As all authorities afterwards admitted,
this was a very great blunder, as fully 100,000 regulars and mobiles might
have been spared to advantage for service in the provinces. Of course the
National Guards themselves could not be sent away from the city, though
they were often an encumbrance rather than a help, and could not possibly
have carried on the work of defence had they been left to their own
resources.
Besides troops, so long as the railway trains continued running,
additional military stores and supplies of food, flour, rice, biscuits,
preserved meats, rolled day by day into Paris. At the same time, several
illustrious exiles returned to the capital. Louis Blanc and Edgar Quinet
arrived there, after years of absence, in the most unostentatious fashion,
though they soon succumbed to the prevailing mania of inditing manifestoes
and exhortations for the benefit of their fellow-countrymen. Victor Hugo's
return was more theatrical. In those famous "Chatiments" in which he had
so severely flagellated the Third Napoleon (after, in earlier years,
exalting the First to the dignity of a demi-god), he had vowed to keep out
of France and to protest against the Empire so long as it lasted, penning,
in this connection, the famous line:
"Et s'il n'en reste qu'un, je serai celui-la!"
But now the Empire had fallen, and so Hugo returned in triumph to Paris.
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