three hundred thousand fighting men, ready to hold out to the last. When they go piously to place garlands at the feet of the statue in Strasburg, they not only obey a sentiment of enthusiastic admiration, they take their heroic watch-word, they swear to be worthy of their brothers of Alsace, and to die like them. After the forts, the ramparts; after the ramparts, the barricades. Paris can hold out for three months, and conquer. If it should fall, France, rising at its call, would avenge it. It would continue the struggle, and the aggressor would perish. This, sir, is what Europe ought to know. We have not accepted power with any other object. We would not retain it a minute if we did not find the population of Paris, and of all France, resolved to aid in carrying out this plan. I sum up our resolutions in one word. Before God, who hears us-before posterity, which will judge us, we only desire peace; but if a destructive war, which we have denounced, be continued against us, we will do our duty to the end. I firmly trust that our cause, which is that of right and justice, will finally triumph. It is in this sense that I desire you to explain the situation to his excellency the Secretary of State, in whose hands you will place a copy of this document. Accept, sir, the expression of my high consideration. JULES FAVRE. B. Circular to Prussian Ministers, September 13, 1870. Translation, Messages and Documents, State Department, 1870-'71, 211-212. Rheims, September 13, 1870. In consequence of the erroneous ideas concerning our relations with France, which reach us even from friendly quarters, I am induced to express myself in the following lines in relation to the views of his Majesty the King, which are shared by the allied German governments. We thought we saw in the plebiscitum and the succeeding apparently satisfactory condition of things in France, a guarantee of peace, and the expression of a friendly feeling on the part of the French nation. Events have taught us the contrary; at least they have shown us how easily this voice, among the French nation, is changed to its opposite. The almost unanimous majority of the representatives of the people, of the senate, and of the organs of public opinion among the press, demanded a war of conquest against us so loudly and emphatically that the isolated friends of peace were discouraged, and the Emperor Napoleon probably told his Majesty no untruth when he declared that the state of public opinion forced him to undertake the war. In the face of this fact we must not seek our guarantees in French feelings. We must not shut our eyes to the fact that, in consequence of this war, we must be prepared for a speedy attack from France again, and not for a permanent peace, and that quite independently of any conditions which we may impose upon France. The French nation will never forgive us for the defeat in itself, nor for our victorious repulse of its wanton attack. If we should now withdraw from France, without any acquisition of territory, without any contribution, without any advantages save the glory won by our arms, the same hatred, the same desire for revenge on account of wounded pride and ambition, would remain among the French nation, and it would only await the day when it might hope successfully to indulge these feelings. It was not a doubt of the justice of our cause, nor was it an apprehension that we might not be strong enough, that restrained us in the year 1867 from the war which was then offered us, but the fear of exciting those passions by our victories and of inaugurating an era of mutual animosity and constantly renewed wars, while we hoped, by a longer continuance and attentive care of the peaceful relations of both nations, to gain a firm foundation for an era of peace and welfare. Now. after having been forced into the war which we desired to avoid, we must seek to obtain better guarantees for our defence against the next attack of the French than those of their good feeling. The guarantees which have been sought since the year 1815 against the same French desires and for the peace of Europe in the holy alliance and other arrangements made in the interest of Europe, have, in the course of time, lost their efficacy and significance; so that Germany has finally been obliged to defend herself against France, depending solely up on her own strength and her own resources. Such an effort as we are now making imposes such sacrifices upon the German nation that we are forced to seek material guarantees and the security of Germany against the future attacks of France, guarantees at the same time for the peace of Europe, which has nothing to fear from Germany. These guarantees we have to demand, not from a temporary government of France, but from the French nation, which has shown that it is ready to follow any government to war against us, as is indisputably manifested by the series of aggressive wars carried on for centuries by France against Germany. Our demands for peace can therefore only be designed to lay obstacles in the way of the next attack of France upon the German, and especially the hitherto defenceless South German frontier, by removing this frontier, and with it the point of departure of French attacks, further back, and by seeking to bring the fortresses with which France threatens 11s, as defensive bulwarks, into the power of Germany. You will express yourself