Chapter 8

THE EDUCATION BILL OF 1870--THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR

I.

From his Russian journeys Sir Charles returned to take part in an election in which occurred his first opportunity for helping the cause of direct Labour Representation. In 1869--

'at the extreme end of the year, I returned to London, and worked hard for Odger in the Southwark Election, in which, opposed by a Conservative and a Liberal (Sir Sydney Waterlow), he beat the Liberal, with the result, however, that the Conservative got in. Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice subscribed towards Odger's expenses, and Fawcett also worked for him. The incident contributed a good deal towards that separate organization of the Radicals which was attempted early in the following year.'

Already another organization of far-reaching influence had been planned, and it led to a great alliance.

'In the course of 1869 I became Chairman of the London Branch of the newly formed Education League, and my friendship with Joseph Chamberlain began, he being Chairman of the Committee of the League and its real head.'

Dilke was seven years the junior of Chamberlain, who in 1869 was thirty- three. But he had seven years' Parliamentary seniority over his friend, who did not become a member of the House of Commons till 1876. Chamberlain was in 1869, and indeed for several years later, a politician and member of the Birmingham Town Council, known throughout the Midland area for the boldness of his Radicalism--which did not stop short of avowing Republican principles--and also for extraordinary ability in developing the municipal improvements in which Birmingham under his auspices led the way. He had conceived, and in the Education League partly carried out, the idea of a political association independent of official party control, which should cover the whole country with its branches, and so become a power behind and beyond the Parliamentary leadership. Sir Charles, on his side, brought into the partnership the resources possessed by a young man of considerable reputation both in literature and in public life, who at an early age had established himself in a metropolitan seat.

'The principle of the League was that of general education, and of compulsion and freedom from fees as a consequence. The teaching of religion was left to the Sunday-schools, and upon this head difficulties soon arose.' The mass of English Liberals inherited the Protestant conviction that "simple Bible teaching" could offend nobody, and must be good for everybody, and consequently should be included in the term "education," while the view of more sophisticated politicians was given by Sir William Harcourt (then Mr. Vernon Harcourt). He wrote to Sir Charles in 1870:

"We are fighting with inferior forces, and everything must depend upon husbanding our strength, using it to the best advantage, and not exposing ourselves to needless defeats. We must always seem to win, even though we do not get what we want. That is what up to this point we have accomplished. But we must not allow ourselves to be precipitated upon destruction by men who may be philosophers, but who are no politicians.... We must now retire on the second line of defence. What is that to be? I lay down first that the thing to be resisted is denominationalism. If it can be got rid of altogether-- best; but if not, then to the greatest degree--next best. Now, as a politician (not as a philosopher) I am quite satisfied that neither in the House of Commons nor in the country can we beat denominationalism by secularism. If we attempt to meet the flood by this dyke it will come over our heads. We must break the force of the wave by a slope, and deal with its diminished weight afterwards as best we may."

'Harcourt then went on to defend that to which I was strongly opposed --namely, Bible reading--on the ground that "we should give our republic not the best possible laws, but the best which they will bear. This is the essence of politics. All the rest is speculation.... We must make up our minds before the meeting on Monday, for in the multitude of counsellors there is folly."'

A definite principle was at stake. Under this proposal the teaching, though called undenominational, would not in fact be so. Bible reading, subject, no doubt, to a conscience clause, would be enforced on Roman Catholics, Jews, and secularists, and Bible reading, though undenominational as regarded the different divisions of Protestant Christianity, would still be denominational as regards these three: 'I myself took the extreme and logical line of not only opposing Bible reading, but of opposing Mr. Jacob Bright's and Mr. Cowper Temple's amendments for excluding creeds, and for setting up a general undenominational Protestantism of the majority.'

He was in agreement with John Stuart Mill in resisting a proposal which in his opinion did injustice to large classes of the community for the sake of introducing what (in his own words) "could be only religion of the driest and baldest kind, and such as would be hardly worthy of the name."

At the beginning of 1870 Sir Charles was not openly in revolt, though after working for Odger against the Government candidate, he had gone on to condemn in a speech the Whig influences and fear of the House of Lords, which in his opinion were destroying Mr. Gladstone's Irish Land Bill. Mr. Gladstone showed a desire to conciliate this overactive critic by inviting him to second the Address to the Crown.

Accordingly at the opening of Parliament on February 8th, 1870, Sir Charles had his part to play in the modest ceremonial which still survives, rather shamefacedly, in the House of Commons, when a couple of commoners, uniformed or in Court dress, are put forward as the spokesmen of that sombre assembly.

His speech, advocating the European concert, dwelt on the cloudless calm which lay--in February, 1870--over the civilized world, and for another six months wrapped it in delusive peace.

