Paris under the Commune - The Seventy-Three Days of the Second Siege; with Numerous Illustrations, Sketches Taken on the Spot, and Portraits (from the Original Photographs)

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Title: Paris under the Commune
- The Seventy-Three Days of the Second Siege; with Numerous Illustrations, Sketches Taken on the Spot, and Portraits (from the Original Photographs)
Author: Leighton, John
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Paris under the Commune
- The Seventy-Three Days of the Second Siege; with Numerous Illustrations, Sketches Taken on the Spot, and Portraits (from the Original Photographs)" ***

[Illustration: the Column of July]

PARIS
UNDER THE COMMUNE:

OR,

THE SEVENTY-THREE DAYS OF THE
SECOND SIEGE

WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS, SKETCHES TAKEN ON THE SPOT, AND
PORTRAITS (FROM THE ORIGINAL PHOTOGRAPHS).

BY JOHN LEIGHTON, F.S.A.,

&C.

[Illustration:]

LONDON:

1871.

Socialism, or the Red Republic, is all one; for it would tear down the
tricolour and set up the red flag. It would make penny pieces out of
the Column Vendôme. It would knock down the statue of Napoleon and
raise up that of Marat in its stead. It would suppress the Académie,
the École Polytechnique, and the Legion of Honour. To the grand device
Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, it would add “Ou la mort.” It would
bring about a general bankruptcy. It would ruin the rich without
enriching the poor. It would destroy labour, which gives to each one
his bread. It would abolish property and family. It would march about
with the heads of the proscribed on pikes, fill the prisons with the
suspected, and empty them by massacres. It would convert France into
the country of gloom. It would strangle liberty, stifle the arts,
silence thought, and deny God. It would bring into action these two
fatal machines, one of which never works without the other—the assignat
press and the guillotine. In a word, it would do in cold blood what the
men of 1793 did in fever, and after the grand horrors which our fathers
saw, we should have the horrible in all that was low and small.

(VICTOR HUGO, 1848.)

[Illustration:]

PREFACE.

Early in June of the present year I was making notes and sketches,
without the least idea of what I should do with them. I was at the
Mont-Parnasse Station of the Western Railway, awaiting a train from
Paris to St. Cloud. Our fellow passengers, as we discovered afterwards,
were principally prisoners for Versailles; the guards, soldiers; and
the line, for two miles at least, appeared desolation and ruin.

The façade of the station, a very large one, was pockmarked all over by
Federal bullets, whilst cannon balls had cut holes through the stone
wall as if it had been cheese, and gone down the line, towards
Cherbourg or Brest! The restaurant below was nearly annihilated, the
counters, tables, and chairs being reduced to a confused heap. But
there was a book-stall and on that book-stall reposed a little work,
entitled the “Bataille des Sept Jours,” a brochure which a friend
bought and gave to me, saying, “_Voilà la texte de vos croquis_,” From
seven days my ideas naturally wandered to seventy-three—the duration of
the reign of the Commune—and then again to two hundred and twenty
days—that included the Commune of 1871 and its antecedents. Hence this
volume, which I liken to a French château, to which I have added a
second storey and wings.

And now that the house is finished, I must render my obligations to M.
Mendès and numerous French friends, for their kind assistance and
valuable aid, including my confrères of “_The Graphic_,” who have
allowed me to enliven the walls with pictures from their stores; and
last, and not least, my best thanks are due to an English Peer, who
placed at my disposal his unique collection of prints and journals of
the period bearing upon the subject—a subject I am pretty familiar
with. Powder has done its work, the smell of petroleum has passed away,
the house that called me master has vanished from the face of the
earth, and my concierge and his wife are reported _fusillés_ by the
Versaillais; and to add to the disaster, my rent was paid in advance,
having been deposited with a _notaire_ prior to the First Siege.... But
my neighbours, where are they? In my immediate neighbourhood six houses
were entirely destroyed, and as many more half ruined. I can only speak
of one friend, an amiable and able architect, who, alas! remonstrated
in person, and received a ball from a revolver through the back of his
neck. His head is bowed for life. He has lost his pleasure and his
treasure, a valuable museum of art,—happily they could not burn his
reputation, or the monument of his life—a range of goodly folio volumes
that exist “_pour tous_.”

LONDON, 1871.

Contents

PREFACE
LIST OF PLATES AND ILLUSTRATIONS
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER The 30th October, 1870—The Hôtel de Ville
invaded—Governor Trochu resigns—A Revolt attempted—Meetings, Place
de la Bastille—The Prussians enter Paris—Hostility of the National
Guard

I. The Memorable 18th of March—Line and Nationals
Fraternise—Discipline at a Discount
II. Assassination of Generals Lecomte and Clément Thomas
III. Proclamation of M. Picard—The Government retires to Versailles
IV. The New Regime Proclaimed—Obscurity of New Masters
V. Paris Hesitates—Small Sympathy with Versailles
VI. The Buttes Montmartre
VII. An Issue Possible—An Approved Proclamation
VIII. Demonstration of the Friends of Order
IX. The Drama of the Rue de la Paix—Victims to Order
X. A Wedding
XI. The Bourse and Belleville
XII. Watching and Waiting
XIII. A Timid but Prudent Person
XIV. Some Federal Opinions
XV. Proclamation of Admiral Saisset—Paris Satisfied.
XVI. A Widow
XVII. The Central Committee Triumphs
XVIII. Paris Elections
XIX. The Commune a Fact—A Motley Assembly
XX. Proclamation of the Elections
XXI. A Batch of Official Decrees—Landlord, and Tenant
XXII. Requisitions and Feasts
XXIII. Removals and Retirements
XXIV. A General Flight
XXV. An Envoy to Garibaldi
XXVI. Commencement of Civil War—Beyond the Arc de Triomphe
XXVII. Mont Valérien opens on the Federals—Contradictory News
XXVIII. Death of General Duval—Able Administration
XXIX. Antipathy to the Church—The Archbishop Interrogated
XXX. The Accomplices of Versailles
XXXI. Death of Colonel Flourens
XXXII. The Cross and the Red Flag
XXXIII. Colonel Assy of Creuzot—Disgrace of Lullier
XXXIV. Fighting goes on
XXXV. Federal Funerals
XXXVI. Prudent Counsel
XXXVII. Suppression of Newspapers
XXXVIII. The Second Bombardment—Avenue de la Grande Armée—Reckless Aim of the Versaillais
XXXIX. The Plan of Bergeret
XL. Another General—Police and Pressgang—A Citizen of the World
XLI. Women and Children
XLII. Why is Conciliation Impossible?
XLIII. The Portable Guillotine
XLIV. The Common Grave
XLV. Idle Paris
XLVI. The Press
XLVII. Day follows Day
XLVIII. The Condemned Column—Model Decrees
XLIX. Thiers and Conciliation—Paris and France
L. Communist Caricatures—Political Satire
LI. Gustave Courbet—Federation of Art—Courbet, President
LII. Camp, Place Vendôme
LIII. Elections of the 16th of April
LIV. The “Change” under the Commune
LV. Elections sans Electors—Farce of Universal Suffrage
LVI. À la Mode de Londres
LVII. The Little Sisters of the Poor
LVIII. Bécon and Asnières taken—Declaration to the French People—Federation of Communes—The Commune or the Deluge
LIX. A Court-Martial
LX. A Heroic Gamin
LXI. Killing the Dead
LXII. The Truce at Neuilly—Porte-Maillot destroyed—Neuilly in Ruins
LXIII. Masonic Mediation—The Envoy of Peace—Citizens and Brothers—A White Flag on Porte-Maillot
LXIV. Prudent Monsieur Pyat
LXV. Resources of the Commune—The Royal Road to Riches
LXVI. The Prophecy of Proudhon
LXVII. Revolutionary Balloons
LXVIII. A Confession of Conscience
LXIX. Communist Journalism—Sensation Articles
LXX. Fort Issy falls
LXXI. Cluseret arrested
LXXII. The Executive Commission—Committee of Public Safety
LXXIII. A Competent Tribunal
LXXIV. The Password betrayed
LXXV. The Condemned Chapel
LXXVI. Restitution is Robbery
LXXVII. The Nuns of Picpus
LXXVIII. Rossel resigns—The Semblance of a Government
LXXIX. Want of Funds—The Sinews of War
LXXX. Passwords—The Chariot of Apollo—Refractories
LXXXI. Sacrilege—Clubs in the Churches
LXXXII. Refractories in Danger
LXXXIII. The Home of M. Thiers, Demolition and Removal
LXXXIV. Filial Love
LXXXV. Communal Secessionists—Save himself who can
LXXXVI. The Failing Cause—The Column Vendôme falls
LXXXVII. A Concert at the Tuileries
LXXXVIII. Cartridge Magazine Explosion
LXXXIX. The Advent of Action—Paris ceases to smile
XC. The Troops enter—Street Fortifications—Insurgents at home
XCI. Arrests and Murders
XCII. Fire and Sword
XCIII. Barricade at the Place de Clichy
XCIV. Rack and Ruin
XCV. Bloodshed and Brigandage
XCVI. Hôtel de Ville on Fire—A Furnace
XCVII. Pétroleurs and Pétroleuses
XCVIII. Streets of Paris
XCIX. The Expiring Demons—The Hostages—Reprisals—Cemeteries
C. Sewers and Catacombs
CI. Mourning and Sadness

APPENDIX

Chronology of the Commune
Memoir of Rochefort.
The 18th of March
The Prussians and the Commune
Memoir of Gambon
Memoir of Lullier
Memoir of Protot
Translation from Victor Hugo
Note of Jourde
Last Proclamations of the Commune
Note of Férré
The Hostages—Gendarmes, &c.
President Bonjean
Note of Urbain.
Devastations of Paris
Official Report of General Ladmirault
Ammunition expended on Second Siege of Paris
List of Monuments and Buildings destroyed
Index to Plan—Damage by Fire, &c.

[Illustration:]

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS:

FRONTISPIECE:—THE COLUMN OF JULY (HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF)

PORTRAIT OF M. THIERS, PRESIDENT OF THE FRENCH REPUBLIC

THE STATE OF PARTY—PICTURED By THEMSELVES. ALLEGORICAL PAGE—ROCHEFORT,
CLÉMENT THOMAS, &c. (_facsimile_)

COLUMN OF JULY—PLACE DE LA BASTILLE

THE BUTTES MONTMARTRE—FEDERAL ARTILLERY PARKED THERE

MONTMARTRE—FIRST LINE OF SENTINELS

THE RED FLAG OF THE COLUMN OF JULY

PURIFICATION OF THE CHAMPS ÉLYSÉES AFTER THE DEPARTURE OF THE
PRUSSIANS—CONSTRUCTION OF THE FIRST BARRICADE, 18TH MARCH

DEFENCE OF THE HOTEL DE VILLE

SENTINELS, BOULEVARD SAINT-MICHEL

BEHIND A BARRICADE—THE DÉJEUNER

PORTRAIT OF GAMBON, MEMBER OF THE COMMUNE

BEHIND A BARRICADE—THE EVENING MEAL

PLACE DE LA CONCORDE—FEDERALS GOING OUT

PORTRAIT OF GENERAL BERGERET

PORTRAIT OF ABBÉ DEGUERRY, CURÉ OF THE MADELEINE

PORTRAIT OF RAOUL RIGAULT, PROCUREUR OF THE COMMUNE

PORTRAIT OF MONSEIGNEUR DARBOY, ARCHBISHOP OF PARIS

PORTRAIT OF COLONEL FLOURENS

PORTRAIT OF COLONEL ASSY, GOVERNOR OF THE HOTEL DE VILLE

THE RED FLAG ON THE PANTHEON

PORTRAIT OF GENERAL CLUSERET

THE ARC DE TRIOMPHE DE L’ÉTOILE

HORSE CHASSEUR ACTING AS COMMUNIST ARTILLERYMAN

MARINE GUNNER AND STREET BOY

THE CORPS LÉGISLATIF—HEAD QUARTERS OF GENERAL BERGERET

PORTRAIT OF GENERAL DOMBROWSKI

BURNING THE GUILLOTINE IN THE PLACE VOLTAIRE

COLONNE VENDÔME

CARICATURE DURING THE COMMUNE—LITTLE PARIS AND HIS PLAYTHINGS
(_facsimile_)

THE MODERN “EROSTRATE”—COURBET AND THE DEBRIS OF THE VENDÔME COLUMN

FEDERAL VISIT TO THE LITTLE SISTERS OF THE POOR

PORTRAIT OF VERMOREL, DELEGATE OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMISSION

FEMALE CURIOSITY AT PORTE MAILLOT

PORTE MAILLOT AND CHAPEL OF ST. FERDINAND

ARMISTICE—INHABITANTS OF NEUILLY ENTERING PARIS

WATCHING FOR THE FIRST SHOT FROM FORT VALERIEN

FEMALE IMPERTURBABILITY AFTER THE ARMISTICE

PORTRAIT OF PROTOT, DELEGATE OF JUSTICE

PORTRAIT OF FÉLIX PYAT, MEMBER OF THE COMMITTEE OF PUBLIC SAFETY

FREEMASONS AT THE RAMPARTS

PORTRAIT OF VERMESCH, EDITOR OF THE “PÈRE DUCHESNE”

PORTRAIT OF PASCHAL CROUSSET, DELEGATE OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS

PORTRAIT OF DUPONT, COMMISSIONER OF TRADE AND COMMERCE

CHAPELLE EXPIATOIRE (CONDEMNED BY THE COMMUNE)

CARICATURE DURING THE COMMUNE—PARIS EATS A GENERAL A-DAY (_facsimile_)

PORTRAIT OF DELESCLUZE, DELEGATE OF WAR

PORTRAIT OF FONTAINE, DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC DOMAINS AND REGISTRATION

RÉFRACTAIRES ESCAPING FROM THE CITY BY NIGHT

PORTRAIT OF GENERAL LA CÉCILIA

CHURCH OF ST. EUSTACHE (EXTERIOR)

INTERIOR OF ST. EUSTACHE, USED AS A RED CLUB

HOUSE OF M. THIERS IN THE PLACE ST. GEORGES

HOUSE DURING DEMOLITION—AFTER ITS SACK

PORTRAIT OF COURNET, PREFECT OF POLICE

PORTRAIT OF ARTHUR ARNOULD, COMMISSIONER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS

THE SEINE: FOUNDERED GUN-BOATS—PORTE MAILLOT, DESOLATION AND
DESTRUCTION

BARRICADE OF THE RUE CASTIGLIONE FROM THE PLACE VENDÔME

PALACE OF THE TUILERIES

PORTRAIT OF RAZOUA, GOVERNOR OF THE MILITARY SCHOOL

CAFÉ LIFE UNDER THE COMMUNE—A SLIGHT INTERRUPTION—PLAY-BILLS AND
BURNT-OFFERINGS—“SPECTACLES DE PARIS”

PLACE DE LA CONCORDE—STATUES OF LILLE AND STRASBOURG

FIRE AND WATER—THE EFFECT OF FIRE ON THE FOUNTAINS OF THE PLACE DE LA
CONCORDE AND THE CHÂTEAU D’EAU—HIRONDELLES DE PARIS

PORTRAIT OF JULES VALLÈS, DELEGATE OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS AND OF PUBLIC
INSTRUCTION

BARRICADE CLOSING THE RUE DE RIVOLI FROM THE PLACE DE LA CONCORDE

BULLET MARKS “EN FACE” AND “EN PROFIL”—THE TREES AND LAMPS

RUE ROYALE, LOOKING FROM THE MADELEINE TO THE PLACE DE LA CONCORDE

A WARM CORNER OF THE TUILERIES

PORTRAIT OF MILLIÈRE, EX-DEPUTY, MEMBER OF THE COMMUNE

PALAIS DE JUSTICE

POLICE OF PARIS—MINISTRY OF FINANCE, RUE DE RIVOLI

PORTRAIT OF FERRÉ, PREFECT OF POLICE

PALACE OF THE LUXEMBOURG (AMBULANCE HOSPITAL OF THE COMMUNE)

PÉTROLEURS AND PÉTROLEUSES

THE THEATRE OF THE PORTE ST-MARTIN—ALL THAT REMAINS OF THE HOME OF
SENSATION DRAMA

CELL OF THE ARCHBISHOP OF PARIS IN THE PRISON OF LA ROQUETTE

YARD OF LA ROQUETTE WHERE THE ARCHBISHOP AND HOSTAGES WERE SHOT

MY NEIGHBOUR OPPOSITE, BUSINESS CARRIED ON AS USUAL—MY NEIGHBOUR NEXT
DOOR, HE THINKS HIMSELF FORTUNATE

PARIS UNDERGROUND (SEWERS AND CATACOMBS)

THE ENEMIES OF PROGRESS (LES ARISTOCRATES ENCORE)—CORPS DE GARDE DE
L’ARMÉE DE VERSAILLES

THE PUBLIC PROMENADES—A CAMP IN THE LUXEMBOURG—THE NEW
MASTERS—PROCLAMATION OVER PROCLAMATION

THE LUXEMBOURG (PRESENT TOWN HALL OF PARIS, 1871)

PORTRAIT OF MARSHAL MACMAHON, DUKE OF MAGENTA

LIGHT AND AIR ONCE MORE—THE FOSSE COMMUNE (THE END)

APPENDIX.

MUSÉE OF THE LOUVRE, FROM THE PLACE DU CARROUSEL

PALAIS ROYAL

HOTEL DE VILLE

FOREIGN OFFICE

PALACE OF THE LEGION OF HONOUR

MAP OF PARIS, WITH INDICATIONS OF ALL THE PARTS DAMAGED OR DESTROYED.

[Illustration: M. Thiers, Voted Chief of the Executive Power Feb.
18.1871, and President of the Republic, Sept. 1871.]

PARIS
UNDER THE COMMUNE.

INTRODUCTORY.

Liberté Égalité Fraternité Late in the day of the 30th October, 1870,
the agitation was great in Paris; the news had spread that the village
of Le Bourget had been retaken by the Prussians. The military report
had done what it could to render the pill less bitter by saying that
“_this village did not form a part of the system of defence_,” but the
people though kept in ignorance perceived instinctively that there must
be weakness on the part of the chiefs. After so much French blood had
been shed in taking the place, men of brave will would not have been
wanting to occupy it. We admit that Le Bourget may not have been
important from a military point of view, but as regarding its moral
effect its loss was much to be regretted.

The irritation felt by the population of Paris was changed into
exasperation, when on the following day the news of the reduction of
Metz appeared in the _Official Journal_:

“The Government has just been acquainted with the sad intelligence of
the capitulation of Metz. Marshal Bazaine and his army were compelled
to surrender, after heroic efforts, which the want of food and
ammunition alone rendered it impossible to maintain. They have been
made prisoners of war.”

And after this the Government talks of an armistice! What! Strasburg,
Toul, Metz, and so many other towns have resisted to the last dire
extremity, and Paris, who expects succour from the provinces, is to
capitulate, while a single effort is left untried? Has she no more
bread? No more powder? Have her citizens no more blood in their veins?
No, no! No armistice!

In the morning, a deputation, formed of officers of the National
Guards, went to the Hôtel de Ville to learn from the Government what
were its intentions. They were received by M. Etienne Arago, who
promised them that the decision should be made known to them about two
o’clock.

The rappel was beaten at the time mentioned; battalions of the National
Guards poured into the Place, some armed, many without arms.

Over the sea of heads the eye was attracted by banners, and enormous
placards bearing the inscriptions—

“Vive la République!

“No Armistice!”

or else

“Vive la Commune!

“Death to Cowards!”

Rochefort,[1] with several other members of the Government, shows
himself at the principal gate, which is guarded by a company of
Mobiles. General Trochu appears in undress; he is received with cries
of “_Vive la République! La levée en masse!_ No Armistice! The National
Guards, who demand the _levée en masse_, would but cause a slaughter.
We must have cannon first; we will have them.” Alas! it had been far
better to have had none whatever, as what follows will prove. While
some cry, “Vive Trochu!” others shout, “Down with Trochu!” Before long
the Hôtel de Ville is invaded; the courts, the saloons, the galleries,
all are filled. Each one offers his advice, but certain groups insist
positively on the resignation of the Government. Lists of names are
passed from hand to hand; among the names are those of Dorian
(president), Schoelcher, Delescluze, Ledru Rollin, Félix Pyat.

THE STATE OF PARTY PICTURED By THEMSELVES

Cries are raised that if the Government refuse to resign, its members
will be arrested.

“Yes! yes! seize them!” And an officer springs forward to make them
prisoners as they sit in council.

“Excuse me, Monsieur, but what warrant have you for so doing?” asks one
of the members.

“I have nothing to do with warrants. I act in the name of the people!”

“Have you consulted the people? Those assembled here do not constitute
the people.”

The officer was disconcerted. Not long afterwards, however, the crowd
is informed that the members of the Government are arrested.

The principal scene took place in the cabinet of the ex-prefect.
Citizen Blanqui approaches the table; addressing the people, he
requests them to evacuate the room so as to allow the commission to
deliberate. The commission! What commission? Where does it spring from?
No one knew anything of it, so the members must evidently have named
themselves. Monsieur Blanqui had seen to that, no doubt. During this
time the adjoining room is the theatre of the most extraordinary
excitement; the men of the 106th Battalion, who were on guard in the
interior of the Hôtel de Ville, are compelled to use their arms to
prevent any one else entering. After some tumult and struggling, but
without any spilling of blood, some National Guards of this battalion
manage to fight their way through to the room in which the members of
the Government are prisoners, and succeed in delivering them.

