de Votre Majeste le
bon Frere

NAPOLEON.

SEDAN, _le 1er Septembre, 1870_.

[Footnote 49: Lebrun, _op. cit._ pp. 130 _et seq._ for the disputes
about surrender.]

The King named von Moltke to arrange the terms and then rode away to a
village farther south, it being arranged, probably at Bismarck's
suggestion, that he should not see the Emperor until all was settled.
Meanwhile de Wimpffen and other French generals, in conference with von
Moltke, Bismarck, and Blumenthal, at the village of Donchery, sought to
gain easy terms by appealing to their generosity and by arguing that
this would end the war and earn the gratitude of France. To all appeals
for permission to let the captive army go to Algeria, or to lay down its
arms in Belgium, the Germans were deaf,--Bismarck at length plainly
saying that the French were an envious and jealous people on whose
gratitude it would be idle to count. De Wimpffen then threatened to
renew the fight rather than surrender, to which von Moltke grimly
assented, but Bismarck again interposed to bring about a prolongation of
the truce. Early on the morrow, Napoleon himself drove out to Donchery
in the hope of seeing the King. The Bismarckian Boswell has given us a
glimpse of him as he then appeared: "The look in his light grey eyes was
somewhat soft and dreamy, like that of people who have lived too fast."
[In his case, we may remark, this was induced by the painful disease
which never left him all through the campaign, and carried him off three
years later.] "He wore his cap a little on the right, to which side his
head also inclined. His short legs were out of proportion to the long
upper body. His whole appearance was a little unsoldier-like. The man
looked too soft--I might say too spongy--for the uniform he wore."

Bismarck, the stalwart Teuton who had wrecked his policy at all points,
met him at Donchery and foiled his wish to see the King, declaring this
to be impossible until the terms of the capitulation were settled. The
Emperor then had a conversation with the Chancellor in a little cottage
belonging to a weaver. Seating themselves on two rush-bottomed chairs
beside the one deal table, they conversed on the greatest affairs of
State. The Emperor said he had not sought this war--"he had been driven
into it by the pressure of public opinion. I replied" (wrote Bismarck)
"that neither had any one with us wished for war--the King least of
all[50]." Napoleon then pl