The winter of 1871 was the coldest that had been known for twenty years.  Fuel and warm clothing grew scarce.  The Rothschilds distributed $20,000 worth of winter garments among the suffering; and others followed their example, till there was no warm clothing left to buy; but the suffering in every home was intense, and at last soldiers were brought in frozen from the ramparts.  There was of course no gas, and the city was dimly lighted by petroleum.  Very great zeal was shown throughout Paris for hospital service.  French military hospitals and the service connected with them are called “ambulances.”  “We were all full of recollections,” says M. de Sarcey, “of the exertions made on both sides in the American Civil War.  Our model hospital was formed on the American Plan.”

The American Sanitary Commission had sent out specimens of hospital appliances to the Exposition Universelle of 1867.  These had remained in Paris, and the hospital under canvas, when set up, excited great admiration.  Everything was for use; nothing for show.  “The four great medicines that we recognize,” said the American surgeon in charge, “are fresh air, hot and cold water, opium, and quinine.”

Among the bravest and most active litter-bearers were the Christian Brothers,—­men not priests, but vowed to poverty, celibacy, and the work of education.  “They advanced wherever bullets fell,” says M. de Sarcey, “to pick up the dead or wounded; recoiling from no task, however laborious or distasteful; never complaining of their food, drinking only water; and after their stretcher-work was done, returning to their humble vocation of teachers, without dreaming that they had played the part of heroes.”

Before Bazaine surrendered at Metz, eager hopes had been entertained that the army raised in the South by Chanzy and Gambetta might unite with his one hundred and seventy-two thousand soldiers in Metz, and march to the relief of Paris; but to this day no one knows precisely why Bazaine took no steps in furtherance of this plan, but, instead, surrendered ignominiously to the Germans.  It is supposed that being attached to the emperor, and dreading a Republic, he declined to fight for France if it was to benefit “the rabble Government of Paris,” as he called the Committee of Public Defence.  He seems to have thought that the Germans, after taking Paris, would make peace, exacting Alsace and Lorraine, and then restore the emperor.

Nothing could have been braver or more brilliant than the efforts of Chanzy and Gambetta on the Loire.  At one time they were actually near compelling the Prussians to raise the siege of Paris; for two hundred and fifty thousand men was a small army to invest so large a city.  But the one hundred and fifty thousand German soldiers who were besieging Metz were enabled by Bazaine’s surrender to reinforce the troops beleaguering the capital.

Gambetta seems to have been at that time the only man in France who showed himself to be a true leader of men, and amidst numerous disadvantages he did nobly.  He and Chanzy died twelve years later, within a week of each other.