For the moment domestic affairs held the field. In spite of Bright's observation about driving six omnibuses abreast through Temple Bar, Forster's Education Bill was pressed forward along with the Irish Land proposals, and the Government were at once in trouble with their advanced wing, in which Sir Charles Dilke was a leader of revolt. He acted as teller along with Henry Richard when Richard took sixty dissentient Liberals into the Lobby in support of a general motion demanding that school attendance should be compulsory, and that all religious teaching should be separately paid for out of voluntary funds. When compromise was accepted: [Footnote: The Cowper Temple clause practically left religious teaching to local option. Each school was to give or not give such religious teaching as it thought well, so long as no _Board_ School was used to attach a child to a particular denomination.]

'I was, I believe, the only Liberal member who resisted the Cowper Temple amendment as accepted by the Government, and I resigned my post as Chairman of the London Branch of the Education League. I published a letter explaining the reasons for my resignation; the Committee wrote in reply that they fully agreed with me in matters of principle, and asked me to reconsider my resignation.'

This, however, he refused to do, since the London Branch and the League generally were abandoning the principle in the support they gave to compromise.

Throughout the Committee stage his name appears in all the numerous division lists, voting against Government as often as with it. Thus it was from a position of complete independence that he carried two amendments of great importance.

'The Bill as brought in made the School Boards mere committees of Boards of Vestries, and the amendment that School Boards should be elected by the ratepayers, which was forced on and ultimately accepted by the Government, was mine. I also was the author of the proposal that the School Board elections should be by ballot, which was carried.' [Footnote: He always regretted the substitution later of the Educational Committees of County Councils for the School Boards.]

The ballot was then the question of the hour, and it was a matter upon which his study of foreign and Colonial institutions had made him an authority. In 1869 he had given evidence before the Select Committee on Parliamentary and Municipal Elections, 'explaining the working of the ballot in France, in the United States, and, above all, in Tasmania and Australia.' The evidence which he gave was of service in the preparation of the Ballot Bill of 1870, which closely followed the example set by Tasmania and South Australia.

Sir John Gorst, who was already a well-known figure in English politics, though not yet in Parliament, remembered attending a debate specially to hear what this newcomer had to say upon the question of the hour.

This first practical application of the ballot, 'forced on and ultimately accepted by the Government,' did not pass unchallenged. When Sir Charles's amendment was at last put to the vote, he was privileged to tell with George Glyn, the Chief Whip, in a division which took place 'after the fiercest conflict ever up to that known within the walls of Parliament, we having sat up all night.' There was a long series of dilatory motions, a fresh one being moved after a division had disposed of its predecessor 'This was the first birth of obstruction, and the lesson taught by Mr. G. C. Bentinck on this occasion was afterwards applied by "the colonels" in the proceedings on the Army Purchase Scheme in 1871, and then by Butt's Irish after 1874.'

In all the discussions on the Ballot Bill for Parliamentary elections Sir Charles steadily opposed the introduction of a scrutiny which involved the numbering of the ballot papers. This appeared to him 'a pernicious interference with the principle of secrecy, chiefly important because it would be impossible to convince ignorant voters that their votes would not be traced.' His view 'prevailed,' he says, 'in the House of Commons, but the provisions of which we secured the omission from the second Ballot Bill were once more inserted by the House of Lords' at its passage in 1871.

There was another matter connected with the franchise in which Sir Charles had effected by an amendment an even more remarkable change, and that in his first session. The proposal to give women ratepayers the franchise in municipal elections, or rather 'to restore to them a right which was taken away by the Municipal Reform Act of 1835,' was his. Two amendments were on the paper, and though by a chance Mr. Jacob Bright's was taken first, the suggestion, as Mr. Bright admitted, really came from Sir Charles, and it was carried in the session of 1869. This proposal, as he explained to a meeting of the London Society for Woman's Suffrage over which Mrs. Grote presided, was in his opinion 'merely experimental, and only a first step to adult suffrage.' In 1870 he seconded Jacob Bright's Woman's Suffrage Bill, which was carried through the second reading--'the only occasion when a majority of the House of Commons declared for the principle till 1897.' Divergencies of opinion had in the meantime arisen. The Bill of 1870 did not debar married women from obtaining the vote. When in later years a proviso excluding them was introduced, Dilke, with Jacob Bright, withdrew from the parent society. He held throughout his life that to attempt compromise on this matter was to court failure, and that women would never get the vote except as part of a scheme for universal suffrage. This was no mere academic opinion; and he gave later on proof of his earnestness for the principle involved in convincing fashion.

