lay down your arms 74

lay down your arms 74

The country fell into wild despair--such a despair as issues in raving

madness. People began to hunt in _Nostradamus_ to find prophecies for

the present events, and new seers began to put out fresh predictions.

Still worse, _possessed_ folks came forward. It was like falling back

into a ghost-night of the middle ages, lighted by the fire of hell. “Oh

that I could be among the Bedouins!” cried Gustave Flaubert. “Oh that I

could be back in the half-conscious dreamland of my illness,” cried I,

weeping. I was well again now, and had to hear and comprehend all the

terrible things that were going on around us. Then began again the

entries in the red books, and I have lit on the following notes:--

 

December 1. Trochu has established himself on the heights of

Champigny.

 

December 2. Obstinate fight around Brie and Champigny.

 

December 5. The cold is becoming constantly more powerful. Oh! the

trembling, bleeding, wretched wights, who are lying out there in

the snow, _and dying_. Even here in the city, there is terrible

suffering from cold. Business has fallen to nothing. There is no

firing to be had. What would not many an one give if there were

only two little pieces of wood to be had--even the certainty of the

throne of Spain!

 

December 21. Sortie out of Paris.

 

December 25. A small detachment of Prussian cavalry was saluted

with musket shot (that is a patriotic duty) from the houses of the

villages of Troo and Sougé. General Kraatz commanded the punishment

of the villages (that is a commander’s duty) and had them burnt.

“Set them on fire,” was the word of command, and the men, probably

gentle, good-natured fellows, obeyed (that is the soldier’s duty),

and set fire to them. The flames burst up to heaven, and the poor

homesteads fell crashing, on man, wife, and child--on flying,

weeping, roaring, burning men and beasts.

 

What a joyous, happy, holy Christmas night!

 

* * * * *

 

Is Paris to be starved out, or bombarded as well?

 

Against the last supposition the civilised conscience revolts. To

bombard this _ville-lumière_, this point of attraction of all nations,

this brilliant home of the arts--bombard it with its irreplaceable

riches and treasures, like the first fort that comes to hand! It is not

to be thought of. The whole neutral press (as I found out afterwards)

protested against it. On the other hand, the press of the war party in

Berlin was favourable to it: that would be the only way to bring the war

to a close--and to conquer the city on the Seine, what glory! Besides,

it was just these protests which determined certain circles at

Versailles to seize this strategic weapon; and, after all, a bombardment

is nothing. And so it came about that on December 28 I was writing in

shaking characters: “Here it is--another heavy stroke--a pause--and

again----”

 

I wrote no further, but I well remember the feelings of that day. In

those words: “Here it is,” there lay, along with the terror, a kind of

freedom, a relief, a cessation of the nervous expectation that had by

that time become well nigh insufferable. What one had been for so long

partly expecting and fearing, partly thinking hardly humanly possible,

is now come. We were sitting at _déjeûner à la fourchette_, _i.e._, we

were taking bread and coffee--food was getting scarce already--Frederick,

Rudolf, the tutor and I--when the first stroke resounded. All of us

raised our heads and exchanged glances. Is that it? But no. It may have

been a house door slamming, or something of that sort. Now all was

quiet. We resumed the talk that had been interrupted, without saying

anything about the thought which that sound had caused. Then, after two

or three minutes it came again. Frederick started up. “That is the

bombardment,” he said, and hurried to the window. I followed him. A

hubbub came in from the street. Groups had formed; the people were

standing and listening, or were exchanging excited words.

 

Now our _valet de chambre_ came rushing into the room, and at the same

time a fresh salvo resounded.

 

“Oh monsieur et madame--c’est le bombardment.”

 

And now all the other men and maids, down to the kitchen-maid, came

pushing into the room. In such catastrophies--in the exigencies of war,

fire, or water, all distinctions of society fall away, and those

threatened all cluster together. All feel equal before danger--much more

than before the law--much more than before Death, which in its burial

ceremonies knows so much of distinction of rank. “C’est le bombardment,

c’est le bombardment.” Every one who came into the room uttered the same

cry.

 

It was horrible, and yet I recollect quite well what I felt--a sort of

admiring shudder, a kind of satisfaction at such a mighty experience--to

be present at a situation so freighted with destiny and not to fear the

danger to my own life in it. My pulses beat, and I felt--what shall I

call it?--the pride of courage.