in this sense, if any questions are asked of you. BISMARCK. C. Circular to Prussian Ministers. September 16, 1870. Translation, Messages and Documents, State Department, 1870-'71, 212-213. Meaux, September 16, 1870. You are aware of the contents of the document which Mr. Jules Favre has addressed to the representatives of France abroad, in the name of the present authorities in Paris, who style themselves the government of the national defence. It has, at the same time, come to my knowledge, that Mr. Thiers has undertaken a confidential mission to several foreign courts, and I presume that it will be his task, on the one hand to inspire confidence in the desire for peace of the present Paris government, and on the other to seek the intervention of neutral powers in favor of a peace designed to rob Germany of the fruits of her victory, and to prevent the establishment of any basis of peace which might lay obstacles in the way of the next French attack upon Germany. We cannot believe in the earnest intention of the present Paris government to put an end to the war, so long as it continues to excite the passions of the people by its language and its acts, to increase the hatred and the bitter feeling of the population, already excited by the sufferings caused by the war, and to condemn in advance as inadmissible for France, every basis of peace which can be accepted by Germany. It thereby renders peace impossible, for which it should prepare the people by mild language, duly considering the serious nature of the situation, if it would lead us to believe that it aims at honest negotiations for peace with us. It could only be seriously supposed that we would now conclude an armistice without every security for our conditions of peace, if we were thought to lack military and political sagacity, and to be indifferent to the interests of Germany. Another thing which prevents the French from clearly comprehending the necessity of peace with Germany, is the hope, which is encouraged by the present authorities, of a diplomatic or material intervention of neutral powers in favor of France. If the French nation becomes convinced, that, as it alone voluntarily inaugurated the war, and as Germany has been obliged to carry on the contest alone, it will be compelled to settle the account with Germany alone, it will soon put an end to its now certainly useless resistance. It is cruelty on the part of neutral nations towards France if they permit the Paris government to encourage unrealizable hopes of intervention among the people and thereby to prolong the struggle. We are far from any desire to interfere in the internal affairs of France. It is a matter of indifference to us what sort of a government the French [people] may choose for itself. The government of the Emperor Napoleon is the only one which has been formally recognized by us. Our terms of peace, with whatever government, authorised for the purpose, we may have to negotiate them, are entirely independent of the question, how and by whom the French nation is governed; they are dictated to us by the nature of the case, and by the law of self-defence against a turbulent and quarrelsome people on our frontier. The unanimous voice of the German governments and of the German people demands that Germany be protected by better boundaries than heretofore against the threats and outrages which have been committed against us for centuries by all French governments. As long as France remains in possession of Strasburg and Metz her offensive is strategically stronger than our defensive, throughout the entire south and that portion of the north of Germany which lies on the left bank of the Rhine. Strasburg is, in the possession of France, a constantly open sally-port against South Germany. In the possession of Germany, on the other hand, Strasburg and Metz acquire a defensive character. In more than twenty wars we have never been the aggressor against France, and we desire nothing from that country but our own safety, which has been so often jeopardized by it. France, on the contrary, will regard any peace which may now be concluded simply as a suspension of hostilities, and will again assail us, in order to be revenged for her present defeat, with just as little reason as she has done this year, as soon as she feels strong enough to do so, either through her own strength or through foreign alliances. In rendering it difficult for France (which has been the originator of every disturbance of the peace of Europe hitherto) to act on the offensive, we are acting, at the same time, in the interest of Europe, which is that of peace. No disturbance of the peace of Europe is to be feared from Germany. Since the war has been forced upon us, which we have shunned for four years with the utmost care and at a sacrifice of our national feeling, which has been incessantly hectored by France, we will demand security in future as the price of the gigantic efforts which we have been obliged to make in our defence. No one will be able to reproach us for want of moderation if we adhere to this just and reasonable demand. I desire you carefully to take cognizance of these ideas and present them for consideration in your interviews. BISMARCK. 124. Decrees and Laws upon the Executive Power. These documents exhibit in large measure the nature of the government of France during the presidency of Thiers. By com |