of the Loire. The cavalry, while infesting a large extent of territory in the west, north and east, could not hold out against infantry. At the end of October, the army before Paris, strongly fortified against the town, was not at all covered from the side of the provinces. The appearance of 50,000 men, even of young troops, would have forced the Prussians to raise the blockade.
Moltke was far from disregarding the danger. He had decided in case of need to raise the blockade, to sacrifice the park of artillery then being formed at Villecoublay, to concentrate his army for action in the open country, and only to re-establish the blockade after the victory, that is to say, after the arrival of the army of Metz. "Everything was ready for our decampment; we only had to team the horses," has been said by an eye-witness, the Swiss Colonel D'Erlach. The official papers of Berlin had already prepared public opinion for this event.
The blockade of Paris raised, even momentarily, might have led, under the pressure of Europe, to an honorable peace; this was almost certain. Paris and France recovering their salutary buoyancy, the revictualling of the great town, and the consequent prolongation of her resistance, would have given the time necessary for the organization of the provincial armies.
At the end of October our army of the Loire was in progress of formation, the 15th corps at Salbris, the 16th at Blois, already numbering 80,000 men. If it had pushed between the Bavarians at Orléans and the Prussians at Châteaudun; if—and this was an easy matter with its numerical superiority—it beat the enemy one after another, the route to Paris would have been thrown open, and the deliverance of Paris almost sure.
The Delegation of Tours did not see so far. It confined its efforts to recovering Orléans, in order to establish there an entrenched camp; so on the 26th General D'Aurelles de Paladines, named by Gambetta commander-in-chief of the two corps, received the order to rescue the town from the Bavarians. He was a senator, a bigoted, rabid reactionist, at best fit only to be an officer of zouaves, fuming in his heart at the defence. It was resolved to make the attack from Blois. Instead of conducting the 15th corps on foot, which by Romorantin would have taken forty-eight hours, the Delegation sent it by the Vierzon railway to Tours, a journey which took five days and could not be hidden from the enemy. Still, on the 28th, D'Aurelles established before Blois, disposed of 40,000 men at least, and the next day he was to have left for Orléans.
On the 28th, at nine o'clock in the evening, the commander of the German troops had him informed of the capitulation of Metz. D'Aurelles, jumping at this pretext, telegraphed to Tours that he should adjourn his movement.
A general of some ability, of some good faith, would, on the contrary, have precipitated everything. Since the German army before Metz, now disengaged, would swoop down upon the centre of France, there was not a day to lose to be beforehand with it. Every hour told. This was the critical juncture of the war.
The Delegation of Tours was as foolish as D'Aurelles. Instead of dismissing him, it contented itself with moans, ordering him to concentrate his forces. This concentration was terminated on the 3d November.[52] D'Aurelles then had 70,000 men established from Mer to Marchenoir. He might have acted, for events seconded him. That very day a whole brigade of Prussian cavalry had been obliged to abandon Mantes and to retreat before bands of franc-tireurs; French forces were observed to be marching from Courville in the direction of Chartres. D'Aurelles did not stir, and the Delegation remained as paralyzed as he. "M. le Ministre," wrote on the 4th November the Delegate at War, M. de Freycinet,[53] "for some days the army and myself do not know if the Government wants peace or war. At this moment, when we are just disposing ourselves to accomplish projects laboriously prepared, rumors of an armistice disturb the minds of our generals, and I myself, I seek to revive their spirits and push them on, I know not whether the next day I shall not be disavowed by the Government." Gambetta the same day answered: "I agree with you as to the detestable influence of the political hesitations of the Government. From to-day we must decide on our march forward;" and on the 7th D'Aurelles still remained motionless. At last, on the 8th, he set out, and went about fifteen kilometers, and in the evening again spoke of making a halt.[54] All his forces together exceeded 100,000 men. On the 9th he made up his mind to attack at Coulmiers. The Bavarians immediately evacuated Orléans. Far from pursuing them, D'Aurelles announced that he was going to fortify himself before the town. The Delegation let him do as he liked, and gave him no orders to pursue the enemy.[55] Three days after the battle Gambetta came to the headquarters and approved of D'Aurelles's plan. The Bavarians during this respite had fallen back upon Toury, and two divisions hurried from Metz by the railway arrived before Paris. Moltke could at his ease direct the 17th Prussian division towards Toury, where it arrived on the 12th. Three other corps of the army of Metz approached the Seine by forced marches. The ignorance of the Delegation, the obstruction of Trochu, the ill-will and blunders of D'Aurelles, frustrated the only chances of raising the blockade of Paris.
On the 19th, the army of Metz protected the blockade in the north and in the south. Henceforth the Delegation had but one part to play—to prepare armies for France, solid, capable of manœuvring, and finding for this the necessary time, as in ancient times the Romans did, and in our days the Americans. It preferred bolstering up vain appearances, amusing public opinion with the din of arms, imagining that they could thus puzzle the Prussians also. It threw upon them men raised but a few days before, without instruction, without discipline, without instruments of war, fatally destined to defeat. The prefects charged with the organization of the mobiles, and those on the point of being mobilized, were in continual strife with the generals, and lost themselves in the details of the equipments. The generals, unable to make anything of those ill-supplied contingents, only advanced on compulsion.[56] Gambetta on his arrival had said in his proclamation, "We will make young chiefs," and the important commands were given to the men of the Empire, worn out, ignorant, knowing nothing of patriotic wars. To these young recruits, who should have been electrified by stirring appeals, D'Aurelles preached the word of the Lord and the interest of the service.[57]