lay down your arms 73

lay down your arms 73

Exiled. Obliged to leave the city within three days. I had occasion to

see how hardly, how inhumanly hardly, this command pressed on many

worthy, harmless families. Among the business people who were supplying

us with goods for the decoration of our house, several were Germans--one

a carriage-builder, one an upholsterer, one an art-furniture

manufacture--settled from ten to twenty years in Paris, where they had

got their domestic hearth, where they had allied themselves in marriage

with Parisians, where they had the whole of their business connection;

and now they had to go out, out in three days--shut up their house,

leave all that was dear and familiar to them, lose their fortune, their

customers, their inheritance. The poor creatures came running to us in

consternation, and told us of the misery that had fallen on them. Even

the work which they were on the point of delivering to us had to be put

aside, and the workshops closed. Wringing their hands and with tears in

their eyes, they complained of their sufferings to us. “I have an old

father an invalid,” said one, “and my wife is looking for her

confinement any day; and now we must go in three days!” “I have not a

sou in the house,” another complained; “all my customers who owe me

money will be in no hurry to meet their obligations. A week hence I

should have completed a large order which would have made me comfortably

off, and now I must leave all in confusion!”

 

And why, _why_ was all this misery brought on these poor people? Because

they belonged to a nation whose army did its duty successfully, or

because (to go further back in the chain of causes) a Hohenzollern might

possibly have allowed it to enter into his mind to assume the Spanish

throne if offered to him? No; this “because,” too, has not arrived at

the ultimate reason. All this is only the pretext--not the cause of that

war.

 

* * * * *

 

_Sedan! “The Emperor Napoleon has given up his sword.”_

 

The news overwhelmed us. Now there had really occurred a great, an

historical catastrophe. The French army beaten, its leader checkmated.

Then the game was over, won triumphantly by Germany. “Over! over!” I

shouted. “If there were people who have the right to call themselves

citizens of the world they might illuminate their windows to-day. If we

had temples of Humanity yet, _Te Deums_ would have to be sung in them on

this occasion--the butchery is over!”

 

“Do not rejoice too soon, my darling,” said Frederick in a warning tone.

“This war has now for some time lost the character of a game fought out

on the chess-board of the battlefield. The whole nation is joining in

the fight. For _one_ army annihilated ten others will start out of the

earth.”

 

“But would that be just? It is only German soldiers who have forced

themselves into the country--not the German people--and so they ought

only to oppose them with French soldiers.”

 

“How you keep on appealing to justice and reason, you unreasonable

creature, in dealing with a madman! France is mad with pain and rage;

and from the point of view of loss of country, her pain is pious, her

rage justifiable. Whatever desperate thing she may do now is inspired,

not by personal self-seeking, but by the highest spirit of sacrifice. If

only the time were come when the powers of virtue, which is the

essential thing that binds men together, were diverted from the work of

destruction and devoted to the work of felicity! But this unholy war has

again thrown us back a long distance from that goal.”

 

“No, no! I hope the war is over now.”

 

“If it were so (and I despair of it) there would be sown the seeds of

future wars, and it could only be the seed of hatred which is contained

in this expulsion of the Germans. Such a thing as that has an effect far

beyond the present generation.”

 

September 4. Another act of violence, an outbreak of passion, and, at

the same time, a remedy tried for the salvation of the country--the

emperor is deposed. France proclaims herself a republic. Whatever

Napoleon III. and his army may have done matters not. Mistakes,

treachery, cowardice, all these faults have been committed by

individuals, the emperor and his generals; but France has not committed

them, she is not answerable for it. When the throne was overturned, the

leaves in France’s history, on which Metz and Sedan were inscribed, were

simply torn out of the book. From this time the country itself would

carry on the war, if, at least, Germany dared to continue this infamous

invasion.

 

“But how if Napoleon had conquered?” I asked, when Frederick

communicated this to me.

 

“Oh, then, France would have taken his victory and his glory as the

country’s victory and glory.”

 

“Is that just?”

 

“Cannot you get out of the habit of putting that question?”

 

I had soon to see my hopes, that the catastrophe of Sedan would put an

end to the campaign, vanish. All around us seemed as warlike as ever.

The air was laden with savage rage and hot lust of vengeance. Rage

against the enemy, and almost as much against the fallen dynasty. The

scandalous talk, the pamphlets which now poured down against the

emperor, the empress, and the unfortunate generals; the contempt, the

slanders, the insults, the jests--it was disgusting. In this way the

uncultured masses thought they could lay the whole burden of the defeats

of the country on the shoulders of one or two persons, and, now that

these persons were down, pelted them with dung and stones. And this was

the beginning of the time when the country was to show that she was

invincible!

