MARSHAL MACMAHON. 299

of Magenta the French guards were the real heroes

‘of the day. For five hours at their head the

Emperor had to sustain all the attacks of the
enemy; they stood firm, like a wall of brass; the
Emperor was beginning to be anxious, when
MacMahon came up just at the right time and
decided the fortune of the day. His arrival was
purely accidental, he heard no cannonading, nothing
told him of the perilous position of the Emperor.
The official historian of the campaign, the Baron
de Bazancourt, finds no other explanation for this
march than the following naive phrase: “The
general by intuition guesses, the clouds passing
above his head bring him the news of the danger
which threatens France.’ General Von Moltke,
in his work on the Italian campaign, thus trans-
jates these high-sounding words: ‘General Mac-
Mahon did not know whither he was marching.”

Next morning the fortunate gencral was Marshal
of France and Duke of Magenta. The Emperor re-
warded imperially. On the following 24th June, the
marshal contributed largely to the victory of Sol-
ferino, his troops scaled heights which were reputed
inaccessible, fell suddenly upon the flank of the
Austrian army commanded by the Emperor Francis
Joseph in person, and completed its utter rout.

The following incident proves the natural kind-
ness of the brave marshal.

When after the battle of Magenta the French
troops entered Milan, at one of the triumphal
arches erected before the gate of the city, Mac-
Mahon perceived a little girl of the people, about
three or four years old, who came out from among
the crowd, and offered him a large bouquet of roses.

He leaned over from his horse to take her up
in his arms, and kiss her.

“J want to stay with you,” said the child.

“Very well; stay,” said the Marshal. Then
he entered Milan, holding the little girl before
him on his horse, radiant with delight, as she
waved her bouquet of roses.

In November, 1861, Napoleon III. sent Marshal
MacMahon to Berlin as ambassador extraordinary,
to represent France at the coronation of the ‘King
of Prussia. Here he assumed a luxury and state
which threw other ambassadors completely into
the shade.

After the death of Pelissier, in 1864, he became
Governor-General of Algeria; here, too, he kept
up all the state which became a viceroy. We well
remember seeing him, surrounded by a brilliant
staff, descending the broad flight of steps from the
Cathedral of Algiers, after the early mass on a
bright morning, in October, 1868 ; and on another
occasion, when he rode in state in the midst of
officers in dazzling uniforms, and a whole troop
of swarthy Arab chiefs, in their bright scarlet
burnouses and flowing white drapery, mounted

on their splendid chargers, along the Boulevard
d@Impératrice, at Algiers, to the races. MacMahon
is a fine-looking man, with a very pleasing and
benevolent, but somewhat melancholy cast of coun-
tenance. He is well proportioned, but not tall,
and looks best on horseback.

As Governor-General of Algeria MacMahon was
not very successful, but this failure was owing
more to the system of government than to the
man who had to carry it out.

When France rushed blindly into the war of
1870, MacMahon was recalled from Africa to
assume an important command. Henceforth to
write his memoir would be merely recapitulating
the disasters to the French army which com-
menced at Worth, and culminated in the cata-
strophe of Sedan. Though MacMahon fought with
his usual heroism, during the campaign, not a
single success favoured his arms. After the
crowning defeat and capitulation of Sedan, he re-
mained as a wounded fugitive in Belgium, till the
conclusion of peace, when, on his return to France,
he was at once made commander-in-chief of the
Versailles army by M. Thiers. His duty now
was to undertake a second siege of Paris. Always
unfortunate in his conflicts with the Prussians,
he was far more successful against his own coun-
trymen. It required no little amount of military
skill, as well as courage, to penctrate into Paris,
defended by a gang of desperadoes, its buildings
in flames, and its streets running with blazing
petroleum. For this victory the friends of order
in France, to whatever party they belonged, were
deeply grateful to the brave marshal, who had
thus in a measure retrieved his fame and revived
his faded laurels. Little mercy was shown to the
Communists by the soldiers of MacMahon, justly
exasperated as they were by the atrocities of these
miscreants, but for acts of cruelty committed by
his troops on this occasion, the Marshal is pro-
bably not to blame.

Whatever MacMahon’s political proclivities may
be, and he is said now to lean towards Orleanism,
he is no friend to the Reds; he agrees on that
point-with Changarnier, who exclaimed in a fit of
indignation in 1848,—

«“ Saerebleu! these animals, then, have so dis-
gusted me with fraternity, that if I had a brother
I should call him my cousin.”

MacMahon is now sixty-four years of age. It
would be difficult to prophecy the future which is
reserved to him in the polities and fortunes of that
ever-changing and uncertain country in which his
lot is cast. Since his victory over the Commune
we have heard little of him, but it is not unlikely
that he will again play a prominent part in some
future revolution, coup d'état, or restoration, in
fickle Trance. James F. Coss.