At about two o’clock in the morning, the 106th Battalion had completely
cleared the Hôtel de Ville of the crowds. No violence had been done,
and General Trochu was reviewing a body of men ranged in battle order,
which extended from the Place de l’Hôtel de Ville to the Place de la
Concorde. An hour later, quiet was completely restored.

The members of the Government, who had been incarcerated during several
hours, now wished to show their authority; they felt that their power
had been shaken, and saw the necessity of strengthening it. What can a
Government do in such a case? Call for a plébiscite. But this time
Paris alone was consulted, and for a good reason. Thus, on the 1st
November, the people, of Paris were enjoined to express their wishes by
answering yes or no to this simple question:—

“Do the people of Paris recognise the authority of the Government for
the National Defence?”

This was clear, positive, and free from all ambiguity.

The partizans of the Commune declared vehemently that those who voted
in the affirmative were reactionists. “Give us the Commune of ’93!“
shouted those who thought they knew a little more about the matter than
the rest. They were generally rather badly received. It is no use
speaking of ’93! Replace your Blanquis, your Félix Pyats, your Flourens
by men like those of the grand revolution, and then we shall be glad to
hear what you have to say on the subject.

The inhabitants of Montmartre, La-Chapelle, Belleville, behaved like
good citizens, keeping a brave heart in the hour of misfortune.

However it came about, the Government was maintained by a majority of
557,995 votes against 62,638.

Well, Messieurs of the Commune, try again, or, still better, remain
quiet.

During the night of the 21st of January the members of the National
Defence and the chief officers of the army were assembled around the
table in the council-room. They were still under the mournful
impression left by the fatal day of the nineteenth, on which hundreds
of citizens had fallen at Montretout, at Garches, and at Buzenval.
Thanks to the want of foresight of the Government, the people of Paris
were rationed to 300 grammes of detestable black bread a day for each
person. All representations made to them had been in vain. Ration our
bread by degrees, had been said, we should thus accustom ourselves to
privation, and be prepared insensibly, for greater sufferings, while
the duration of our provisions would be lengthened. But the answer
always was: “Bread? We shall have enough, and to spare.” When the great
crisis was seen approaching, the public feeling showed itself by
violent agitation. It was not surprising, therefore, that all the faces
of these gentlemen at the council-table bore marks of great depression.
The Governor of Paris offered his resignation, as he was in the habit
of doing after every rather stormy sitting; but his colleagues refused
to accept it, as they had before. What was to be done? Had not the
Governor of Paris sworn never to capitulate? After a night spent in
discussing the question, the members of Government decided on the
following plan of action. You will see that it was as simple as it was
innocent! The following announcement was placarded on all the walls:—

“The Government for the National Defence has decided that the chief
commandment of the army of Paris shall in future be separate from the
presidency of the Government.
“General Vinoy is named Commandant-in-Chief of the army of Paris.
“The title and functions of the Governor of Paris are suppressed.”

A trick was played: if they capitulate now, it will no longer be the
act of the Governor of Paris. How ingenious this would have been, if it
had not been pitiful!

“General Trochu retains the presidency of the Government.”

By the side of this placard was the proclamation of General Thomas.

“TO THE NATIONAL GUARD.

“Last night, a handful of insurgents forced open the prison of Mazas,
and delivered several of the prisoners, amongst whom was M. Flourens.
The same men attempted to occupy the _mairie_ of the 20th
arrondissement (Belleville), and to install the chiefs of the
insurrection there; your commander-in-chief relies on your patriotism
to repress this shameful sedition.
“The safety of Paris is at stake.
“While the enemy is bombarding our forts, the factions within our
walls use all their efforts to paralyse the defence.
“In the name of the public good, in the name of law, and of the
high and sacred duty that commands you all to unite in the defence
of Paris, hold yourselves ready to frustrate this most criminal
attempt; at the first call, let the National Guard rise to a man,
and the perturbators will be struck powerless.
“The Commander-in-Chief of the National Guard,

“CLEMENT THOMAS.

“A true copy.

“Minister of the Interior ad interim,
“JULES FAVRE.

“Paris, 22nd January, 1871.”

In the morning, large groups of people assembled from mere curiosity,
appeared on the Place of the Hôtel de Ville, which however wore a
peaceful aspect.

At about half-past two in the afternoon, a detachment of a hundred and
fifty armed National Guards issued from the Rue du Temple, and
stationed themselves before the Hôtel de Ville, crying, “Down with
Trochu!” “Long live the Commune!” A short colloquy was then held
between several of the National Guards and some officers of the
Mobiles, who spoke with perfect calmness. Suddenly, a shot is fired,
and at the same moment, as in the grand scene of a melodrama, the
windows and the great door are flung open, and two lines of Mobile
Guards are seen, the front rank kneeling, the second standing, and all
levelling their muskets and prepared to fire. Then came a volley which
spread terror amidst the crowds of people in the Place, who
precipitated themselves in all directions, uttering cries and shrieks.
In another moment the Place is cleared. Ah! those famous chassepots can
work miracles.

The insurgents, during this mad flight of men, women, and children, had
answered the attack, some aiming from the shelter of angles and posts,
others discharging their rifles from the windows of neighbouring
houses.

Then the order to cease firing is heard, and a train of litterbearers,
waving their handkerchiefs as flags, approach from the Avenue Victoria.
At the Hôtel de Ville one officer only is wounded, but on the Place lie
a dozen victims, two of whom are women.

At four o’clock the 117th Battalion of the National Guard takes up its
position before the municipal palace. They are reinforced by a
detachment of _gendarmes_, mounted and on foot, and by companies of
Mobiles, under the command of General Carréard.

General Clément Thomas hastens to address a few words to the 117th;
later, he paid with his life for thus appearing on the side of order.
Finally, General Vinoy arrives, followed by his staff, to take measures
against any renewed acts of aggression. Mitrailleuses and cannon are
stationed before the Hôtel de Ville; the drums beat the _rappel_
throughout the town, and a great number of battalions of National
Guards assemble in the Rue de Rivoli, at the Louvre, and on the Place
de la Concorde; others bivouac before the Palais de l’Industrie, while
on the other side of the Champs Elysées regiments of cavalry, infantry,
and mobiles, are drawn out. The agitators have disappeared, calm is
restored, within the city be it understood, for all this did not
interrupt the animated interchange of shells between the French and
Prussian batteries, and a great number of Parisians, who had twice
helped to disperse the insurgents of October and January, thought
involuntarily of the Commune of the 10th of August, 1793, which headed
the revolution, and said to themselves that there were perhaps some
amongst the present insurgents who, like the former, would rise up to
deliver them from the Prussians. For these agitators have some
appearance of truth on their side: “You are weak and timorous,” they
cry to those in power; “you seem awaiting a defeat rather than
expecting a victory. Give place to the energetic, obscure though they
may be; for the men of the great Commune, of our first glorious
revolution, they also were for the greater part unknown. We have
confidence in the army of Paris, and we will break the iron circle of
invasion.”

Though the Communists have since then shown bravery, and sometimes
heroism, in their struggle against the Versailles troops, we are very
doubtful, now that we have seen their chiefs in action, whether the
efforts they talked of would have been crowned with success. Their
object was power, and, having nothing to risk and all to gain, they
would have forthwith disposed of public property in order to procure
themselves enjoyment and honours. The few right-minded men who at first
committed themselves, proved this by the fact of their giving in their
resignation a few days after the Commune had established itself.

Tranquillity had returned. In the morning of the 25th, guards patrolled
the Place de la Bastille, the Place du Château d’Eau, the Boulevard
Magenta, and the outer boulevards. Paris started as if she had been
aroused from some fearful dream, and the waking thought of the enemy at
her gates stirred up all her energies once more.

The Communists had been defeated for the second time; but they were
soon to take a terrible revenge.

The vow made by the Governor of Paris had been repeated by the majority
of the Parisians, and all parties seemed to have rallied round him
under the same device: vanquish or die. After the forts, the
barricades, and as a last resource, the burning of the city. Who knows?
Perhaps the fanatics of resistance had already made out the plan of
destruction which served later for the Commune. It has been proved that
nothing in this work of ruin was impromptu.

The news of the convention of the 28th of January, the preliminary of
the capitulation of Paris, was thus very badly received, and M.
Gambetta, by exhorting the people, in his celebrated circular of the
31st of January, to resist to the death, sowed the seeds of civil war:—

“CITIZENS,—
“The enemy has just inflicted upon France the most cruel insult
that she has yet had to endure in this accursed war, the too-heavy
punishment of the errors and weaknesses of a great people.
“Paris, the impregnable, vanquished by famine, is no longer able to
hold in respect the German hordes. On the 28th of January, the
capital succumbed, her forts surrendered to the enemy. The city
still remains intact, wresting, as it were, by her own power and
moral grandeur, a last homage from barbarity.
“But in falling, Paris leaves us the glorious legacy of her heroic
sacrifices. During five months of privation and suffering, she has
given to France the time to collect herself, to call her children
together, to find arms, to compose armies, young as yet, but
valiant and determined, and to whom is wanting only that solidity
which can be obtained but by experience. Thanks to Paris, we hold
in our hands, if we are but resolute and patriotic, all that is
needed to revenge, and set ourselves free once more.
“But, as though evil fortune had resolved to overwhelm us,
something even more terrible and more fraught with anguish than the
fall of Paris, was awaiting us.
“Without our knowledge, without either warning, us or consulting
us, an armistice, the culpable weakness of which was known to us
too late, has been signed, which delivers into the hands of the
Prussians the departments occupied by our soldiers, and which
obliges us to wait for three weeks, in the midst of the disastrous
circumstances in which the country is plunged, before a national
assembly can be assembled.
“We sent to Paris for some explanation, and then awaited in silence
the promised arrival of a member of the government, to whom we were
determined to resign our office. As delegates of government, we
desired to obey, and thereby prove to all, friends and dissidents,
by setting an example of moderation and respect of duty, that
democracy is not only the greatest of all political principles, but
also the most scrupulous of governments.
“However, no one has arrived from Paris, and it is necessary to
act, come what may; the perfidious machinations of the enemies of
France must be frustrated.
“Prussia relies upon the armistice to enervate and dissolve our
armies; she hopes that the Assembly, meeting after so long a
succession of disasters, and under the impression of the terrible
fall of Paris, wilt be timid and weak, and ready to submit to a
shameful peace.
“It is for us to upset these calculations, and to turn the very
instruments which are prepared to crush the spirit of resistance,
into spurs that shall arouse and excite it.
“Let us make this same armistice into a code of instruction for our
young troops; let us employ the three coming weeks in pushing on
the organization of the defence and of the war more ardently than
ever.
“Instead of the meeting of cowardly reactionists that our enemies
expect, let us form an assembly that shall be veritably national
and republican, desirous of peace, if peace can ensure the honour,
the rank, and the integrity of our country, but capable of voting
for war rather than aiding in the assassination of France.
“FRENCHMEN,
“Remember that our fathers left us France, whole and indivisible;
let us not be traitors to our history; let us not deliver up our
traditional domains into the hands of barbarians. Who then will
sign the armistice? Not you, legitimists, who fought so valiantly
under the flag of the Republic, in the defence of the ancient
kingdom of France; nor you, sons of the bourgeois of 1789, whose
work was to unite the old provinces in a pact of indissoluble
union; nor you, workmen of the towns, whose intelligence and
generous patriotism represent France in all her strength and
grandeur, the leader of modern nations; nor you, tillers of the
soil, who never have spared your blood in the defence of the
Revolution, which gave you the ownership of your land and your
title of citizen.
“No! Not one Frenchman will be found to sign this infamous act; the
enemy’s attempt to mutilate France will be frustrated, for,
animated with the same love of the mother country and bearing our
reverses with fortitude, we shall become strong once more and drive
out the foreign legions.
“To the attainment of this noble end, we must devote our hearts,
our wills, our lives, and, a still greater sacrifice perhaps, put
aside our preferences.
“We must close our ranks about the Republic, show presence of mind
and strength of purpose; and without passion or weakness, swear,
like free men, to defend France and the Republic against all and
everyone.
“To arms!”

The Government, by obtaining from M. de Bismarck a condition that the
National Guards should retain their arms, hoped to win public favour
again, as one offers a rattle to a fractious child to keep him quiet;
and it published the news on the 3rd of February:

“After the most strenuous efforts on our part, we have obtained,
for the National Guard, the condition ratified by the convention of
the 28th January.”

Three days after, on the 6th of February, Gambetta wrote:

“His conscience would not permit him to remain a member of a
government with which he no longer agreed in principle.”

The candidates, elected in Paris on the 8th of February, were Louis
Blanc, Victor Hugo, Garibaldi, Gambetta, Rochefort, Delescluze, Pyat,
Lockroy, Floquet, Millière, Tolain, Malon. The provinces, on the other
hand, chose their deputies from among the party of reaction, the
members of which have been so well-known since under the name of
_rurals._

Loud murmurs arose in the ranks of the National Guard, when the decrees
of the 18th and 19th of February, concerning their pay, were published;
and later, when an order from headquarters required the marching
companies to send in to the state depôt all their campaigning
paraphernalia.

On the 18th of February, M. Thiers was named chief of the executive
power by a vote of the Assembly.

On Sunday, the 26th of February, the Place de la Bastille, in which
manifestations had been held for the last two days in celebration of
the revolution of February ’48, became as a shrine, to which whole
battalions of the National Guard marched to the sound of music, their
flags adorned with caps of liberty and cockades. The Column of July was
hung with banners and decorated with wreaths of immortelles. Violent
harangues, the theme of which was the upholding of the Republic “to the
death,” were uttered at its foot. One man, of the name of Budaille,
pretended that he held proofs of the treachery of the Government for
the National Defence, and promised that he would produce them at the
proper time and place.

Up to this moment, the demonstrations seemed to have but one
result—that of impeding circulation; but they soon gave rise to scenes
of tumult and disorder. Towards one o’clock, when perhaps twenty or
thirty thousand persons were on the above Place, an individual, accused
of being a spy, was dragged by an infuriated mob to the river, and
flung, bound hand and foot, into the look by the Ile Saint Louis,
amidst the wild cries and imprecations of the madmen whose prey he had
become.

The night of the 26th was very agitated; drums beat to arms, and on the
morning of the 27th the Commander-in-Chief of the National Guard issued
a proclamation, in which he appealed to the good citizens of Paris, and
confided the care of the city to the National Guard. This had no
effect, however, on the aspect of the Place de la Bastille; the crowd
continued to applaud, frantically, the incendiary speeches of the
socialist party, who had sworn to raise Paris at any cost.

[Illustration: Column of July, Place de La Bastille.]

On the same day, the 27th of February, the Government informed the
people of Paris of the result of the negociations with Prussia, in the
following proclamation:

“The Government appeals to your patriotism and your wisdom; you
hold in your hands the future of Paris and of France herself. It is
for you to save or to ruin both!
“After a heroic resistance, famine forced you to open your gates to
the victorious enemy; the armies that should have come to your aid
were driven over the Loire. These incontestable facts have
compelled the Government for the National Defence to open
negotiations of peace.
“For six days your negotiators have disputed the ground foot by
foot; they did all that was humanly possible, to obtain less
rigorous conditions. They have signed the preliminaries of peace,
which are about to be submitted to the National Assembly.
“During the time necessary for the examination and discussion of
these preliminaries, hostilities would have recommenced, and blood
would, have flowed afresh and uselessly, without a prolongation of
the armistice.
“This prolongation could only be obtained on the condition of a
partial and very temporary occupation of a portion of Paris:
absolutely to be limited to the quarter of the Champs Elysées. Not
more than thirty thousand men are to enter the city, and they are
to retire as soon as the preliminaries of peace have been ratified,
which act can only occupy a few days.
“If this convention were not to be respected the armistice would be
at an end: the enemy, already master of the forts, would occupy the
whole of Paris by force. Your property, your works of art, your
monuments, now guaranteed by the convention, would cease to exist.
“The misfortune would reach the whole of France. The frightful
ravages of the war, which have not heretofore passed the Loire,
would extend to the Pyrenees.
“It is then absolutely true to say that the salvation of France is
at stake. Do not imitate the error of those who would not listen to
us when, eight months ago, we abjured them not to undertake a war
which must be fatal.
“The French army which defended Paris with so much courage will
occupy the left of the Seine, to ensure the loyal execution of the
new armistice. It is for the National Guard to lend its aid, by
keeping order in the rest of the city.
“Let all good citizens who earned honour as its chiefs, and showed
themselves so brave before the enemy, reassume their authority, and
the cruel situation of the moment will be terminated by peace and
the return of public prosperity.”

This clause of the occupation of Paris by the Prussians was regarded by
some people as a mere satisfaction of national vanity; but the greater
number considered it as an apple of discord thrown by M. de Bismarck,
who had every reason to desire that civil war should break out, thus
making himself an accomplice of the Socialists and the members of the
International. Confining ourselves simply to the analysis of facts, and
to those considerations which may enlighten public opinion respecting
the causes of events, we shall not allow ourselves to be carried over
the vast field of hypothesis, but preserve the modest character of
narrators. On the night of the 27th of February, the admiral commanding
the third section of the fortifications, having noticed the hostile
attitude of the National Guard, caused the troops which had been
disarmed in accordance with the conditions of the armistice to withdraw
into the interior of the city. The men of Belleville profited by the
circumstance to pillage the powder magazines which had been entrusted
to their charge, and on the following day they went, preceded by drums
and trumpets, to the barracks of the Rue de la Pépinière to invite the
sailors lodged there to join them in a patriotic manifestation on that
night. Believing that the object was to prevent the Prussians entering
Paris, a certain number of these brave fellows, who had behaved so
admirably during the siege, set out towards the Place de la Bastille
but having been met on their way by some of their officers, they soon
separated themselves from the rioters. Thirty of them had been invited
to an open-air banquet in the Place de la Bastille; but seeing the
probability of some disorder they nearly all retired, and on the
following morning only eight of them were missing at the roll-call. Not
one of the six thousand marines lodged in the barracks of the Ecole
Militaire absented himself. On the same day, the 28th, a secret
society, which we learned later to know and to fear, issued its first
circular under the name of the Central Committee of the National Guard;
the part since played by this body has been too important for us to
omit to insert this proclamation here: its decisions became official
acts which overthrew all constituted authority.

“CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE NATIONAL GUARD.
“Citizens,—
“The general feeling of the population appears to be to offer no
opposition to the entry of the Prussians into Paris. The Central
Committee, which had emitted contrary advice, declares its
intention of adhering to the following resolutions:—
“‘All around the quarters occupied by the enemy, barricades shall
be raised so as to isolate completely that part of the town. The
inhabitants of the circumscribed portion should be required to quit
it immediately.
“‘The National Guard, in conjunction with the army, shall form an
unbroken line along the whole circuit, and take care that the
enemy, thus isolated upon ground which is no longer of our city,
shall communicate in no manner with any of the other parts of
Paris.
“‘The Central Committee engages the National Guard to lend, its aid
for the execution of the necessary measures to bring about this
result, and to avoid any aggressive acts which would have the
immediate effect of overthrowing the Republic.’”

But here is a little treacherous placard, manuscript and anonymous,
which takes a much fairer tone:—

“A convention has permitted the Prussians to occupy the Champs
Elysées, from the Seine to the Faubourg St. Honoré, and as far as
the Place de la Concorde.
“Be it so! The greater the injury, the more terrible the revenge.
“But, if some panderer dare to pass the circle of our shame, let
him be instantly declared traitor, let him become a target for our
balls, an object for our petroleum, a mark for our Orsini bombs,[2]
an aim for our daggers!
“Let this be told to all.

“By decision of the Horatii,
“(Signed) POPULUS.”

The effervescence in the minds of the people was so great, that the
entry of the Prussians was delayed for forty-eight hours, but on the
first of March, at ten in the morning, they had come into the city, and
the smoke of their bivouac fires was seen in the Champs Elysées. On the
evening of the same day, a telegram from Bordeaux announced that the
National Assembly had ratified the preliminaries of peace by a majority
of 546 voices against 107. On the following day the ex-Minister of
Foreign Affairs left for Versailles, and by nine o’clock in the
evening, everything was prepared for the evacuation of the troops,
which was effected by eleven, on the third of March. During the short
period of their stay, the city was in veritable mourning; the public
edifices (even the Bourse) were closed, as were the shops, the
warehouses, and the greater part of the cafés. At the windows hung
black flags, or the tricolour covered with black crape, and veils of
the same material concealed the faces of the statues[3] on the Place de
la Concorde.

All these demonstrations had, however, a pacific character, and the
presence of the enemy in Paris gave rise to no serious incident.

