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The battle of Sedan was fought on Thursday, September 1; but it was only on Saturday, September 3, that Palikao shadowed forth the disaster in the Chamber, stating that MacMahon had failed to effect a junction with Bazaine, and that, after alternate reverses and successes that is, driving a part of the German army into the Meuse! he had been obliged to retreat on Sedan and Mezieres, some portion of his forces, moreover, having been compelled to cross the Belgian frontier.
He was in command of the fourth army corps at Lyons when summoned by the empress-regent to take up the reins of government; but in the course of the unvaried succession of misfortunes which made up the history of the French arms during the month of August, the public statements of Palikao proved as unreliable as those of his predecessor.
To-day we have two pieces of news that M. Thiers entered Paris yesterday, and that Metz has fallen. The Journal des Débats also publishes copious extracts from a file of provincial papers up to the 26th, which it has obtained. I hear that M. Thiers advises peace on any terms. The Government of Paris is in a difficult position. It has followed in the course of Palikao.
On the road lies Tchang-kia-wang, the scene of the treacherous outrage in 1858 on the French and English bearers of truce; and almost at the gates of Pekin, the great town of Tung-tcheou and the famous bridge of Palikao, where, on the 21st of September, 1860, the Anglo-French army defeated 25,000 Tartar horsemen.
The last message of Count Palikao to the Chambers had been one of defiance to the enemy; and the Parisian deputies, nearly all of them Republicans, who formed the Government of National Defence, scouted all faint-hearted proposals.
In fact, MacMahon had undertaken a task of terrible difficulty. On taking over the command at Châlons, where Napoleon III. arrived from Metz on the 16th, he found hopeless disorder not only among his own beaten troops, but among many of the newcomers; the worst were the Garde Mobile, many regiments of whom greeted the Emperor with shouts of À Paris. To meet the Germans in the open plains of Champagne with forces so incoherent and dispirited was sheer madness; and a council of war on the 17th came to the conclusion to fall back on the capital and operate within its outer forts a step which might enable the army to regain confidence, repress any rising in the capital, and perhaps inflict checks on the Germans, until the provinces rose en masse against the invaders. But at this very time the Empress-Regent and the Palikao Ministry at Paris came to an exactly contrary decision, on the ground that the return of the Emperor with MacMahon's army would look like personal cowardice and a mean desertion of Bazaine at Metz. The Empress was for fighting
Starting with these premises she insisted with the utmost urgency that the army should advance, at every risk, whatever might be the cost of human life, and effect a junction with the army of Metz, in which course she was supported moreover by General de Palikao, the Minister of War, who had a plan of his own for reaching Bazaine by a rapid and victorious march.
Among the portraits she has exhibited at the Paris Salon are those of Marshal Canrobert, General d'Aurelle de Paladines, General de Palikao, Count de Chambrun, M. Dufaure, and many others, both ladies and gentlemen. Her portrait of Thiers in 1872 was greatly admired. Paul d'Abrest wrote of Mlle.
Ducrot at once yielded to the ministerial ukase; the Emperor sought to intervene in favour of Ducrot, only to be waved aside by the confident de Wimpffen; and thus the long conflict between MacMahon and the Palikao Ministry ended in victory for the latter and disaster for France .
But Palikao telegraphed to Napoleon: "If you abandon Bazaine there will be Revolution in Paris, and you yourself will be attacked by all the enemy's forces. Paris will defend herself from all assault from outside. The fortifications are completed."
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