BOOKS.
THE FRENCH WAR IN THE DEPARTMENTS.* [FIRST NOTICE.] THESE two works furnish semi-official accounts of the administra- tion and conduct of the war in France after the capitulation of Sedan.
How the French nation bore up against the disasters in which the "sun of Austerlitz" went down, how Paris hold out, and the departments improvised army after army, and stood out in stead- fast battle for five months, will long remain an interesting subject of study. To many of the world of lookers-on the task appeared to be hopeless, and there were not wanting those who, while they admired the resistance, foresaw that the stupendous effort must end in defeat ; but oven both these categories were astonished at the vigour which showed itself at Tours and on the banks of the Loire. The whole regular army being captured, the nation was left, it is true, stunned, amazed, enraged, but a nation almost wholly unprovicled for the desperate enterprise which was the immediate legacy of the fatal Empire. The Revolution of the 4th of September—a revolution loudly condemned, yet always foreseen as the inevitable consequence of imperial defeat, come when it might—gave the country new leaders of the passionate and impetuous sort, who still preserved some of the fire of 1792, and who were saturated with a belief in the invincibility of a national rising. But there were two things wanting, two things essential to the successes of the First Revolution ; one was the elakelees fury which animated the emancipated warriors of the eighteenth cen- tury, the other was the lumbering armies to which they were op- posed. Perhaps we might add a third thing, that first success which
gilded the battle smoke of Vainly. Instead of Brunswick and Conde and the Duke of York, instead of composite or separate and jealous armies, the French of 1870 were opposed to a You Moltke and a Red Prince and a homogeneous army composed of classes not often seen in the field, and directed by a single will. That General Trochu, cognizant of the kind of force France would have to encounter, cognizant also of the weak- ness of troops hastily patched up, should take desponding views is not surprising ; that Gionhetta, on the other hand, familiar only with history and legend, and not with the facts of hard experience, should be audacious, resolute, sanguine, was equally natural. His sole chance of success lay in his comparative ignorance, in his unbounded confidence, in a tameless energy which never succumbed ; but the truth is none the less plain that, from the 4th September, unless the Germans committed fault after fault, the levies of Gambetta must go down before the trained soldiers of Germany ; that they could live only so long as Paris had rations, but that after Paris full, the armies in the field would no longer exist, at least in the field. How there came to be armies in the field ; how they were organized, clothed, armed, fed ; how, with infinite pains, artillery and munitions were obtained, M. Charles de Freycinet, delegate of the Minister of War, has told us in his instructive book entitled La Guerre en Province. The work ranges over a wider field and deals with the conduct of the war ; but, reserving the latter sub- ject until we take up Chanzy's book, La Deuxieme Armee de la Loire, we will sketch the conditions under which these armies came into being, and the methods by which their existence was maintained.
M. de Freycinet draws a gloomy picture of French resources in the first mouth after Sedan. The primary idea was that Paris should absorb what remained of the public force, and it was carried out, for Paris kept the remaining regulars, called up an immense body of departmental Gerdes Mobiles and some thousands of marines, and retained the cadres of officers, the materiel, and the munitions,.—M, de Freycinet says all that remained, but the state- ment is an exaggeration. Outside Paris, a few days before the investment was completed, there were at Tours three members of the new Government whose business it was to create an army of relief,—out of chaos. "Not a single regiment of infantry or cavalry existed ; there were, it is true, men in large numbers in the depots, but without any organization. The artillery was' nowhere ;' in all
• La alarm en Province pougami le Siege de Parts. Par Charlos de FroysLuot, melon ildIdgud tiu 1414354re Ca la, Quern lr Tours a it Rorelosux. Paris, It La bezzalime Arcade de to Loire. Par Is Cit6ndral Ohanzy. Douai= edition. Paris 197L
France there were:but six pieces ready to take the field ; all the rest stood in need of horses, of men, and many of gun-carriages." Here was not much to begin with. Soldiers were brought from Africa, and about 30,000 men collected under General de Lamotterouge—the first army of the Loire—a body in the Vosges, and another in the west, but none of much consistency. The Tours delegation did not pull together, and for some days there was no Minister for War. Affairs were in this disjointed state when M. Gambetta dropped down in his balloon, reached Tours, and issued his famous proclamation. lie acted on instructions received from and orders issued by " the Government of the Republic," and assuming the duties of Home and War Minister, he infused an instant and fiery spirit of activity into the work of preparation. On the 10th of October, when he set his hand to the work, the situation, according to our author, was this : Paris was completely invested ; Bazaine was " preparing " to capitulate ; the Loire Army, 25,000 men, beaten at Arthenay and soon afterwards at Orleans, was falling back into the heart of La Sologue ; on the east, Cambriels, with an exhausted force, had sought shelter in Besancon ; the 30,000 Mobiles in the West, badly equipped and armed, without cavalry or artillery, formed a feeble line between Chartres and Evreux ; in the Nord nothing but garrisons. The total force afoot every- where was 40,000 regular troops, as many Mobiles, 6,000 horse- men, and 100 guns iu had condition and much worn. The admi- nistrative services were so scantily supplied that one man filled many offices; there were three heads of departments to do the work of nine, and the employds were in like proportion. Even in January, 1871, the Provincial Government had only a fourth of the personnel employed at Paris in time of peace I They had no records, no army list, no maps—not even a common road map—all had to be created anew. It must be admitted that few mon ever entered on so groat a task with such impoverished means.