Nevertheless, the agitation of the public mind was not allayed; some
attributed this to a plot the Socialists had formed, and which had
arrived at maturity. Others believed that the Prussians had left
emissaries, creators of disorder, behind them, in revenge for their
reception on the Place de la Concorde. In truth, their entry was
anything but triumphal; their national airs were received with hisses;
their officers were hooted as they promenaded in the Tuileries, and
those who attempted to visit the Louvre were compelled to retreat
without having satisfied their curiosity. On the evening of the 3rd of
March, a note emanating from the Ministry of the Interior, pointed out
in the following terms the danger to be feared from the Central
Committee:—

“Incidents of the most regrettable nature have occurred during the
last few days, and menace seriously the peace of the capital.
Certain National Guards in arms, following the orders, not of their
legitimate chiefs, but of an anonymous Central Committee, which
could not give them any instructions without committing a crime
severely punishable by the law, took possession of a considerable
quantity of arms and ammunition of war, under the pretext of saving
them from the enemy, whose invasion they pretended to fear. Such
acts should at any rate have ceased after the departure of the
Prussian army. But such is not the case, for this evening the
guard-house at the Gobelins was invaded, and a number of cartridges
stolen.
“Those who provoke these disorders draw upon themselves a most
terrible responsibility; it is at the very moment that the city of
Paris, relieved from contact with the foreigner, desires to
reassume its habits of serenity and industry, that these men are
sowing trouble and preparing civil war. The Government appeals to
all good citizens to aid in stifling in the germ these culpable
manifestations.
“Let all who have at heart the honour and the peace of the city
arise; let the National Guard, repulsing all perfidious
instigations, rally round its officers, and prevent evils of which
the consequences will be incalculable. The Government and the
Commander-in-Chief (General d’Aurelle de Paladines, nominated on
the same day by M. Thiers to the chief command of the National
Guard) are determined to do their duty energetically; they will
cause the laws to be executed; they count on the patriotism and the
devotion of all the inhabitants of Paris.”

[Illustration: The Hill of Montmartre—with the Guns Of The National
Guard Parked There. View Taken from the Place St. Pierre.]

It was indeed time to put a stop to the existing state of affairs, for
already twenty-six guns were in the possession of the insurgents, who
had formed a regular park of artillery in the Place d’Italie, and this
is the aspect of the Buttes Montmartre on the sixth of March, as
described by an eye-witness:—

“The heights have become a veritable camp. Three or four hundred
National Guards, belonging partly to the 61st and 168th Battalions,
mount guard there day and night, and relieve each other regularly,
like old campaigners. They have two drummers and four trumpeters,
who beat the rappel or ring out the charge whenever the freak takes
them, without any one knowing why or wherefore. The officers, with
broad red belts, high boots, and their long swords dragging after
them, parade the Place with pipes or cigars in their months. They
glance disdainfully at the passers-by, and seem almost overpowered
with the importance of the high mission they imagine themselves
called upon to fulfil.
“This is of what their mission consists: at the moment of the entry
of the Prussians into Paris, the National Guard of Montmartre,
fearing that the artillery would be taken from them to be delivered
to the enemy, assembled and dragged their pieces, about twenty in
number, up to the plateau which forms the summit of Montmartre, and
then placed them in charge of a special guard. Now that the
Prussians have left, they still keep their stronghold, thinking to
use it in the defence of the Republic against the attacks of the
reactionists. The guns are pointed towards Paris, and guard is kept
without a moment’s relaxation. There are four principal posts, the
most important being at the foot of the hill, on the Place Saint
Pierre. The guards bivouac in the open air, their muskets piled,
ready at hand. Sentinels are placed at the corner of each street,
most of them lads of sixteen or seventeen; but they are thoroughly
in earnest, and treat the passers-by roughly enough.
“All the streets which debouche on the Place Saint-Pierre are
closed
by barricades of paving-stones. The most important was formed of an
overturned cart, filled with huge stones, and with a red flag
reared
upon the summit. A death-like silence reigned around. There were
but
few passers-by, none but National Guards with their guns on their
shoulders.”

[Illustration: Sentinels at Montmartre]

The appearance of the Boulevard de Clichy and Boulevard Rochechouart is
completely different. The cafés are overflowing with people, the
concert-rooms open. Men and women pass tranquilly to and fro, without
disturbing themselves about the cannon that are pointed towards them.

The Government, before coming to active measures, appealed to the good
sense of the people in a proclamation, dated the 8th of March, saying
that this substitution of legal authority by a secret power would
retard the evacuation of the enemy, and perhaps expose us to disasters
still more complete and terrible.

“Let us look our position calmly in the face. We have been
conquered; nearly half of our territory has been in the power of a
million of Germans, who have imposed upon us a fine of five
milliards. Our only means of discharging this weighty debt is by
the strictest economy, the most exemplary conduct and care. We must
not lose a moment before putting our hands to work, which is our
one and solitary hope. And at this awful moment shall our miserable
folly lead us into a civil strife?...
“If, while they are meeting to treat with the enemy, our
negotiators have sedition to fear, they will break down as they did
on the 31st of October, when the events of the Hôtel de Ville
authorised the enemy to refuse us an armistice which might have
saved us.”

This form of reasoning was not illogical, but those who were working in
secret for the furtherance of their own ambition, oared little to be
convinced, and their myrmidons obeyed them blindly, and gloated over
the wild, bombastic language of the demagogic press, which, though they
did not understand it, impressed them no less with its inflated
phrases.

The Government, perceiving that it would be perhaps necessary to use
rigorous measures, gave orders to hasten the arrival of the rest of the
Army of the North.

Some few days after the 18th of March, they resolved to deal a decided
blow to the Democratic party in suppressing at once the _Vengeur_, the
_Mot d’Ordre_, the _Cri du Peuple_, the _Caricature_, the _Père
Duchesne_, and the _Bouche de Fer_.

The National Guards had a perfect mania for collecting cannon; after
having placed in battery the mitrailleuses and pieces of seven, the
produce of patriotic subscriptions, they also seized upon others
belonging to the State, and carried them off to the Buttes Montmartre,
where they had about a hundred pieces. The retaking of this artillery
was the matter in question. While they at Versailles were occupied with
the solution of the problem, the National Guards continued their
manifestations at the Place de la Bastille, dragging these pieces of
artillery in triumph from the Champ de Mars to the Luxembourg, from the
park of Montrouge to Notre Dame, from the Place des Vosges to the Place
d’Italie, and from the Buttes Montmartre to the Buttes Chaumont.

Before making use of force, the Government desired to make a last
effort at conciliation, and on the 17th of March the following
proclamation was posted on the walls:—

“INHABITANTS of PARIS,
“Once more we address ourselves to you, to your reason, and your
patriotism, and we hope that you will listen to us.
“Your grand city, which cannot live except with order, is
profoundly troubled in some of its quarters, and this trouble,
without spreading to other parts, is sufficient nevertheless to
prevent the return of industry and comfort.
“For some time a number of ill-advised men, under the pretext of
resisting the Prussians, who are no longer within our walls, have
constituted themselves masters of a part of the city, thrown up
entrenchments, mounting guard there and forcing you to do the same,
all by order of a secret committee, which takes upon itself to
command a portion of the National Guard, thus setting aside the
authority of General d’Aurelle de Paladines so worthy to be at your
head, and would form a government in opposition to that which
exists legally, the offspring of universal suffrage.
“These men, who have already caused you so much harm, whom you
yourselves dispersed on the 31st of October, are placarding their
intention to protect you against the Prussians, who have only made
an appearance within our walls, and whose definite departure is
retarded by these disorders, and pointing guns, which if fired
would only ruin your houses and destroy your wives and yourselves;
in fact, compromising the very Republic they pretend to defend; for
if it is firmly established in the opinion of France that the
Republic is the necessary companion of disorder, the Republic will
be lost. Do not place any trust in them, but listen to the truth
which we tell you in all sincerity.
“The Government instituted by the whole nation could have retaken
before this these stolen guns, which at present only menace your
safety, seized these ridiculous entrenchments which hinder nothing
but business, and have placed in the hands of justice the criminals
who do not hesitate to create civil war immediately after that with
the foreigner, but it desired to give those who were misled the
time to separate themselves from those who deceived them.
“However, the time allowed for honourable men to separate
themselves from the others, and which is deducted from your
tranquillity, your welfare, and the welfare of France, cannot be
indefinitely prolonged.
“While such a state of things lasts, commerce is arrested, your
shops are deserted, orders which would come from all parts are
suspended; your arms are idle, credit cannot be recreated, the
capital which the Government requires to rid the territory of the
presence of the enemy, comes to hand but slowly. In your own
interest, in that of your city, as well as in that of France, the
Government is resolved to act. The culprits who pretend to
institute a Government of their own must be delivered up to
justice. The guns stolen from the State must be replaced in the
arsenals; and, in order to carry out this act of justice and
reason, the Government counts upon your assistance.
“Let all good citizens separate themselves from the bad; let them
aid, instead of opposing, the public forces; they will thus hasten
the return of comfort to the city, and render service to the
Republic itself, which disorder is ruining in the opinion of
France.
“Parisians! We use this language to you because we esteem your good
sense, your wisdom, your patriotism; but, this warning being given,
you will approve of our having resort to force at all costs, and
without a day’s delay, that order, the only condition of your
welfare, be re-established entirely, immediately, and unalterably.”

As soon as the party of disorder saw the intentions of the Government
of Versailles thus set forth, a chorus of recriminations burst
forth:—“They want to put an end to the Republic!”—“They are about to
fire on our brothers!”—“They wish to set up a king,” &c. The same
strain for ever! In order to prevent as far as possible the mischievous
effects of this insurrectionary propaganda, the Government issued the
following proclamation, which bore date the 18th of March:—

“NATIONAL GUARDS of PARIS!—
“Absurd rumours are spread abroad that the Government contemplates
a _coup d’état._
“The Government of the Republic has not, and cannot have, any other
object but the welfare of the Republic.
“The measures which have been taken were indispensable to the
maintenance of order; it was, and is still, determined to put an
end to an insurrectionary committee, the members of which, nearly
all unknown to the population of Paris, preach nothing but
Communist doctrines, will deliver up Paris to pillage, and bring
France into her grave, unless the National Guard and the army do
not rise with one accord in the defence of the country and of the
Republic.”

The Government had many parleys with the insurrectionary National
Guards at Montmartre; at one moment there was a rumour that the guns
had been given up. It appeared that the guardians of this artillery had
manifested some intention of restoring it, horses had even been sent
without any military force to create mistrust, but the men declared
that they would not deliver the guns, except to the battalions to which
they properly belonged. Was there bad faith here? or had those who made
the promise undertaken to deliver up the skin before they had killed
the bear.

Public opinion shaped itself generally in somewhat the following
form:—“If they are tricking each other, that is not very dangerous!”

Many an honest citizen went to bed on the seventeenth of March full of
hope. He saw Paris marching with quick steps towards the
re-establishment of its business, and the resumption of its usual
aspect; the emigrants and foreigners would arrive in crowds, their
pockets overflowing with gold to make purchases and put the industry of
Paris under contributions the French and foreign bankers will rival
each other to pay the indemnity of five milliards.

The dream of good M. Prudhomme[4] was, however, somewhat clouded by the
figure of the Buttes Montmartre bristling with cannon; but the number
of guards had become so diminished, and they seemed so tired of the
business, that it appeared as if they were about to quit for good. The
following chapter will inform you what were the waking thoughts of the
Parisians on the morning of the eighteenth of March.

[Illustration: THE GENIUS OF THE RED FLAG.]

NOTES:

[1] Memoir, see Appendix I.

[2] The police had seized, some time before, in Paris, ten thousand
Orsini bombs, and hundreds of others of a new construction, charged
with fulminating mercury.

[3] The eight gigantic female figures, representing the principal
towns of France: Strasbourg, Lille, Metz, &c., &c.

[4] “Joseph Prudhomme” is the typical representative of the Parisian
middle-class (_Bourgeois_); the honest simple father of family,
peaceful but patriotic, proud of his country and ready to die for it.

[Illustration: Purification of the Champs Élysées—After The Departure
of the Prussians Mar 1871. Building A Barricade. March 18. 1871.]

Listen! What does that mean? Is it a transient squall or the first gust
of a tempest? Is it due to nature or to man’s agency; is it an émeute
or the advent of a revolution that is to overturn everything?

Such were my reflections when awakened, on the 18th of March, 1871, at
about four in the morning, by a noise due to the tramp of many feet.
From my window, in the gloomy white fog, I could see detachments of
soldiers walking under the walls, proceeding slowly, wrapped in their
grey capotes; a soft drizzling rain falling at the time. Half awake, I
descended to the street in time to interrogate two soldiers passing in
the rear.

“Where are you going?” asked I.—“We do not know,” says one; “Report
says we are going to Montmartre,” adds the other.[5] They were really
going to Montmartre. At five o’clock in the morning the 88th Regiment
of the line occupied the top of the hill and the little streets leading
to it, a place doubtless familiar to some of them, who on Sundays and
fête days had clambered up the hill-sides in company with apple-faced
rustics from the outskirts, and middle-class people of the quarter;
taking part in the crowd on the Place Saint-Pierre, with its games and
amusements, and “assisting,” as they would say, at shooting in a
barrel, admiring the ability of some, whilst reviling the stupidity of
others; when they had a few sous in their pockets they would try their
own skill at throwing big balls into the mouths of fantastic monsters,
painted upon a square board, while their country friends nibbled at
spice-nuts, and thought them delicious. But on this 18th of March
morning there are no women, nor spice-nuts, nor sport on the Place
Saint-Pierre: all is slush and dirt, and the poor lines-men are obliged
to stand at ease, resting upon their arms, not in the best of humour
with the weather or the prospect before them.

Ah! and the guns of the National Guard that frown from their embrasures
on the top of the hill, have they been made use of against the
Prussians? No! they have made no report during the siege, and were only
heard on the days on which they were christened and paid for; elegant
things, hardly to be blackened with powder, that it was always hoped
would be pacific and never dangerous to the capital. Cruel irony! those
guns for which Paris paid, and those American mitrailleuses, made out
of the savings of both rich and poor, the farthings of the frugal
housewife, and the napoleons of the millionaires; the contributions of
the artists who designed, and the poets who pen’d, are ruining Paris
instead of protecting it. The brass mouths that ate the bread of
humanity are turned upon the nation itself to devour it also.

But, to return to the 88th Regiment of Line, did they take the guns?
Yes, but they gave them up again, and to whom? why, to a crowd of women
and children; and as to the chiefs, no one seemed to know what had
become of them. It is related, however, that General Lecomte had been
made a prisoner and led to the Château-Rouge, and that at nine o’clock
some Chasseurs d’Afrique charged pretty vigorously in the Place Pigalle
a detachment of National Guards, who replied by a volley of bullets. An
officer of Chasseurs was shot, and his men ran away, the greater part,
it is said, into the wine-shops, where they fraternised with the
patriots, who offered them drink. I was told on the spot that General
Vinoy, who was on horseback, became encircled in a mob of women, had a
stone and a cap[6] thrown at him, and thought it prudent to escape,
leaving the National Guards and linesmen to promenade in good
fellowship three abreast, dispersing themselves about the outer
boulevards and about Paris. Indeed, I have just seen a drunken couple
full of wine and friendship, strongly reminding one of a duel ending in
a jolly breakfast. And who is to blame for this? Nobody knows. All
agree that it is a bungle,—the fault of maladministration and want of
tact. Certainly the National Guards at Montmartre had no right to hold
the cannons belonging to the National Guards, as a body, or to menace
the reviving trade and tranquillity of Paris, by means of guns turned
against its peaceful citizens and Government officials; but was it
necessary to use violence to obtain possession of the cannons? Should
not all the means of conciliation be exhausted first, and might we not
hope that the citizens at Montmartre would themselves end by abandoning
the pieces of artillery[7] which they hardly protected. In fact, they
were encumbered by their own barricades, and they might take upon
themselves to repave their streets and return to order.

Monsieur Thiers and his ministers were not of that opinion. They
preferred acting, and with vigour. Very well! but when resolutions are
formed, one should be sure of fulfilling them, for in circumstances of
such importance failure itself makes the attempt an error.[8]

Well! said the Government, who could imagine that the line would throw
up the butt ends of their muskets,[9] or that the Chasseurs, after the
loss of a single officer, would turn their backs upon the Nationals,
and that their only deeds should be the imbibing of plentiful potations
at the cost of the insurgents? But how could it be otherwise? Not many
days since the soldiers were wandering idly through the streets with
the National Guards; were billeted upon the people, eating their soup
and chatting with their wires and daughters, unaccustomed to discipline
and the rigour of military organisation; enervated by defeat, having
been maintained by their officers in the illusion of their
invincibility; annoyed by their uniform, of which they ceased to be
proud, the humiliated soldiers sought to escape into the citizen. Were
the commanding officers ignorant of the prevailing spirit of the
troops? Must we admit that they were grossly deceived, or that they
deceived the Government, when the latter might and ought to have been
in a position to foresee the result. Possibly the Assembly had the
right to coerce, but they had no right to be ignorant of their power.
They must have known that 100,000 arms (chassepots, tabatières,[10] and
muskets) were in the hands of disaffected men, clanking on the floors
of the dealers in adulterated wines and spirits, and low cabarets. The
fact is, the Government took a leap in the dark, and wondered when they
found the position difficult.

NOTES:

[5] Appendix, note 2.

[6] A mark of insult.

[7] This useless artillery was much ridiculed; jokers said that the
notary of General Trochu was working out faithfully the “plan” of his
illustrious client in these tardy fortifications.

[8] How was the Government to act in the presence of these facts; to
await events, or to strike a great blow?
Some think that the resistance of the insurgents was strengthened
by the measures taken by Government, which ought to have been more
diplomatic and skilful. The agitation of these men of Montmartre,
at the entry of the Prussians, had calmed down in a few hours; it
was now the duty of Government to allay the irritation which had
caused the insurgents to form their Montmartre stronghold, and not
to follow the advice of infuriated reactionaries, who make no
allowance for events and circumstances, neither analysing the
elements of that which they are combating, nor weighing the
measures they do not even know how to apply with tact.
The guns had not been re-taken, but Paris was very calm.
Dissensions had broken out in the Montmartre Committee, some of
whose members wished the cannon to be returned (the Committee sat
at No, 8 of the Rue des Rosiers, with a court-martial on one hand,
and military head-quarters on the other). Danger seemed now to be
averted, and the authorities had but one thing to do, to allow all
agitation to die out, without listening to blind or treacherous
counsellors, who advocated a system of immediate repression. It was
said, however, that the greater number of the members of Government
were inclined to temporise, but the provisional appointment of
General Valentin to the direction of the Prefecture of Police,
seemed to contradict this assertion.
During this time, the leaders who held Montmartre, spurred on by
the ambitious around them, and by those desirous of kindling civil
war for the sake of the illicit gains to be obtained from it, were
getting up a manifestation, which was to claim for the National
Guard the right of electing its commander-in-chief; and the post
was to be offered to Menotti Garibaldi. But though the men of
Montmartre declared that all who did not sign the manifestos were
traitors, yet the addresses remained almost entirely blank. The
insurrection had evidently few supporters. According to others, the
insurrection of 1871 was the result of a vast conspiracy, planned
and nurtured under the influence of a six months’ siege. No simple
Paris _émeute_, but a grand social movement, organised by the great
and universal revolutionary power; the Société Internationale,
Garibaldiism, Mazziniism, and Fenianism, have given each other
rendezvous in Paris. Cluseret, the American; Frankel, the Prussian;
Dombrowski, the Russian; Brunswick, the Lithuanian; Romanelli, the
Italian; Okolowitz, the Pole; Spillthorn, the Belgian; and La
Cécilia, Wroblewski, Wenzel, Hertzfel, Bozyski, Syneck, Prolowitz,
and a hundred others, equally illustrious, brought together from
every quarter of the globe; such were these ardent conspirators,
all imbued, like their colleagues the Flourens, the Eudes, the
Henrys, the Duvals, and _tutti quanti_, with the principles of the
French school of democracy and socialism.
This strong and terrible band, we are told, is under the command of
a chief who remains hidden and mute, while ostensibly it obeys the
Pyats, Delescluzes, and Rocheforts, politicians, who not being
generals, never condescend to fight.
In the first days of March all was prepared for a coming explosion,
and in spite of the departure of the Prussians, the Socialist party
determined that it should take place. (_Guerre des Communeux_, p.
61.)

[9] A sign that they refused to fight.

[10] A smooth-bore musket arranged as breech-loader, and called a
snuff-box, from the manner of opening the breech to adjust the charge.

II.

At three o’clock in the afternoon there was a dense group of linesmen
and Nationals in one of the streets bordering on the Elysée-Montmartre.
The person who told us this did not recollect the name of the street,
but men were eagerly haranguing the crowd, talking of General Lecomte,
and his having twice ordered the troops to fire upon the citizen
militia.

“And what he did was right,” said an old gentleman who was listening.

Words that were no sooner uttered than they provoked a torrent of
curses and imprecations from the by-standers. But he continued
observing that General Lecomte had only acted under the orders of his
superiors; being commanded to take the guns and to disperse the crowd,
his only duty was to obey.

These remarks being received in no friendly spirit, hostility to the
stranger increased, when a vivandière approached, and looking the
gentleman who had exposed himself to the fury of the mob full in the
face, exclaimed, “It is Clément Thomas!” And in truth it was General
Clément Thomas; he was not in uniform. A torrent of abuse was poured
forth by a hundred voices at once, and the anger of the crowd seemed
about to extend itself to violence, when a ruffian cried out: “You
defend the rascal Lecomte! Well, we’ll put you both together, and a
pretty pair you’ll be!” and this project being approved of, the General
was hurried, not without having to submit to fresh insults, to where
General Lecomte had been imprisoned since the morning.

From this moment the narrative I have collected differs but little from
that circulated through Paris.

At about four o’clock in the afternoon the two generals were conducted
from their prison by a hundred National Guards, the hands of General
Lecomte being bound together, whilst those of Clément Thomas were free.
In this manner they were escorted to the top of the hill of Montmartre,
where they stopped before No. 6 of the Rue des Rosiers: it is a little
house I had often seen, a peaceful and comfortable habitation, with a
garden in front. What passed within it perhaps will never be known. Was
it there that the Central Committee of the National Guard held their
sittings in full conclave? or were they represented by a few of its
members? Many persons think that the house was not occupied, and that
the National Guards conducted their prisoners within its walls to make
the crowd believe they were proceeding to a trial, or at least to give
the appearance of legality to the execution of premeditated acts. Of
one thing there remains little doubt, namely, that soldiers of the line
stood round about at the time, and that the trial, if any took place,
was not long, the condemned being conducted to a walled enclosure at
the end of the street.