To the argument still urged against that principle--the argument that most women are against it--he gave his answer in 1870:

"You will always find that in the case of any class which has been despotically governed--and though I do not wish to use strong language, it cannot be denied that women have been despotically governed in England, although the despotism has been of a benevolent character--the great majority of that class are content with the system under which they live."

He pointed out that to admit women to the franchise did not compel those to vote who did not desire to do so.

In this matter Jacob Bright was his leading associate in Parliament; but outside Parliament he was working with Mill.

To the two questions already dealt with--Education and Woman's Suffrage-- was now added a third, which Sir Charles describes as 'chief of all the questions I had to do with in 1870--the land question.' There is this endorsement on one of Mill's letters written in 1870:

"I acted as his secretary for above a year on (_a_) his land movement = taxation of land values; (_b_) the women's suffrage proposal, which followed the carrying of his municipal franchise for women by me in 1869 and the School Boards, 1870."

The Radical Club was founded, with Sir Charles as Secretary, in 1870, and Mill was among the original members of the Club. [Footnote: The others were Professor Cairnes, Mr. John Morley, Mr. Frank Hill (editor of the _Daily News_), Leslie Stephen, Mr. Leonard Courtney, Mr. Henry Sidgwick, Mr. W. C. Sidgwick, Mr. McCullagh Torrens, and Mr. Fawcett. Sir David Wedderburn, Mr. Peter Taylor, and Mr. Walter Morrison were added at the first meeting, as also was Mr. Hare. At the first meeting it was decided that women should be eligible. Half the Club was to consist of members of Parliament, half of non-members.] From this platform Mill propounded, in 1870, his views on land--views which forty years later became the adopted principles of the Liberal party; and at the inaugural public meeting of the Land Tenure Association in 1870 Sir Charles for the first time promulgated the doctrine of taxing the "unearned increment." He insisted that England's system of land tenure was "unique in the world," and answerable for tragic consequences.

"One who has seen our race abroad under fair conditions knows how frank and handsome the Englishman is elsewhere, and might be here. But when he looks around him in Sheffield or in East London, he sees none but miserable and stunted forms. The life of the English labourer is a steady march down a hill with a poorhouse at the bottom. At the same time the observer finds, when he asks for the remedy, that in these matters there is not a pin to choose between the two parties in the State." [Footnote: A note sent to Lord Courtney in 1909 will show exactly what Sir Charles's position had been on this fundamental matter from the very outset of his political career:

"Mill's object was--

"To claim for the benefit of the State the interception by taxation of a great part of the unearned increase of the value of land which is continually accruing, without effort or outlay by the proprietors, through the growth of population and wealth.

"To purchase land for the State, and let for co-operative agriculture under conditions of efficiency and to smallholders on durable cultivating interests."

He adds a reference to his own Bill "for utilizing public and quasi- public lands under public management, with repeal of the Statute of Mortmain and forbidding of alienation."

This Bill was introduced by him in the early seventies, but obtained no support till 1875 (see Chapter XIII., p. 192).]

Within the previous twenty-five years over six hundred thousand acres of common land had been enclosed, under Orders sanctioned by Parliament. Of this vast amount only four thousand had been set apart for public purposes. In 1866 the commons near London were threatened, and a Society for their preservation was formed, in which Mr. Shaw Lefevre was the moving spirit. [Footnote: Now Lord Eversley.] Sir Charles became in 1870 Chairman of the Society. Among the latest of his papers is a note from Lord Eversley accompanying an early copy of the new edition of his _Commons and Forests_ "which I hope will remind you of old times and of your own great services to the cause." 'We saved Wisley Common and Epping Forest,' says the Memoir. It was more important that on April 9th, 1869, the annual Enclosure Bill was referred to a Select Committee, notwithstanding the determined opposition of the Government. The date is memorable in the history of the question, for the Committee recommended that all further enclosures should be suspended until the general Act had been amended, as it was in 1876.

About the same time Sir Charles became publicly committed to another cause, barren of political advantage, into which he put, first and last, as much labour as might have filled the whole of a creditable career. He began to take an active part in connection with the Aborigines Protection Society and presided at its Annual Meeting in 1870. This, says the Memoir laconically, 'threw on me lifelong duties.'

II.

The Franco-German War broke upon Europe in July, 1870. Later, it became one of the chief interests of Sir Charles's mind to track out the workings of those few men who prepared what seemed a sudden outburst; here it is important only to outline his attitude towards the combatants. In that period of European history every politician was of necessity attracted or repelled by the personality of the Emperor of the French. In Sir Charles's case there was no wavering between like and dislike: he carried on his grandfather's detestation of the lesser Napoleon. The chapter in _Greater Britain_ which is devoted to Egypt shows this feeling; and when news of Sadowa reached him during his American journey in the autumn of 1866, he wrote home to say that he rejoiced in Prussia's triumph, and hoped "Louis Napoleon would quarrel with the Germans over it, and get well thrashed, with the result that German unity might be brought about."

