Bismarck's War: France and Germany at the Crossroads of Europe by Rachel Chrastil

Author:Rachel Chrastil
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Europe, Germany
ISBN: 9780241419199
Publisher: Penguin Books, Limited
Published: 2023-06-14T19:00:00+00:00

As for Bazaine himself, the last of Napoleon III’s commanders was allowed to hand himself over to the Germans. He arrived too early, however, and had to spend the day inside a suburban villa awaiting capture, in a humiliating and rain-drenched posture of cowardice.

The French reaction was swift and full of pain. With the fall of Metz, the return of Napoleon III was now utterly impossible and his supporters saw this clearly. Captain Claude Lombard expressed his reaction to the sight of the French flag replaced by that of Prussia:

Day of mourning and desolation. All is over. Poor France! An army of 100,000 men pushed to its knees, without making a final effort … Dear national colours! Symbols of valiance and glory, reminder of our grandeur, of our victory, of our military honours, here you are trodden on the ground, dragged through the mud, and in your place on our forts and citadels fly enemy colours. Oh! Shame! If our fathers rose from their graves, what would they say to their descendants? Bastardized generation that was unable to defend the doorstep of the fatherland and could not chase the enemy from its foyer.11

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.