The men who assembled at Tours in October, when once under the influence of M. Gambetta, set to work with a will. They framed administrative officers out of such men as they could get, volunteers coming forward, whose ability did not equal their patriotism. The principal resource was the railway officials and engineers. Some of these, even engineers-in-chief, superintended the copying of letters ! Thus by degrees the various business departments were organized, and the pressing needs of the Govern- ment were applied by the exercise of ingenuity, in which Frenchmen are rarely defective. The want of maps was an hourly grievance. Requisitions were sent to the departmental authorities, but only incomplete and imperfect copies came slowly in. At length M. Jusselain, an officer of Marines, proposed to reproduce by photo- graphy the maps of the tat-major, and although discouraged by the Colonel at head-quarters, he persisted, and obtaining the assist- ance of a railway engineer, succeeded. He submitted proofs of his photographs and autographs to the Colonel who had snubbed him, and elicited his approval, with the remark that he had no money to pay for them. " Thus," says Jusselain, " six weeks after Sedan, generals of divisions had no maps, and France was the theatre of war 1" Not to be baulked, Jusselain obtained a letter to Freycinet, who instantly ordered that the maps should be made and paid for afterwards. The energetic marine revised the old staff map, and furnished the army with 15,025 maps in four months. It is a characteristic fact that in his work of revision he was obliged to use German maps of France. Another difficulty was a lack of percussion-caps. Only one man in France, outside Paris, knew how to make them, and when he had set up a factory at Bourges the proximity of the enemy obliged him to remove to Toulouse. The Government were reduced to begging the Paris authorities to send caps in a balloon. Here again, calling in the chemists, and setting up factories in various towns, energy and ingenuity prevailed, the scientific men actually improved theprocoss, and the establishments at length turned out 2,000,000 caps per diem. In like manner, while cannon and small arms had to be purchased i " n the markets of the world," and were purchased of all sorts
and sizes, the cartridges for the chassepOt had to be manufactured. On the 10th of October there was in hand only a stock that would last ten days. Suitable paper was not to be had, the store and the workmen were in Paris. But an old student of the Polytechnic and a great papermaker were found, and these two rapidly solved the difficulty, and ended by making a million cartridges a day. Early in its career the Tours Administration organized a " service des reconuaiseances " or establishment of spies on a large scale. Special agents, always on the move, sometimes within the euomy'e lines, mayors, telegraphic employes, forest watchmen, and men employed on the roads seat information to a central elite. One agent lived for two months at the head-quarters of a Prussian general, and furnished minute reports ; another purloined from an officer on the staff of Von Moltke a plan of the works of investment around Paris. As to the raising of men, General de Loverdo, head of this department, organized in less than four months, and sent before the enemy, no fewer than 600,00Cs men, or two regiments per diem I It is worth remarking that out of these 230,000 were troops of the line. On the 3rd of February, 1871, the Gambetta Administration left in the field, exclusive of Bourbaki's army, forced into Switzerland, no fewer than 534,452 men in line, 354,000 men in camps, depots, and Algeria, 1,232 field-guns, and 228 guns belonging to the departmental artillery,— a new creation altogether. They organized a large railway trans- port service, including flying magazines in waggons on the metals, nearly 5,000 being so employed ; they created a staff of civil engineers attached to each corps darnae ; and they furnished clothing and food to the myriads under arms. Not the least difficulty was presented by the lack of officers, and the mode of overcoming it adopted has given rise to much discon- tent. First, the effective force of each company was doubled, but M. de Freycinet says this weakened the quality of the troops. Next, the corps commanders were told to promote sous-officiers and even privates, and those chosen rose rapidly in rank. The ordinary rules were suspended " during the war," in order to remove all obstacles in the way of promotion. But unless granted for special service, the promotions held good only until the peace. Finally, following the example of the United States, an auxiliary army was created, wherein all ranks existed solely " for the war," and no longer. This measure brought in numbers of efficient men of all parties and professions, and was a good example of the energy and resource imported by Gambetta into the management of the cause to which he was devoted.
This succinct summary will give some idea of the arduous labours of the Tours Government. It may well be doubted, when the retrospect is carefully surveyed, whether any body of men, in the face of a very powerful and triumphant enemy, could have done more. The results, so far as the heaping-up of men, the wholesale purchases of arms, the improvizing of military factories, the making good the tremendous losses due to imperial failure, redound to the honour of the men who produced those results, and afford an example to other nations deprived of normal re- sources, and compelled to front national peril, or accept, without further blows, national humiliation. The military half of the problem raises different questions.
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