'This' (he notes in the Memoir) 'is somewhat curious at a time when everybody believed (except myself and Moltke and Bismarck, not including, I think, the King of Prussia) that the French Army was superior to the armies of all Germany.'

In coming down the Mexican coast he touched at Acapulco, which was under Mexican fire, as the French still held the bay and city; and he had then, later in 1866, 'begun to hope for the fall of Louis Napoleon, who was piling up debt for France at the average rate of ten millions sterling every year, and whose prestige was vanishing fast in the glare of the publicity given to the actions of Bazaine.'

Before Sir Charles returned to Europe in 1867, Maximilian, the Austrian Archduke sent by Napoleon III to be 'Emperor of Mexico,' had fallen, an unlucky victim of French intrigue. But Paris was still the centre of Europe; and the traveller on his way home from Egypt--where he had seen French enterprise opening the Suez Canal, French language and influence dominant--saw Louis Napoleon preside at a pageant, already darkened by the rising storm-cloud:

'Reaching Paris' (in June, 1867), 'I attended the review held (during the Exhibition of 1867) by the Emperors of Russia and of the French, and the King of Prussia, at which I saw Gortschakof, Schouvalof, Bismarck, and Moltke, on the day on which the Pole Berezowski shot at Alexander II. Sixty thousand men marched past the three Sovereigns at the very spot at which, three years later, one of them was, to review a larger German force. The crash was near; Maximilian had been shot. It is, however, not pleasant to contrast the horror with which the news of the execution of the puppet Emperor was received in Europe, with the indifference with which all but a handful of Radicals had regarded the Paris executions of December, 1851.'

'In October, 1867, three months later, I again visited Paris, with my father, and made the acquaintance of the Queen of Holland, the Queen of Sheba to Louis Napoleon's Solomon in his glory. The Emperor of Austria, the King of Bavaria, and Beust were also in Paris on business which boded no good to Bismarck, and the populace were amusing themselves in crying "Vive Garibaldi!" to the Austrian Emperor, as three or four months earlier they had cried "Vive la Pologne!" to the Tsar. At a banquet to the Foreign Commission to the Exhibition, at which I dined, I heard Rouher make his famous speech, "L'Italie n'aura jamais Rome," which he afterwards in December repeated in the Corps Législatif--"L'Italie ne s'emparera pas de Rome--jamais" (shouts of "Jamais!" from the Right): "Jamais la France ne supportera cette violence faite à son honneur et à la catholicité." When I heard the word "jamais," I believed I should live to see Italy at Rome, but hardly so soon.'

His governing dislike of France's rulers had reflected itself in that part of his first address to the electors of Chelsea which laid down his views on foreign affairs. "Our true alliance," he had told them, "is not with the Latin peoples, but with men who speak our tongue, with our brothers in America, and with our kinsmen in Germany and Scandinavia." This prepossession, notable in one who came afterwards to be regarded as the closest friend of France among English politicians, shaped his action when the crash came. It tempted him to the German side, but contact with Prussian militarism showed where his real sympathies lay.

War was declared on Tuesday, July 19th. On the following Saturday morning Sir Charles left London for Paris: left Paris for Strasbourg the same evening: visited Metz on the Monday, and saw the Imperial Guard at Nancy. Within four days from the time of leaving he was back in London, and busy with preparations. He had decided to attach himself to the ambulances of the Crown Prince of Prussia's army, and in this expedition two other members of Parliament joined him:

'Auberon Herbert (physically brave, and politically the bravest, though not politically the strongest, man of our times) and Winterbotham, afterwards Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, and a man of eloquence, whose early death is still deplored by those who knew him. We took letters from Count von Bernstorff, the Prussian Ambassador, and following up the German armies through the Bavarian Palatinate, a journey during which we were arrested and marched to Kaiserslautern to the King's headquarters by Bavarian gendarmes, as French spies, we were enrolled under the Prussian Knights of St. John at Sulz by Count Goertz, and received billets from that time, although we used to pay for all we had at every place. At Wissembourg and at Sulz we were sent to the inn, and at Lunéville I was planted on an ironmonger, but we were divided. At Nancy only, being fixed on a legitimist Baron, I was not allowed to pay for what I had, but I was put with him by his wish, by his friend the Mayor, as he would not have real Prussians. He made things so unpleasant for my companion, Count Böthmer--though, unlike his brother, the Count was a non-combatant--that this Knight of St. John had to go elsewhere. Auberon and Winterbotham were also put elsewhere at Nancy. At Sarrebourg and Pont-à-Mousson I forget with whom we were, but we were together and were nearly starved.

