GENERAL TROCHE'.
IF we could thoroughly understand the failure of General 1 Trochu, we should understand the cause of the failure of France, which as yet no one yet quite professes to do. Some- thing is wanting among Frenchmen, something as yet undefin- able, and General Trochn, dealing with a representative crowd of Frenchmen, with the population of Paris, with an army recruited from all the Provinces, and with Mobiles from all the Northern Departments, has failed to supply that deficiency. To say why he has failed is to state what that deficiency is,— the most important and least soluble of the hundred problems raised by the war. The one thing certain is that the want is not of the kind which Englishmen are in the habit of believ- ing. General Trochu possessed in full measure all the qualities in which they are in the habit of placing confidence. He was no untried man, such as they believe Gambetta to be, confident in his own brains and his own principles, full of Republican vehemence, and tainted by the Southern tendency to gasconade; but a strong cool soldier, who had proved not only in literature, but in actual war, war against Austrians, that he has thoroughly mastered the art as well as the scientific theory of his pro- fession. No one in England would have hesitated to give command to a General of his antecedents, and no one in England doubted that he was precisely the man to organize the fluid enthusiasm for independence and free government which had raised him to power. He was believed then to have the knowledge, the decision, and the ability required for his great task, and now that he has failed, no one seriously doubts that he had them all. There may, of course, be evidence to be produced after the siege; but certainly not one scrap has been forthcoming during its progress to change the original high estimate of his character as a cool, patient Breton gentleman, able to organize, able to keep order, able to lead soldiers to battle, a man exter- nally as like a cultivated English officer of the scientific branches as a French general could be. His personal courage has been conspicuous throughout the siege, has, in fact, sug- gested a popular taunt that he wanted death to escape from his position. His patience has been demonstrated by his whole action, by his steadfast adherence to his "plan," which, it now seems clear, was to make Paris impregnable, and then aid the provinces in a rash upon the besiegers. His magnani- mity shone out clearly after the October e'rneute, when he refused, very weakly, as many Englishmen thought, to execute any Reds. He doubtless reflected in his cool judicious way that his business was to defend Paris, not to make defence hopeless by inaugurat- ing civil war, but his abstinence from bloodshed on that occasion showed a nature very far removed either from cruelty or from despotism. Of his ability to organize, in the ordinary sense of organizing, no proof is needed beyond the proof that his organization exists. In a city closely invested he has created an artillery, an army, and a system of transport,—a feat which, under the conditions, is probably one of the greatest ever performed by an administrator. He so prepared his supplies that the second capital of Europe has lived on for four months without an ounce of bread from without, and so organized its distribution that, with wages at an end, there has not been a bread riot. The German engineers are alarmed by his works; the German correspondents testify to the power of his artil- lery ; the German precautions show how real they deem his army. He is said to have fed the populace with illusions, but the charge lacks evidence of any kind. That he has held back unfavourable news for a time may be true, but every General claims the right to choose his own moment for announcing depressing facts to his soldiers, who may be at the moment of receipt preparing for an engagement. He has repeatedly published inaccurate news, but he published it as he received it, and had not the slightest means of distinguishing whether confusion existed between hopes and accomplished facts. His own proclamations have been penetrated by a tone of sadness as well as of truthfulness of the most depressing kind. The very foible of which his enemies accuse him, a tendency to proclamations, has arisen from an anxious desire to explain the facts to the people who so sorely needed guidance, He may have some literary vanity, but when required to take power, he took it; when required to yield it, he yielded it; no one even in jealous, quick-witted Paris has suspected him of personal ambition, of intrigues, or of political predilection. An Orleanist by habit, he frankly accepted the Republic, and throughout his command of the Army was heartily loyal to his adopted flag, and to colleagues whose Republicanism had been tested when to be a Republican was to be an outlaw. We declare that excepting Washington we do not know a career in history which more completely reveals the chivalric, high-minded, single-eyed soldier of duty, while of his competence let these judge who for months on months have sighed in vain for the surrender of Paris. Nevertheless, he has failed, and the point is the reason for that failure, for the method of failure is intaffigible enough. That he lacked the power to inspire either Generals or soldiers with sufficiently tenacious audacity is self-evident, for, as the Quar- terly Review shews, Ducrot might have won, indeed did win upon the Marne, and in sortie aftersortie the men have either succeeded uselessly, or have shrunk from the hard persistent fighting they would have endured if they had had confidence in their leader. But the absence of power to supply a particular necessary is no explanation of the failure of a strong character which natur- ally would have supplied it, and the Times' theory, that General Trochu lacked nothing but genius, is to the last degree vague. He has genius,—f or organization, but he has not the genius which can make of crude materials an army that will win victories. Some element in his character is lacking, and we incline to believe that that element is hopeful- ness, and that hopefulness is the stimulus which the French character requires, as other nations require the sense of duty or religious devotion. All observers who have recently traversed France assert this about the entire nation, and it may very well be true also about the Army of Paris. One victory, it is said, would turn all Frenchmen into soldiers. The Pall Mall Gazette, in a singularly thoughtful article, argued that the French character, its necessity for hoping, was the best excuse for the issue of vapouriug bulletins; but the writer overlooked, we think, another side of the French cha- racter,—its habit of realistic criticism. It is excited even by rumour of victory, but retains an underlying doubt. Napoleon wrote bombastic bulletins, but in the middle of them were the truths,—the cannons taken, the men killed, the cities captured; and his men, supplied with their one want, shoeless, foodless, but confident, rushed forward over the world. A man to lead them must either win, or himself be of the character which imparts hope; and Trochu could not impart it, for he had it not, had none of that effluent confidence and. belief in the ran of events which its owner can pour like wine into the souls of other men. He was a pessi- mist, a man who expected circumstances to be unfavourable, who was for himself rather braced by the expectation, but who necessarily diminished the power of others of a different type. It is alleged that he feared, or rather dis- trusted the Reds, and frequently avoided energetic action lest Belleville should take advantage of his movement. That, if a weakness, is one quite in accordance with his character. Only the sanguine, only those who can dream 'Utopian dreams sincerely trust the Socialists, and not trusting them, it is likely that their existence, would act as a cause of perpetual depression. At all events, this depression is, we believe, the cause of Trochu's failure. _ He could reason out the circumstances of the siege, but could see 'no reason why he should, unaided, defeat the besiegers; and ,the possibility of victory against reason never entered his mind, while he was not of the temperament which without reason could sacrifice 50,000 lives upon a mere experiment. _ Gambetta is probably Trochu's inferior in all matters. of detailed organization, and had he been Dictator in Paris he might have failed to make it what it is, the best fortified camp that ever existed in the world; but had Ga.mbetta been inside Paris, the siege would have been raised, or victors and vanquished would have been "in one red burial blent." It was just the difference which would exist between the man by nature Orleanist and the man by nature Republican, the difference between the cold and the burning imagination; and it is because we see that the latter so rouses Frenchmen, that we believe Republicanism is of the two the fitter instrument to bring out what there is in France.
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