Montimont, le camp de la Misère
After spending the night at Bellevue, the prisoner Emperor left for Germany on September 3, escorted by German hussars who led him around Sedan. It was indeed impossible to cross the city which offered a dantesque spectacle: it was cluttered with an inextricable heap of guns, cars, weapons, horses and harnesses and the stench had become unbearable because of the excrement, the fermented fodder and horse carcasses butchered by starving men.
It took several days to remove the corpses from the battlefield and to collect innumerable weapons and debris of all kinds. The peninsula of Iges, which the Villette canal had made into an island, also offered a vision of horror which earned it the name of "Camp of Misery": 83 men and 000 horses were piled up on 20 hectares in the mud, hungry, without cover, at the end of their tether!
Many died and, coming out of this hell a few days later, the survivors were taken captive to Germany.
Knowing that all was lost, Napoleon III, exhausted and without hope, had, on September 1, sought to die in the midst of his soldiers, but, two days later, deposed emperor, he saw them in the most cruel distress, when he walked along the Meuse at Montimont?
On September 3, it was raining while the escort of the imperial prisoner rode towards Belgium through Saint-Menges, Illy and La Chapelle. Arrived at Bouillon in the afternoon, he visited French wounded in the ambulance of the Château fort before spending the night at the Hôtel de la Poste in a room which overlooks the Semois and which can still be visited. His guards took him the next day to Libramont where he took the train to Kassel: a few kilometers away, he was interned in the castle of Wilhelmshöhe until the Treaty of Frankfurt (May 10, 1871). Less than three years after the debacle of Sedan, he died in England where he had retired to exile.
It took several days to remove the corpses from the battlefield and to collect innumerable weapons and debris of all kinds. The peninsula of Iges, which the Villette canal had made into an island, also offered a vision of horror which earned it the name of "Camp of Misery": 83 men and 000 horses were piled up on 20 hectares in the mud, hungry, without cover, at the end of their tether!
Many died and, coming out of this hell a few days later, the survivors were taken captive to Germany.
Knowing that all was lost, Napoleon III, exhausted and without hope, had, on September 1, sought to die in the midst of his soldiers, but, two days later, deposed emperor, he saw them in the most cruel distress, when he walked along the Meuse at Montimont?
On September 3, it was raining while the escort of the imperial prisoner rode towards Belgium through Saint-Menges, Illy and La Chapelle. Arrived at Bouillon in the afternoon, he visited French wounded in the ambulance of the Château fort before spending the night at the Hôtel de la Poste in a room which overlooks the Semois and which can still be visited. His guards took him the next day to Libramont where he took the train to Kassel: a few kilometers away, he was interned in the castle of Wilhelmshöhe until the Treaty of Frankfurt (May 10, 1871). Less than three years after the debacle of Sedan, he died in England where he had retired to exile.