'We marched with the Poseners, or Fifth Army Corps, through Froeschwilier and Reichshoffen; went off the road to Saverne to witness the bombardment of Phalsbourg; joined again at Sarrebourg; marched by Lunéville, and from Nancy were sent to Pont-à-Mousson during the battles before Metz.

'The first thing that struck us much during this portion of the war was that the grandest of the early victories in this so-called war of races, the Battle of Worth, was won and lost in the centre of the position by pure Poles and native Algerians. Poseners were arrayed against Turcos, and both fought well, while hardly a German or a Frenchman was in sight. On the field of Wörth I noted that the Poseners had all many cartridges as well as their Polish hymn-books with them, but the Turcos were as short of cartridges as of hymn- books. Wanting a French cartridge, I was unable to find one in the pouches of the dead, while of German cartridges I had at once as many dozens as I pleased. I fancy, however, that it would not be safe to conclude, from the fact that the French had fired away their ammunition, that they fired carelessly because too fast; for the Germans, vastly outnumbering the French (who ought not to have fought a battle, but rather should have fallen back), had probably opposed at different portions of the day different corps to the same French regiments, who had not been relieved. After this battle all was lost to the French cause. The scattered French spread terror where they went, and while the railway might have been wholly destroyed by the simple plan of blowing up some tunnels, only bridges were blown up, which in the course of a few days were, of course, replaced even where they were not in a few hours easily repaired....

'I was glad to have seen the beginning of the invasion. At no other time could I have gained a real knowledge of that which every politician ought to know--the working of the transport system of a modern army. We were the smaller of the two invading forces, yet we needed a stream of carts the whole way to Nancy from Bingen upon the Rhine, perpetually moving day and, night. The French compared the swarming in of Germany to the invasions of the Huns....

'My letters to my grandmother (by the military field post) were not numerous. My first (written from Wissembourg) states that we are much elated at the victory of Wissembourg; while the second is as follows:

'"I write on paper left by the French in the Palace of Justice. They seem to have fled in haste, for... the judges' pen-and-ink portraits of one another still adorn the blotting-paper. This place (Wissembourg) is in much confusion.... When, by straining, and a good deal of pressure upon the members of the old French municipal council, a regiment is housed, in comes another with a demand for food and lodging for six hundred horses and four hundred men; then a Prussian infantry regiment two thousand strong, and so on all night.... We are leaving as members of the Prussian Order of St. John for the Bavarian camp. The whole series of French telegrams up to July 30th are still posted here on the Sous-Préfecture, inside which is confined Baron de Rosen, Colonel of the 2nd Cuirassiers of the French Guard." I go on to say that the "town commandant is an English volunteer and lives in London when at home.... He is a most accomplished man." He was accomplished enough, but he was a lunatic; and there is no more singular episode in the war than the fact that an unauthorized lunatic should have appointed himself to the command of an important depot, and been recognized for at least a week as commandant by all the authorities. The fact was that no regiment was stopping many hours in the town, and that each Colonel, finding a particular person established there, although he may have thought him a curious commandant, never thought of questioning his authority.

'One of my letters appeared in the _Daily News_. It was dated August 15th, and prophesied the complete destruction of the French armies, and it contained a somewhat amusing paragraph:

'"In our march last night we came into a part of the country unoccupied by either army. We were twice driven from villages by the Mayors, who seemed at their wits' end in the mazes of international law. One said to us: 'This town is not Prussian. It is French, and martial law is proclaimed in this part of France. Accordingly I must tell you that you need a French military safe-conduct. If you stop here without it I must arrest you, and send you'--he thought for a while--'to the Prussian Commandant at Sarrebourg.'" At Nancy I saw the Crown Prince, Dr. Russell of the _Times_, Mr. Hilary Skinner of the _Daily News_, and Mr. Landells of the _Illustrated London News_, who afterwards died of rheumatism caused by exposure in the war. Lord Ronald Gower was there on the same day, but was sent away, as his presence with Dr. Russell as a guest was unauthorized.

