The letter containing them, addressed to General Trochu, has not arrived. Later, General Trochu, having learned that a letter had been addressed to him, replied to him last July:
The responsibilities are with those who wanted the war, then with the whole nation which preferred to flatter the Empire than to control and contain it. Be firm, Monsieur le Maréchal, with the thought that the test raises men whose conscience is clear much higher than the chances and conventions of the most brilliant fortune.
• Finally the Marshal asked to be judged and Mr. Thiers. rising to the rostrum on May 29, 1871, said:Marshal Bazaine, I am convinced, has been cruelly calumniated.
But the names of Trochu and Thiers are without effect, Lachaud s I realize this, and it is behind a shadow, a great shadow, that of Marshal Ney, whose name he skilfully does not pronounce. that he will try to shield his client from the rigors of the law:
Shall I, at this last hour, remind you, Mr. Government Commissioner, what becomes of the charges of high treason when the angers and burning passions which produced them are extinguished? Political trials have this fatality that the criminal of today can become the hero of tomorrow and that, on the place of torture, later stands a statue!
Skillful as he was, Lachaud, carried away by his zeal, went too far. A few murmurs rise from different corners of the room.
But the general-president does not give them time to clarify:in a curt voice, he asks the accused if he has nothing to add in his defence.
Bazaine then stood up quickly and, showing emotion for the first time, pointing to his plaque of the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor, he declared in a loud but slightly trembling voice:
I wear on my chest these words:Honor and Fatherland. I have never failed in this noble motto during the forty-two years that I have loyally served my country, neither in Metz nor elsewhere, I swear it before Christ!
The proceedings are closed!... Take the accused away! orders the Duke of Aumale. The council retired to deliberate!
After four hours of deliberation, the judges reappeared and the general-president read the judgment condemning Marshal Bazaine, in the name of the people. French and unanimously, to the death penalty, to military degradation and to the removal of executives from the Legion of Honor and the Military Medal.