The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1

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He adds a reference to his own Bill "for utilizing public and quasi-
public lands under public management, with repeal of the Statute of
Mortmain and forbidding of alienation."

This Bill was introduced by him in the early seventies, but obtained
no support till 1875 (see Chapter XIII., p. 192).]

Within the previous twenty-five years over six hundred thousand acres of
common land had been enclosed, under Orders sanctioned by Parliament. Of
this vast amount only four thousand had been set apart for public
purposes. In 1866 the commons near London were threatened, and a Society
for their preservation was formed, in which Mr. Shaw Lefevre was the
moving spirit. [Footnote: Now Lord Eversley.] Sir Charles became in 1870
Chairman of the Society. Among the latest of his papers is a note from
Lord Eversley accompanying an early copy of the new edition of his
_Commons and Forests_ "which I hope will remind you of old times and of
your own great services to the cause." 'We saved Wisley Common and Epping
Forest,' says the Memoir. It was more important that on April 9th, 1869,
the annual Enclosure Bill was referred to a Select Committee,
notwithstanding the determined opposition of the Government. The date is
memorable in the history of the question, for the Committee recommended
that all further enclosures should be suspended until the general Act had
been amended, as it was in 1876.

About the same time Sir Charles became publicly committed to another
cause, barren of political advantage, into which he put, first and last,
as much labour as might have filled the whole of a creditable career. He
began to take an active part in connection with the Aborigines Protection
Society and presided at its Annual Meeting in 1870. This, says the Memoir
laconically, 'threw on me lifelong duties.'

II.

The Franco-German War broke upon Europe in July, 1870. Later, it became
one of the chief interests of Sir Charles's mind to track out the workings
of those few men who prepared what seemed a sudden outburst; here it is
important only to outline his attitude towards the combatants. In that
period of European history every politician was of necessity attracted or
repelled by the personality of the Emperor of the French. In Sir Charles's
case there was no wavering between like and dislike: he carried on his
grandfather's detestation of the lesser Napoleon. The chapter in _Greater
Britain_ which is devoted to Egypt shows this feeling; and when news of
Sadowa reached him during his American journey in the autumn of 1866, he
wrote home to say that he rejoiced in Prussia's triumph, and hoped "Louis
Napoleon would quarrel with the Germans over it, and get well thrashed,
with the result that German unity might be brought about."

'This' (he notes in the Memoir) 'is somewhat curious at a time when
everybody believed (except myself and Moltke and Bismarck, not
including, I think, the King of Prussia) that the French Army was
superior to the armies of all Germany.'

In coming down the Mexican coast he touched at Acapulco, which was under
Mexican fire, as the French still held the bay and city; and he had then,
later in 1866, 'begun to hope for the fall of Louis Napoleon, who was
piling up debt for France at the average rate of ten millions sterling
every year, and whose prestige was vanishing fast in the glare of the
publicity given to the actions of Bazaine.'

Before Sir Charles returned to Europe in 1867, Maximilian, the Austrian
Archduke sent by Napoleon III to be 'Emperor of Mexico,' had fallen, an
unlucky victim of French intrigue. But Paris was still the centre of
Europe; and the traveller on his way home from Egypt--where he had seen
French enterprise opening the Suez Canal, French language and influence
dominant--saw Louis Napoleon preside at a pageant, already darkened by the
rising storm-cloud:

'Reaching Paris' (in June, 1867), 'I attended the review held (during
the Exhibition of 1867) by the Emperors of Russia and of the French,
and the King of Prussia, at which I saw Gortschakof, Schouvalof,
Bismarck, and Moltke, on the day on which the Pole Berezowski shot at
Alexander II. Sixty thousand men marched past the three Sovereigns at
the very spot at which, three years later, one of them was, to review
a larger German force. The crash was near; Maximilian had been shot.
It is, however, not pleasant to contrast the horror with which the
news of the execution of the puppet Emperor was received in Europe,
with the indifference with which all but a handful of Radicals had
regarded the Paris executions of December, 1851.'

