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Updated: May 15, 2025
My troops and guns around the town would smash yours before they could make a movement; and as to defending Sedan, you have not provisions for eight-and-forty hours, nor ammunition which would suffice for that period. Then, says De Wimpffen, he entered into details respecting our situation, which, 'unfortunately, were too true, and he offered to permit an officer to verify his statements, an offer which the Frenchman did not then accept.
With tearful eyes and a voice broken by sobs, the unhappy and most ill-starred De Wimpffen described his interview and conflict with Von Moltke and Bismarck, and its dire result the army to surrender as prisoners of war, the officers alone to retain their arms, and by way of mitigating the rigor of these conditions, full permission to return home would be given to any officer, provided he would engage in writing and on honor not to serve again during the war.
He left the Sous-Prefecture with the letter in his pocket, but apprehensive he might not succeed in finding de Wimpffen, entirely ignorant as he was of the general's whereabouts on the field of battle. Within the ramparts of Sedan, moreover, the crowd was so dense that he was compelled to walk his horse, which enabled Delaherche to keep him in sight until he reached the Minil gate.
De Wimpffen, we say, paid little heed to the remonstrances of Generals Douay and Ducrot at leaving the northern apex and the north-western front of the defence to be crushed by weight of metal and of numbers. He rode off towards Balan, near which village the former defenders of Bazeilles were making a gallant and partly successful stand, and no reinforcements were sent to the hills on the north.
Wimpffen suggested that it would be more politic of the Germans to show generosity; they would thereby earn the gratitude of France, and this might be made the beginning of a lasting peace; otherwise what had they to look forward to but a long series of wars?
The news of this impending retreat, which must be conducted under the hot fire of the Germans now threatening the line of the Givonne, cut de Wimpffen to the quick.
As early as eight General de Wimpffen had convened another council of war, consisting of more than thirty generals, to whom he related the results that had been reached so far, the hard conditions imposed by the victorious foe, and his own fruitless efforts to secure a mitigation of them. His emotion was such that his hands shook like a leaf, his eyes were suffused with tears.
"One of members observed that there would be a good deal of trouble in raising an armed force of one thousand men." The principal military leaders at Caen and at Lyons, Wimpffen, Precy, Puisaye, are Feuillants and form only a provisional alliance with the Girondists properly so called, Hence constant contentions and reciprocal mistrust. Buchez et Roux, XXVII, 360.
It was a mad attempt, anyway; the desperate effort of a commander who could not bring himself to acknowledge that he was defeated. And it ended by General de Wimpffen finding himself and General Lebrun alone together on the Bazeilles road, which they had to make up their mind to abandon to the enemy, for good and all.
A terrible silence fell on the room; Moltke, with Bismarck by his side, stood cold and impenetrable, facing the three French officers; their faces were lighted by two candles on the table; behind stood the stalwart forms of the German officers of the staff, and from the walls of the room looked down the picture of Napoleon I. Then again Bismarck interfered; he begged Wimpffen not in a moment of pique to take a step which must have such horrible consequences; he whispered a few words to Moltke, and procured from him a concession; hostilities should not be renewed till nine o'clock the next morning.
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