Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, Transmitted to Congress with the Annual Message of the President, December 5, 1870
No. 10.
Mr. Jones to Mr. Fish.
Sir: I have the honor to inclose herewith circulars of Count Bismarck and M. Jules Favre, on the subject of the negotiations with M. Thiers for an armistice.
* * * * * * * *
I have the honor to be, very respectfully, your obedient servant,
Hon. Hamilton Fish, Secretary of State.
[Translation.]
The following is the text of M. Jules Favre’s circular:
Paris, November 7, 1870.
Sir: Prussia has just rejected the armistice proposed by the four great neutral powers—England, Russia, Austria, and Italy—having for its object the convocation of a national assembly. She has thus shown once more that she continued the war with a purely selfish purpose, without preoccupying herself with the true interest of her subjects, and especially that of the Germans, whom she leads on in her train. She pretends, it is true, to be constrained by our refusal to cede to her two of our provinces; but she occupies those provinces, which we neither wish nor are able to give up to her, and whose inhabitants energetically repel her, and it is not for the purpose of obtaining them that she lays waste our fields, drives before her armies our ruined families, and has held, for nearly fifty days, Paris shut in under the fire of the batteries behind which she intrenches herself. No; she wishes to destroy us to satisfy the ambition of the men who govern her. The sacrifice of the French nation is beneficial to the preservation of their power. They accomplish it coldly, being astonished that we are not their accomplices in giving ourselves up to the exhaustions to which their diplomacy advises us.
Being engaged in this course, Prussia shuts her ear to the opinion of the world. Knowing that she wounds all honest sensibilities, that she alarms all conservative interests, makes an isolated system and thus shrinks away from the condemnation which Europe would not fail to inflict upon her if it had been allowed to discuss her conduct. And yet, in spite of her refusals, four great neutral powers intervened and proposed to her a suspension of arms, with the definite purpose of permitting France to take the opinion of her people by calling together an assembly. What could be more reasonable, more equitable, more necessary? The imperial government has been overwhelmed by the exertions of Prussia. The following day the men whom necessity had clothed with power proposed a peace to her, and, in order to settle the conditions thereof, demanded a truce, as indispensable to the formation of a national representation.
Prussia repelled the idea of a truce by subordinating it to unacceptable exactions, and her armies surrounded Paris. An early surrender had been foretold to her. The siege has lasted fifty days; the people are not growing weaker. The promised sedition was expected for a longtime; it came at a propitious moment for the Prussian negotiator, who announced it to ours as a foreseen auxiliary; but by breaking out, it permitted the people of Paris, by a commanding vote, to legitimatize the government of the national defense, which by this means obtained in the eyes of Europe a consecration of its right.
It behooved it then to confer with regard to the proposition for an armistice of the four powers; it could without temerity hope for its success. Being desirous above all to defer to the representatives of the country, and to come to an honorable peace through them, it accepted the negotiation and entered upon it in the ordinary terms of international law.
The armistice should admit of the election of deputies throughout the whole territory of the republic, even that which is invaded; a duration of twenty-five days; a revictualing proportional to this duration.
Prussia did not contest the two first conditions. However, she made in relation to the vote of Alsace and Lorraine some reservations which we mention without giving them further examination, because her absolute refusal to permit the revictualing has [Page 54] rendered all discussion useless. In fact, the revictualing is the necessary consequence of a suspension of arms with regard to an invested city. Provisions are an element of defense. The act of taking them from it without compensation is to create an inequality contrary to justice. Would Prussia dare to ask us to lay low a piece of our walls by means of her cannon, without allowing us to resist her? She would place us in a still worse situation, by compelling us to consume a month without fighting, while, she, living on our soil, would wait till we were harassed by famine to renew the war. Her armistice, without revictualing, would be a capitulation at a specified time without honor and without hope.
In refusing the revictualing, Prussia then refuses the armistice. And this time it is not the army only, it is the French nation which she pretends to annihilate by reducing Paris to the terrors of hunger. The question in point is to know whether France can assemble her deputies to deliberate with respect to peace. Europe demands this assembly. Prussia repels it by subjecting it to a condition which is inimical and contrary to common law. And yet, if one must believe a document, published and not contradicted, and which is said to have emanated from her chancellor’s office, she dares to accuse the government of the national defense of giving up Paris to certain famine. She complains of being compelled by it to invest and to starve us.
Europe will judge what such imputations are worth. They are the last stroke of that policy which begins by pledging the word of the sovereign in behalf of the French nation, and ends by the systematic rejection of all combinations which allow France to express her will. We do not know what the four great neutral powers, whose propositions are put aside with so much haughtiness, will think; perhaps they finally will conjecture what Prussia, having become by victory mistress able to accomplish all her designs, would lay in store for them.
As regards us, we obey an imperious and simple duty in persisting to maintain their proposition of an armistice as the only means of solving, by an assembly, the formidable questions which the crimes of the imperial government have allowed the enemy to impose upon us. Prussia, who feels the odium of her refusal, dissimulates it under a disguise which can deceive no one. She asks us provisions for a month; it is asking us for our arms. We hold them with a resolute hand, and we will not lay them down without fighting. We have done all that men of honor could do to put a stop to the contest. The outlet is closed to us; we have only hereafter to consult our courage in putting back the responsibility of the bloodshed on those who systematically repel every transaction.
