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To make matters worse, we received in the evening intelligence that the Germans had driven Carre de Bellemare's men out of Le Bourget after some brief but desperate fighting. Trochu declared that he had no need of the Bourget position, that it had never entered into his scheme of defence, and that Bellemare had been unduly zealous in attacking and taking it from the Germans.
General Trochu has issued an appeal to the city to be calm, and not to believe that differences of opinion exist among the members of the Government. General Clément Thomas has issued an address to the National Guards, telling them that the country is going to demand great sacrifices of them. In fact, after the manner of the Gauls, everybody is addressing everybody.
Then General Trochu asked for an armistice of two days to bury the dead; but his real object was that Jules Favre might enter the Prussian lines and endeavor to negotiate. Before this took place, however, Trochu himself resigned his post as military governor. He had sworn that under him Paris should never capitulate. General Vinoy took his command.
The increasing fury of the bombardment is a proof of their despair." "In that case," whispered Savarin to De Breze, "suppose we send a flag of truce to Versailles with a message from Trochu that, on disgorging their conquests, ceding the left bank of the Rhine, and paying the expenses of the war, Paris, ever magnanimous to the vanquished; will allow the Prussians to retire." "The Prussians!
General Trochu announced this morning that 100 battalions of the National Guards are outside the walls, and I shall be curious to learn how they conduct themselves under fire. Far be it from me to say that they will not fight like lions. If they do, however, it will surprise most of the military men with whom I have spoken on the subject.
At one moment he offered to consider their plans not to comply with them; at another he wished to wait for decisive news from Trochu and Ducrot. In this engagement the French, whose forces ought to have been more concentrated, lost 4000 men in killed and wounded, and 1800 who were taken prisoners; the German loss not exceeding 1000 men.
In this respect the troops of the line are not much better. The Prussian tactics, indeed, have revolutionized the whole system of warfare, and the French, until they have learnt them, will always go to the wall. Every day that this siege lasts, convinces me more and more that General Trochu is not the right man in the right place.
Well may General Trochu look up to the sky when it is overcast, and wish that he were in Brittany shooting woodcocks. He has undertaken a task beyond his own strength, and beyond the strength of the greatest general that ever lived. How can the Parisians expect to force the Prussians to raise the siege?
As I shall have occasion in these pages to mention a good many members of the self-constituted Government which succeeded the Empire, it may be as well for me to set down here their names and the offices they held. I have already mentioned that Trochu was President, and Jules Favre Vice-President, of the new administration.
In the carrying out of this plan, neither Trochu nor Gambetta was wanting in the requisite energy and circumspection. The former organized sallies from time to time, in order to reconnoiter and discover whether the army of relief was on its way from the provinces; the latter exerted all his powers to bring the Loire army up to the Seine.
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