Montimont, le camp de la Misère

After spending the night at Bellevue, the imprisoned Emperor set off for Germany on September 3, escorted by German hussars who took him around Sedan. It was impossible to cross the town, which was a Dantesque sight: it was crowded with an inextricable pile of guns, cars, weapons, horses and harnesses, and the stench had become unbearable because of the excrement, fermented fodder and horse carcasses cut up by starving men. It took several days to remove the corpses from the battlefield and collect countless weapons and debris of all kinds. The Iges peninsula, which the Villette canal had turned into an island, also offered a vision of horror that earned it the name "Camp de la Misère": 83,000 men and 20,000 horses were crammed into 400 hectares of mud, starving, without cover, at the end of their strength... Many died, and when they came out of this hell a few days later, the survivors were taken into captivity in Germany.Knowing that all was lost, Napoleon III, exhausted and without hope, had, on September 1, sought to die among his soldiers, but two days later, as a fallen emperor, did he see them in the cruellest distress as he rode along the Meuse River at Montimont? On September 3, it rained while the escort of the imperial prisoner rode to Belgium via Saint-Menges, Illy and La Chapelle. Arriving in Bouillon in the afternoon, he visited French wounded in the ambulance of the fortified castle before spending the night at the Hôtel de la Poste in a room overlooking the Semois, which can still be visited. His guards took him the next day to Libramont, where he took the train to Kassel: a few kilometres away, he was interned at Wilhelmshöhe Castle until the Treaty of Frankfurt (10 May 1871). Less than three years after the Sedan debacle, he died in England, where he had withdrawn into exile.