'In October, 1867, three months later, I again visited Paris, with my
father, and made the acquaintance of the Queen of Holland, the Queen
of Sheba to Louis Napoleon's Solomon in his glory. The Emperor of
Austria, the King of Bavaria, and Beust were also in Paris on business
which boded no good to Bismarck, and the populace were amusing
themselves in crying "Vive Garibaldi!" to the Austrian Emperor, as
three or four months earlier they had cried "Vive la Pologne!" to the
Tsar. At a banquet to the Foreign Commission to the Exhibition, at
which I dined, I heard Rouher make his famous speech, "L'Italie n'aura
jamais Rome," which he afterwards in December repeated in the Corps
Legislatif--"L'Italie ne s'emparera pas de Rome--jamais" (shouts of
"Jamais!" from the Right): "Jamais la France ne supportera cette
violence faite a son honneur et a la catholicite." When I heard the
word "jamais," I believed I should live to see Italy at Rome, but
hardly so soon.'

His governing dislike of France's rulers had reflected itself in that part
of his first address to the electors of Chelsea which laid down his views
on foreign affairs. "Our true alliance," he had told them, "is not with
the Latin peoples, but with men who speak our tongue, with our brothers in
America, and with our kinsmen in Germany and Scandinavia." This
prepossession, notable in one who came afterwards to be regarded as the
closest friend of France among English politicians, shaped his action when
the crash came. It tempted him to the German side, but contact with
Prussian militarism showed where his real sympathies lay.

War was declared on Tuesday, July 19th. On the following Saturday morning
Sir Charles left London for Paris: left Paris for Strasbourg the same
evening: visited Metz on the Monday, and saw the Imperial Guard at Nancy.
Within four days from the time of leaving he was back in London, and busy
with preparations. He had decided to attach himself to the ambulances of
the Crown Prince of Prussia's army, and in this expedition two other
members of Parliament joined him:

'Auberon Herbert (physically brave, and politically the bravest,
though not politically the strongest, man of our times) and
Winterbotham, afterwards Under-Secretary of State for the Home
Department, and a man of eloquence, whose early death is still
deplored by those who knew him. We took letters from Count von
Bernstorff, the Prussian Ambassador, and following up the German
armies through the Bavarian Palatinate, a journey during which we were
arrested and marched to Kaiserslautern to the King's headquarters by
Bavarian gendarmes, as French spies, we were enrolled under the
Prussian Knights of St. John at Sulz by Count Goertz, and received
billets from that time, although we used to pay for all we had at
every place. At Wissembourg and at Sulz we were sent to the inn, and
at Luneville I was planted on an ironmonger, but we were divided. At
Nancy only, being fixed on a legitimist Baron, I was not allowed to
pay for what I had, but I was put with him by his wish, by his friend
the Mayor, as he would not have real Prussians. He made things so
unpleasant for my companion, Count Bothmer--though, unlike his
brother, the Count was a non-combatant--that this Knight of St. John
had to go elsewhere. Auberon and Winterbotham were also put elsewhere
at Nancy. At Sarrebourg and Pont-a-Mousson I forget with whom we were,
but we were together and were nearly starved.

'We marched with the Poseners, or Fifth Army Corps, through
Froeschwilier and Reichshoffen; went off the road to Saverne to
witness the bombardment of Phalsbourg; joined again at Sarrebourg;
marched by Luneville, and from Nancy were sent to Pont-a-Mousson
during the battles before Metz.

'The first thing that struck us much during this portion of the war
was that the grandest of the early victories in this so-called war of
races, the Battle of Worth, was won and lost in the centre of the
position by pure Poles and native Algerians. Poseners were arrayed
against Turcos, and both fought well, while hardly a German or a
Frenchman was in sight. On the field of Worth I noted that the
Poseners had all many cartridges as well as their Polish hymn-books
with them, but the Turcos were as short of cartridges as of hymn-
books. Wanting a French cartridge, I was unable to find one in the
pouches of the dead, while of German cartridges I had at once as many
dozens as I pleased. I fancy, however, that it would not be safe to
conclude, from the fact that the French had fired away their
ammunition, that they fired carelessly because too fast; for the
Germans, vastly outnumbering the French (who ought not to have fought
a battle, but rather should have fallen back), had probably opposed at
different portions of the day different corps to the same French
regiments, who had not been relieved. After this battle all was lost
to the French cause. The scattered French spread terror where they
went, and while the railway might have been wholly destroyed by the
simple plan of blowing up some tunnels, only bridges were blown up,
which in the course of a few days were, of course, replaced even where
they were not in a few hours easily repaired....