'Among our adventures, in addition to our arrest near Kreuznach and to our obtaining passes from the maniac commandant, was the adventure of our being lost in the Vosges, and nearly coming to be murdered by some French peasants, who in the night tried to force their way into the village school in which we had barricaded ourselves. Another adventure was our being nearly starved at Pont-à-Mousson, where at last we managed to buy a bit of the King of Prussia's lunch at the kitchen of the inn on the market-place at which it was being cooked in order to be placed in a four-in-hand break. While we were ravenously gorging ourselves upon it, a man burst into the room, and suddenly exclaimed: "Winterbotham!" It was Sir Henry Havelock, who was hiding in the place, being absent without leave from the Horse Guards, where he was, I think, an Assistant Quartermaster-General. He had made friends with the Prussian Military Attaché, to whom Bismarck had lent his maps, and we thus saw them and learnt much. It was on the same day that Bismarck himself was nearly starved. The first part of the story had appeared in print, and I asked him about it when I was staying with him in September, 1889. He told me that he had with him at his lodging the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg and General Sheridan, the American cavalry officer. Bismarck had gone out to forage, and had succeeded in finding five eggs, for which he had paid a dollar each. He then said to himself: "If I take home five, I must give two to the Grand Duke and two to Sheridan, and I shall have but one." "I ate," he said, "two upon the spot and took home three, so that the Grand Duke had one, and Sheridan had one, and there was one for me. Sheridan died: he never knew--but I told the Grand Duke, and he forgave me."'

No turn of fortune any longer seemed possible, and in Sir Charles's mind hatred of the Emperor began to be replaced by sympathy for France.

'Writing on the day of Gravelotte to my grandmother, I said: "I have no notion how I shall get back.... Perhaps I shall come from Paris when we take it, as I suppose we shall do in a week or two." Such was the impression made on me by the rapidity of the early successes of the Germans. My feelings soon changed. Winterbotham continued to be very German, but Herbert and I began to wish to desert when we saw how overbearing success had made the Prussians, and how determined they were to push their successes to a point at which France would have been made impotent in Europe....

'During the week which followed Gravelotte I saw much of Gustav Freytag, the celebrated Prussian writer and politician, who was the guest of the Crown Prince. This "Liberal," who had the bad taste to wear the Legion of Honour in conquered France, was odious in his patriotic exultation.

'Bringing back with me nothing but a couple of soldiers' books from the field of Wörth, and the pen of the Procureur-Impérial of Wissembourg, which still hangs outside my room, I got myself sent to Heidelberg in charge of a train full of wounded French officers of Canrobert's Division, wounded at the Battle of Mars la Tour on August 16th, but not picked up until after Gravelotte on August 18th. It was the first train back; and as there was no signal system, and we had to keep a lookout ahead, it took me two days to reach the German frontier. We halted for the night at Bischweiler, and, passing through Hagenau, were received at the frontier of the Palatinate by a young man who came and spoke to every French officer, and asked after his wounds, introducing himself at each compartment by saluting and saying: "Je suis le duc Othon de Bavière." This pleasant boy was afterwards to show the hereditary madness of his unhappy race. One of my prisoners was a Nancy man, and at this station I managed to find a boy who ran to his house, and brought down his old nurse with wine and food. It was a touching scene of a simple kind, and we were all the gainers by the officer's hospitality.

'From Heidelberg and Karlsruhe, where I was examined as a spy, I made my way by Switzerland and Paris to London. Almost the moment I reached London I saw a telegram in an evening paper announcing Sedan. I started that evening for Paris, accompanying Major Byng Hall, who carried despatches to Lord Lyons. We were the first to bring the news to Calais, where it was not believed, and we were mobbed in the railway-station. Old Byng Hall put his hand on his heart, and assured the crowd upon his honour that, though he was very sorry, it was true.

'On the morning of September 4th, my birthday and that of the French Republic, I was standing in Paris with Labouchere, afterwards the "Besieged Resident," in front of the Grand Hotel upon the Boulevard in an attitude of expectation. We had not long to wait. A battalion of fat National Guards from the centre of Paris, shopkeepers all, marched firmly past, quietly grunting: "L'abdication! L'abdication!" They were soon followed by a battalion from the outskirts marching faster, and gaining on them to the cry of "Pas d'abdication! La déchéance! La déchéance!" It was a sunny cloudless day. The bridge leading to the Corps Législatif was guarded by a double line of mounted Gardes de Paris, but there were few troops to be seen, and were indeed very few in Paris. We stood just in front of the cavalry, who were perhaps partly composed of mounted Gendarmerie of the Seine, only with their undress _képis_ on, instead of the tall bearskins which under the Empire that force wore.... Labouchere kept on making speeches to the crowd in various characters--sometimes as a Marseillais, sometimes as an Alsatian, sometimes as an American, sometimes as an English sympathizer; I in terror all the while lest the same listeners should catch him playing two different parts, and should take us for Prussian spies. We kept watching the faces of the cavalry to see whether they were likely to fire or charge, but at last the men began one by one to sheathe their swords, and to cry "Vive la République!" and the Captain in command at last cried "Vive la République!" too, and withdrew his men, letting the crowd swarm across the bridge. So fell the Second Empire, and I wished that my grandfather had lived to see the day of the doom of the man he hated.

