CHAPTER XIX.

THREE FRENCH PRESIDENT’S.

Marshal MacMahon, the Duke of Magenta, was of Irish descent, his ancestors having followed James II. into exile, and distinguished themselves at the Battle of the Boyne.  Their descendant, Patrice (or Patrick), the subject of this sketch, was the sixteenth of seventeen children.

He was born when French glory was at its height, under the First Empire, in the summer of 1806.  When he was seventeen he was sent to the military school at Saint-Cyr.  There his Irish dash and talent soon won him renown.  In Algeria he acquired fame and fortune and the Cross of the Legion of Honor.  In 1830 he went to the siege of Antwerp, at the time when the French insisted on promoting a revolution in Belgium, and the moment that enterprise was over, he retired to Algeria.  At twenty-five he was a captain and had distinguished himself at the siege of Constantine, fighting side by side with the Duc de Nemours and that other French officer of Irish descent, Marshal Niel.  At forty-four he was a general of division, and had seen twenty-seven years of service.  The Arabs called him the Invulnerable.

He went to the Crimean War, and there led the attack on the Malakoff, holding his post until the place was won.  Devoted to his profession, he was diffident in society.  He was named a senator by Napoleon III. after his return from the Crimea, but declined to take his seat, refusing at the same time some other proffered honors.  He was sent back to Algeria at his own request, and stayed there, fighting the Arabs, for five years.  Then, returning to Paris, he took his seat in the Senate, where he opposed some of the arbitrary decrees of the emperor.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Temple Bar, “Courts of the three Presidents, Thiers, MacMahon, and Grevy,” 1884.]

In the Italian War in 1859 he fought with distinguished bravery, and on the battlefield of Magenta was made a Marshal of France and Duke of Magenta.  After being ambassador at Berlin he was sent to bear the emperor’s congratulations to King William on his accession, and to attend his coronation.  He was again sent to Algeria as its governor-general.  He had already married Marie, daughter of the Duc de Castries.  She was very rich, and connected with some of the most opulent bankers in Vienna.

Marshal MacMahon came back to France at the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, and was given the command of the First Army Corps; but the emperor insisted on commanding his own armies as general-in-chief.  The day before the surrender at Sedan, Marshal MacMahon had been badly wounded, and had to resign his command to General Ducrot.  Ducrot being also wounded, it became the sad duty of General Wimpffen to sign the capitulation.  Marshal MacMahon was taken as a prisoner to Wiesbaden, where he remained till the close of the war.  He got back to Paris forty-eight hours before the outbreak of the Commune.  A commander