[Illustration: Hotel de Ville, As Fortified by the National Guard,
March, 1871.]

The Hôtel de Ville of Paris, Which Witnessed So Many National
Ceremonies and Republican Triumphs, Was Commenced in 1533, And It Was
Finished in 1628. Here the First Bourbon, Henry Iv., Celebrated His
Entry Into Paris After the Siege of 1589, and Bailly The maire, On The
17th July, 1789, Presented Louis Xvi. To the People, Wearing A Tricolor
Cockade. Henry Iv. Became a Catholic in Order to Enter “his Good City
of Paris” Whilst Louis Xvi. Wore the Democratic Insignia In Order to
Keep It. A Few Days Later the 172 Commissioners of Sections,
Representing the Municipality of Paris, Established The Commune. The
Hôtel de Ville Was the Seat of The First Committee Of Public Safety,
And From the Green Chamber, Robespierre Governed The Convention and
France Till his Fall on the 9th Thermidor. From 1800 to 1830 Fêtes Held
The Place of Political Manifestations. In 1810 Bonaparte Received
Marie-Louise Here; in 1821, the Baptism of The Duke Of Bordeaux Was
Celebrated Here; in 1825 Fêtes Were Given to the Duc D’angouleme on His
Return from Spain, and to Charles X., Arriving From Rheims. Five Years
Later, from the Same Balcony Where Bailly Presented Louis Xvi. To The
People, Lafayette, Standing by the Side of Louis Philippe, Said, “this
Is the Best of Republics!” It Was Here, in 1848, That de Lamartine
Courageously Declared to an Infuriated Mob That, As Long As he Lived,
The Red Flag Should Not Be the Flag of France. During The Fatal Days Of
June, 1848, the Hôtel de Ville Was Only Saved from Destruction by The
Intrepidity of a Few Brave Men. The Queen Of England Was Received Here
In 1865, and the Sovereigns Who Visited Paris Since Have Been Fêted
Therein. On the 4th of September The Bloodless Revolution Was
Proclaimed; and on the 31st of October, 1870, And The 22nd Of January,
1871, Flourens and Blanqui Made a Fruitless Attempt to Substitute The
Red Flag for the Tricolor; But Their Partisans Succeeded on The 18th Of
March, when It Was Fortified, and Became the Head-quarters of The
Commune of 1871.

As soon as they had halted, an officer of the National Guard seized
General Clément Thomas by the collar of his coat and shook him
violently several times, exclaiming, whilst he held the muzzle of a
revolver close to his throat,—“Confess that you have betrayed the
Republic.” To this Monsieur Clément Thomas only replied by a shrug of
his shoulders; upon this the officer retired, leaving the General
standing alone in the front of the wall, with a line of soldiers
opposite.

Who gave the signal to fire is unknown, but a report of twenty muskets
rent the air, and General Clément Thomas fell with his face to the
earth.

“It is your turn now,” said one of the assassins, addressing General
Lecomte, who immediately advanced from the crowd, stepping over the
body of Clément Thomas to take his place, awaiting with his back to the
wall the fatal moment.

“Fire!” cried the officer, and all was over.

Half an hour after, in the Rue des Acacias, I came across an old woman
who wanted three francs for a bullet—a bullet she had extracted from
the plaster of a wall at the end of the Rue des Rosiers.

III.

It is ten o’clock in the evening, and if I were not so tired I would go
to the Hôtel de Ville, which, I am told, has been taken possession of
by the National Guards; the 18th of March is continuing the 31st of
October. But the events of this day have made me so weary that I can
hardly write all I have seen and heard. On the outer boulevards the
wine shops are crowded with tipsy people, the drunken braggarts who
boast they have made a revolution. When a stroke succeeds there are
plenty of rascals ready to say: I did it. Drinking, singing, and
talking are the order of the day. At every step you come upon “piled
arms.” At the corner of the Passage de l’Elysée-des-Beaux-Arts I met
crowds of people, some lying on the ground; here a battalion standing
at ease but ready to march; and at the entrance of the Rue Blanche and
the Rue Fontaine were some stones, ominously posed one on the other,
indicating symptoms of a barricade. In the Rue des Abbesses I counted
three cannons and a mitrailleuse, menacing the Rue des Martyrs. In the
Rue des Acacias, a man had been arrested, and was being conducted by
National Guards to the guard-house: I heard he was a thief. Such
arrests are characteristic features in a Parisian émeute.
Notwithstanding these little scenes the disorder is not excessive, and
but for the multitude of men in uniform one might believe it the
evening of a popular fête; the victors are amusing themselves.

[Illustration: Sentinels, Rue du Val de Grâce and Boulevard St. Michel]

Among the Federals this evening there are very few linesmen; perhaps
they have gone to their barracks to enjoy their meal of soup and bread.

Upon the main boulevards noisy groups are commenting upon the events of
the day. At the corner of the Rue Drouot an officer of the 117th
Battalion is reading in a loud voice, or rather reciting, for he knows
it all by heart, the proclamation of M. Picard, the official poster of
the afternoon.

“The Government appeals to you to defend your city, your home, your
children, and your property.
“Some frenzied men, commanded by unknown chiefs, direct against
Paris the guns defended from, the Prussians.
“They oppose force to the National Guard and the army.
“Will you suffer it?
“Will you, under the eyes of the strangers ready to profit by our
discord, abandon Paris to sedition?
“If you do not extinguish it in the germ, the Republic and France
will be ruined for ever.
“Their destiny is in your hands.
“The Government desires that you should hold your arms
energetically to maintain the law and preserve the Republic from
anarchy. Gather round your leaders; it is the only means of
escaping ruin and the domination of the foreigner.

“The Minister of the Interior,
“ERNEST PICARD.”

The crowd listened with attention, shouted two or three times “To
arms!” and then dispersed—I thought for an instant, to arm themselves,
though in reality it was only to reinforce another group forming on the
other side of the way.

This day the Friends of Order have been very apathetic, so much so that
Paris is divided between two parties: the one active and the other
passive.

To speak truly, I do not know what the population of Paris could have
done to resist the insurrection. “Gather round your chiefs,” says the
proclamation. This is more easily said than done, when we do not know
what has become of them. The division caused in the National Guard by
the Coup d’Etat of the Central Committee had for its consequence the
disorganisation of all command. Who was to distinguish, and where was
one to find the officers that had remained faithful to the cause of
order?

It is true they sounded the “rappel”[11] and beat the “générale”;[12]
but who commanded it? Was it the regular Government or the
revolutionary Committee?

More than one good citizen was ready to do his duty; but, after having
put on his uniform and buckled his belt, he felt very puzzled, afraid
of aiding the entente instead of strengthening the defenders of the
law. Therefore the peaceful citizen soldiers regarded not the call of
the trumpet and the drum.

It is wise to stay at home when one knows not where to go. Besides, the
line has not replied, and bad examples are contagious; moreover, is it
fair to demand of fathers of families, of merchants and tradesmen, in
fact of soldiers of necessity, an effort before which professional
soldiers withdraw? The fact is the Government had fled. Perhaps a few
ministers still remained in Paris, but the main body had gone to join
the Assembly at Versailles.

I do not blame their somewhat precipitate departure,[13] perhaps it was
necessary; nevertheless it seems to me that their presence would have
put an end to irresolution on the part of timid people.

Meanwhile, from the Madeleine to the Gymnase, the cafés overflowed with
swells and idlers of both sexes. On the outer boulevards they got
drunk, and on the inner tipsy, the only difference being in the quality
of the liquors imbibed.

What an extraordinary people are the French!

NOTES:

[11] The roll call.

[12] Muster call in time of danger, which is beaten only by a superior
order emanating from the Commander-in-chief in a stronghold or
garrison town.

[13] The army of Paris was drawn off to Versailles in the night of the
18th of March, and on the 19th, the employés of all the ministries and
public offices left Paris for the same destination.
On the 19th of March, as early as eight in the morning, Monsieur
Thiers addressed the following circular to the authorities of all
the departments:—
“The whole of the Government is assembled at Versailles: the
National Assembly will meet there also.
“The army, to the number of forty thousand men, has been assembled
there in good order, under the command of General Vinoy. All the
chiefs of the army, and all the civil authorities have arrived
there.
“The civil and military authorities will execute no other orders
but those issued by the legitimate government residing at
Versailles, under penalty of dismissal.
“The members of the National Assembly are all requested to hasten
their return, so as to be present at the sitting of the 20th of
March.
“The present despatch will be made known to the public.

“A. THIERS.”

IV.

Next morning, the 19th of March, I was in haste to know the events of
last night, what attitude Paris had assumed after her first surprise.
The night, doubtless, had brought counsel, and perhaps settled the
discord existing between the Government and the Central Committee.

Early in the morning things appeared much as usual; the streets were
peaceful, servants shopping, and the ordinary passengers going to and
fro. In passing I met a casual acquaintance to whom I had spoken now
and then, a man with whom I had served during the siege when we mounted
guard on the ramparts. “Well,” said I, “good morning, have you any
news?”—“News,” replied he, “no, not that I know of. Ah I yes, there is
a rumour that something took place yesterday at Montmartre.” This was
told me in the centre of the city, in the Rue de la Grange-Batelière.
Truly there are in Paris persons marvellously apathetic and ignorant. I
would wager not a little that by searching in the retired quarters,
some might be found who believe they are still governed by Napoleon
III., and have never heard of the war with Prussia, except as a not
improbable eventuality.

On the boulevards there was but little excitement. The newspaper
vendors were in plenty. I do not like to depend upon these public
sheets for information, for however impartial or sincere a reporter may
be, he cannot represent facts otherwise than according to the
impression they make upon him, and to value facts by the impression
they make upon others is next to impossible.

I directed my steps to the Rue Drouot in search of placards, and
plentiful I found them, and white too, showing that Paris was not
without a government; for white is the official colour even under a red
Republic.[14]

Taking out a pencil I copied hastily the proclamation of the new
masters, and I think that I did well, for we forget very quickly both
proclamations and persons. Where are they now, the official bills of
last year?

“RÉPUBLIQUE FRANÇAISE.
“Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité.”
_To the People_.

“Citizens,—The people of Paris have shaken off the yoke endeavoured
to be imposed upon them.”

What yoke, gentlemen—I beg pardon, citizens of the Committee? I assure
you, as part of the people, that I have never felt that any one has
tried to impose one upon me. I recollect, if my memory serves me, that
a few guns were spoken of, but nothing about yokes. Then the expression
“People of Paris,” is a gross exaggeration. The inhabitants of
Montmartre and their neighbours of that industrious suburb are
certainly a part of the people, and not the less respectable or worthy
of our consideration because they live out of the centre (indeed, I
have always preferred a coal man of the Chaussée Clignancourt to a
coxcomb of the Rue Taitbout); but for all that, they are not the whole
population. Thus, your sentence does not imply anything, and moreover,
with all its superannuated metaphor, the rhetoric is out of date. I
think it would have been better to say simply—

“Citizens,—The inhabitants of Montmartre and of Belleville have
taken their guns and intend to keep them.”

But then it would not have the air of a proclamation. Extraordinary
fact! you may overturn an entire country, but you must not touch the
official style; it is immutable. One may triumph over empires, but must
respect red tape. Let us read on:

“Tranquil, calm in our force, we have awaited without fear as
without provocation, the shameless madmen who menaced the
Republic.”

The Republic? Again an improper expression, it was the cannons they
wanted to take.

“This time, our brothers of the army....”

Ah! your brothers of the army! They are your brothers because they
fraternised and threw up the butt-ends of their muskets. In your family
you acknowledge no brotherhood except those who hold the same opinion.

“This time, our brothers of the army would not raise their hands
against the holy ark of our liberty.”

Oh! So the guns are a holy ark now. A very holy metaphor, for people
not greatly enamoured of churchmen.

“Thanks for all; and let Paris and France unite to build a Republic,
and accept with acclamations the only government that will close for
ever the flood gates of invasion and civil war.
“The state of siege is raised.
“The people of Paris are convoked in their sections to elect a
Commune. The safety of all citizens is assured by the body of the
National Guard.
“Hôtel de Ville of Paris, the 19th of March, 1871.
“The Central Committee of the National Guard:
“Assy, Billioray, Ferrat, Babick, Ed. Moreau, Oh. Dupont, Varlin,
Boursier, Mortier, Gouhier, Lavallette, Fr. Jourde, Rousseau, Ch.
Lullier, Blanchet, G. Gaillard, Barroud, H. Geresme, Fabre,
Pougeret.”[15]

There is one reproach that the new Parisian Revolution could not be
charged with; it is that of having placed at the head men of proved
incapacity. Those who dared to assert that each of the persons named
above had not more genius than would be required to regenerate two or
three nations would greatly astonish me. In a drama of Victor Hugo it
is said a parentless child ought to be deemed a gentleman; thus an
obscure individual ought, on the same terms, to be considered a man of
genius.

But on the walls of the Rue Drouot many more proclamations were to be
seen.

“RÉPUBLIQUE FRANÇAISE.
“LIBERTÉ, EGALITÉ, FRATERNITÉ,
“To the National Guards of Paris.

“CITIZENS,—You had entrusted us with the charge of organising the
defence of Paris and of your rights.”

Oh! as to that, no; a thousand times, no! I admit—since you appear to
cling to it—that Cannon are an ark of strength, but under no pretext
whatever will I allow that I entrusted you with the charge of
organising anything whatsoever. I know nothing of you; I have never
heard you spoken of. There is no one in the world of whom I am more
ignorant than Ferrat, Babick, unless it be Gaillard and Pougeret
(though I was national guard myself, and caught cold on the ramparts
for the King of Prussia[16] as much as anyone else). I neither know
what you wish nor where you are leading those who follow you; and I can
prove to you, if you like, that there are at least a hundred thousand
men who caught cold too, and who, at the present moment, are in exactly
the same state of mind concerning you “We are aware of having fulfilled
our mission.”

You are very good to have taken so much trouble, but I have no
recollection of having given you a mission to fulfil of any kind
whatever!

“Assisted by your courage and presence of mind!...”

Ah, gentlemen, this is flattery!

“We have driven out the government that was betraying you.
“Our mandate has now expired...”

Always this same mandate which we gave you, eh?

“We now return it to you, for we do not pretend to take the place
of those which the popular breath has overthrown.
“Prepare yourselves, let the Communal election commence forthwith,
and give to us the only reward we have ever hoped for—that of
seeing the establishment of a true republic. In the meanwhile we
retain the Hôtel de Ville in the name of the people.
“Hôtel de Ville, Paris, 19th March, 1871.
“The Central Committee of the National Guards:
“Assy, Billioray, and others.”

Placarded up also is another proclamation[17] signed by the citizens
Assy, Billioray, and others, announcing that the Communal elections
will take place on Wednesday next, 22nd of March, that is to say in
three days.

This then is the result of yesterday’s doings, and the revolution of
the 18th March can be told in a few words.

There were cannon at Montmartre; the Government wished to take them but
was not able, thanks to the fraternal feeling and cowardice of the
soldiers of the Line. A secret society, composed of several delegates
of several battalions, took advantage of the occasion to assert loudly
that they represented the entire population, and commanded the people
to elect the Commune of Paris—whether they wished or not.

What will Paris do now between these dictators, sprung from heaven
knows where, and the Government fled to Versailles?

NOTES:

[14] No one may use white placards—they are reserved by the
government.
The following is an extract from the _Official Journal_ of
Versailles, bearing the date of the 20th of March, which explains
the official form of the announcements made by the Central
Committee:—
“Yesterday, 19th March, the offices of the _Official Journal_, in
Paris, were broken into, the employés having escaped to Versailles
with the documents, to join the Government and the National
Assembly. The invaders took possession of the printing machines,
the materials, and even the official and non-official articles
which had been set up in type, and remained in the composing-rooms.
It is thus that they were enabled to give an appearance of
regularity to the publication of their decrees, and to deceive the
Parisian public by a false _Official Journal_.”

[15] Here is an extract from the _Official Journal_ upon the subject
(numbers of the 29th March and 1st June):—
“In the insurrection, the momentary triumph of which has crushed
Paris beneath so odious and humiliating a yoke, carried the
distresses of France to their height, and put civilisation in
peril, the International Society has borne a part which has
suddenly revealed to all the fatal power of this dangerous
association.
“On the 19th of March, the day after the outbreak of the terrible
sedition, of which the last horrors will form one of the most
frightful pages in history, there appeared upon the walls a placard
which made known to Paris the names of its new masters.
“With the exception of one, alone, (Assy), who had acquired a
deplorable notoriety, these names were unknown to almost all who
read them; they had suddenly emerged from utter obscurity, and
people asked themselves with astonishment, with stupor, what unseen
power could have given them an influence and a meaning which they
did not possess in themselves. This power was the International;
these names were those of some of its members.”

[16] _Travailler pour le Roi de Prusse_, “to work for the King of
Prussia,” is an old French saying, which means to work for nothing, to
no purpose.

[17] “THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE NATIONAL GUARD.
“Inasmuch:—
“That it is most urgent that the Communal administration of the
City of Paris shall be formed immediately,
“Decrees:—
“1st. The elections for the Communal Council of the City of Paris
will take place on Wednesday next, the 22nd of March.
“2nd. The electors will vote with lists, and in their own
arrondissements.
Each arrondissement will elect a councillor for each twenty
thousand of inhabitants, and an extra one for a surplus of more
than ten thousand.
3rd. The poll will be open from eight in the morning to six in the
evening. The result will be made known at once.
4th. The municipalities of the twenty arrondissements are entrusted
with the proper execution of the present decree.
A placard indicating the number of councillors for each
arrondissement will shortly be posted up.
“Hôtel de Ville, Paris, 29th March, 1871.”

Paris remains inactive, and watches events as one watches running
water. What does this indifference spring from? Surprise and the
disappearance of the chiefs might yesterday have excused the inaction
of Paris, but twenty-four hours have passed over, every man has
interrogated his conscience, and been able to listen to its answer.
There has been time to reconnoitre, to concert together; there would
have been time to act!

Why is nothing done? Why has nothing been done yet? Generals Clément
Thomas and Lecomte have been assassinated; this is as incontestable as
it is odious. Does all Paris wish to partake with the criminals in the
responsibility of this crime? The regular Government has been expelled.
Does Paris consent to this expulsion? Men invested with no rights, or,
at least, with insufficient rights, have usurped the power. Does Paris
so far forget itself as to submit to this usurpation without
resistance?

No, most assuredly no. Paris abominates crime, does not approve of the
expulsion of the Government, and does not acknowledge the right of the
members of the Central Committee to impose its wishes upon us. Why then
does Paris remain passive and patient? Does it not fear that it will be
said that silence implies consent? How is it that I myself, for
example, instead of writing my passing impressions on these pages, do
not take my musket to punish the criminals and resist this despotism?
It is that we all feel the present situation to be a, singularly
complicated one. The Government which has withdrawn to Versailles
committed so many faults that it would be difficult to side with it
without reserve. The weakness and inability the greater part of those
who composed it showed during the siege, their obstinacy in remaining
deaf to the legitimate wishes of the capital, have ill disposed us for
depending on a state of things which it would have been impossible to
approve of entirely. In fine, these unknown revolutionists, guilty most
certainly, but perhaps sincere, claim for Paris rights that almost the
whole of Paris is inclined to demand. It is impossible not to
acknowledge that the municipal franchise is wished for and becomes
henceforth necessary.

It is for this reason that although aghast at the excesses in
perspective and those already committed by the dictators of the 18th
March, though revolted at the thought of all the blood spilled and yet
to be spilled—this is the reason that we side with no party. The past
misdeeds of the legitimate Government of Versailles damp our enthusiasm
for it, while some few laudable ideas put forth by the illegitimate
government of the Hôtel de Ville diminish our horror of its crimes, and
our apprehensions at its misdoings.

Then—why not dare say it?—Paris, which is so impressionable, so
excitable, so romantic, in admiration before all that is bold, has but
a moderate sympathy for that which is prudent. We may smile, as I did
just now, at the emphatic proclamation of the Central Committee, but
that does not prevent us from recognizing that its power is real, and
the ferocious elements that it has so suddenly revealed are not without
a certain grandeur. It might have been spitefully remarked that more
than one patriot in his yesterday evening walk on the outer boulevards
and in the environs of the Hôtel de Ville, had taken more _petit vin_
than was reasonable in honour of the Republic and of the Commune, but
that has not prevented our feeling a surprise akin to admiration at the
view of those battalions hastening from all quarters at some invisible
signal, and ready at any moment to give up their lives to defend ...
what? Their guns, and these guns were in their eyes the palpable
symbols of their rights and liberties. During this time the heroic
Assembly was pettifogging at Versailles, and the Government was going
to join them. Paris does not follow those who fly.

VI.

The Butte-Montmartre is _en fête_. The weather is charming, and every
one goes to see the cannon and inspect the barricades, Men, women, and
children mount the hilly streets, and they all appear joyous ... for
what, they cannot say themselves, but who can resist the charm of
sunshine? If it rained, the city would be in mourning. Now the citizens
have closed their shops and put on their best clothes, and are going to
dine at the restaurant. These are the very enemies of disorder, the
small shopkeepers and the humble citizens. Strange contradiction! But
what would you have? the sun is so bright, the weather is so lovely.
Yesterday no work was done because of the insurrection; it was like a
Sunday. To-day therefore is the holiday-Monday of the insurrection.

