The questioning of identity and the calling of witnesses completed, the General Duke of Aumale gave the floor to Captain Castres, clerk, to read the accused's service records. Born in Versailles in 1811, Bazaine, at the age of twenty, had enlisted. Two years later he was a second lieutenant, and in 1855 he received the stars and the oak leaves.
With quiet bravery, wounded six times, the young general, who had won all his ranks on the battlefields of Spain, Africa - where he had notably commanded the foreign legion - and Crimea, had received, in 1864, the marshal's baton. Commander-in-chief of the army charged with securing on the front of Maximilian of Austria the crown of Emperor of Mexico which the will of Napoleon III had imprudently placed there, he had with a new military glory weighed down the folds of his flags. ... And then the war against Germany had broken out.
What Bazaine's role had then been, General Séré de Rivière's report
stated with a rigor that left no room for doubt. Commander in chief of the Army of the Rhine, he had, in this post, evidence of an uncertainty in his decisions and a slowness in his movements which had been painfully surprised all those who, having previously dealt with him, knew his energy. , his vigor his stubbornness to carry out all the operations he undertook until their end.
Nothing similar in Lorraine. La:sant to crush at Spicheren the corps of Fr( sard when he had four divisions at hand which, thrown into battle, would have reversed the course, deciding to reform the army which his first failures had started and bringing it back for this under Metz but not leaving it there and, even before having received the reinforcements which were sent to him, leaving for Verdun, letting his rear guard hang on to Borny and, although he was master of the battlefield, losing two days into his retreat, which had enabled Prince Frederic-Charles to throw against him, both at Rezonville and at Saint-Privat, considerable forces, spinning head-to-tail under the action of these masses, without report on the exact situation and come again to take refuge under the walls of Metz...
So many gestures, so many mistakes. And it's not over:leaning against Metz, he lets himself be invested without doing anything to try to break the encirclement with which he is threatened, then, the circle closed, he sinks into a demoralizing inaction for all but him. ...
MacMahon is crushed at Sedan:he does not move... The Emperor is a prisoner:he does not move... Does he hope that events will turn in his favor without his doing anything to help them? .. to force them if necessary? Isn't the role of a soldier to use the weapons that his country has put in his hands?...
What is he thinking? In Paris, a National Defense government was formed as soon as the Empire collapsed:it did not try to get in touch with it. On the contrary, it was with the Prussian command and government that he began talks and these talks led, on October 27, 1870, to the surrender of the city and its garrison...
All of this, General Séré de Rivière's report establishes with indictable precision:Bazaine's guilt appears overwhelming.
Reading this report occupied five audiences. Impassive behind his table, his arms crossed or his hands clasped, his heavy half-closed eyelids allowing only an indifferent gaze to filter through, Bazaine listened, a veritable rock against which the waves of this coldly accusing eloquence came crashing. From time to time, however, he leaned on his lawyer's shoulder and whispered a few words in his ear. Then he fell back into his impassivity. An impassivity that would not have been more absolute if he had been deaf.
But this was only an attitude, we noticed it when, the interrogation having begun, Bazaine did not let a question pass without providing the most precise answers, the best made to prove that he was not had not lost a syllable of all that, for nearly a week, he had given the impression of not hearing, discussing step by step each of the charges he guessed under the words of the General-President and showing in this discussion all the shrewdness of a devious and clever peasant, all the skills of a courtier, all the subtleties of a litigant who has studied the Code for a long time. And all this without ever losing your cool...