Alistair Horne, The Fall of Paris

Technology under Siege, 1: Balloons

8. A TOUCH OF  VERNE

WHEN,  at  the  beginning of   October,  a  Frenchwoman in Prussian-occupied  Versailles first saw a balloon rising out of Paris she exclaimed in the hearing of Russell  of The Times: 'Paris reduced to that! Oh good God! Have pity on us!' Yet the balloons of  Paris were to constitute probably the  most illustrious single episode of  the Siege. To the average person today, the Siege of  Paris evokes principally two images: rat­eating and balloons. The first represents the depths to which a modern civilization can be reduced; the second, the zenith
of  its resourcefulness in adversity.

The development of  the balloon had always been a preserve of  the inventor nation. De Montgolfier's  first 'hot-air' balloon of  1783 was a  perilous device in  which the  passengers had to stoke a fire with straw and wood immediately beneath the highly inflammable paper envelope; so perilous, indeed, that Louis XVI had proposed that the first manned flight be made by two criminals under sentence of  death. In fact  it was carried out by Pilâtre de Rozier and the Marquis d'Arlandes, who flew for  twenty-five minutes across Paris, at a height of  three hundred feet. Almost simultaneously, a French physicist, Professor Charles, was experimenting with a hydrogen-filled balloon, which made its first ascent from the Tuileries in December 1783. When someone cast doubts on the usefulness of Charles's invention,  one of the spectators, Benjamin Franklin, was provoked to make a famous retort:  'Of what use is the new-born baby?' Two years later, Blanchard managed to cross the Channel in a charliere  (throwing out even his own trousers in an endeavour to maintain altitude), for which feat he earned £50 and a life pension from Louis XVI. . . .

As early as 1793, the French were using balloons for military  purposes- to  carry  dispatches over  the  heads  of   the enemy -- and  the  following year  Robespierre established an 'Ecole  Aerostatique' at Meudon.  This was closed down by Napoleon I;  perhaps one  of  the  few instances where he showed less prescience than his tragic nephew. For Napoleon III at least appreciated the military potentialities  of balloons, and had employed a man called Nadar to spy out Austrian positions at Solferino. . .

When  the Siege of Paris began, there were only seven existing balloons in the city, most of  them in disrepair. Symbolically, the  Imperial, which had  arrived  just too late to observe the dynasty triumph at Solferino,- was in shreds; the Celeste, which by giving captive flights had dazzled visitors to the Great Exhibition of 1867 with French prowess, was described as being as gas-tight as a 'sieve'. But undismayed the  intrepid French aeronauts at once went  to work;  literally, with  paste-pot  and  paper. Within  two  days  of the  closing  of the ring, the  first balloon  was  prepared for  flight,  but  burst while  being  inflated.  That  same  day,  however, Nadar  carried out  a  successful reconnaissance  of  the Prussian   lines.   The corpulent Nadar   was a man  of  many  talents -- photographer, caricaturist, journalist, and  a  friend  of  the  Impressionists  (It was in, his house  that Renoir  held  one of his first exhibitions). . . . He also appears to have  been  an astute businessman; Nadar's enemies  later  accused  him of dropping advertisements for his own  company over the  Prussian outposts, instead of  propaganda  leaflets!

On September 23rd,  Durouf  made  his successful  solo flight to  Evreux  and three days later   the Minister of  Posts, M. Rampont, 'decreed the establishment of a  'Balloon Post'. Among  the  first  to  be  invited  to  send  a letter  by  it was the eighty-six-year-old daughter  of  the inventor,  Mlle  de Montgolfier. . . .

 After  Durouf, balloons  took  off at  a  rate  of  about  two  or three  a week usually  from  an  empty  space  at  the  foot of the Solferino  Tower on  top  of  Montmartre, or  from  outside  the Gare du Nord and the Gare  d'Orleans.  Godard,  one  of  a family  of veteran  aeronauts, got away  successfully  suspended from  two  small  balloons   lashed   together  and   appropriately named  Les Etats-Unis. Tissandier, flying in the patched-up Celeste, which  in  peacetime had  never  been  capable of staying  in  the  air  for  more  than  thirty-five  minutes, managed  to reach  Dreux  (fifty miles from Paris') after  passing  so low over Versailles  that  he  could  see  Prussian  soldiers  sunbathing on the   lawns.   Lutz, travelling  aboard   the  Ville   de  Florence,
found  himself  descending  rapidly into  the  Seine, and  was forced   to  jettison  a  sack  full  of  top-secret  Government  dispatches. Remarkably enough,  it was returned to him on landing  by some  peasants,   and  he  managed to escape  with  them through the  Prussian  lines  to  Tours,  disguised  as a cowherd. . . .

. . . looking  back  from  this  age of  science,  it  does  seem  little  less  than   miraculous   that  so many  of the  French balloonists  succeeded in getting  through. It was not  until  the  eighteenth flight  on  October 25th  that a  manned  balloon  (curiously enough named  the  Montgolfier) fell into  Prussian hands.  Equipment was incredibly primitive. The  balloons themselves  were constructed simply of varnished cotton,  because  silk was  unobtainable, and  filled  with  highly explosive  coal-gas;   thus they  were  exceptionally vulnerable to Prussian  sharp-shooters. Capable of  unpredictable  motion in all three   dimensions,  none of  which  was  controllable in inexperienced hands they  had  an unpleasant habit  of shooting suddenly up  to six thousand feet,  then  falling  back  again almost   to   ground-level.  Huddled in their   baskets  (which Bowles noted  to his horror  were  only 'the  height  of a man's waist,  with  just enough  room  for  two  people  to sit  or  rather squat'), devoid  of  any protection from the   elements, the balloonists  suffered  agonizingly  from cold as the winter grew more  bitter. . . . Often the aeronauts carried no compass, and after a few minutes of twisting, giddy progress they had in any case lost all sense of direction.

To every corner of France -- and beyond -- the winds blew them, and they seldom had the remotest idea where they were on landing. Added to this, since a frustrated Bismarck had proclaimed that he would submit any apprehended balloonists to the fate of common line-crossers, there was always the prospect of a Prussian bullet at the end of each flight (although, on hearing of the Prussian threat, another 172 aeronauts had promptly volunteered).

In the deserted halls of the Gare d'Orléans, Eugène Godard, veteran of some eight hundred flights, had set up an assembly line for fabricating balloons, and scattered across Paris were small ancillary workshops. Conducted by Nadar to a former dance-hall at Montmartre, Théophile Gautier found some sixty young women sewing away with furious industry, reminding him of the 'humming of old-fashioned spinning-wheels'. At the Gare du Nord, where rails already rusted over with grass beginning to grow between them made Bowles think of the Sleeping Beauty, the completed balloons were varnished; stretched out, partially inflated, Iike rows of massive whales. In the waiting-rooms here and at the Gare du Nord, sailors were busv braiding ropes and halliards. . . .

Where could sufficient numbers of trained aeronauts be found to man the balloons?  Soon the "professionals" would all have flown out of Paris.  Goddard solved this by setting up a training-school within the factory. Baskets were suspended from the station girders, containing all the essential controls to simulate flight -- valves, ballast, guide-ropes, etc. Godard's sailors in-particular (possibly because they were less prone to sea-sickness) proved themselves markedly proficient in a short time; of the 65 balloons that left Paris during the Siege, only 18 were piloted by professionals, 17 by volunteers, and the remaining 30 by sailor.

Broadside with map of where the balloons landed during the siege and a list of the pilots