I do not suppose, if he had had a free hand, that Bismarck would have exhibited the courage of his opinions; but if his sentiments as expressed count for anything he would fain have seen the methods of warfare in the Dark Ages reverted to. "Prisoners! more prisoners!" he once exclaimed at Versailles, after one of Prince Frederick Charles's victories in the Loire country--"What the devil do we want with prisoners? Why don't they make a battue of them?" His motto, especially as regarded Francs-tireurs, was "No quarter," forgetful of the swarms of free companions and volunteer bands whose gallant services in Prussia's War of Liberation are commemorated to this day in song and story. It was told him that among the French prisoners taken at Le Bourget were a number of Francs-tireurs--by the way, they were the volunteers _de la Presse_ and wore a uniform. "That they should ever take Francs-tireurs prisoners!" roared Bismarck in disgust. "They ought to have shot them down by files!" Again, when it was reported that Garibaldi with his 13,000 "free companions" had been taken prisoners, the Chancellor exclaimed, "Thirteen thousand Francs-tireurs, who are not even Frenchmen, made prisoners! Why on earth were they not shot?" And when he heard that Voights Rhetz having experienced some resistance from the inhabitants of the open town of Tours, had shelled it into submission, Bismarck waxed wrath because the General had ceased firing when the white flag went up. "I would have gone on," said he, "throwing shells into the town till they sent me out 400 hostages." The simple truth is that in spite of his long pedigree and good blood Bismarck was not quite a gentleman in our sense of the word; and as this accounts for his ferocious bluster and truculent bloodthirsty utterances when he was in power in the war time, so it was the keynote to his more recent undignified attitude and howls of querulous impatience of his altered situation. It must be said of him, however, that he was a man of cool and undaunted courage. I have seen him perfectly impassive under heavy fire. In Bar-le-Duc, in Rheims, and over and over again in Versailles, I have met him walking alone and unarmed through streets thronged with French people who recognised him by the pictures of him, and who glared and spat and hissed in a cowed, furtive, malign fashion that was ugly to see.