[Illustration: Behind a Barricade: The Morning Meal—thirty Sous A Day
and nothing to eat]

VII.

In the midst of all these troubles, in which every one is borne along,
without any knowledge of where he is drifting—with the Central
Committee making proclamations on one side, and the Versailles
Government training troops on the other, a few men have arisen who have
spoken some words of reason. These men may be certain from this moment
that they are approved of by Paris, and will be obeyed By Paris—by the
honest and intelligent Paris—by the Paris which is ready to favour that
side which can prove that it has the most justice in it.

The deputies and maires of Paris have placarded the following
proclamation:—

“RÉPUBLIQUE FRANÇAISE.
“LIBERTÉ, ÉGALITÉ, FRATERNITÉ.

“Citizens,—Impressed with the absolute necessity of saving Paris
and the Republic by the removal of every cause of collision, and
convinced that the best means of attaining this grand object is to
give satisfaction to the legitimate wishes of the people, we have
resolved this very day to demand of the National Assembly the
adoption of two measures which we have every hope will contribute
to bring back tranquillity to the public mind.
“These two measures are: The election of all the officers of the
National Guard, without exception, and the establishment of a
municipal council, elected by the whole of the citizens.
“What we desire, and what the public welfare requires under all
circumstances; and which the present situation renders more
indispensable than ever, is, order in liberty and by liberty.
“_Vive la France!_ Vive la République!

“_The representatives of the Seine_:

“Louis Blanc, V. Schoelcher, Edmond Adam, Floquet, Martin Bernard,
Langlois, Edouard Lockroy, Farcy, Brisson, Greppo, Millière.

“_The maires and adjoints of Paris_:

“1st Arrondissement: Ad. Adam, Meline, adjoints.—2nd
Arrondissement: Tirard, maire, representative of the Seine; Ad.
Brelay, Chéron, Loiseau-Pinson, adjoints.—3rd Arrondissement;
Bonvalet, maire; Ch. Murat, adjoint.—4th Arrondissement: Vautrain,
maire; Loiseau, Callon, adjoints.—5th Arrondissement: Jourdan,
adjoint.—6th Arrondissement: Hérisson, maire; A. Leroy,
adjoint.—7th Arrondissement: Arnaud (de l’Ariége), maire,
representative of the Seine.—8th Arrondissement: Carnot, maire,
representative of the Seine.—9th Arrondissement: Desmaret,
maire.—10th Arrondissement: Dubail, maire; A. Murat,
Degoyves-Denunques, adjoints.—11th Arrondissement: Motu, maire,
representative of the Seine; Blanchon, Poirier, Tolain,
representative of the Seine.—12th Arrondissement: Denizot, Dumas,
Turillon, adjoints.—18th Arrondissement: Léo Meillet, Combes,
adjoints.—14th Arrondissement: Héligon, adjoint.—15th
Arrondissement: Jobbe-Duval, adjoint.—16th Arrondissement: Henri
Martin, maire and representative of the Seine,—17th.
Arrondissement: FRANÇOIS FAVRE, maire; MALOU, VILLENEUVE, CACHEUX,
adjoints.—18th. Arrondissement: CLÉMENCEAU, maire and
representative of the people; J.B. LAFONT, DEREURE, JACLARD,
adjoints.”

This proclamation has now been posted two hours, and I have not yet met
a single person who does not approve of it entirely. The deputies of
the Seine and the _maires_ of Paris have, by the flight of the
Government to Versailles, become the legitimate chiefs. We have elected
them, it is for them to lead us. To them belongs the duty of
reconciling the Assembly with the city; and it appears to us that they
have taken the last means of bringing about that conciliation, by
disengaging all that is legitimate and practical in its claims from the
exaggeration of the _émeute_. Let them therefore have all praise for
this truly patriotic attempt. Let them hasten to obtain from the
Assembly a recognition of our rights. In acceding to the demands of the
deputies and the _maires_, the Government will not be treating with
insurrection; on the contrary, it will effect a radical triumph over
it, for it will take away from it every pretext of existence, and will
separate from it, in a definite way, all those men who have been
blinded to the illegal and violent manner in which this programme is
drawn up, by the justice of certain parts of it.

If the Assembly consent to this, all that will remain of the 18th of
March will be the recollection—painful enough, without doubt—of one
sanguinary day, while out of a great evil will come a great benefit.

Whatever may happen, we are resolute; we—that is to say, all those who,
without having followed the Government of Versailles, and without
having taken an active part in the insurrection, equally desire the
re-establishment of legitimate power and the development of municipal
liberties—we are resolved to follow where our deputies and the _maires_
may lead us. They represent at this, moment the only legal authority
which seems to us to have fairly understood the difficulties of the
situation, and if, in the case of all hope of conciliation being lost,
they should tell us to take up arms, we will do so.

VIII.

Paris has this evening, the 21st of March, an air of extraordinary
contentment; it has belief in the deputies and the _maires_, it has
trust even, in the National Assembly. People talk of the manifestation
of the Friends of Order and approve of it. A foreigner, a Russian,
Monsieur A—— J——, who has inhabited Paris for ten years, and is
consequently Parisian, has given me the following information, of which
I took hasty note:—

“At half-past one o’clock to-day a group, of which I made one, was
formed in the place of the New Opera-house. We numbered scarcely twenty
persons, and we had a flag on which was inscribed, ‘Meeting of the
Friends of Order.’ This flag was carried by a soldier of the line, an
employé, it is said, of the house of Siraudin, the great confectioners.
We marched along the boulevards as far as the Rue de Richelieu; windows
were opened as we passed, and the people cried, ‘_Vive l’Ordre! Vive
l’Assemblée Nationale! A bas la Commune!_’ Few as we were at starting
our numbers soon grew to three hundred, to five hundred, to a thousand.
Our troop followed the Rue de Richelieu, increasing as it went. At the
Place de la Bourse a captain at the head of his National Guards tried
to stop us. We continued our course, the company saluted our flag as,
we passed, and the drums beat to arms. After having traversed, still
increasing in numbers, the streets which surround the Bourse, we
returned to the boulevards, where the most lively enthusiasm burst out
around us. We halted opposite the Rue Drouot. The _mairie_ of the Ninth
Arrondissement was occupied by a battalion attached to the Central
Committee—the 229th, I believe. Although there was some danger of a
collision, we made our way into the street, resolved to do our duty,
which was to protest against the interference with order and the
disregard for established laws; but no resistance was opposed to us.
The National Guards came out in front of the door of the _mairie_ and
presented arms to us, and we were about to continue our way, when some
one remarked that our flag, on which, as I have already said, were the
woods ‘Meeting of the Friends of Order,’ might expose us to the danger
of being taken for ‘_réactionnaires_,’ and that we ought to add the
words ‘_Vive la République!_’ Those who headed the manifestation came
to a halt, and a few of them went into a café, and there wrote the
words on the flag with chalk. We then resumed our march, following the
widest and most frequented paths, and were received with acclamations
everywhere. A quarter of an hour later we arrived at the Rue de la Paix
and were marching towards the Place Vendôme, where the battalions of
the Committee were collected in masses, and where, as is well known,
the staff of the National Guard had its head-quarters. There, as in the
Rue Drouot, the drums were beaten and arms presented to us; more than
that, an officer came and informed the leaders of the manifestation
that a delegate of the Central Committee begged them to proceed to the
staff quarters. At this moment I was carrying the flag. We advanced in
silence. When we arrived beneath the balcony, surrounded by National
Guards, whose attitude was generally peaceful; there appeared on the
balcony a rather young man, without uniform, but wearing a red scarf,
and surrounded by several superior officers; he came forward and
said—‘Citizens, in the name of the Central Committee....’ when he was
interrupted by a storm of hisses and by cries of ‘_Vive l’Ordre! Vive
l’Assemblée Nationale! Vive la République!_’ In spite of these daring
interruptions we were not subjected to any violence, nor even to any
threats, and without troubling ourselves any more about the delegate,
we marched round the column, and having regained the boulevards
proceeded towards the Place de la Concorde. There, some one proposed
that we should visit Admiral Saisset, who lived in the Rue Pauquet, in
the quarter of the Champs Elysées, when a grave looking man with grey
hair said that Admiral Saisset was at Versailles. ‘But,’ he added,
‘there are several admirals amongst you.’ He gave his own name, it was
Admiral de Chaillé. From that moment he headed the manifestation, which
passed over the Pont de la Concorde to the Faubourg St. Germain.
Constantly received with acclamations, and increasing in numbers, we
paraded successively all the streets of the quarter, and each time that
we passed before a guard-house the men presented arms. On the Place St.
Sulpice a battalion drew up to allow us to pass. We afterwards went
along the Boulevard St. Michel and the Boulevard de Strasbourg. During
this part of our course we were joined by a large group, preceded by a
tricolor flag with the inscription, ‘_Vive l’Assemblée Nationale!_’
From this time the two flags floated side by side at the head of the
augmented procession. As we were about to turn into the Boulevard
Bonne-Nouvelle, a man dressed in a paletot and wearing a grey felt hat,
threw himself upon me as I was carrying the standard of the Friends of
Order, but a negro, dressed in the uniform of the National Guard, who
marched beside me, kept the man off, who thereupon turned against the
person that carried the other flag, wrested it from him, and with
extraordinary strength broke the staff, which was a strong one, over
his knee. This incident caused some confusion; the man was seized and
carried off, and I fear he was rather maltreated. We then made our way
back to the boulevards. At our appearance the enthusiasm of the
passers-by was immense; and certainly, without exaggeration, we
numbered between three and four thousand persons by the time we got
back to the front of the New Opera-house, where we were to separate. A
Zouave climbed up a tree in front of the Grand Hôtel, and fixed our
flag on the highest branch. It was arranged that we should meet on the
following day, in uniform but without arms, at the same place.”

This account differs a little from those given in the newspapers, but I
have the best reason to believe it absolutely true.

What will be the effect of this manifestation? Will those who desire
“Order through Liberty and in Liberty” succeed in meeting in
sufficiently large numbers to bring to reason, without having recourse
to force, the numerous partizans of the Commune? Whatever may happen,
this manifestation proves that Paris has no intention of being disposed
of without her own consent. In connection with the action of the
deputies in the National Assembly, it cannot have been ineffective in
aiding the coming pacification.

Many hopeful promises of concord and quiet circulate this evening
amongst the less violent groups.

IX.

What is this fusillade? Against whom is it directed? Against the
Prussians? No! Against Frenchmen, against passers-by, against those who
cry “_Vive la République et vive l’Ordre_.” Men are falling dead or
wounded, women flying, shops closing, amid the whistling of the
bullets,—all Paris terrified. This is what I have just seen or heard.
We are done for then at last. We shall see the barricades thrown up in
our streets; we shall meet the horrid litters, from which hang hands
black with powder; every woman will weep in the evening when her
husband is late in returning home, and all mothers will be seized with
terror. France, alas! France, herself a weeping mother, will fall by
the hands of her own children.

I had started, in company with a friend, from the Passage Choiseul on
my way to the Tuileries, which has been occupied since yesterday by a
battalion devoted to the Central Committee. On arming at the corner of
the Rue St. Roch and the Rue Neuve des Petits Champs we perceived a
considerable crowd in the direction of the Rue de la Paix. “What is
going on now?” said I to my friend. “I think,” said he, “that it is an
unarmed manifestation going to the Place Vendôme; it passed along the
boulevards a short time since, crying “_Vive l’Ordre_.”

As we talked we were approaching the Rue de la Paix. All at once a
horrible noise was heard. It was the report of musketry. A white smoke
rose along the walls, cries issued from all parts, the crowd fled
terrified, and a hundred yards before us I saw a woman fall. Is she
wounded or dead? What is this massacre? What fearful deeds are passing
in open day, in this glorious sunshine? We had scarcely time to escape
into one of the cross-streets, followed by the frightened crowd, when
the shops were closed, hurriedly, and the horrible news spread to all
parts of terrified Paris.

Reports, varying extremely in form, spread with extraordinary rapidity;
some were grossly exaggerated, others the reverse. “Two hundred victims
have fallen,” said one. “There were no balls in the guns,” said
another. The opinions regarding the cause of the conflict were
strangely various. Perhaps we shall never know, with absolute
certainty, what passed in the Place, Vendôme and the Rue de la Paix.
For myself, I was at once; too far and too near the scene of action;
too near, for I had narrowly missed being killed; too far, for I saw
nothing but the smoke and the flight, of the terrified crowd.

One thing certain is that the Friends of Order who, yesterday,
succeeded in assembling a large number of citizens, had to-day tried to
renew its attempt at pacification by unarmed numbers. Three or four
thousand persons entered the Rue de la Paix towards two o’clock in the
afternoon, crying, “_L’Ordre! L’Ordre! Vive l’Ordre!_” The Central
Committee had doubtless issued severe orders, for the foremost
sentinels of the Place, far from presenting arms to the “Friends of
Order,” as they had done the day before, formally refused to let them
continue their way. And then what happened? Two crowds were face to
face; one unarmed, the other armed, both under strong excitement, one
trying to press forward, the other determined to oppose its passage. A
pistol-shot was heard. This was a signal. Down went the muskets, the
armed crowd fired, and the unarmed dispersed in mad flight, leaving
dead and wounded on their path.

But who fired that first pistol-shot? “One of the citizens of the
demonstration; and moreover, the sentinels had their muskets torn from
them;” affirm the partisans of the Central Committee, and they bring
forward, among other proofs; the evidence of an eye-witness, a foreign
general, who saw it all from a window of the Rue de la Paix. But these
assertions are but little to be relied upon. Can it be seriously
believed that a crowd, to all appearance peaceful, would commit such an
act of aggression? Who would have been insane enough to expose a mass
of unarmed people to such dire revenge, by a challenge as criminal as
it was useless? The account according to which the pistol was fired by
an officer of the Federal guard from the foot of the Place Vendôme,
thus giving the signal to those under his orders to fire upon the
citizens, improbable as appears such an excess of cold-blooded
barbarity, is much the more credible. And now how many women mourn
their husbands and son’s wounded, and perhaps dead? How many victims
have fallen? The number is not yet known. Monsieur Barle, a lieutenant
of the National Guard, was shot in the stomach. Monsieur Gaston
Jollivet, who some time ago committed the offence, grave in our eyes,
of publishing a comic ode in which he allows himself to ridicule our
illustrious and beloved master, Victor Hugo, but was certainly guilty
of none in desiring a return to order, had his arm fractured, it is
said. Monsieur Otto Hottinger, one of the directors of the French Bank,
fell, struck by two balls, while raising a wounded man from the ground.

One of my friends assures me that half-an-hour after the fusillade he
was fired at, as he was coming out from a _porte-cochère_,[18] by
National Guards in ambuscade.

At four o’clock, at the corner of the Rue de la Paix and the Rue Neuve
des Petits Champs, an old man, dressed in a blouse, still lay where he
had fallen across the body of a _cantinière_, and beside him a soldier
of the line, the staff of a tricolour flag grasped in his dead hand. Is
this soldier the same of whom my friend Monsieur A—— J—— speaks in his
account of the first demonstration, and who was said to be an employé
at Siraudin’s?

There were many other victims—Monsieur de Péne, the editor of
_Paris-Journal_, dangerously wounded by a ball that penetrated the
thigh; Monsieur Portel, lieutenant in the Eclaireurs Franchetti,
wounded in the neck and right foot; Monsieur Bernard, a merchant,
killed; Monsieur Giraud, a stockbroker, also killed. Fresh names are
added to the funereal list every moment.

Where will this revolution lead us, which was begun by the murder of
two Generals and is being carried on by the assassination of
passers-by?

NOTES:

[18] Porte-cochère (carriage gateway).

In the midst of all this horror and terror I saw one little incident
which made me smile, though it was sad too; an idyl which might be an
elegy. Three hired carriages descended the Rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette.
It was a wedding. In the first carriage was the bride, young and
pretty, in tears; in the second, the bridegroom, looking anything but
pleased. As the horses were proceeding slowly on account of the hill, I
approached and inquired the cause of the discontent. A disagreeable
circumstance had happened, the _garçon d’honneur_ told me. They had
been to the _mairie_ to be married, but the _mairie_ had been turned
into a guard-house, and instead of the _mairie_ and his clerks, they
found soldiers of the Commune. The sergeant had offered to replace the
municipal functionary, but the grands-parents had not consented to such
an arrangement, and they were forced to return with the connubial knot
still to be tied. An unhappy state of things. “Pooh!” said an old woman
who was passing by, “they can marry to-morrow.—There is always time
enough to commit suicide.”

It is true, they can marry to-morrow; but these young people wished to
be married to-day. What are revolutions to them? What would it have
mattered to the Commune had these lovers been united to-day? Is one
ever sure of recovering happiness that has once escaped? Ah! this
insurrection, I hate it for the men it has killed, and the widows it
has made; and also for the sake of those pretty eyes that glistened
with tears under the bridal wreath.

XI.

The _mairie_ of the Second Arrondissement seems destined to be the
centre of resistance to the Central Committee. The Federals have not
been able, or have not dared, to occupy it. In the quarter of the Place
de la Bourse and the Place des Victoires, National Guards have
assembled and declared themselves Friends of Order. But they are few in
number. Yesterday morning, the 23rd of March, they were reinforced by
battalions that joined them, one by one, from all parts of Paris. They
obey the orders, they say, of Admiral Saisset, raised to the superior
command of the National Guard. It is believed that there are
mitrailleuses within the Bourse and in the court of the Messageries.
The massacre of the Rue de la Paix decided the most timorous. There is
a determination to have done, by some means or other, with tyrants who
represent in fact but a small part of the population of Paris, and who
wish to dominate over the whole city. The preparations for resistance
are being made between the Hôtel de Ville on the one hand, where the
members of the Committee are sitting, formidably defended, and the
Place Vendôme, crammed with insurgents, on the other. Is it civil
war—civil war, with all its horrors, that is about to commence? A
company of Gardes Mobiles has joined the battalions of Order. Pupils of
the Ecole Polytechnique come and go between the _mairie_ of the Second
Arrondissement and the Grand Hôtel, where Admiral Saisset and his staff
are said to be installed.[19] A triple line of National Guards closes
the entrance of the Rue Vivienne against carriages and everybody who
does not belong to the quarter. Nevertheless, a large number of people,
eager for information, manage to pass the sentries in spite of the
rule. On the Place de la Bourse a great crowd discusses, and
gesticulates around the piled bayonets which glitter in the sun. I
notice that the pockets of the National Guards are crammed full; a
large number of cartridges has been distributed.

The orders are strict: no one is to quit his post. There are men,
however, who have been standing there, without sleep, for twenty-four
hours. No one must leave the camp of the Friends of Order even to go
and dine. Those who have no money either have rations given them or are
provided at the expense of the _mairie_, from a restaurant of the Rue
des Filles Saint-Thomas, with a dinner consisting of soup and bouilli,
a plate of meat, vegetables, and a bottle of wine. I hear one of them
exclaim,

“If the Federals knew that we not only get our pay, but are also fed
like princes, they would come over to us, every man of them. As for us,
we are determined to obey the _maires_ and deputies of Paris.” Much
astonishment is manifested at the absence of Vice-Admiral Saisset; as
he has accepted the command he ought to show himself. Certain croakers
even insinuate that the vice-admiral hesitates to organise the
resistance, but we will not listen to them, and are on the whole full
of confidence and resolution. “We are numerous, determined; we have
right on our side, and will triumph.”

At about four o’clock an alarm is sounded. We hear cries of “To arms!
To arms!” The drums beat, the trumpets sound, the ranks are formed. The
ominous click, click, as the men cock their rifles, is heard on all
sides. The moment of action has arrived. There are more than ten
thousand men, well armed and determined. A company of Mobiles and the
National Guards defend the entrance of the Rue Vivienne. All this
tumult is caused by one of the battalions from Belleville, passing
along the boulevards with three pieces of cannon.

What is about to happen? When the insurgents reach the top of the Rue
Vivienne they seem to hesitate. In a few seconds the boulevards, which
were just now crowded, are suddenly deserted; and even the cafés are
closed.

At such a moment as this, a single accidental shot (several such have
happened this morning; a woman standing at a window at the corner of
the Rue Saint Marc was nearly killed by the carelessness, of one of the
Guards),—a single shot, a cry even, or a menacing gesture would suffice
to kindle the blaze. Nobody. moves or speaks. I feel myself tremble
before the possibility of an irreparable disaster; it is a solemn and
terrible moment.

The battalion from Belleville presents arms; we reply, and they pass
on. The danger is over; we breathe again. In a few seconds the crowd
has returned to the boulevards.

NOTES:

[19] Lieutenant-Colonel de Beaugrand had improvised staff-quarters at
the Grand Hôtel, and the nomination of Admiral Saisset, together with
M. Schoelcher and Langlois, had strengthened the enmity of the two
parties. The Central Committee, seeing the danger which threatened,
announced that the Communal elections were adjourned to Sunday the
26th March.

XII.

It is two in the morning. Tired of doing nothing I take out my
note-book, seat myself on a doorstep opposite the Restaurant Catelain,
and jet down my memoranda by the light of a street lamp.

