After peace had been signed between Prussia and France, the emperor landed at Dover, where he was touched by the kindly and respectful reception he met with from the English people.  The next day he was visited by Lord Malmesbury, an old friend in the days of his youth, before he entered on his life of adventure.  Lord Malmesbury says: 

“He came into the room alone to meet me, with that remarkable smile that could light up his dark countenance.  I confess I never was more moved.  His quiet and calm dignity, and absence of all nervousness or irritability, were grand examples of moral courage.  All the past rushed to my memory.  He must have seen what I felt, for he said:  ’A la guerre comme a la guerre.  It is very good of you to come to see me.’  In a quiet, natural way he then praised the kindness of the Germans at Wilhelmshoehe, nor did a single plaint escape him during our conversation.  He said he had been deceived as to the force and preparation of his armies, but without mentioning names, nor did he abuse anybody, till I mentioned Trochu, who had abandoned the empress, whom he had sworn to defend.  During half an hour he conversed with me as in the best days of his life, with dignity and resignation, but when I saw him again he was much more depressed.  He was grieving at the destruction of Paris, and at the anarchy prevailing over France, far more than he had done over his own misfortunes.  That the Communists should have committed such horrors in the presence of their enemies, the Prussians, seemed to him the very acme of humiliation and national infamy.”

On Jan. 9, 1873, he died at Chiselhurst, in the presence of the empress, who never left him, released from the storms of a fitful existence and from intense physical suffering.

Let us return now to Paris and the Committee of Defence, its new Republican Government.  Though the people of Paris, in the excitement consequent on the proclamation of a Republic, seemed to have forgotten the Prussians, the prospect of their speedy arrival stared the Government in the face.  It was a Government, not of France, but of Paris.  France had had no voice in making this new Republic, nor was it at all likely that it would be popular in the Provinces; but meanwhile work of every kind was pressing on its hands.  The fortifications of Paris were unmanned, and, indeed, were not even completed, and there were hardly any soldiers in the capital.

The first thing to be done was to bring provisions into the city.  Cattle, grain, salt, hay, preserved meats, in short, everything edible that could be imagined, poured in so long as the railroads remained open.  All public buildings became storehouses, but affairs were conducted with such recklessness and disorder that the live-stock suffered terribly, and half the hay was wasted.  As to troops, General Vinoy arrived with twenty thousand soldiers, who had been stationed between Belgium and Sedan.  They had never fought