THE DEFENCE OF FRANCE.
THE public has become so accustomed to the "melodramatic catastrophes," which Mr. Disraeli said would never occur again, that it is apt to miss the meaning of movements such as those which have marked the last three weeks of this cam- paign. They are movements of the old kind, which English- men, never having seen war of the old kind, have very nearly forgotten. The French are waging a popular war with popular armies, that is, armies not yet, quite coherent enough to win victories in the open ; and of course, the German armies, which are coherent, pass through them like locomotives through an inundation. As long as the rails hold and the fires are alight the engines always seem to be making progress, but their advance does not hinder in the least the rising of the flood, which at some one moment will be above the furnaces. After eighteen days of battle, more or less continuous, the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg has shunted Chanzy off on to Le Mans, and the daily journals think him quite victorious, but what good does his " victory "
do him ? He is a great many good soldiers the weaker, the fluid regiments which gave way before him have reunited, a great depot of recruits has been reached, and there stands Chanzy again with more than 150,000 men, in some distress for shoes, but with rifles and artillery sufficient, plenty of food, some days to rest in, and an experience of battle worth everything,—experience showing them that defeat does not necessarily mean collapse. .France has lost a good many good. soldiers, and a lot of miscellaneous ragamuffins, who for various reasons prefer imprison- ment to exertion, and who may as well be taken pri- soners as hanged ; but there is the Army, just as for- midable as ever it was, and no whit further from Paris. In the South centre, again, Bourbaki, at the head of his "totally defeated" corps, numbering 25,000 men, has apparently gone Eastward in such force that General Werder has evacuated Dijon and Gray, and either retreated or more probably advanced Northward, to see what his entirely vanquished opponent may, —in defiance of all the decencies which Frenchmen are bound to observe, but Prussians are shot for observing,—be about to do. Of course, if the campaign goes on in its regular way, Wer- der will move where he likes, and defeat Bourbaki twice a day, and be highly commended in telegrams to Queen Augusta, and then,—why, then, Bourbaki will be just where he was, with just as many men of a rather better kind, and requiring even more watchfulness than ever. It is like the perennial fight between the policeman and the street boys ; he is never beaten, but he never ends the game, and if left to himself would Inevitably lose it at last. Manteuffel, in the North again, was " victorious " at Noyelles, at least they say so at Versailles ; but what has he got by his " victory " ? He has just got out of his proper place, and that is all. General Failherbe chal- lenged him outside Amiens, and Manteuffel was com-
pelled to accept the challenge, and attack. Faidherbe, strongly posted on the hills, received the attack for two days, repulsed the attack—so the Englishmen in the German Army admit—and then, knowing that if he descended into the plain his raw troops would be beaten, went back again home to his circle of fortified towns, with Lille for citadel. If Manteuffel attacks him there, he will be occupied for months ; if he goes back, he will have had a week's marching, fighting, and losses, all for nothing. Whit have the French lost ? A very few men killed, a few more wounded but curable, and a good many prisoners for the Prussians to feed. Perhaps they will starve them ? Possibly, but if they do, next time their opponents will fight like men with ropes round their necks, which will be .no advantage to King William, but the contrary. Ter- rorism does not pay as against an enemy who can give three men for one, and who obeys a Republic, that is, a Government
indestructible by slaughter or assassination. All that is lost is time, and time, though fatally important to Pans, is not important to France. Suppose Paris, which can hold out till March, to fall somehow next week, what would be the position ? There would be Trochu with 100,000 men inside Valerien, and the camp below it, and all the rest of France making Chalons their "object," thus compelling the Germans to fight their way step by step back to their own territory. Presumably they would get there, the waters giving way to the locomotive ; but no peace would have been made, and all France changed into one vast camp, with the Army the only career, would be left free to reorganize itself, and secure by another year of warfare a peace tolerably just, or, at all events, a peace on some other basis than dis- memberment. Even if the locomotive gets to its terminus, it cannot stop there ; but must go back again, and there will be the waters out as widely as ever. Everybody is calculating on peace ; but nothing would surprise us less than to find the war going on at Christmas, ]871, the central object of the picture being the French siege of Metz.
We have said nothing of events in Paris, because there is nothing to say of them. The patient Breton marched out on the 21st, in accordance, most likely, with some plan which had failed, waited three days and marched back again, the cold trying his men too much. What a defeat I say the journals, as they said when "that unenterprising Indian," Wellesley, would keep dodging in and out of the lines of Tones Vedras. Mont Avron, too, has been "bombarded," or even "taken," according to German telegrams ; but what difference does that event, if true, make to the siege ? The forts are no nearer capture, Chanzy no further off, Trochu slightly more advanced with those works under Mont Valerien, which he is certainly not putting up for his own amusement. He has lost nothing except time, and judging from his history, his acts, and his character, it is perhaps barely possible that he understands the value of time nearly as well as his critics. Of course, being a French- man, he is in the wrong somehow, but still we venture to suggest the possibility that he may be wrong on system. That system may, we believe, be expressed in the phrase of the Dutchmen who two hundred years ago fought for their free- dom as the French now fight,—" Patience, and let the waters rise."
Previous page