As soon as night came on, every measure of precaution was taken. We
have no idea by whom we are commanded, but it would appear that a
serious defence is contemplated, and is being executed with prudence.
Is it Admiral Saisset who is at our head? We hope so. Although we have
been so often disappointed in our chiefs, we have not yet lost the
desire to place confidence in some one. To-night we believe in the
admiral. Ever and anon our superior officers retire to the _mairies_,
and receive strict orders concerning their duty. We are quite an army
in ourselves; our centre is in the Place de la Bourse, our wings extend
into the adjoining streets. Lines of Nationals guard all the openings;
sentinels are posted sixty feet in front to give the alarm. Within the
enclosed space there is no one to be seen, but the houses are inhabited
as usual. The doors have been left open by order, and also all the
windows on the first floors. Each company, divided under the command of
sergeants, has taken possession of three or four houses. At the first
signal of alarm the street-doors are to be closed, the men to rush to
the windows, and from there to fire on the assailants. “Hold yourselves
in readiness; it is very possible you may be attacked. On the approach
of the enemy the guards in the streets are to fall back under fire
towards the houses, and take shelter there. Those posted at the windows
are to keep up an unceasing fire on the insurgents. In the meantime the
bulk of our forces will come to our aid, and clear the streets with
their mitrailleuses.”

So we waited, resolved on obedience, calm, with a silent but fervent
prayer that we might not be obliged to turn our arms against our
fellow-townsmen.

The night is beautiful. Some of our men are talking in groups on the
thresholds of the doors, others, rolled in their blankets, are lying on
the ground asleep. In the upper storeys of some of the houses lights
are still twinkling through the muslin curtains; lower down all is
darkness. Scarcely a sound is to be heard, only now and then the rumble
of a heavy cart, or perhaps a cannon in the distance; and nearer to us
the sudden noise of a musket that slips from its resting-place on to
the pavement. Every hour the dull sound of many feet is heard; it is
the patrol of Mobiles making its round. We question them as they
pass.—“Anything fresh?”—“Nothing,” is the invariable reply.—“How far
have you been?”—“As far as the Rue de la Paix,” they answer, and pass
on. Interrupted conversations are resumed, and the sleepers, who had
been awakened by the noise, close their eyes again. We are watching and
waiting,—may we watch and wait in vain!

XIII.

Never have I seen the dawn break with greater pleasure. Almost everyone
has some time in his life passed such sleepless nights, when it seems
to him that the darkness will never disappear, and the desire for light
and day becomes a fearful longing. Never was dawn more grateful than
after that wretched night. And yet the fear of a disastrous collision
did not disappear with the night. It was even likely that the Federals
might have waited for the morning to begin their attack, just when
fatigue is greatest, sleep most difficult to fight against, and
therefore discipline necessarily slackened. Anyhow, the light seemed to
reassure us; we could scarcely believe that the crime of civil war
could be perpetrated in the day-time. The night had been full of fears,
the morning found us bright and happy. Not all of us, however. I smile
as I remember an incident which occurred a little before daylight. One
of our comrades, who had been lying near me, got up, went out into the
street, and paced up and down some time, as if to shake off cramp or
cold. My eyes followed him mechanically; he was walking in front of the
houses, the backs of which look out upon the Passage des Panoramas, and
as he did so he cast furtive glances through the open doorways. He went
into one, and came out with a disappointed expression on his face.
Having repeated this strange manoeuvre several times, he reached a
_porte-cochère_ that was down by the side of the Restaurant Catelain.
He remained a few minutes, then reappeared with a beaming countenance,
and made straight for where I was standing, rubbing his hands
gleefully.

“Monsieur,” said he, in a low voice, so as not to be overheard, “do you
approve of this plan of action, which consists, in case of attack, of
shooting from the windows on the assailants?”—“A necessity of street
fighting,” said I. “Let us hope we shall not have to try it.”—“Oh! of
course; but I should have preferred it if they had taken other
measures.”—“Why?” I asked.—“Why, you see, when we are in the houses the
insurgents will try to force their way in.”—I could not see what he was
driving at, so I said, “Most probably.”—“But if they do get in?” he
insisted:—“I will trust to our being reinforced from the Place de la
Bourse before they can effect an entrance.”—“Doubtless! doubtless!” he
answered; but I saw he was anything but convinced.—“But you know
reinforcements often arrive too late, and if the Federals should get
in, we shall be shot down like dogs in those rooms overhead!”—I
acknowledged that this would be, to say the least, disagreeable, but
argued that in time of war one must take one’s chance.—“Do you think,
then, monsieur,” he continued, “that, if in the event of the insurgents
entering we were to look out for a back door to escape by, we should be
acting the part of cowards?”—“Of cowards? no; but of excessively
prudent individuals? yes.”:—“Well, monsieur, I am prudent, and there is
an end of it!” exclaimed my comrade, with an air of triumph, “and I
think I have found——” —“The back door in question?”—“Just go; look down
that passage in front of us; at the end there is a door which
leads—where do you think?”—“Into the Passage des Panoramas, does it
not?”—“Yes, monsieur, and now you see what I mean.”—I told him I did
not think I did.—“Why, you see,” he explained, “when the enemy comes we
must rush into that passage, shut the lower door, and make for our post
at the windows, where we will do our duty bravely to our last
cartridge. But suppose, in the meantime, that those devils, succeed in
breaking open the lower door with the butt end of their muskets—and it
is not very strong—what shall we do then?”—“Why, of course,” I said,
“we must plant ourselves at the top of the staircase and receive them
at the point of our bayonets.”—“By no means;” he expostulated.—“But we
must; it is our duty.”—“Oh! I fancied we might have gained the door
that leads into the passage,” he went on, looking rather
shame-faced.—“What, run away!”—“No, not exactly; only find some place
of safety!”—“Well, if it comes to that,” I replied, “you may do just as
you like; only I warn you that the passage is occupied by a hundred of
our men, and that all the outlets are barricaded.”—“No, not all,” he
said with conviction, “and that is why I appeal to you. You are a
journalist, are you not?”—“Sometimes.”—“Yes, but you are; and you know
actors and all those sort of people, and you go behind the scenes, I
dare say, and know where the actors dress themselves, and all that.”—I
looked at my brave comrade in some surprise, but he continued without
noticing me, “And, you know all the ins and outs of the theatre, the
corridors, the trapdoors.”—“Suppose I do, what good can that do
you?”—“All the good in the world, monsieur; it will be the saving of
me. Why we shall only have to find the actors’ entrance of the
_Variétés_, which is in the passage, then ring, at the bell; the porter
knows you, and will admit us. You can guide us both up the staircase
and behind the scenes, and we can easily hunt out some hole or corner
in which to hide until the fight is over.”—“Then,” said I, feeling
rather disgusted with my companion, “we can bravely walk out of the
front door on the boulevards, and go and eat a comfortable breakfast,
while the others are busy carrying away our dead comrades from the
staircase we ought to have helped to defend!”

The poor man looked at me aghast, and then went off. I saw that I had
hurt his feelings, and I thought perhaps I had been wrong in making him
feel the cowardice of his proposition. I had known him for some months;
he lived in the same street as I did, and I remembered that he had a
wife and children. Perhaps he was right in wishing to protect his life
at any price. I thought it over for a minute or two, and then it went
out of my mind altogether.

At four in the morning we had another alarm; in an instant every one
was on foot and rushing to the windows. The house to which I was
ordered was the very one that had inspired my ingenious friend with his
novel plan of evasion. I found him already installed in the room from
whence we were to fire into the street.—“You do not know what I have
done,” said he, coming up to me.—“No.”—“Well, you know the door which
opens on to the passage; you remember it?”—“Of course I do.”—“I found
there was a key; so what do you think I did? I double-locked the door,
and went and slipped the key down the nearest drain! Ha! ha! The fellow
who tries to escape that way will be finely caught!”

I seized him cordially by the hand and shook it many times. He was
beaming, and I was pleased also. I could not help feeling that however
low France may have fallen, one must never despair of a country in
which cowards even can be brave.

XIV.

On Friday, the 24th of March, at nine in the morning, we are still in
the quarter of the Bourse. Some of the men have not slept for
forty-eight hours. We are tired but still resolved. Our numbers are
increasing every hour. I have just seen three battalions, with
trumpeters and all complete, come up and join us. They will now be able
to let the men who have been so long on duty get a little rest. As to
what is going on, we are but very incompletely informed. The Federals
are fortifying themselves more strongly than ever at the Place de
l’Hôtel de Ville and the Place Vendôme. They are very numerous, and
have lots of artillery. Why do they not act on the offensive? Or do
they want, as we do, to avoid a conflict? Certainly our hand shall not
be the first to spill French blood. These hours of hesitation on both
sides calm men’s minds. The deputies and mayors of Paris are trying to
obtain from the National Assembly the recognition of the municipal
franchise. If the Government has the good sense to make these
concessions, which are both legitimate and urgent, rather than remain
doggedly on the defensive, with the conviction that it has right on its
ride; if, in a word, it remembers the well-known maxim, “_Summum jus,
summa injuria_,” the horrors of civil war may be averted. We are told,
and I fancy correctly, that the Federal Guards are not without fear
concerning the issue of the events into which they have hurried. The
chiefs must also be uneasy. Even those who have declared themselves
irreconcileable in the hour of triumph would not perhaps be sorry now
if a little condescension on the part of the Assembly furnished them
with a pretext of not continuing the rebellion. Just now, several
Guards of the 117th Battalion, a part of which has declared for the
Central Committee, who happened to be passing, stopped to chat with our
outposts. Civil war to the knife did not at all appear to be their most
ardent desire. One of them said: “We were called to arms, what could we
do but obey? They give us our pay, and so here we are.” Were they
sincere in this? Did they come with the hope of joining us, or to spy
into what we were doing? Others, however, either more frank or less
clever at deception, declared that they wanted the Commune, and would
have, it at any price. This, however, was by far the smaller number;
the majority of the insurgents are of the opinion of these men who
joined in conversation with us. It is quite possible to believe that
some understanding might be brought about. A fact has just been related
to me which confirms me in my opinion.

The Comptoir d’Escompte was occupied by a post of Federals. A company
of Government Guards from the 9th Arrondissement marched up to take
possession. “You have been here for two whole days; go home and rest,”
said the officer in command of the latter. But the Federals obstinately
refused to be sent away. The officer insisted.—“We are in our own
quarter, you are from Belleville; it is our place to guard the Comptoir
d’Escompte.”—It was all of no avail until the officer said: “Go away
directly, and we will give you a hundred francs.”—They did not wait for
the offer to be repeated, but accepted the money and marched off. Now
men who are willing to sell their consciences at two francs a head—for
there were fifty of them—cannot have any very formidable political
opinions. I forgot to say that this post of Federals was commanded by
the Italian Tibaldi, the same who had been arrested in one of the
passages of the Hôtel de Ville during the riots of the 31st October.

XV.

The news is excellent, in a few hours perhaps it will be better. We
rejoice beforehand at the almost certain prospect of pacification. The
sun shines, the boulevards are crowded with people, the faces of the
women especially are beaming. What is the cause of all this joy? A
placard has just been posted up on all the walls in the city. I copy it
with pleasure.

“DEAR FELLOW CITIZENS,—I hasten to announce to you that together with
the Deputies of the Seine and the Mayors of Paris, we have obtained
from the Government of the National Assembly: 1st. The complete
recognition of your municipal franchises; 2nd. The right of electing
all the officers of the National Guard, as well as the
general-in-chief; 3rd. Modifications of the law on bills; 4th. A
project for a law on rents, favourable to tenants paying 1,200 francs a
year, or less than that sum. Until you have confirmed my nomination, or
until you name some one else in my stead, I shall continue to remain at
my post to watch over the execution of these conciliatory measures that
we have succeeded in obtaining, and to contribute to the well-being of
the Republic!

“The Vice-Admiral and
Provisional Commander,
SAISSET
Paris, 23rd March.”

Well! this is opportune and to the purpose. The National Assembly has
understood that, in a town like Paris, a revolution in which a third of
the population is engaged, cannot be alone actuated by motives of
robbery and murder;[20] and that if some of the demands of the people
are illegitimate or premature, there are at least others, which it is
but right should obtain justice. Paris is never entirely in the wrong.
Certainly among the authors and leaders of the 18th March, there are
many who are very guilty. The murderers of General Lecomte and General
Clément Thomas should be sought out and punished. All honest men must
demand and expect that a minute inquiry be instituted concerning the
massacres in the Place Vendôme. It must be acknowledged that all the
Federals, officers and soldiers, are not devils or drunkards. A few
hundred men getting drunk in the cabarets—(I have perhaps been wrong to
lay so much stress here upon the prevalence of this vice among the
insurrectionists)—a few tipsy brutes, ought not to be sufficient to
authorise us to condemn a hundred thousand men, among whom are
certainly to be found some right-minded persons who are convinced of
the justice of their cause. These unknown and suddenly elevated chiefs,
whom the revolution has singled out, are they all unworthy of our
esteem, and devoid of capacity? They possess, perhaps, a new and vital
force that it would be right and perhaps necessary to utilise somehow.
The ideas which they represent ought to be studied, and if they prove
useful, put into practice. This is what the Assembly has understood and
what it has done. By concessions which enlarge rather than diminish its
influence, it puts all right-minded men, soldiers and officers, under
the obligation of returning to their allegiance. Those who, having read
the proclamation of Admiral Saisset, still refuse to recognise the
Government, are no longer men acting for the sake of Paris and the
Republic, but rioters guilty of pursuing the most criminal paths, for
the gratification of their own bad passions. Thus the tares will be
separated from the wheat, and torn up without mercy. Yesterday and the
day before, at the Place de la Bourse, at the Place des Victoires and
the Bank, we were resolved on resistance—resistance, nothing more, for
none of us, I am sure, would have fired a shot without sufficient
provocation—and even this resolution cost us much pain and some
hesitation. We felt that in the event of our being attacked, our shots
might strike many an innocent breast—and perhaps at the last moment our
hearts would have failed us. Now, no thoughts of that kind can hinder
us. In recognising our demand, the Assembly has got right entirely on
its side, we shall now consider all rebellion against the authority of
which it makes so able a use, as an act entailing immediate punishment.
Until now, fearing to be abandoned or misunderstood by the Government,
we had determined to obey the mayors and deputies elected by the
people, but the Assembly, by its judicious conduct, has shown itself
worthy confidence. Let them command, we are ready to obey.

Truly this change in the attitude of the Government is at once strange
and delightful. No later than yesterday their language was quite
different. The manner in which the majority received the mayors did not
lead us to expect a termination so favourable to the wishes of all
concerned. But this is all past, let us not recriminate. Let us rather
rejoice in our present good fortune, and try and forget the dangers
which seemed but now so imminent. I hear from all sides that the
Deputies of the Seine and the mayors, fully empowered, are busy
concluding the last arrangements. Municipal elections are talked of,
for the 2nd April; thus every cause for discontent is about to
disappear. Capital! Paris is satisfied. Shops re-open. The promenades
are crowded with people; the Place Vendôme alone does not brighten with
the rest, but it soon will. The weather is lovely, people accost each
other in the streets with a smile; one almost wonders they do not
embrace. Is to-day Friday? No, it is Sunday. Bravo! Assembly.

NOTES:

[20] At the same time that the proclamation of Admiral Saisset
encouraged the partizans of the Assembly, proofs were not wanting of
the poverty of the Commune in money, as well as men: a new loan
obtained from the Bank of France, which had already advanced half a
million of francs, and the military nominations which raised Brunel,
Eudes, and Duval from absolute obscurity to the rank of general. These
were indications decidedly favourable to the party of order.

XVI.

On the ground-floor of the house of my neighbour there is an
upholsterer’s workshop. The day before yesterday the master went out to
fetch some work, and this morning he had not yet returned. In an agony
of apprehension his wife went everywhere in search of him. His body has
just been found at the Morgue with a bullet through its head. Some say
he was walking across the Rue de la Paix on his way home, and was shot
by accident; but the _Journal Officiel_ announces that this poor man,
Wahlin, was a national guard, assassinated by the revolvers of the
manifestation. Whom are we to believe? Anyhow, the man is to be buried
tomorrow, and his poor wife is a widow.

XVII.

What is the meaning of all this! Are we deceiving ourselves, or being
deceived? We await in vain the consummation of Admiral Saisset’s
promises. In officially announcing that the Assembly had acceded to the
just demands of the mayors and deputies, did he take upon himself to
pass delusive hopes as accomplished facts? It seems pretty certain now
that the Government will make no concessions, that the proclamation is
only waste paper, and that the Provisional Commander of the National
Guard has been leading us into error—with a laudable intention
doubtless—or else has himself been deceived likewise. The united
efforts of the Deputies of the Seine and the Mayors of Paris have been
unequal to rouse the apathy of the Assembly.[21] In vain did Louis
Blanc entreat the representatives of France to approve the conciliatory
conduct of the representatives of Paris. “May the responsibility of
what may happen be on your own heads!” cried M. Clémenceau. He was
right; a little condescension might have saved all; such obstinacy is
fatal. Deprived of the countenance of the Assembly, and left to
themselves, the Deputies and Mayors of Paris, desirous above all of
avoiding civil war, have been obliged to accede to the wishes of the
Central Committee, and insist upon the municipal elections being
proceeded with immediately. They could not have acted otherwise, and
yet it is humiliating for them to have to bow before superior force,
and their authority is compromised by so doing. What the Assembly,
representing the whole of France, could have done with no loss of
dignity, and even with honour to itself, the former accomplish only at
the risk of losing their influence; what to the Assembly would have
been an honourable concession is to them dangerous although necessary
submission. The Committee would have been annulled if the Government
had consented to the municipal elections, but thanks to a tardy
consent, rung from the Deputies and Mayors of Paris, it triumphs. The
result of the humiliation to which the representatives of Paris have
been forced to submit to prevent the effusion of blood, will be the
entire abdication of their authority, which will remain vested in the
Central Committee until the members of the Commune are elected.
Abandoned by the Government since the departure of the chief of the
executive power and the ministers, we rallied round the
representatives, who, unsustained by the Government, are obliged to
submit to the revolutionists. We must now choose between the Commune
and anarchy.

Therefore, to-day, Sunday, the 26th March, the male population of Paris
is hurrying to the poll. It is in vain that the journals have begged
the people not to vote; the elections were only announced yesterday,
and the electors have had no time to reconsider the choice they have to
make, and yet they insist on voting. Those who decline to obey the
suggestions of the Central Committee, will re-elect the late mayors or
choose among the deputies, but vote they will. The present attitude of
the regular Government has done much towards furthering the revolution.
The mistakes of the Assembly have diminished in the eyes of the public
the crime of revolt. Everywhere the murder of Generals Clément Thomas
and Lecomte is openly regretted; but those who repeat that the Central
Committee declares having had nothing to do with it, are listened to
with patience. The rumour that they were shot by soldiers gains ground,
and seems less incredulously received. As to the massacres of the Rue
de la Paix, we are told that this event is enveloped in mystery, that
the evidence is most contradictory, etc., etc.[22] There is evidently a
decided reactionary movement in favour of the partizans of the Commune.
Without approving their acts their activity is incontestable. They have
done much in a short time. People exclaim, “There are men for you!”
This state of things is very alarming to all those who have remained
faithful to the Assembly, which in spite of its errors has not ceased
to be the legal representative of the country. It is a cruel position
for the Parisians who are obliged to choose between a regular
Government which they would desire to obey, but which by its faults
renders such obedience impossible, and an illegitimate power, that,
although guilty in its acts, and stained with crime, still represents
the opinions of the republican majority. By to-night, therefore, the
Commune will have been called into existence; an illegal existence it
may be argued, doubtless, by the partizans of constitutional legality,
who would consider as null and void elections carried on without the
consent of the nation, as represented by the Assembly. Legal or not,
however, the elections have taken place, and the fact alone is of some
importance. In a few hours the Executive Power of the Republic will
have to treat, whether it will or no, with a force which has
constituted itself with as much legality as it had in its power to
assume under the circumstances.

NOTES:

[21] The news of the check which the Maires of Paris had suffered in
the Assembly suddenly loosened the bond which for two days had united
the friends of order, and profound discouragement seized upon the
public mind. It was at this moment that the deputies from the
Committee presented themselves at the Mairie of the first
arrondissement, preceded by three pieces of artillery, a very warlike
accompaniment to a deputation. It was arranged that the Communal
election should be managed by the existing Maires, and that the
battalions of each quarter of the city, whether federal or not, should
occupy the voting places of their sections; but this did not prevent
the Committee on the following morning occupying the Mairie of
Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois, in spite of the arrangement, by their most
devoted battalions.

[22] The following are the terms in which the Commune spoke of the
events of the 18th March, and excused the murder of the two generals:
“CITIZENS,—The day of the 18th of March, which for interested
reasons has been travestied in the most odious manner, will be
called in history, The Day of the People’s Justice!
The Government, now subverted—always maladroit—rushed into a
conflict without considering either its own unpopularity, or the
fraternal feeling that animates the armies; the entire army, when
ordered to commit fratricide, replied with cries of “Vive la
République!” “Vive la Garde Nationale!”
Two men alone, who had rendered themselves unpopular by acts which
we now pronounce as iniquitous, were struck down in a moment of
popular indignation.
The Committee of the Federation of the National Guard, in order to
render homage to truth, declare it was a stranger to these two
executions.
At the present moment the ministries are constituted, the prefect
of police has assumed his duties, the public offices are again
active, and we invite all citizens to maintain the utmost calmness
and order.”

XVIII.

