he yielded . on 25th January he issued two strongly worded cabinet orders . the first reiterated the command that Bismarck was to be kept informed of the course of military operations , and directed Moltke to take such effective steps to do so that Bismarck would have no further cause for complaint ; while the second expressly ordered that in any correspondence with members of the French government or delegation which might have any political significance , and in the drafting of any replies , the ministry of foreign affairs was always to be consulted . the royal decision was unequivocal and settled the matter . the reply which Moltke at first projected was virtually a letter of resignation . the royal order , he said , was ungna&quot;dig , un-gracious . his communications with Trochu , he maintained , had been strictly military . all he had withheld from Bismarck was information and plans which would be of value to the Chancellor only if he as well as Moltke were advising the King about operations ; and rather than have the war conducted by such a dual authority Moltke declared himself ready to leave the relevant operations and the responsibility for them to the federal Chancellor alone . I await , he concluded grimly , your imperial majesty &apos;s most gracious decision on the matter . the letter which he actually sent , however , was considerably milder . in it he merely defended his conduct with dignity , complained at Bismarck &apos;s repeated and unjustified accusations , asked for a clear ruling about his relationship with the Chancellor , and requested the Emperor &apos;s protection against any further attacks . the imperial secretaries drafted an anodyne reply , but it was not sent . there was no need . on 28th January an armistice was signed with the government of national defence . for the preservation of peaceful relations within royal headquarters it had come not a moment too soon . Bismarck &apos;s d&amp;eacute;marche of 18th January took effect almost immediately . two days later , on the evening of 20th January , Trochu sent his request for an armistice to bury the dead after Buzenval . the Kaiser at once referred the request , not to Moltke , but to Bismarck ; and Bismarck grimly refused it . the brusqueness of the refusal , the failure to take advantage of what was generally sensed in Versailles to be the beginning of the end , seems so out of keeping with Bismarck &apos;s desire to renew peace negotiations that the explanation must surely be sought in Bismarck &apos;s attitude to the earlier exchanges between Moltke and Trochu . in this new overture he may have seen another move in the negotiations which he believed the soldiers to be conducting behind his back , and it is not surprising that he should have taken advantage of his new established dominance to end them . in any case he was convinced that after the failure of the Buzenval sortie capitulation could not be long delayed , and then the peace-proposals of the imperial party could be seriously considered . Cl&amp;eacute;ment Duvernois was expected at any moment . but Duvernois did not come : the stubbornness of the emigr&amp;eacute; group in Brussels threw his whole time-table out of joint , and before he was ready to talk to Bismarck Jules Favre had reached Versailles . Favre arrived at German headquarters late in the evening of 23rd January . his journey followed a day of stormy debate while the government in Paris discussed whether he should negotiate for an armistice for the fortress of Paris only or for the whole of France . the question was left open : he was instructed only to discover what terms were available , without betraying the desperate state of the city &apos;s supplies . Favre himself hoped to secure , as a minimum , that there should be facilities given for the free election of a national assembly to decide the question of war or peace ; that there should be no entry of Prussian troops into Paris and no imprisonment in Germany of the garrison , and that civil war should not be provoked by an attempt to disarm the Garde Nationale . failing these conditions , he was prepared to threaten a renewal of the fighting and ultimately a total surrender which would compel the Germans to accept complete responsibility for the civil administration of Paris . Bismarck was able to bluff much more effectively than Favre . as at Ferri&amp;egrave;res , he was able to state truthfully that he was in negotiation with the Empress , who alone represented lawful authority , for the summoning of the only legal representative body in France , the Corps L&amp;eacute;gislatif . Favre &apos;s project of a freely elected assembly he declared to be no longer realisable : under the dictatorial republicanism of Gambetta elections would not be free . he was prepared however to talk in general terms about conditions for Paris . he agreed that the garrison should not be sent as prisoners to Germany , where their presence would only be an embarrassment ; he considered that although opinion in the army and in Germany would insist on a triumphal entry into the city , the scope of this might be strictly limited ; and while refusing to waive the disarmament of the Garde Nationale , he suggested that the most politically reliable battalions alone should be allowed to keep their arms . the contrast between these terms and the draconian conditions demanded by Moltke speaks for itself . by the end of the first evening &apos;s discussion it was evident that the chances of agreement were good . Bismarck said nothing to the curious bystanders as he left the room in which he had been closeted alone with Favre , but he whistled a hunting call of unmistakable meaning : the chase was over . next day , 24th January , both negotiators came into the open . Cl&amp;eacute;ment Duvernois had still not arrived , and Bismarck consented to abandon his negotiations with the Empress if he could reach agreement with the government of national defence . in return Favre agreed to sign an armistice covering the whole of France , and to ensure that no resistance by the delegation would be allowed to stand in the way of its implementation . only the question of the armament of the Garde Nationale remained unsettled , and on this Bismarck , faced by Favre &apos;s convincing assurance that it would be physically impossible to disarm them