Part 9 (2/2)
_By Tenniel in ”Punch.”_]
CHAPTER XXII
THE DeBaCLE
[Ill.u.s.tration: France, September 4, 1870.
”Aux armes, citoyens, Formez vos bataillons.”]
After the unimportant engagement at Saarbruck disaster began falling thick and fast on the French arms, and soon we find _Punch_ taking up again the idea of the two monarchs as rival duelists. By this time the duel has been decided. Louis Napoleon, sorely wounded and with broken sword, is leaning against a tree. ”You have fought gallantly, sir,”
says the King. ”May I not hear you say you have had enough?” To which the Emperor replies: ”I have been deceived about my strength. I have no choice.” With Sedan, the downfall of the Empire, and the establishment of the Republic, France ceased to be typified under the form of Louis Napoleon. Henceforth she became an angry, blazing-eyed woman, calling upon her sons to rise and repel the advance of the invader. The cartoon in _Punch_ commemorating September 4, 1870, when the Emperor was formally deposed and a Provisional Government of National Defense established under the Presidency of General Trochu, with Gambetta, Favre, and Jules Ferry among its leading members, shows her standing erect by the side of a cannon, the imperial insignia trampled beneath her feet, waving aloft the flag of the Republic, and shouting from the ”Ma.r.s.eillaise”:
”Aux armes, citoyens, Formez vos bataillons!”
[Ill.u.s.tration: Her Baptism of Fire.
_By Tenniel in ”Punch.”_]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Andre Gill.]
The announcement that the German royal headquarters was to be removed to Versailles, and that the palace of Louis XIV. was to shelter the Prussian King surrounded by his conquering armies, drew from Tenniel the cartoon in which he showed the German monarch seated at his table in the palace studying the map of Paris, while in the background are the ghosts of Louis XIV. and the great Napoleon. The ghost of the Grand Monarque is asking sadly: ”Is this the end of 'all the glories'?” The sufferings of Paris during the siege are summed up in a cartoon ent.i.tled ”Germany's Ally,” in which the figure of Famine is laying its cold, gaunt hand on the head of the unhappy woman typifying the stricken city. The beginning of the bombardment was commemorated in a cartoon ent.i.tled ”Her Baptism of Fire,” showing the grim and b.l.o.o.d.y results of the falling of the first sh.e.l.ls. The whole tone of _Punch_ after the downfall of the Emperor shows a growing sympathy on the part of the English people toward France, and the feeling in England that Germany, guided by the iron hand of Bismarck, was exacting a cruel and unjust penalty entirely out of proportion. This belief that the terms demanded by the Germans were harsh and excessive is shown in the _Punch_ cartoon ”Excessive Bail,” where justice, after listening to Bismarck's argument, says that she cannot ”sanction a demand for exorbitant securities.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: Le Marquis aux Talons Rouges.
_By Willette._
The Marquis de Galliffet will be remembered as the French Minister of War during the second Dreyfus trial. It was Willette's famous cartoon of Queen Victoria which stirred up so much ill feeling during the Boer War.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: The History of a Reign.
_By Daumier in ”Charivari.”_]
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”This has killed That.”
_By Daumier in ”Charivari.”_]
French caricature during ”the terrible year” which saw Gravelotte, Sedan, and the downfall of the Empire was necessarily somber and utterly lacking in French gayety. It was not until the tragic days of the Siege and the Commune that the former strict censors.h.i.+p of the French press was relaxed, and the floodgates were suddenly opened for a veritable inundation of cartoons. M. Armand Dayot, in his admirable pictorial history of this epoch, which has already been frequently cited in the present volume, says in this connection: ”It has been said with infinite justice that when art is absent from caricature nothing remains but vulgarity.” In proof of this, one needs only to glance through the alb.u.ms containing the countless cartoons that appeared during the Siege, and more especially during the Commune.
Aside from those signed by Daumier, Cham, Andre Gill, and a few other less famous artists, they are unclean compositions, without design or wit, odious in color, the gross stupidity of their legends rivaling their lamentable poverty of execution. But under the leaders.h.i.+p of Daumier, the small group of artists who infused their genius into the weekly pages of _Charivari_, made these tragic months one of the famous periods in the annals of French caricature. Of the earlier generation, the irrepressible group whose mordant irony had hastened the down fall of Louis Philippe, Daumier alone survived to chronicle by his pencil the disasters which befell France, with a talent as great as he had possessed thirty-odd years before, when engaged in his light-hearted and malicious campaign against the august person of Louis Philippe. Then there were the ill.u.s.trious ”Cham” (Comte de Noe), and Andre Gill (a caricaturist of striking wit), Hadol, De Bertall, De Pilopel, Faustin, Draner, and a number of others not so well known.
But, above all, it was Daumier who, after twenty years of the Empire, during which his pencil had been politically idle, returned in his old age to the fray with all the vigor of the best days of _La Caricature_.
[Ill.u.s.tration: The Mouse-Trap and its Victims.
<script>