Crowds in the streets and promenades. This evening all the theatres
will be re-opened. In the meantime the voting is going on. The weather
is delightful, so I take a stroll along the promenades. Under the
colonnade of the Châtelet there is a long line of electors awaiting
their turn. I fancy that in this quarter the candidates of the Central
Committee will be surely elected. Women, in bright-coloured dresses and
fresh spring bonnets, are walking to and fro. I hear some one say that
there are a great many cannon at the Hôtel de Ville. Two friends meet
together in the square of the Arts et Métiers.—“Are you alone, madame?”
says one lady to another.—“Yes, madame; I am waiting for my husband,
who is gone to vote.”

A child, who is skipping, cries out, “Mama, mama, what is the Commune?”

The fiacre drivers make the revolution an excuse for asking extravagant
fares; this does not prevent their having very decided political
opinions. One who, drove one would scarcely have been approved of by
the Central Committee.—“_Cocher_, what is the fare?” I ask.—“Five
francs, monsieur.”—“All right; take me to the mairie Place
Saint-Sulpice.”—“Beg pardon, monsieur, but if you are going to vote, it
will be ten francs!”

On the Boulevard de Strasbourg there are streams of people dressed in
holiday attire; itinerant dealers in tops, pamphlets, souvenirs of the
siege—bits of black bread, made on purpose, and framed and glazed, also
bits of shells—and scented soap, and coloured pictures; crowds of
beggars everywhere. In this part of the town the revolution looks very
much like a fair.

At the mairie of the 6th Arrondissement there are very few people. I
enter into conversation with one of the officials there. He tells me he
has never seen voting carried on with greater spirit.

I meet a friend who has just returned from Belleville, and ask him the
news, of course.—“The voting is progressing in capital order,” he tells
me; “the men go up to the poll as they would mount the breach. They
have no choice but to obey blindly.”—“The Central Committee?” I
inquire.—“Yes, but the Committee itself only obeys
orders.”—“Whose?”—“Why those of the International, of course.”

At a corner near the boulevards, a compact little knot of people is
stationed in front of a poster. I fancy they are studying the
proclamation of one of the candidates, but it turns out only to be a
play-bill. The crowd continues to thicken; the cafés are crammed; gold
chignons are plentiful enough at every table; here and there a red
Garibaldi shirt is visible, like poppies amongst the corn. Every now
and then a horseman gallops wildly past with dispatches from one
section to another. The results of some of the elections are creeping
out. At Montrouge, Bercy, Batignolles, and the Marais, they tell us the
members of the Central Committee are elected by a very large majority.
Here the hoarse voice of a boy strikes in,—“Buy the account of the
grand conspiracy of Citoyen Thiers against the Republic!” Then another
chimes in with wares of a less political and more vulgar nature. The
movement to and fro and the excitement is extraordinary. While the
populace basks in the sun the destiny of the city is being decided.—“M.
Desmarest is elected for the 9th Arrondissement,” says some one close
to me.—“Lesueur is capital in the ‘Partie de Piquet,’” says another.
Oh! people of Paris!

XIX.

It is over. We have a “Municipal Council,” according to some; a
“Commune,” according to others. Not quite legally elected, but
sufficiently so. Eighty councillors, sixty of whom are quite unknown
men. Who can have recommended them, or, rather, imposed them on the
electors? Can there really be some occult power at work under cover of
the ex-Central Committee? Is the Commune only a pretext, and are we at
the début of a social and political revolution? I overheard a partizan
of the new doctrines say,—“The Proletariat is vindicating its rights,
which have been unjustly trampled on by the aristocratic bourgeoisie.
This is the workman’s 1789!”

Another person expresses the same thing in rather a different form.
“This is the revolt of the _canaille_ against all kind of supremacy,
the supremacy of fortune, and the supremacy of intellect. The equality
of man before the law has been acknowledged, now they want to proclaim
the equality of intellect. Soon universal suffrage will give place to
the drawing of lots. There was a time in Athens when the names of the
archontes were taken haphazard out of a bag, like the numbers at loto.”

However, the revolution has not yet clearly defined its tendencies, and
in the meantime what are we to think of the unknown beings who
represent it? A man in whom I have the greatest confidence, and who has
passed his life in studying questions of social science, and who
therefore has mixed in nearly all the revolutionary circles, and is
personally acquainted with the chiefs, said to me just now, in speaking
of the new Municipal Council,[23] “It will be an assemblage of a very
motley character. There will be much good and much bad in it. We may
safely divide it into three distinct parts: firstly, ten or twelve men
belonging to the International, who have both thought and studied and
may be able to act, mixed with these several foreigners; secondly, a
number of young men, ardent but inexperienced, some of whom are imbued
with Jacobin principles; thirdly, and by far the largest portion,
unsuccessful plotters in former revolutions, journalists, orators, and
conspirators,—noisy, active, and effervescent, having no particular tie
amongst themselves except the absence of any common bond of unity with
the two former divisions, and being confounded now with one, now with
the other. The members of the International alone have any real
political value; they are Socialists. The Jacobin element is decidedly
dangerous.”—If in reality the Communal Assembly is thus composed, how
will it act? Let us wait and see; in the meantime the city is calm.
Never did so critical a moment wear so calm an exterior. By the bye,
where are the Prussians?[24]

NOTES:

[23] The _Figaro_ gives the following those who held service under the
Commune:—

Anys-el-Bittar, Librarian MSS. Department, Bibliothèque Nationale.
(Egyptian)
Biondetti, Surgeon 233rd Battalion. (Italian.)
Babiok, a Member of the Commune. (Pole.)
Beoka, Adjutant to the 207th Battalion. (Pole.)
Cluseret, General, Delegate of War. (American.)
Cernatesco, Surgeon of Francs Tireurs. (Pole.)
Crapulinski, Colonel of Staff. (Pole.)
Carneiro de Cunha, Surgeon 38th Battalion. (Portuguese.)
Charalambo, Surgeon of the Federal Scouts. (Pole.)
Dombrowski, General. (Russian.)
Dombrowski (his brother), Colonel of Staff. (Russian.)
Durnoff, Commandant of Legion. (Pole.)
Echenlaub, Colonel. (German.)
Ferrera Gola, General Manager of Field Hospitals. (Portuguese.)
Frankel, a Member of the Commune. (Prussian.)
Giorok, Commandant of the Fort d’Issy. (Valachian.)
Grejorok, Commandant of the Artillery at Montmartre.(Valachian.)
Kertzfeld, Chief Manager of Field Hospitals. (German.)
Iziquerdo, Surgeon of the 88th Battalion. (Pole.)
Jalowski, Surgeon of the Zouaves de la République. (Pole.)
Kobosko, Despatch Bearer.
La Cecilia, General. (Italian.)
Landowski, Aide-de-Camp of General Dombrowski. (Pole.)
Mizara, Commandant of the 104th Battalion. (Italian.)
Maratuch, Surgeon’s mate of the 72nd Battalion. (Hungarian.)
Moro, Commandant of the 22nd Battalion. (Italian.)
Okolowicz and his brothers, General and Staff Officers. (Poles.)
Ostyn, a Member of the Commune. (Belgian.)
Olinski, Chief of the 17th Legion. (Pole.)
Pisani, Aide-de-Camp of Flourens. (Italian.)
Potampenki, Aide-de-Camp of General Dombrowski. (Pole.)
Ploubinski, Staff Officer. (Pole.)
Pazdzierswski, Commandant of the Fort de Vanves. (Pole.)
Piazza, Chief of Legion. (Italian.)
Pugno, Music-manager at the Opera-house. (Italian.)
Romanelli, Manager of the War Offices. (Italian.)
Rozyski, Surgeon of the 144th Battalion. (Pole.)
Rubinowicz, Surgeon of the Marines. (Pole.)
Syneck, Surgeon of the 151st Battalion. (German.)
Skalski, Surgeon of the 240th Battalion. (Pole.)
Soteriade, Surgeon. (Spaniard.)
Thaller, Under Governor of the Fort de Bicêtre. (German.)
Van Ostal, Commandant of the 115th Battalion. (Dutch.)
Vetzel, Commandant of the Southern Forts. (German.)
Wroblewski, General Commandant of the Southern Army. (Pole.)
Witton, Surgeon of the 72nd Battalion. (American.)
Zengerler, Surgeon of the 74th Battalion, (German.)]

[24] The Prussians and the Commune, see Appendix 3.

XX.

Who can help being carried away by the enthusiasm of a crowd? I am not
a political man, I am only an observer who sees, hears, and feels.

I was on the Place de l’Hôtel de Ville at the moment when the names of
the successful candidates were proclaimed, and the emotion is still
fresh upon me.[25] There were perhaps a hundred thousand men there,
assembled from all quarters of the city. The neighbouring streets were
also full, and the bayonets glittering in the sun filled the Place with
brilliant flashes like miniature lightning. In the centre of the façade
of the building a platform was erected, over which presided a statue of
the Republic, wearing a Phrygian cap. The bronze basso-relievo of Henry
IV. had been carefully hidden with clusters of flags. Each window was
alive with faces. I saw several women on the roof, and the _gamins_
were everywhere, hanging on to the sculptured ornaments, or riding
fearlessly on the shoulders of the marble busts. One by one the
battalions had taken up their position on the Place with their bands.
When they were all assembled they struck up the Marseillaise, which was
re-echoed by a thousand voices. It was grand in the extreme, and the
magnificent hymn, which late defeats had shorn of its glory, swelled
forth again with all its old splendour revived. Suddenly the cannon is
heard, the voices rise louder and louder; a sea of standards, bayonets,
and human heads waves backwards and forwards in front of the platform.
The cannon roars, but we only hear it between the intervals of the
hymn. Then all the sounds are confounded in one universal shout, that
shout of the vast multitude which seems to have but one heart and one
voice. The members of the Committee, each with a tricolor scarf across
his breast, have taken their places on the platform. One of them reads
out the names of the elected councillors. Then the cannon roars once
more, but is almost drowned by the deafening huzzas of the crowd. Oh!
people of Paris, who on the day of the “_Crosse en l’air_”[26] got
tipsy in the wine-shops of Montmartre, whose ranks furnished the
murderers of Thomas and Lecomte, who in the Rue de la Paix shot down
unconscious passengers, who are capable of the wildest extravagance and
most execrable deeds, you are also in your days of glory, grand and
magnificent, when a volcano of generous passions rages within, and the
hearts even of those who condemn you most, are scorched in the flames.

NOTES:

[25] The result of the voting was made known at four o’clock on the
28th March. The papers devoted to the Commune asserted, on the
following day, that _two hundred and fifteen_ battalions were
assembled on that day, and that the average strength of each corps was
one thousand men. Who could have believed that the Place de l’Hôtel de
Ville was capable of accommodating so many! This farcical assertion of
the two hundred and fifteen battalions has passed into a proverb.

[26] When they turned the butt-ends (_crosses_) of their guns in the
air, as a sign they would not fight.

XXI.

“Citizens,” says the _Official Journal_ this morning, “your Commune is
constituted.” Then follows decree upon decree. White posters are being
stuck up everywhere. Why are they at the Hôtel de Ville, if not to
publish decrees? The conscription is abolished. We shall see no more
poor young fellows marching through the town with their numbers in
their caps, and fired with that noble patriotism which is imbibed in
the cabarets at so much a glass. We shall have no more soldiers, but to
make up for that we shall all be National Guards. There’s a glorious
decree, as Edgar Poë says. As to the landlords, their vexation is
extreme; even the tenants do not seem so satisfied as they ought to be.
Not to have to pay any rent is very delightful, certainly, but they
scarcely dare believe in such good fortune. Thus when Orpheus, trying
to rescue Eurydice from “the infernal regions,” interrupts with “his
harmonious strains” the tortures of eternal punishment, Prometheus did
not doubtless show as much delight as he ought to have done, on
discovering that the beak of the vulture was no longer gnawing at his
vitals, “scarcely daring to believe in such good fortune.” Orpheus is
the Commune; Eurydice, Liberty; “the infernal regions,” the Government
of the 4th September; “the harmonious strains,” the decrees of the
Commune; Prometheus, the tenant; and the vulture, the landlord!

In plain terms, however—forgive me for joking on such a subject—the
decree which annuls the payment of the rents for the quarters ending
October 1870, January 1871, and April 1871, does not appear to me at
all extravagant, and really I do not see what there is to object to in
the following lines which accompany it:—

“In consideration of the expenses of the war having been chiefly
sustained by the industrial, commercial, and working portion of the
population, it is but just that the proprietors of houses and land
should also bear their part of the burthen....”

Let us talk it over together, Mr. Landlord. You have a house and I live
in it. It is true that the chimneys smoke, and that you most
energetically refuse to have them repaired. However, the house is
yours, and you possess most decidedly the right of making a profit by
it. Understand, once for all, that I never contest your right. As for
me, I depend upon my wit, I do not possess much, but I have a tool—it
may be either a pen, or a pencil, or a hammer—which enables me, in the
ordinary course of things, to live and to pay with more or less
regularity my quarter’s rent. If I had not possessed this tool, you
would have taken good care not to let me inhabit your house or any part
or portion thereof, because you would have considered me in no position
to pay you your rent. Now, during the war my tool has unquestionably
rendered me but poor service. It has remained ignobly idle in the
inkstand, in the folio, or on the bench. Not only have I been unable to
use it, but I have also in some sort lost the knack of handling it; I
must have some time to get myself into working order again. While I was
working but little, and eating less, what were you doing? Oh! I do not
mean to say that you were as flourishing as in the triumphant days of
the Empire, but still I have not heard of any considerable number of
landlords being found begging at the corners of the streets, and I do
not fancy you made yourselves conspicuous by your assiduous attendance
at the Municipal Cantines. I have even heard that you or many of your
brother-landlords took pretty good care not to be in Paris during the
Prussian siege, and that you contented yourselves with forming the most
ardent wishes, for the final triumph of French arms, from beneath the
wide-spreading oaks of your châteaux in Touraine and Beauce, or from
the safe haven of a Normandy fishing village; while we, accompanied it
is true by your most fervent prayers, took our turn at mounting guard,
on the fortifications during the bitter cold nights, or knee-deep in
the mud of the trenches. However, I do not blame those who sought
safety in flight; each person is free to do as he pleases; what I
object to is your coming back and saying, “During seven or eight months
you have done no work, you have been obliged to pawn your furniture to
buy bread for your wife and children; I pity you from the bottom of my
heart—be so kind as to hand me over my three quarters’ rent.” No, a
thousand times no; such a demand is absurd, wicked, ridiculous; and I
declare that if there is no possible compromise between the strict
execution of the law and his decree of the Commune, I prefer, without
the least hesitation, to abide by the latter; I prefer to see a little
poverty replace for a time the long course of prosperity that has been
enjoyed by this very small class of individuals, than to see the last
articles of furniture of five hundred thousand suffering wretches, put
up to auction and knocked down for one-twentieth part of their value.
There must, however, be some way of conciliating the interests of both
landlords and tenants. Would it be sufficient to accord delays to the
latter, and force the former to wait a certain time for their money? I
think not; if I were allowed three years to pay off my three quarters’
rent, I should still be embarrassed. The tool of the artisan is not
like the peasant’s plot of ground, which is more productive after
having lain fallow. During the last few sad months, when I had no work
to do, I was obliged to draw upon the future, a future heavily
mortgaged; when I shall perhaps scarcely be able to meet the expenses
of each day, will there be any possibility of acquitting the debts of
the past? You may sell my furniture if the law gives you the right to
do so, but I shall not pay!

The only possible solution, believe me, is that in favour of the
tenants, only it ought not to be applied in so wholesale a fashion.
Inquiries should be instituted, and to those tenants from whom the war
has taken away all possibility of payment an unconditional receipt
should be delivered: to those who have suffered less, a proportionate
reduction should be allowed; but those whom the invasion has not ruined
or seriously impoverished—and the number is large, among provision
merchants, café keepers, and private residents—let those pay directly.
In this way the landlords will lose lees than one may imagine, because
it will be the lowest rents that will be forfeited. The decree of the
Commune is based on a right principle, but too generally applied.

The new Government—for it is a Government—does not confine itself to
decrees. It has to install itself in its new quarters and make
arrangements.[27]

In a few hours it has organized more than ten committees—the executive,
the financial, the public-service, the educational, the military, the
legal, and the committee of public safety. No end of committees and
committeemen: it is to be hoped that the business will be promptly
despatched!

NOTES:

[27] Organisation of the Commissions on the 31st of March:

_Executive Commission_.—Citizens Eudes, Tridou, Vaillant, Lefrançais,
Duval, Félix Pyat, Bergeret.
_Commission of Finance_.—Victor Clément, Varlin, Jourde, Beslay,
Régère.
_Military Commission_.—General E. Duval, General Bergeret, General
Eudes, Colonel Chardon, Colonel Flourens, Colonel Pindly, Commandant
Ranvier.
_Commission of Public Justice_.—Ranc, Protot, Léo Meillet, Vermorel,
Ledroit, Babick.
_Commission of Public Safety_.—Raoul Rigault, Ferré, Assy, Cournet,
Oudet, Chalain, Gérardin.
_Victualling Commission_.—Dereure, Champy, Ostyn, Clément, Parizel,
Emile Clément, Fortuné Henry.
_Commission of Industry and Trade_.—Malon, Frankel, Theiz, Dupont,
Avrial, Loiseau-Pinson, Eugène Gérardin, Puget.
_Commission of Foreign Affairs_.—Delescluze, Ranc, Paschal Grousset,
Ulysse Parent, Arthur Arnould, Antoine Arnauld, Charles Gérardin.
_Commission of Public Service_.—Ostyn, Billioray, Clément (J.B.)
Martelet, Mortier, Rastoul.
_Commission of Education_.—Jules Vallès, Doctor Goupil, Lefèvre,
Urbain,[28] Albert Leroy, Verdure, Demay, Doctor Robinet.]

[28] Memoir, see Appendix XIII.

XXII.

Come, let us understand each other. Who are you, members of the
Commune? Those among you who are in some sort known to the public do
not possess, however, enough of its confidence to make up for the want
of knowledge it has of the others. Have a care how you excite our
mistrust. You have published decrees that certainly are open to
criticism, but that are not entirely obnoxious, for their object is to
uphold the interests of that portion of the population, which you most
particularly represent, and from whom you hold your commission. We will
forgive the decrees if you do nothing worse. Yesterday, the 30th March,
during the night (why in the night?) some men wearing a red scarf and
followed by several others with arms, presented themselves at the Union
Insurance Company. On the porter refusing to deliver up the keys of the
offices he was arrested. They then proceeded to break open the doors
with the butt-end of their muskets, and put seals on the strong box.
What can this portend? Have you been elected to break open private
offices and put seals on cash-boxes? That same night, a friend of mine
who happened to be passing across one of the bridges on his way home,
noticed that the windows of the Hôtel de Ville were brilliantly
lighted. Could they be having a ball already? he wondered. He made
inquiries and discovered that it was not a ball, but a banquet; three
or four hundred National Guards from Belleville had invaded the
apartments and had ordered a dinner to be served to them. They were
accompanied by a corresponding number of female companions, and were
drinking, talking, and singing to their hearts’ content. What do you
mean by that, members of the Commune? Have you been elected to keep
open-house, and do you propose to inscribe over the entrance of the
municipal palace: “Ample accommodation for feasts and banquets,” as a
companion to your motto of “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity?”

XXIII.

“I tell you, you shall not go!”—“But I will.”—“Well, you may, but not
your furniture.”—“And who shall prevent my carrying off my furniture if
I choose?”—“I will.”—“I defy you!”—“Thief!”—“Robber!”

This animated discussion was being carried on at the door of a house,
in front of which a cart filled with furniture was standing; a crowd of
street boys was fast assembling, and the heads of curious neighbours
appeared grinning in all the windows.

A partizan of the Commune had determined to profit by the decree.
Matters at first had seemed to go on quietly. The concierge, taken
aback by the sudden apparition of the van, had not summoned up courage
to prevent the furniture from being stowed away in it. The landlord,
however, had got scent of the affair, and had hastened to this spot.
Now, the tenant was a determined character, and as the van-men refused
to mix themselves up in the fray, he himself shouldered his last
article of furniture and carried it to the van. He was about to place
it within cover of the awning, when the landlord, like a miser deprived
of his treasure, seized it and deposited it on the pavement. The tenant
re-grasped his spoil and thrust it again into the cart, from whence it
was instantly drawn forth again by the enraged landlord. This game was
carried on for some time, each as determined as the other, grasping;
snatching, and pulling this unfortunate piece of furniture until one
wrench, stronger than the former, entirely dislocated its component
parts, and laid it in a ruined heap upon the ground. This was the
moment for the tenant to show himself a man of spirit. Taking advantage
of the surprise of the landlord, he swept the broken remains of his
property deftly into the van, bounded on to the driver’s seat, shook
the reins, cracked his whip, and started off at a thundering gallop,
pursued by the huzzas of the crowd, the cries of the van-men, and the
oaths of the disappointed landlord. The van and its team of lean cattle
were soon lost to view, and the landlord was left alone on his
doorstep, shaking his fist and muttering “Brigand!”

XXIV.

