The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-10-31
THE HELPLESS OoNDITIONOFF FRANCE.
ENo,n ira n Y uoroId


And when the sun SET where were they?
This is Byron's graphic summing up Of the
invasion of Greece by Xerxes, and the defeat
and dispersion of his fleets aud armies. The
picture, however, may be aptly applied to
the late advance of the armies of Napoleon
upon Germany and their annihilation as
military force. On the I'd of August, at the
head of an army infinitely stronger than that
of the King of Persia, the French Emperor,
at the pretty little German frontier town of
Saarbruck, gave the Prince Imperial his
baptism of fire, and then retired with the
young lad to his headquarters at Metz to
report to the Empress Regent in Paris his
first engagement of the campaign for Berlin
as prosperous beginning. His armies on
that day, stretching from Metz to and along
the German border from Saarbruck up to
Strasburg, numbered three hundred and fifty
thousand men. The soldiers of that army
had the reputation of the best disciplined,
armed, and equipped, and the prestige of the
finest soldiers in the world. On the I'd of
September, nevertheless, after being shat
tered in many battles, one-half the remainder
of that splendid army, with fifty thousand
fresh troops as reinforcements, was captured,
with the Emperor, at Sedan, and the other
half was shut up within the Notifications of
Metz.
Thus within the brief space of a month
the prestige of Napoleon the Third as the
arbiter of Europe, and the fame and the
name of his armies as the imperial Romans
revived, were scattered to the winds, and
CONSERVATION and chaos eclipsed the gay plea
sures of Paris. A month later, and we find,
while the late imperial dictator of peace or
war is prisoner amid the mockeries of a
royal palace beyond the Rhine, and
while the Empress and the poor bewil-
dered little Prince Imperial are eating
the bread of exiles beyond the British Chan
mel, Paris itself, with its two millions of peo-
pie and it's two hundred and fifty-two thou
sand soldiers, is as closely invested by the
German legions as was the little city of Jeru-
salem by Titus eighteen hundred years ago.
We find the Provisional Republican Govern
ment of France partly in Paris and partly in
Tours, over a hundred miles away, and the
only mode of communication between these
two divisions the hazardous and uncertain
balloon.
On Friday they had the news in California,
in Cuba, Egypt, and Bengal of the surrender
of the strong city of Metz, with an army of
one hundred and fifty thousand men, in
cluding several marshals of France and the
last of the flower of her imperial troops
bronzed and hardened to war in their cam-
naiqns in Algeria It",,1 ;.,y. Mexico and tie
rx;S 49, 10y, 49, +t0A auJ ons,i "uu yn
nation of France, with her forty millions of
people, is in reality as helpless against the
astounding military strength of Germany as
was distracted Mexico in the grasp of Bazaine
There is something that appalls US, some
thing that we can hardly realize, and which
we cannot comprehend in the startling facts
that the internsl defense of the first military
nation on the globe is to-day reduced to the
guerilla warfare of Mexico against Bazaine,
and that BaZaine, with hundred and fifty
thousand of the finest soldiers of France,
chassepots and all, has surrendered as inglo-
riously as Napoleon.
Incredible, however, these facts may
appear, they are before us, and before pros
trate, bleeding, and starving France, in all
their gloominess, and they must be recog-
nized by France, or she may be utterly de-
stroyed as an independent State. Was not
Poland at one time the great central power of
Europe, stretching from the Black Sea to the
Baltic? Did she not, through Sobieski, in a
great crisis of peril to Vienna and to Central
and Western Europe, expel the audacious
Turk, who, with his splendid army of three
hundred thousand men, counted upon a
march over the continent? And where is
Poland now? What interest, we may next
inquire, have the governing feudal aristo-
cracy of England, what interest mas the royal
house of Austria, or even that of Italy, in in
terposing a helping hand to the present
French republic? They have none of them
any more interest in this matter than the
Czar of Russia, save in the maintenance of
what they call ''the balance of power"
They may not consent to the absorption of
France by Germany, but it is apparent that
they will consent to the reduction of France
to that last extremity of prostration in which
she will be compelled to accept the Govern
ment dictated by King William. What gov
ernment will that be should France be re-
duced to this humiliation E? Will it be the
Bonapartes or the Bourbons? 1t may be the
Bourbons; but there is a mystery about Ba-
Zaine which points to the Bonapartes. The
present government of France, then, should
at once proceed to treaty of peace with
Count Bismarck on the best terms that can
be obtained, through such assistance as in
their selfshness the neutral powers may be
ready to give, to arrest this fearful military
power of Germany.
But with part of this French Provisional
Government in Paris and part in Tours aud
on the move it cannot be got together. Let
shorter method, then, be adopted. Let
General Trochu, then, assume the RESPONSE
bility and organize new provisional govern
ment in Paris and open negotiations fo
peace, in view of the imperative necessity o
saving France from chaos, and the impera
tive duty of saving the two millions of souls
in Paris from starvation, and he may save
France and secure the republic. The sur
render of Metz will add one hundred thou
sand men to the army investing Paris, ant
will furnish one hundred and fifty thousauC
men for the spolistion of Lyons and Southeri
France generally. For warlilke purpose
France after Sedan may be compared t.
our late Southern Confederacy after the sur
render of Lee; and if so, France after Met
may be ikened to said confederacy after tn
Of In I,h