History of the Commune of 1871. Lissagaray

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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.

      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.


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