The World полностью

Napoleon insisted on taking command of one army in Lorraine accompanied by the fourteen-year-old prince imperial, Loulou, while leaving Eugénie in Paris as regent; the other army mustered in Alsace. Yet the mobilization was incomplete, the emperor in pain and not in control. On the Prussian side, the cerebral, meticulous chief of staff von Moltke, Der Grosse Schweiger – the Great Silent One – manoeuvred brilliantly over specially built railways, deploying Krupp cannon with twice the French range.^* The sick Napoleon could barely mount a horse let alone command a war and he and his marshals were repeatedly confused by the direction taken by the Prussians. After narrowly escaping Metz, which was besieged by the Prussians, Napoleon tried to relieve his other army and cover Paris, falling into a Prussian trap. After tearfully hugging Loulou, he sent him to safety.

At Sedan, on 1–2 September 1870, Moltke’s 250,000 troops with 500 guns, and with Bismarck and Wilhelm spectating, trapped Napoleon and 110,000 men. ‘We have them,’ said Moltke, ‘in a mousetrap.’

‘We’re in a chamber pot and they’re shitting on us,’ exclaimed General Ducrot. Krupp guns scythed through French cavalry charges.

‘Agh!’ gasped King Wilhelm. ‘Brave fellows.’

‘Why,’ asked Napoleon, riding out into the battle to find death, ‘does this useless struggle go on?’ But, unable to die, he ordered surrender. Bismarck was astonished that Napoleon was present. As the emperor rode painfully towards the Prussian headquarters, Bismarck cut him off: ‘I gave the military salute. He took off his cap whereupon I took off mine.’ Led to a cottage, Napoleon lamented that he had ‘been driven into war by public opinion’. Bismarck was amazed by Napoleon’s decrepitude, muttering, ‘There’s a dynasty on the way out.’

Meeting at a nearby chateau, Wilhelm treated Napoleon courteously. ‘I congratulate you on your army, above all your artillery,’ said Napoleon. Krupp had won. As Napoleon sobbed, Wilhelm blushed and looked away.

In Paris, Eugénie received Napoleon’s telegraph. ‘Surely you don’t believe that abomination,’ she cried in a ‘torrent of incoherent mad words’. ‘A Napoleon never surrenders. He’s dead! Why didn’t he kill himself? … What a name to leave to his son!’ Outside, rebellious crowds surrounded the Tuileries chanting ‘La déchéance!’ Dethronement! On 4 September, the Third Republic was declared at Paris’s Hôtel de Ville, launching a new 1792-style war effort against Prussia. Eugénie, insisting that she had ‘no fear of death’ but that ‘I dreaded falling into the hands of the viragoes who’d defile my last scene,’ fled to the house of her American dentist, Evans, who escorted her to England. She settled in Kent, and a dying Napoleon joined her. Their son Loulou longed to enlist in the British army.

La Débâcle coincided with the triumph of the tropical emperor Pedro over Marshal López, who had so admired Napoleon.

KKK AND GREASY GRASS: GRANT AND SITTING BULL

Pedro camped with his soldiers and resisted any move towards peace as the Brazilians fought their way into Paraguay, hunting the tyrant. ‘What sort of fear could I have? That they take the government from me?’ asked Pedro. ‘Many better kings than I have lost it, and to me it is no more than the weight of a cross which it is my duty to carry.’

After the Brazilians had taken Asunción, López twice moved his capital. Pedro appointed his twenty-seven-year-old French son-in-law Gaston, comte d’Eu, as commander-in-chief. Gaston, a grandson of Louis Philippe, had initially been disappointed by his wife, Princess Isabel, but he turned out to be affectionate and capable. The public relished his exploits as he not only won battles but liberated 25,000 Paraguayan slaves – though many were then conscripted into the allied army. The desperate López murdered his own two brothers, his brothers-in-law and hundreds of foreigners; his English engineer committed suicide by injecting nicotine. Short of ammunition, he had his victims lanced to death. Finally at Cerro Corá, López, accompanied by Madama Eliza Lynch and their son Colonel Juan, aged fourteen, her Residentas and a guard of 400 half-dressed youths, was trapped, wounded and abandoned. Brazilian soldiers found him washing his wounds in a stream and shot him. ‘A Paraguayan colonel never surrenders,’ cried his son – also shot. Madama threw herself on to his body shouting, ‘Is this the civilization you promised?’ They forced her to bury both Lópezes with her bare hands.^* Between 800,000 and 1.3 million Paraguayans were dead, a toll from which Paraguay never recovered.