without a civil war , was eventually to yield . for the rest , the government in Paris with some reason accepted Bismarck &apos;s terms as inesp&amp;eacute;r&amp;eacute;es . thanks to the Chancellor &apos;s diplomatic moderation , the honour of the city and the troops who had defended it would remain intact . on 25th January Favre was therefore authorised to sign an armistice for three weeks , to enable a national assembly to meet at Bordeaux and finally resolve the question of war or peace . so far Bismarck had carried on the negotiations single-handed . now the military had unavoidably to be called in to settle the details of the armistice . it was unfortunate that this stage in the negotiations coincided exactly with the crisis of the quarrel between the civil and military authorities ; and Bismarck rubbed salt into the wounds of his defeated rivals by insisting that the agreement with the French should take the form , not of a capitulation , which would signify surrender , but of a convention , which indicated only a negotiated settlement between equals . Moltke began attending conferences on 26th January , the day after his rebuff by the Emperor . the French negotiators noted , without fully appreciating the cause , the unpleasant contrast between his grim , unsmiling dourness and the easy affability of Bismarck , and Bismarck openly stigmatised Moltke &apos;s attitude as mean , pettifogging and unrealistic . but the French had trouble enough with their own military representatives . Trochu &apos;s oath never to capitulate made it impossible for him to undertake the responsibility of negotiating surrender , and Ducrot had never been forgiven by the German Emperor for his apparent breach of parole after Sedan . Favre therefore found to accompany him a certain General Beaufort d&apos;Hautpoul , who proved quite incapable of carrying on negotiations . the French attributed his peculiar condition to honourable mortification ; the Germans , less charitably , said he was drunk . he was succeeded after one embarrassing day by General de Valdan , Vinoy &apos;s Chief of staff , by whom , on 28th January , the armistice was signed . the armistice was to take effect in Paris immediately - indeed on Bismarck &apos;s suggestion the bombardment and counter-bombardment had ceased two days earlier - and was to come into action elsewhere in France in three days &apos; time . it was to last until 19th February , during which time full facilities would be given for an assembly to be freely elected and to meet at Bordeaux , where it would debate whether the war should continue and on what terms peace should be made . meanwhile Paris was to pay a war-indemnity of two hundred million francs . it was to yield up its perimeter forts and dismount the guns from its walls , but the ground between the forts and the city would be considered neutral , and no German troops would enter Paris . the Germans would provide full facilities for the rapid re-provisioning of the city . 12,000 men of the Paris garrison would retain their arms , an essential minimum to preserve order , as Favre insisted . the rest were to surrender their arms and remain in Paris until the end of the armistice ; when , if peace had not yet been made , they were to be taken over by the Germans as prisoners-of-war . the terms for the rest of the country were less satisfactory to the French . it was agreed that a military demarcation line should be drawn , from which both armies should withdraw ten kilometres ; but Favre and his military advisers depended entirely on the Germans for information about the position of the existing front line , and Moltke was in no mood to interpret doubtful cases to his opponents &apos; advantage . the agreed line was to involve at several points the withdrawal of French troops from positions which they had quite securely held . moreover about the operations still in progress in the Jura both Favre and Bismarck were equally ill-informed . Favre knew only that the fortress of Belfort was still intact and that Bourbaki &apos;s relieving force still held the field . to enforce an armistice in this area might be to spoil the chance of a military victory which would considerably strengthen the French hand when it came to negotiating the final peace . Moltke , though he had received little news from the swiftly moving Manteuffel , was sufficiently confident of the outcome to allow Favre to nurse his illusions ; so by common agreement military operations were allowed to continue in the department of Jura , C&amp;ocirc;te d&apos;Or , and Doubs . when Favre telegraphed the news of the armistice to Gambetta on the evening of 28th January he made the astonishing and notorious mistake of failing to inform him of this omission . how this error contributed to the final agonies of the army of the east we have already seen . Moltke admitted the validity of the political considerations which had led Bismarck to conclude the convention with the government of national defence , but he made no secret of his dissatisfaction with the moderation of its terms . in this he spoke for the army , but not for the army alone . his views were widely echoed throughout Germany . on the French side it was the civilians , Gambetta and the politicians of the Paris clubs , who wished to prolong the war after all but a tiny minority of their military advisers had urged the conclusion of peace . the relaxing of the tension which was brought about by even a temporary suspension of hostilities undermined the strength of the extremists on both sides . the parties of guerre &amp;agrave; outrance dwindled to impotent if vociferous cliques at Bordeaux and Versailles , able to embarrass the peace-makers but not to thwart them . that this was so in the French ranks was due to the openly expressed determination of the French people , through their elected representatives , to have peace at any cost . but Bismarck , in dealing with his own military party , did not enjoy a comparable advantage . instead public opinion in Germany as overwhelmingly supported a peace of extermination as did that in the allied nations in 1918 . if the opposition to Bismarck at Versailles which had been at its height on the eve of the armistice abated rapidly once the armistice was signed , it was not because the military party was accepting defeat with a good grace . 