It is through their personal ambition that thousands of men may yet be sacrificed. And when Europe, aroused, wishes to stop the combatants on the border of this field of carnage, in order to call the representatives of the nation and to attempt peace, “Yes,” they say, “but on the condition that that suffering population—those women, those children, those old men, who are the innocent victims of the war—shall receive no succor; that when the truce shall have expired, it shall be no longer possible for their defenders to fight us without causing them to die of hunger.” That is what the Prussian leaders do not fear to answer to the proposition of the four powers. We call to witness against them right and justice, and we are convinced that if, like ours, their nation and their army could vote, they would condemn this inhuman policy. It would at least be established that, to the last hour, the government of the national defense, preoccupied with the vast and precious interests which are confided to it, has done everything to make possible an honorable peace. They refuse it the means of consulting France. It questions Paris, and the whole of Paris takes up arms to show the country and the world what a great people is able to do when it defends its honor, its fireside, and the independence of the land.
You will have no difficulty, sir, in making truths so simple understood, and in making them the subject of observations, which you will have to offer, whenever the opportunity shall be given you.
Accept, &c.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs,
[Untitled]
The Staatsanzeiger brings us the text of the circular of Count Bismarck, dated November 8, addressed to the representatives of the North German Confederation, and giving an account of the negotiations held at Versailles with M. Thiers. The document is as follows:
“Versailles, November 8, 1870.
“Your excellency is aware that M. Thiers had expressed a desire to repair to headquarters in order to commence negotiations, after having conferred with the different members of the government of the national defense at Tours and at Paris. By order of his Majesty I declared my readiness to accept these conferences, and M. Thiers was [Page 55] yesterday authorized to go to Paris on the 30th of October, whence he returned, on the 31st, to headquarters.
“The fact that a statesman so eminent and so experienced as M. Thiers had accepted the powers of the Paris government gave me reason to hope that propositions would be made to us, whose acceptance would be possible, favoring the re?stablishment of peace. I received M. Thiers with very respectful attention, to which his distinguished personal qualities, laying aside the consideration of his former relations, gave him a perfect right. M. Thiers declared that, at the request of the neutral powers, France was ready to conclude an armistice. His Majesty the King, in view of this declaration, had to consider that an armistice, by itself, brought with it, for Germany, all the disadvantages which any prolongation of the campaign must bring to an army whose provisioning is rendered more difficult by the distance from which it is obliged to draw its supplies. Moreover, with the armistice we assumed the obligation of stopping the forces rendered disposable by the capitulation of Metz, in the positions which they should occupy on the day of the signing, and to renounce, in consequence, the occupation of vast hostile territories which we could to-day seize without striking a blow, or in spite of an unimportant resistance. In the space of a few weeks the German armies will not be able to expect any large reënforcements. On the other hand, the armistice would have rendered it possible for France to develop her own resources, to complete the organization of her forces, and, in case of a recommencement of hostilities at the expiration of the armistice, to array large military forces against us which do not now exist.
“Notwithstanding these considerations, his Majesty manifested the desire to take the first step in favor of peace, and I was authorized to anticipate the wishes of M. Thiers in granting an armistice of twenty-five days, or even of twenty-eight days, just as he has expressed the desire in the course, upon the base of a simple military statu quo, from the day of the signature. I proposed to him to determine by the line of demarcation the position of the respective troops, such as it would be on the day of the signature, to suspend hostilities during four weeks, and to proceed, during this time, to the election and constitution of a national assembly. For France this armistice would not have had other consequences than to renounce of these little sorties, each time unlucky, and to avoid the unnecessary and incomprehensible waste of her munitions kept for the defense of the fortifications. With regard to the election of Alsace I was unable to declare that we would not insist on any stipulations which may put in question the dependence of the German departments of France, before the conclusion of peace, and that we would not hold any inhabitant of these provinces responsible for having taken their seats in a national assembly as a representant of their countrymen.
“I was much astonished on hearing the representative of provisional government decline the propositions, all advantages of which were for the French, and declare himself unable to accept any armistice unless it stipulated for the revictualing of Paris in proportion to its duration. I answered that an article of this nature disagreed infinitely from the military statu quo, and surpassed greatly all concessions which might reasonably be contended for. I asked him, nevertheless, if he had any equivalent to offer in exchange, and, in this case, what would be this equivalent. M. Thiers declared to me that he was not authorized to offer us in exchange any military concession of any kind whatever, but that he was charged to put this question of revictualing, affirming to us in compensation the good will with which the government would take the test of the reunion of an assembly chosen freely by the French nation and with which it undoubtedly would be possible to open negotiations for peace. These declarations being given it was my duty to refer them to the King and his council of war. His Majesty was rightly very much surprised at demands disagreeing in so unusual a manner from military usages, and deceived in the hope which he had founded on the negotiations with M. Thiers. The scarcely credible pretension, to make us lose the fruits of two months of exertion, with the advantages which they had brought us, and to lead us back to the point where we were at the commencement of the investment of the capital, proved again that they were seeking at Paris merely a pretext to prevent the elections and not an opportunity to let the nation manifest its will without obstacle.
“Upon the desire expressed by me to try once more to make an arrangement upon new foundations before recommencing hostilities, M. Thiers had, upon 5th of this month, on the line of our outposts, a last interview with the members of the provisional government, in which he proposed to them either a shorter armistice with the military statu quo, or the convocation of the electors without special stipulations concerning an armistice, in which ease I was ready to concede all the measures compatible with our military security.
“M. Thiers has not made me acquainted with the details of his interview with MM. Trochu and Jules Favre; he could only communicate the result to me, which was the injunction received by him to break off negotiations and to leave Versailles, because they could not result in an armistice with revictualing. His departure for Tours took place on the morning of the 7th. The progress of negotiations [Page 56] has convinced me that form the beginning the men who are actually at the head of the French government did not seriously desire to let the voice of the French nation make itself heard in a representative assembly; that they have proposed a condition which they knew to be perfectly unacceptable, only in order not to avoid giving a negative response to the neutral powers from whom they expect support.
“I invite your excellency to express yourself according to the tenor of the present dispatch; and I authorize you to read it.