'I was glad to have seen the beginning of the invasion. At no other
time could I have gained a real knowledge of that which every
politician ought to know--the working of the transport system of a
modern army. We were the smaller of the two invading forces, yet we
needed a stream of carts the whole way to Nancy from Bingen upon the
Rhine, perpetually moving day and, night. The French compared the
swarming in of Germany to the invasions of the Huns....

'My letters to my grandmother (by the military field post) were not
numerous. My first (written from Wissembourg) states that we are much
elated at the victory of Wissembourg; while the second is as follows:

'"I write on paper left by the French in the Palace of Justice. They
seem to have fled in haste, for... the judges' pen-and-ink portraits
of one another still adorn the blotting-paper. This place
(Wissembourg) is in much confusion.... When, by straining, and a good
deal of pressure upon the members of the old French municipal council,
a regiment is housed, in comes another with a demand for food and
lodging for six hundred horses and four hundred men; then a Prussian
infantry regiment two thousand strong, and so on all night.... We are
leaving as members of the Prussian Order of St. John for the Bavarian
camp. The whole series of French telegrams up to July 30th are still
posted here on the Sous-Prefecture, inside which is confined Baron de
Rosen, Colonel of the 2nd Cuirassiers of the French Guard." I go on to
say that the "town commandant is an English volunteer and lives in
London when at home.... He is a most accomplished man." He was
accomplished enough, but he was a lunatic; and there is no more
singular episode in the war than the fact that an unauthorized lunatic
should have appointed himself to the command of an important depot,
and been recognized for at least a week as commandant by all the
authorities. The fact was that no regiment was stopping many hours in
the town, and that each Colonel, finding a particular person
established there, although he may have thought him a curious
commandant, never thought of questioning his authority.

'One of my letters appeared in the _Daily News_. It was dated August
15th, and prophesied the complete destruction of the French armies,
and it contained a somewhat amusing paragraph:

'"In our march last night we came into a part of the country
unoccupied by either army. We were twice driven from villages by the
Mayors, who seemed at their wits' end in the mazes of international
law. One said to us: 'This town is not Prussian. It is French, and
martial law is proclaimed in this part of France. Accordingly I must
tell you that you need a French military safe-conduct. If you stop
here without it I must arrest you, and send you'--he thought for a
while--'to the Prussian Commandant at Sarrebourg.'" At Nancy I saw the
Crown Prince, Dr. Russell of the _Times_, Mr. Hilary Skinner of the
_Daily News_, and Mr. Landells of the _Illustrated London News_, who
afterwards died of rheumatism caused by exposure in the war. Lord
Ronald Gower was there on the same day, but was sent away, as his
presence with Dr. Russell as a guest was unauthorized.

'Among our adventures, in addition to our arrest near Kreuznach and to
our obtaining passes from the maniac commandant, was the adventure of
our being lost in the Vosges, and nearly coming to be murdered by some
French peasants, who in the night tried to force their way into the
village school in which we had barricaded ourselves. Another adventure
was our being nearly starved at Pont-a-Mousson, where at last we
managed to buy a bit of the King of Prussia's lunch at the kitchen of
the inn on the market-place at which it was being cooked in order to
be placed in a four-in-hand break. While we were ravenously gorging
ourselves upon it, a man burst into the room, and suddenly exclaimed:
"Winterbotham!" It was Sir Henry Havelock, who was hiding in the
place, being absent without leave from the Horse Guards, where he was,
I think, an Assistant Quartermaster-General. He had made friends with
the Prussian Military Attache, to whom Bismarck had lent his maps, and
we thus saw them and learnt much. It was on the same day that Bismarck
himself was nearly starved. The first part of the story had appeared
in print, and I asked him about it when I was staying with him in
September, 1889. He told me that he had with him at his lodging the
Grand Duke of Mecklenburg and General Sheridan, the American cavalry
officer. Bismarck had gone out to forage, and had succeeded in finding
five eggs, for which he had paid a dollar each. He then said to
himself: "If I take home five, I must give two to the Grand Duke and
two to Sheridan, and I shall have but one." "I ate," he said, "two
upon the spot and took home three, so that the Grand Duke had one, and
Sheridan had one, and there was one for me. Sheridan died: he never
knew--but I told the Grand Duke, and he forgave me."'