'The crowd marched across the bridge singing the "Marseillaise" in a chorus such as had never been heard before, perhaps, for the throng was enormous. After ten minutes' parley inside the Chamber the leaders returned from it, and chalked up on one of the great columns the names of the representatives of Paris declared to constitute the Provisional Government, and I drew the moral--on a day of revolution always have a bit of chalk. The crowd demanded the addition of Rochefort's name, and it was added. We then parted, one section going off to look for Paul de Cassagnac, [Footnote: M. Paul de Cassagnac was a conspicuous Imperialist.] who was the only man that the crowd wanted to kill.

'I went with the others, first to the statue of Strasbourg, which was decorated with flowers, and to which a sort of worship was paid on account of the gallant defence of the city, Labouchere making another speech, and then on to the Tuileries. A Turco detained us for some time at the gates by dancing in face of the crowd. But at last they insisted on the private gardens being thrown open, and then swept in, and we passed through the whole of the apartments. Privates of the National Guard stationed themselves as sentries in all the rooms, and not a thing was touched, an inscription proclaiming "Death to thieves" being chalked upon every wall. Precautions were necessary, for the police, knowing themselves to be unpopular, had disappeared. Indeed the first proof to me in the early morning of the certainty of a revolution had been that on the boulevards the squads had passed me, relieving themselves in the usual way, but no squads going to take their places. The crowds were orderly, but the eagles, of course, were broken down, and a bit of one from the principal guardroom hangs still on the wall of my London study. The next day I wrote to my grandmother: "I would not have missed yesterday for the world. Louis Blanc and other exiles have come over, but I fear that the great northern line will be cut by Wednesday, and then you will get no more news from me."

'I had dined with Lord Lyons on the previous evening in such a costume as had never till then been seen at dinner at the Embassy, and had listened with him to the bands playing the "Marseillaise" and "Mourir pour la Patrie," and on the morning of the 5th I had seen Louis Blanc. On the 6th I wrote that I feared that my letters would be stopped. In the course of the following days I visited all the forts with Alfred Tresca, of the Arts et Métiers, who had been set by Government, although a civil engineer, to organize the bastion powder-magazines, so I saw the defences well. Alfred Tresca was afterwards arrested while I was in Paris under the Commune, in the first week in April, 1871, for refusing to point out where his powder was.

'I did not believe in food being got in fast enough to enable Paris to hold out long. Knowing as I do that the German cavalry were within 100 miles of Melun for a fortnight before they cut the Lyons line, I consider that to have allowed the French its use was a great error on the part of Germany, an error equal to that of letting Canrobert's army join Bazaine by Frouard Junction without hindrance on August 13th, when we were already in Nancy, only five miles off. Both errors turned out well enough, as the luck of the Germans had it; but I do not believe that anyone now realizes the narrowness of the escape that the Prussians had of being crushed by Gambetta. They undertook too much when, with 210,000 men (at first), they set themselves to besiege Paris, which had in it 500,000 (though of bad material and no discipline), with 300,000 more French upon the Loire. The Germans succeeded, but I believe, with the French, that if Bazaine had held out a fortnight longer they must have failed....

'What was done in thirteen days at Paris was wonderful. It is to Jules Favre and to Gambetta that France owed the exhaustion of the Germans by a siege in 132 days, instead of a collapse in ten days, and it is to them, therefore, that they nearly owed success--success which would have crowned Gambetta a king of men, though he had done no more than what, as it is, he did. I had an interview with Jules Favre [Footnote: Jules Favre was at this time Vice-President of the Provisional Government for National Defence with the Portfolio of Foreign Affairs.] at the Foreign Office one morning at 6 a.m. I also met Blanqui, [Footnote: Blanqui, well known as an agitator and revolutionary writer, was elected to Parliament in 1871 for Montmartre. He was disqualified from membership by various judicial condemnations, but "the Chamber decided to invalidate his election by solemn vote, instead of accepting as his disqualification the recital of the sentences passed on him depriving him of political rights" (_France_, by J. E. C. Bodley, vol. ii., p. 101). Theirs had him arrested and imprisoned.] afterwards too famous, at breakfast at Louis Blanc's restaurant (opposite the old Town Hall), the headquarters of the Reds. Naquet, the hunchback, now known for his divorce law, was also there.