 

* * * * *

 

The thing was on the whole less terrible than it had seemed at the first

instant. No flaming buildings, no crowds shrieking with terror, no

bombshells whizzing continually through the air; but only always this

heavy, far-off thunder, with long and still longer intervals between.

One came after a time to get almost accustomed to it. The Parisians

chose as objects for a walk those points where the cannon music was best

heard. Here and there a bomb would fall in the street and burst; but how

rarely did it occur to any given person to happen to be near? It is true

that many shells did fall which carried death, but in the city of a

million men these cases were heard of in the same scattered way in which

at other times one is accustomed to see in one’s newspaper various cases

of accident, without its coming specially near to oneself. “A bricklayer

fell from a scaffold four storeys high,” or “A genteelly dressed female

threw herself over the balustrades of the bridge into the river,” and so

forth. The real grief, the real terror of the populace, was not for the

bombardment, but hunger, cold, and starvation. But _one_ such account of

the death-dealing shot gave me a deep shock. It came in the form of a

black-bordered mourning-card sent to the house:--

 

Monsieur and Madame R---- inform you of the death of their two

children, François aged eight, and Amélie aged four, who were

struck by a bomb coming through the window. Your silent sympathy is

requested.

 

Silent sympathy! I gave a loud shriek as I read the paper. A thought--a

picture flashing before my inner eye with lightning clearness, showed me

the whole of the woe which lay in this simple mourning-notice. I saw

_our_ two children, Rudolf and Sylvia--no! I could not pursue the

thought!

 

The tidings which one got were scanty. All communication by post was, of

course, cut off. It was by carrier pigeons and balloons only that we had

intercourse with the world outside. The rumours that cropped up

everywhere were of the most contradictory nature. Victorious sallies

were announced, or the information was spread that the enemy was on the

point of storming Paris, with a view of setting it on fire in all

corners, and levelling it to the ground, or it was asseverated that

sooner than allow one German to get within the walls, the commandants of

the forts would blow up themselves and the whole of Paris into the air.

It was related that the whole population of the country, especially of

the south (_le midi se lève_), were falling on the besiegers’ rear, in

order to cut off their retreat, and annihilate them to the last man.

 

Along with the false news, some true intelligence also came to us--some

whose truth was proved afterwards. Such as about a panic that broke out

on the road of Grand Luce near Mans, in which horrible deeds took

place--soldiers getting beyond control, throwing the wounded out of the

railway carriages that were all standing ready, and taking their places

themselves.

 

It became more difficult every day to get food. The supply of meat was

exhausted; there had for a long time now been no longer any beeves or

sheep in the cattle parks that had been formed; all the horses also were

soon eaten up, and then the period began when the dogs and cats, the

rats and mice, and finally the beasts in the Jardin des Plantes also,

even the poor elephant, who was such a favourite, had to serve as food.

Bread could now be hardly procured. The people had to stand in rows for

hours after hours in front of the bakers’ shops in order to get their

little ration, and still most of them had to go empty away. Exhaustion

and sickness made Death’s harvest a rich one. Whilst ordinarily 1100

died in a week, the death-list of Paris in these times rose to between

4000 and 5000 weekly. That is, there were every day between 400 and 500

unnatural deaths--that is to say, _murders_. For if the murderer is not

an individual man, but an impersonal thing, _viz._, _war_, it is not any

the less murder. Whose is the responsibility? Does it not lie on those

parliamentary swaggerers, who in their provocative speeches declared

with proud self-assumption--as that Girardin did in the sitting of July

15--that they “took on themselves the responsibility for this war in the

face of history”? Could, then, any man’s shoulders be sufficiently

strong to bear such a load of guilt? Surely not. But no one thinks of

taking such boasters at their word.

 

One day--it was about January 20--Frederick came into my room, with an

excited look, on his return from a walk in the city.

 

“Take your diary in hand, my busy little historian,” he called out to

me. “To-day a mighty despatch has come.” And he threw himself into a

chair.

 

“Which of my books?” I asked. “_The Protocol of Peace_?”

       Frederick shook his head.