No turn of fortune any longer seemed possible, and in Sir Charles's mind
hatred of the Emperor began to be replaced by sympathy for France.

'Writing on the day of Gravelotte to my grandmother, I said: "I have
no notion how I shall get back.... Perhaps I shall come from Paris
when we take it, as I suppose we shall do in a week or two." Such was
the impression made on me by the rapidity of the early successes of
the Germans. My feelings soon changed. Winterbotham continued to be
very German, but Herbert and I began to wish to desert when we saw how
overbearing success had made the Prussians, and how determined they
were to push their successes to a point at which France would have
been made impotent in Europe....

'During the week which followed Gravelotte I saw much of Gustav
Freytag, the celebrated Prussian writer and politician, who was the
guest of the Crown Prince. This "Liberal," who had the bad taste to
wear the Legion of Honour in conquered France, was odious in his
patriotic exultation.

'Bringing back with me nothing but a couple of soldiers' books from
the field of Worth, and the pen of the Procureur-Imperial of
Wissembourg, which still hangs outside my room, I got myself sent to
Heidelberg in charge of a train full of wounded French officers of
Canrobert's Division, wounded at the Battle of Mars la Tour on August
16th, but not picked up until after Gravelotte on August 18th. It was
the first train back; and as there was no signal system, and we had to
keep a lookout ahead, it took me two days to reach the German
frontier. We halted for the night at Bischweiler, and, passing through
Hagenau, were received at the frontier of the Palatinate by a young
man who came and spoke to every French officer, and asked after his
wounds, introducing himself at each compartment by saluting and
saying: "Je suis le duc Othon de Baviere." This pleasant boy was
afterwards to show the hereditary madness of his unhappy race. One of
my prisoners was a Nancy man, and at this station I managed to find a
boy who ran to his house, and brought down his old nurse with wine and
food. It was a touching scene of a simple kind, and we were all the
gainers by the officer's hospitality.

'From Heidelberg and Karlsruhe, where I was examined as a spy, I made
my way by Switzerland and Paris to London. Almost the moment I reached
London I saw a telegram in an evening paper announcing Sedan. I
started that evening for Paris, accompanying Major Byng Hall, who
carried despatches to Lord Lyons. We were the first to bring the news
to Calais, where it was not believed, and we were mobbed in the
railway-station. Old Byng Hall put his hand on his heart, and assured
the crowd upon his honour that, though he was very sorry, it was true.

'On the morning of September 4th, my birthday and that of the French
Republic, I was standing in Paris with Labouchere, afterwards the
"Besieged Resident," in front of the Grand Hotel upon the Boulevard in
an attitude of expectation. We had not long to wait. A battalion of
fat National Guards from the centre of Paris, shopkeepers all, marched
firmly past, quietly grunting: "L'abdication! L'abdication!" They were
soon followed by a battalion from the outskirts marching faster, and
gaining on them to the cry of "Pas d'abdication! La decheance! La
decheance!" It was a sunny cloudless day. The bridge leading to the
Corps Legislatif was guarded by a double line of mounted Gardes de
Paris, but there were few troops to be seen, and were indeed very few
in Paris. We stood just in front of the cavalry, who were perhaps
partly composed of mounted Gendarmerie of the Seine, only with their
undress _kepis_ on, instead of the tall bearskins which under the
Empire that force wore.... Labouchere kept on making speeches to the
crowd in various characters--sometimes as a Marseillais, sometimes as
an Alsatian, sometimes as an American, sometimes as an English
sympathizer; I in terror all the while lest the same listeners should
catch him playing two different parts, and should take us for Prussian
spies. We kept watching the faces of the cavalry to see whether they
were likely to fire or charge, but at last the men began one by one to
sheathe their swords, and to cry "Vive la Republique!" and the Captain
in command at last cried "Vive la Republique!" too, and withdrew his
men, letting the crowd swarm across the bridge. So fell the Second
Empire, and I wished that my grandfather had lived to see the day of
the doom of the man he hated.

