A door opened and the one everyone had been waiting for entered. He was in the undress of a Marshal of France:red trousers, a black tunic on which burst, from the right shoulder to the left hip, the broad shimmering band of the great cord of the Legion of Honor, a thin embroidery of oak leaves on the collar and at the edge of the sleeves, the gold epaulets adorned with the azure stick surrounded by the seven silver stars and, above the heart, the plaque of the National Order and the Military Medal with a yellow ribbon edged with green.
Holding the little gold laureate cap in his left hand, he advanced, having on his right his orderly officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Willette, behind him his lawyer, Mc Lachaud, accompanied by his son, both in robe, and, closing the small procession, the officer in charge of the guard of the accused.
With a heavy step, waddling lightly on his short legs, he passed between the guards who were presenting arms, reached the table reserved for him opposite that where General Pourcet, government commissioner, was verifying the order of the files spread out in front of him and, having sat down on the chair closest to the judges, he straightened up and, with a heavy look between his swollen eyelids, he slowly walked through the first rows of the audience. But already the General-President was speaking:
Accused, stand up! What is your name?
The fat man rose and, turning towards the questioner, his square, blotchy face with thick jaws darkened by a few tufts of hair under his nose and chin, he replied in a voice that showed no signs of confusion:
François Achille Bazaine.
What is your occupation?
Marshal of France.
It was October 6, 1873. Noon was coming to ring.
As soon as the war with Germany ended, some of those who had not admitted the defeat of France had sought to define its causes and, immediately, Among all the responsibilities which had been revealed, that of Marshal Bazaine, who had delivered the place of Metz to the enemy and the army fighting under the walls of the place, had appeared the heaviest. So heavy that public opinion was moved.
Especially since a brochure had just appeared, Metz, campaign and negotiations, written in captivity by Colonel d'Andlau and in which the author, who had belonged to the staff of the army of the Rhine, saying not only what his functions had allowed him to know but also all that his humiliated patriotism made him foresee, stood up as a public accuser of his former leader.
The municipality of Metz, which had in its turn thrown itself into the fight by publishing a report of the siege, Le Blocus de Metz, had not shown itself to be less severe; so much so that, yielding to the general indignation which had been expressed in a precise manner in a petition initiated by Colonel of the Engineers Cosseron de Villenoisy, the Minister of War had formed a council of inquiry chaired by the Marshal Baraguey-d'Hilliers, who, by virtue of the decree of October 13, 1863 on the "service of the places of war", had expressed the opinion that Bazaine was the cause of the loss of an army of 150,000 men and of the square in Metz; that the responsibility was entirely on him and that, as Commander-in-Chief, he had not done what military duty required of him.
This advice was accompanied by a reprimand addressed to the marshal for having maintained relations with the enemy that had only resulted in a capitulation unexampled in history; for delivering war material without destroying it; for not having taken care in the protocol of the capitulation to improve the lot of his soldiers nor stipulated, for the wounded and the sick, all the clauses of exception and favor which he could have obtained and finally for having delivered to the enemy the flags he could and should destroy, thus adding to the humiliation of brave soldiers whose honor it was to safeguard.
This moral condemnation, which left no room for he shadow of any of the charges with which each had overwhelmed the Marshal had been a real relief to public opinion, but it put Bazaine under the obligation to demand a public judgment.