'On one of the last sad days before the commencement of the siege (Vinoy's or) Ducrot's army crossed Paris, and the 30,000 men which formed it marched down the Rue Lafayette, across the Place de l'Opéra, and down the Rue de la Paix towards the south-western heights, where they afterwards ran away on September 19th. I never saw a more depressing sight. I stood all day and through the evening in the rain, comparing these wretched, draggled, weary, dejected men, on the one hand, with the French troops I had seen at Nancy six weeks earlier, and, on the other, with the Prussian Fifth Army Corps I now knew so well. Troops, however, cannot be always judged by the eye alone, for the Bavarians, who fought admirably throughout the war, when I saw them on the march at the beginning of it looked so bad that I expected daily to see the whole 60,000 of their two strong corps eaten up by the single French corps which I knew was just in front of them. This French corps was commanded by de Failly, who had commanded three years earlier a mixed Papal and French force against Garibaldi at Mentone, near Monte Rotondo, and reported: "Les chasse-pôts ont fait merveille."

'The day before I left Paris I saw a sergeant of foot surrounded by a crowd of roughs. He was explaining to them that he was an Alsatian. "I come from down there. They have eaten my cow!" "Ah," cried the witty Paris crowd, "if they had only eaten _Leboeuf!_" The Marshal was looked upon in Paris as the cause of the war in virtue of his influence with the Empress.

The investment of Paris was completed on September 15th, and on the 16th 'I parted from Louis Blanc, who was despondent, and to whom I was able to give no reassuring words, for I had seen the wonderful organization of the Germans. I left by the southern station for Geneva. Thousands of packing-cases encumbered the courts, the luggage abandoned by the women and children flying from Paris. At Villeneuve St. Georges the French marines were drawn up in skirmishing order, and the enemy's cavalry were in sight. Our train was the last but one which passed, but we could, if stopped, have left Paris two days later by the Rouen line, although on the 18th the trains by that last line were fired at. I wrote home that I could not help thinking of one of the plays of Aristophanes, in which a peasant wings his way to heaven on the back of a gigantic dung-beetle in order to remonstrate with God upon the evils which He has inflicted upon man by war, and finds that God is out, and that His place has been taken by a devil, who is pounding all the powers together in a mortar.

'I went to Lyons, where the red flag was flying from the Town Hall, but where the feeling in favour of continuing the war was just as strong as in the districts of the tricolour. I then crossed France to Tours, where I saw M. Crémieux, a Jew, the representative of the Government outside Paris, Gambetta not having yet descended from his balloon....

'I visited the camp of the Army of the Loire, of which the organization was commencing, saw Lord Lyons and Sheffield, his secretary, near Tours, and took despatches for them to Calais by Rouen and Amiens. They included the correspondence of Mme. de Pourtalès and Mme. de Metternich. The railways were in terrible confusion--National Guards moving, people flying before the Prussians, no food. I was three days and three nights on this little bit of road, and slept on tables in waiting-rooms at Vierzon and elsewhere. Passports were strictly demanded at this time on leaving as well as on entering France. When I reached Calais I found that the boat (and even that boat one with no passengers) would leave about 4 a.m., after the arrival of mails by sea. The inspection of my passport could only take place, I was told, when the boat was starting. It was midnight, the gates of the town were shut and drawbridges up, and the hotel at the station had been closed for lack of visitors. Watching my time, I dropped on board the steamer from off the quay, when the coastguardsman's head was turned, and, finding a deck-cabin unlocked, I popped in and bolted the door, going fast asleep, and woke only when we were outside the harbour in the grey light of early morning, which shows that passport regulations can be evaded. All through the war Prussian spies could get into France with ease, without any need of false papers, by visiting the Savoy coast of Lake Leman as Swiss peasants. I was not called upon to show my papers when I passed from the Germans to the French by way of Basle, Ouchy, and Evian.'

Sir Charles here concludes the story of his French adventures of this year by giving his judgment of that moment upon the--

'events which will never be forgotten by those of my time ... the downfall of the most magnificent imposture of any age--the Second Empire....

'As I noted in my diary at the time, "it is possible that the Bonapartists may raise their heads again, though if so, it is more likely to be under Plon-Plon than under the Empress, an impossible woman, whom even her son would have to exile should he come to the throne. But the 'Sphinx' who dominated Europe for so long is fallen, and it seems that my grandfather and dear old Kinglake were right, who always said that he had long ears and was a sorry beast after all. Now Europe thinks so, except the Rothschilds and the _Daily Telegraph_. What will future ages say of the shameful story of the _coup d'état_ of 1851, of the undermining of the honour of every officer in the French Army by promises of promotion for treachery to the nation, of France ruined by the denying of all advancement to those who had not Court favour, of the Morny war in Mexico--of Maximilian, abandoned after having been betrayed, of the splendour of the Guards and of the Imperial stables, of the plundering, of the degradation of justice, of the spying by everybody on everybody else? What a sad farce the whole thing was, but how seriously Europe took it at the time!"'