'The crowd marched across the bridge singing the "Marseillaise" in a
chorus such as had never been heard before, perhaps, for the throng
was enormous. After ten minutes' parley inside the Chamber the leaders
returned from it, and chalked up on one of the great columns the names
of the representatives of Paris declared to constitute the Provisional
Government, and I drew the moral--on a day of revolution always have a
bit of chalk. The crowd demanded the addition of Rochefort's name, and
it was added. We then parted, one section going off to look for Paul
de Cassagnac, [Footnote: M. Paul de Cassagnac was a conspicuous
Imperialist.] who was the only man that the crowd wanted to kill.

'I went with the others, first to the statue of Strasbourg, which was
decorated with flowers, and to which a sort of worship was paid on
account of the gallant defence of the city, Labouchere making another
speech, and then on to the Tuileries. A Turco detained us for some
time at the gates by dancing in face of the crowd. But at last they
insisted on the private gardens being thrown open, and then swept in,
and we passed through the whole of the apartments. Privates of the
National Guard stationed themselves as sentries in all the rooms, and
not a thing was touched, an inscription proclaiming "Death to thieves"
being chalked upon every wall. Precautions were necessary, for the
police, knowing themselves to be unpopular, had disappeared. Indeed
the first proof to me in the early morning of the certainty of a
revolution had been that on the boulevards the squads had passed me,
relieving themselves in the usual way, but no squads going to take
their places. The crowds were orderly, but the eagles, of course, were
broken down, and a bit of one from the principal guardroom hangs still
on the wall of my London study. The next day I wrote to my
grandmother: "I would not have missed yesterday for the world. Louis
Blanc and other exiles have come over, but I fear that the great
northern line will be cut by Wednesday, and then you will get no more
news from me."

'I had dined with Lord Lyons on the previous evening in such a costume
as had never till then been seen at dinner at the Embassy, and had
listened with him to the bands playing the "Marseillaise" and "Mourir
pour la Patrie," and on the morning of the 5th I had seen Louis Blanc.
On the 6th I wrote that I feared that my letters would be stopped. In
the course of the following days I visited all the forts with Alfred
Tresca, of the Arts et Metiers, who had been set by Government,
although a civil engineer, to organize the bastion powder-magazines,
so I saw the defences well. Alfred Tresca was afterwards arrested
while I was in Paris under the Commune, in the first week in April,
1871, for refusing to point out where his powder was.

'I did not believe in food being got in fast enough to enable Paris to
hold out long. Knowing as I do that the German cavalry were within 100
miles of Melun for a fortnight before they cut the Lyons line, I
consider that to have allowed the French its use was a great error on
the part of Germany, an error equal to that of letting Canrobert's
army join Bazaine by Frouard Junction without hindrance on August
13th, when we were already in Nancy, only five miles off. Both errors
turned out well enough, as the luck of the Germans had it; but I do
not believe that anyone now realizes the narrowness of the escape that
the Prussians had of being crushed by Gambetta. They undertook too
much when, with 210,000 men (at first), they set themselves to besiege
Paris, which had in it 500,000 (though of bad material and no
discipline), with 300,000 more French upon the Loire. The Germans
succeeded, but I believe, with the French, that if Bazaine had held
out a fortnight longer they must have failed....

'What was done in thirteen days at Paris was wonderful. It is to Jules
Favre and to Gambetta that France owed the exhaustion of the Germans
by a siege in 132 days, instead of a collapse in ten days, and it is
to them, therefore, that they nearly owed success--success which would
have crowned Gambetta a king of men, though he had done no more than
what, as it is, he did. I had an interview with Jules Favre [Footnote:
Jules Favre was at this time Vice-President of the Provisional
Government for National Defence with the Portfolio of Foreign
Affairs.] at the Foreign Office one morning at 6 a.m. I also met
Blanqui, [Footnote: Blanqui, well known as an agitator and
revolutionary writer, was elected to Parliament in 1871 for
Montmartre. He was disqualified from membership by various judicial
condemnations, but "the Chamber decided to invalidate his election by
solemn vote, instead of accepting as his disqualification the recital
of the sentences passed on him depriving him of political rights"
(_France_, by J. E. C. Bodley, vol. ii., p. 101). Theirs had him
arrested and imprisoned.] afterwards too famous, at breakfast at Louis
Blanc's restaurant (opposite the old Town Hall), the headquarters of
the Reds. Naquet, the hunchback, now known for his divorce law, was
also there.