 

The preparations for intrenching Paris were carried on zealously. The

buildings in the fighting area of the chief _enceinte_ were abandoned or

taken down entirely. The suburbs became deserts. Troops of men kept

coming from outside into the city with all their belongings. Oh, those

sorrowful trains of carts and pack horses, and laden men, who were

trailing the ruins of their desolated hearths through the streets! I had

already seen the same thing once in Bohemia, when the poor country folk

were flying from the enemy; and now I had to look on the same picture of

wretchedness in the joyous, brilliant capital of the world. There were

the same frightened, sorrowful visages, the same weariness and haste,

the same woe.

 

At last, God be praised, once more a good piece of news! On the proposal

of a mediation on the part of England, a meeting was arranged at

Ferrières between Jules Favre and Bismarck. Now surely they would

succeed in coming to an agreement--in making peace!

 

On the contrary, it was not till now that the extent of the gulf was

seen. For some little time before this there had been some talk in the

German papers of the annexation of Alsace and Lorraine. A desire was

shown to incorporate once more the land which had formerly been German.

The historical argument for the claim on these provinces appearing only

partially sustainable, the _strategic_ argument was brought forward to

support it--“indispensable as a fortress in future wars which may be

expected”. And it is well known, of course, that the strategic grounds

are the weightiest, the most impregnable; and that in comparison with

them a moral ground can only reckon as secondary. On the other hand, the

war game had been lost by France; was it not fair that the prize should

fall to the winners? In case _they_ had won, would not the French have

seized the Rhine provinces? If the result of a war is not to have for

its consequence an extension of territory for one side or the other,

what good would it be to make war at all?

 

Meantime the victorious army made no halt in its onward march. The

Germans were already before the gates of Paris. The cession of Alsace

and Lorraine was officially demanded; to which came the well-known

reply: “Not an inch of our territory, not a stone of our

fortresses”--(“Pas un pouce--pas une pierre”).

 

Yes, yes--thousands of lives, but not an inch of ground. That is the

rooted idea of the patriotic spirit. “They wish to humble us,” cried the

French patriots. “No! sooner shall exasperated Paris bury itself under

its own ruins!”

 

Away! away! was now our resolution. Why should we stay in a beleaguered

foreign city without any necessity; why live among people full of no

other thoughts than those of hate and vengeance, who looked at us with

sidelong glances and often with clenched fists, when they heard us

talking German? It is true, we could no longer leave Paris, or leave

France, without difficulty. One had in all directions to pass over war

districts, the railway traffic was frequently suspended for private

travellers. To leave our new building in the lurch was unpleasant, but

this was of no consequence, for our stay was impossible. In fact we had

already stayed far too long. The events which I had experienced recently

had shaken me so much that my nerves had suffered grievously from it. I

was seized often with shivering, and once or twice also with crying

fits.

 

Our boxes were all ready packed, and everything prepared for departure,

when I had another attack, and this time so violent that I had to be

carried to bed. The physician who was sent for said that either a

nervous fever or even an inflammation of the brain was commencing, and

for the present it was not to be thought of to expose me to the fatigues

of travelling.

 

I lay in bed for long, long weeks. Only a very dreamy recollection of

that whole time remains with me. And strangely enough, a pleasant

recollection. I was, it is true, very ill, and everything in the place

where I resided was unceasingly mournful and terrible; and yet when I

look back on it it was a singularly joyful time. Yes, joy, perfectly

intense joy, such as children are in the habit of feeling. The cerebral

affection which I was suffering, and which brought with it an almost

continuous absence, or at least only half-presence of consciousness,

caused all thoughts and judgments, all reflections and deliberations, to

vanish out of my head, and there remained only a vague enjoyment of

existence, just like that which children experience, as I said just now,

and especially those children who are tenderly watched over. There was

no want of tender watching for me. My husband, thoughtful and loving and

untiring, was with me day and night. He brought the children also often

to my bedside. How much my Rudolf had to tell me! For the most part I

did not understand it, but his beloved voice sounded to me like music,

and the babbling of our little Sylvia, our heart’s idol, how sweetly

that began to charm me! Then there were a hundred little jokes and

intelligences between Frederick and me about the tricks of our little

daughter. What these jokes were about I have quite forgotten, but I know