What a quantity of luggage! Even those who had the good fortune of
witnessing the emigration before the siege would never have supposed
that there could be so much luggage in Paris. Well-to-do looking trunks
with brass ornaments, black wooden boxes, hairy trunks, leathern
hat-boxes, and cardboard bonnet-boxes, portmanteaux and carpet bags are
piled up on vehicles of every description, of which more than ten
thousand block up the roads leading to the railway stations. Everybody
is wild to get away; it is whispered about that the Commune, the horrid
Commune, is about to issue a decree forbidding the Parisians to quit
Paris. So all prudent individuals are making off, with their bank-notes
and shares in their pocket-books. I see a man I know, walking very
fast, wearing a troubled expression on his face. I ask him where he is
going.—“you do not know what has happened to me?” he cries. I confess I
do not.—“The most extraordinary thing: I am condemned to death!”—“You!”
I exclaim.—“Yes! by the Commune!”—“And wherefore?” I ask.—“Because I
write on the _Figaro_.”—“Why, I never knew that!”—“Oh! not very often;
but last year I addressed a letter to the Editor, to explain to him
that my new farce called ‘My Aunt’s Garters’ had nothing at all to do
with ‘My Uncle’s Braces,’ which is by somebody else. You understand
that I did not want to change the title, which is rather good of its
kind, so I wrote to the _Figaro_, and as my letter was inserted, and as
the Commune condemns all the contributors.... You see ...!”—“Perfectly!
Why, my dear fellow, you ought to have been off before. Of course you
go to Versailles?”—“Why, yes.”—“By the railway?” I cannot help having a
joke at his expense.—“Yes, of course.”—“Well, if I were you, I would
not, really; the engine might blow up, or you might run into a luggage
train. Such things do happen in the best of times, and I think the
Commune capable of anything to get rid of so dangerous an
adversary.”—“You don’t mean to say,” says the poor little, man in a
tremor, “that they would go to such lengths! Well, at any rate I will
travel by the road.”[29]

A little farther up the Boulevard des Italiens I see another
acquaintance. “What, still in Paris?” I say, shaking hands with him.—“I
am off this evening,” he answers.—“Are you condemned to death?”—“No,
but I shall be tried to-night.”—“The devil! Do you write on the
_Figaro_!”—“No, no, it is quite a long story. Three years ago, I made
the acquaintance of a charming blonde, who reciprocated my advances,
and made herself highly agreeable. In a word, I was smitten.
Unfortunately there was a husband in the case!”—“The devil there
was!”—“He made inquiries, and found out who I was, and ...”—“And
invited you to mortal combat?”—“Oh! no, he is a hosier. But from that
day forth he became my most bitter enemy.”—“Very disagreeable of him, I
am sure, but I do not see how the enmity of this retail dealer obliges
you to quit Paris?”—“Why, you see he has a cousin who is elected a
member of the Commune.”—“I understand your uneasiness; you fear the
latent revenge of this unreasonable hosier.”—“I am to be tried
to-night, but it is not the fear of death which makes me fly. It is
worse than that. Those Hôtel de Ville people are capable of anything,
and I hear they are going to make a law on divorce. I know the
malignity of the lady’s husband—and I believe he is capable of getting
a divorce, and forcing me to marry her!”

So, under one pretext and another, almost everyone is going away. As
for me, I am like a hardened Parisian—my boots have a rooted dislike to
any other pavement than that of the boulevards. Who is right, I, or
those who are rushing off? Is there really danger here for those who
are not ardently attached to the principles of the Commune? I try to
believe not. True there have been arrests—domiciliary visits and other
illegal and tyrannical acts—but I do not think it can last.[30] May we
not hope that the dangerous element in the Commune will soon be
neutralised by the more intelligent portion of the Municipal Council,
if, indeed, that portion exists? I cannot believe that a revolution,
accomplished by one-third of the population of Paris, and tolerated by
another (the remaining fraction having taken flight), can be entirely
devoid of the spirit of generosity and usefulness, capable only of
appropriating the funds of others, and unjustly imprisoning innocent
citizens. Besides, even if the Commune, instead of trying to make us
forget the bloody deeds with which it preceded its establishment, or
seeking to repair the faults of which it has been guilty, on the
contrary continues to commit such excesses, thus harrying to its ruin a
city which has already suffered so much, even then I will not leave it.
I will cling to it to the last, as a sailor who has grown to love the
ship that has borne him gallantly in so many voyages, clings to the
wreck of his favourite, and refuses to be saved without it.

NOTES:

[29] The following is a document which completely justifies these
apprehensions:—
“30th March—The Commune of Paris—Orders from the Central Committee
to the officer in command, of the battalion on guard at the station
of Ouest-Ceinture.
“To stop all trains proceeding in the direction of Paris at the
Ouest-Ceinture station.
“To place an energetic man night and day at this post. This man is
to mount guard with a beam, which he is to throw across the rails
at the arrival of each train, so as to cause it to run off the
rails, if the engine-driver refuses to stop.

“HENRI, Chief of a Legion.”

[30] Vexatious measures accumulated:

The pacific M. Glais-Bizoin was arrested in a tobacconist’s shop, where
he was, doubtless, lighting a reactionary cigar. He fancied at first
that there had been a mistake, but he was taken before the Committee,
which caused him, however, to be liberated.

M. Maris Proth, a writer in _Charivari_, which is certainly not a
royalist journal, was arrested on the following day, and detained for a
longer time.

On the same day a search was made at the house of the publisher
Lacroix.]

[Illustration: Gambon.]

XXV.

Garibaldi is expected. Gambon has gone to Corsica to meet him. He is to
be placed at the head of the National Guard. It is devoutly to be hoped
that he will not come.[31]

Firstly, because his presence at this moment would create new dangers;
and secondly, because this admirable and honoured man would compromise
his glory uselessly in our sorry discords. If I, an obscure citizen,
had the honour of being one of those to whom the liberator of Naples
lends an ear, I would go to him without hesitation, and, after having
bent before him as I would before some ancient hero arisen from his
glorious sepulchre, say to him,—“General, you have delivered your
country. At the head of a few hundred men you have won battles and
taken towns. Your name recalls the name of William Tell. Wherever there
were chains to rend and yokes to break, you were seen to hasten. Like
the warriors Hugo exalts in his _Légende des Siècles_, you have been
the champion of justice, the knight-errant of liberty. You appear to us
victorious in a distant vision, as in the realm of legend. For the
glory of our age in which heroes are wanting, it befits you to remain
that which you are. Continue afar off, so that you may continue great.
It is not that your glory is such that it can only be seen at a
distance, and loses when regarded, too nearly. Not so! But you would be
hampered amongst us. There is not space enough here for you to draw
your sword freely. We are adroit, strange, and complicated. You are
simple, and in that lies your greatness. We belong to our time, you
have the honour to be an anachronism. You would be useless to your
friends, destructive to yourself. What would you, a giant fighting with
the sword, do against dwarfs who have cannon? You are courageous, but
they are cunning, and would conquer you. For the sake of the nineteenth
century you must not be vanquished. Do not come; in your simplicity you
would be caught in the spider’s web of clever mediocrity, and your
grand efforts to tear yourself free would only be laughed at. Great
man, you would be treated like a pigmy.”

It is probable, however, that if I held such a discourse to General
Garibaldi, General Garibaldi would politely show me the door. Other and
more powerful counsellors have inspired him with different ideas.
Friendship dangerous indeed! How deeply painful is it that no man,
however intelligent or great, can clearly distinguish the line, where
the mission for which Heaven has endowed him ceases, and, disdaining
all celebrity foreign to his true glory, consent to remain such as
future ages will admire.[32]

NOTES:

[31] The Citizen Gambon, representative of the Department of the
Seine, left Paris charged with a mission to seek Garibaldi, but was
arrested at Bonifacio, in the island of Corsica, just as he was
embarking for Caprera.
For Memoir, see Appendix 4.

[32] Garibaldi was chosen by the Central Committee for
Commander-in-Chief of the National Guard, but he refused in the
following terms, pretending not to be aware of the condition of
Paris:—

“Caprera, 28th March, 1871.

“CITIZENS,—
“Thanks for the honour you have conferred upon me by my nomination as
Commander-in-Chief of the National Guard of Paris, which I love, and
whose dangers and glory I should be proud to share.
“I owe you, however, the following explanations:—
“A commandant of the National Guard of Paris, a commander of the
Army of Paris, and a directing committee, whatever they may be, are
three powers which are not reconcilable with the present situation
of France.
“Despotism has the advantage over us, the advantage of the
concentration of power, and it is this same centralisation which
you should oppose to your enemies.
“Choose an honest citizen, and such are not wanting: Victor Hugo,
Louis Blanc, Félix Pyat, Edgar Quinet, or another of the elders of
radical democracy, would serve the purpose. The generals Oremer and
Billot, who, I see, have your confidence, may be counted in the
number.
“Be assured that one honest man should be charged with the supreme
command and full powers; such a man would choose other honest men
to assist him in the difficult task of saving the country.
“If you should have the good fortune to find a Washington, France
will recover from shipwreck, and in a short time will be grander
than ever.
“These conditions are not an excuse for escaping the duty of
serving republican France. No! I do not despair of fighting by the
side of these _braves_, and I am,

“Yours devotedly,
(Signed), “G. GARIBALDI.”

XXVI.

Monday, the 3rd of April.[33] A fearful day! I have been hurrying this
way and that, looking, questioning, reading. It is now ten o’clock in
the evening. And what do I know? Nothing certain; nothing except this,
which is awful,—they are fighting.

Yes, at the gates of Paris, Frenchmen against Frenchmen, beneath the
eyes of the Prussians, who are watching the battle-field like ravens:
they are fighting. I have seen ambulance waggons pass full of National
Guards. By whom have they been wounded? By Zouaves. Is this thing
credible, is it possible? Ah! those guns, cannon, and mitrailleuses,
why were they not all claimed by the enemy—all, every one, from
soldiers and Parisians alike? But little hindrance would that have
proved. It had been resolved—by what monstrous will?—that we should be
hurled to the very bottom of the precipice. These Frenchmen, who would
kill Frenchmen, would not be checked by lack of arms. If they could not
shoot each other, they would strangle each other.

[Illustration: The Barricade: Evening Meal—soup and cigars, and a
“petit verre”]

This, indeed, was unlooked for. An insurrection was feared; men thought
of the June days; that evening when the battalions devoted to the
National Assembly camped in the neighbourhood of the Bank, we imagined,
as a horrible possibility, muskets pointed from between the stones of
barricades, blood flowing in the streets, men killed, women in tears.
But who could have foretold that a new species of civil war was
preparing? That Paris, separated from France, would be blockaded by
Frenchmen? That it would once more be deprived of communication with
the provinces; once more starved perhaps? That there would be, not a
few men struggling to the death in one of the quarters of the town, but
two armies in presence, each with chiefs, fortifications and cannon?
That Paris, in a word, would be besieged anew? How abominable a
surprise of fate!

The cannonading has been heard since morning. Ah! that sound, which,
during the siege, made our hearts beat with hope,—yes, with hope, for
it made us believe in a possible deliverance—how horrible it was this
morning. I went towards the Champs Elysées. Paris was deserted. Had it
understood at last that its honour, its existence even, were at stake
in this revolution, or was it only not up yet? Battalions were marching
along the boulevards, with music playing. They were going towards the
Place Vendôme, and were singing. The _cantinières_ were carrying guns.
Some one told me that men had been at work all night in the
neighbourhood of the Hôtel de Ville, and that the streets adjoining it
were blocked with barricades. But in fact no one knows anything, except
that there is fighting in Neuilly, that the “Royalists” have attacked,
and that “our brothers are being slaughtered.” A few groups are
assembled in the Place de la Concorde. I approach, and find them
discussing the question of the rents,—yes, of the rents! Ah! it is
certain those who are being killed at this moment will not have to pay
their landlord. On reaching the Rond Point I can distinctly perceive a
compact crowd round the Triumphal Arch, and I meet some tired National
Guards who are returning from the battle. They are ragged, dusty, and
dreary. “What has happened?”—“We are betrayed!” says one.—“Death to the
traitors!” cries another.

No certain news from the field of battle. A runaway, seated outside a
café amidst a group of eager questioners, recounts that the barricade
at the Neuilly bridge has been attacked by _sergents de ville_ dressed
as soldiers, and Pontifical Zouaves carrying a white flag.—“A
parliamentary flag?” asks some one.—“No! a royalist flag,” answered the
runaway.—“And the barricade has been taken?”—“We had no cartridges; we
had not eaten for twenty-four hours; of course we had to decamp.”

Farther on a soldier of the line affirms that the barricade has been
taken again. The cannon roars still. Mont Valérien is firing, it is
said, on the Courbevoie barracks, where a battalion of Federal guards
was stationed yesterday.—“But they were off before daybreak,” adds the
soldier.

As I continue my road the groups become more numerous. I lift my head
and see a shell burst over the Avenue of the Grande Armée, leaving a
puff of white smoke hanging for a few seconds like a cloud-flake
detached by the wind.

On I go still. The height on which the Arc de Triomphe stands is
covered with people; a great many women and children among them. They
are mounted on posts, clinging to the projections of the Arch, hanging
to the sculpture of the bas-reliefs. One man has put a plank upon the
tops of three chairs, and by paying a few _sous_ the gapers can hoist
themselves upon it. From this position one can perceive a motionless,
attentive crowd reaching down the whole length of the Avenue of the
Grande Armée, as far as the Porte Maillot, from which a great cloud of
white smoke springs up every moment followed by a violent explosion,—it
is the cannon of the ramparts firing on the Rond Point of Courbevoie;
and beyond this the Avenue de Neuilly stretching far out in the
sunshine, deserted and dusty, a human form crossing it rapidly from
time to time; and farthest of all, beyond the Seine, beyond the Avenue
de l’Empereur, deserted too, the hill of Courbevoie, where a battery of
the Versailles troops is established. But stretch my eyes as I may I
cannot distinguish the guns; but a few men, sentinels doubtless, can be
made out. They are _sergents de ville_, says my right-hand neighbour;
but he on my left says they are Pontifical Zouaves. They must have good
eyes to recognise the uniforms at this distance. The most contradictory
rumours circulate as to the barricade on the bridge; it is impossible
for one to ascertain whether it has remained in the possession of the
soldiers or the Federals. There has been but little fighting, moreover,
since I came. A little later, at twelve o’clock, the fusillade ceases
entirely. But the battery on the ramparts continues to fire upon
Courbevoie, and Mont Valérien still shells Neuilly at intervals.
Suddenly a flood of dust, coming from Porte Maillot, thrusts back the
thick of the crowd, and as it flies, widening, and whirling more madly
as it comes, everyone is seized with terror, and rushes away screaming
and gesticulating. A shell has just fallen, it is said, in the Avenue
of the Grande Armée. Not a soul remains about the Triumphal Arch. The
adjoining streets are filled with people who have run to take shelter
there. By little and little, however, the people begin to recover
themselves, the flight is stopped in the middle, and, laughing at their
momentary panic, they turn back again. A quarter of an hour afterwards
the crowd is everywhere as compact as before.

[Illustration: Place de La Concorde and Champs Elysees, from the
Gardens of the Tuileries—Federalists going out to fight the
Versaillais:]

This panorama gives an idea of the theatre of operations of the Second
Siege of Paris. The Prussians closed the eastern enceinte, whilst the
Federals held the southern forts to the last, with the exception of
Issy and Vanves that were abandoned. Point-du-Jour and Porte Maillot
were the parts particularly attacked; the former being defended by the
Federal gunboats on the Seine. Mont Valérien, it will be seen, commands
the whole of the distant plateau. About one mile and a half beyond the
Triumphal Arch the river Seine intersects the space from south to
north, enclosing the Bois de Boulogne and the villages of Neuilly,
Villiers, and Courcelles, being a sort of outer fortification. The
walls of Paris follow the same line, falling about half a mile on the
other side of the Arch, and parallel runs a line of railway within the
fortified wall. This view exhibits the portion the Prussians were
permitted to occupy for two days: all the outlets, except the west,
being barricaded and defended.

This spectacle, however, of combatants and gapers distresses me, and in
despair of learning anything I return into the city.

At some distance from the scene of events one gets better information,
or, at any rate, a great deal more of it. Imagination has better play
when it is farther from the fact. A hundred absurd stories reach me.
What appears tolerably certain is, that the Federals have received a
check, not very important in itself, the Versailles troops having made
but little advance, but at any rate a check which might have some
influence on the resolution of the National Guards. They have been told
that the army would not fight, that the soldiers of the line would turn
the butt-ends of their guns into the air at Neuilly as they had done at
Montmartre. But now they begin to believe that the army will fight, and
those who cry the loudest that it was the _sergents de ville_ and
Charette’s Zouaves who led the attack alone, seem as if they said it to
give themselves courage and keep up their illusions.

But from which side did the first shot come? On this point everyone has
something to say, and no one knows what to believe. Official reports
are looked for with the utmost impatience. The walls, generally so
communicative, are mute up to this hour. The least improbable of the
versions circulated is the following: At break of day some shots are
said to have been exchanged between the Federal advanced guard and the
patrols of the Versailles troops. None dead or wounded; only powder
wasted, happily. A little later, and a few minutes after the arrival of
General Vinoy at Mont Valérien, a messenger with a flag of truce,
preceded by a trumpeter and accompanied by two _sergents de ville_
(inevitably), is said to have presented himself at the bridge of
Courbevoie. The name of the messenger has been given,—Monsieur
Pasquier, surgeon-in-chief to the regiment of mounted _gendarmes_. Two
of the National Guards go to meet him; after some words exchanged, one
of the Federals blows out Monsieur Pasquier’s brains with his revolver,
and ten minutes later Mont Valérien opens a formidable fire, which
continues as fiercely four hours afterwards.

Meanwhile the drams beat to arms, on all sides. A considerable number
of battalions defile along the Boulevard Montmartre; more than twenty
thousand men, some say, who pretend to know. On they march, singing and
shouting “_Vive la Commune! Vive la République!_” They are answered by
a few shouts. These are not the Montmartre and Belleville guards alone;
peaceful faces of citizens and merchants may be seen under the military
_képis_, and many hands are white as no workman’s are. They march in
good order,—they are calm and resolved; one feels that these men are
ready to die for a cause that they believe to be just. I raise my hat
as they pass; one must do honour to those who, even if they be guilty,
push their devotion so far as to expose themselves to death for their
convictions.

But what are these convictions? What is the Commune? The men who sit at
the Hôtel de Ville have published no programme, yet they kill and are
killed for the sake of the Commune. Oh, words! words! What power they
have over you, heroic and most simple people!

In the evening out came a proclamation. There was so great a crowd
wherever it was posted up that I had not the chance of copying it; but
it ran somewhat in these terms:—

“CITIZENS,—This morning the Royalists have ATTACKED.
“Impatient, before our moderation they have ATTACKED.
“Unable to bring French bayonets against us, they have opposed us
with the Imperial Guard and Pontifical Zouaves.
“They have bombarded the inoffensive village of Neuilly.
“Charette’s _chouans_, Cathelineau’s _Vendéens_, Trochu’s
_Bretons_, Valentin’s _gendarmes_, have rushed upon us.
“There are dead and wounded.
“Against this attack, renewed from the Prussians, Paris should rise
to a man.
“Thanks to the support of the National Guard, the victory will be
ours!”

Victory! What victory? Oh, the bitter pain! Paris shedding the blood of
France, France shedding the blood of Paris! From whatever side the
triumph comes, will it not be accursed?

NOTES:

[33] On the 1st of April several shots were fired under the walls of
Fort Issy, but it was not until the next day, the 2nd of April, at
nine o’clock in the morning, that the action commenced in earnest at
Courbevoie, by an attack of the Versailles army. The federals, who
thought themselves masters of the place, were stopped by the steady
firing of a regiment of gendarmerie and heavy cannonading from Mont
Valérien. At first the National Guards retreated, then disputed every
foot of ground with much courage. In the neighbourhood the desolation
and misery was extreme.
The revolution had now entered a new phase; the military
proceedings had begun, and it was about to be proved that, the
Communist generals had even less genius than those of the Défense
Nationale, although it must be admitted that the latter did not
know the extent of the resources they had at their disposal. When
we remember the small advantage those generals managed to derive
from the heroism of the Parisian population, who, during the second
siege showed that they knew how to fight and how to die, it is
marvellous that many people have gone so far as to regret that the
émeute of the 31st of October was not successful, believing that if
the Commune had triumphed at that time, Paris would have been
saved. All this seems very doubtful now, and opinions have veered
round considerably, for it is not such men as Duval, Cluseret, La
Cécilia, Eudes, or Bergeret, who could have protected Paris against
the science of the Prussian generals.

[Illustration: General Bergeret.]

XXVII.

To whom shall we listen? Whom believe? It would take a hundred pages,
and more, to relate all the different rumours which have circulated
to-day, the 4th of April, the second day of the horrible straggle. Let
us hastily note down the most persistent of these assertions; later I
will put some order into this pell-mell of news.

All through the night the drums beat to arms in every quarter of the
town. Companies assembled rapidly, and directed their way towards the
Place Vendôme or the Porte Maillot, shouting, “_A Versailles!_” Since
five this morning, General Bergeret has occupied the Rond-Point of
Courbevoie. This position has been evacuated by the troops of the
Assembly. How was this? Were the Federals not beaten yesterday?

(One thing goes against General Bergeret in the opinion of his troops:
he drives to battle in a carriage.)

He has formed his troops into columns. No less than sixty thousand men
are under his orders; two batteries of seven guns support the infantry;
omnibuses follow, filled with provisions. They march towards the Mont
Valérien; after having taken the fort, they will march on Versailles by
Rueil and Nanterre.[34] After they have taken the Mont Valérien! there
is not a moment’s doubt about the success of the enterprise. “We were
assured,” said a Federal general to me, “that the fort would open its
doors at the first sight of us.” But they counted without General
Cholleton, who commands the fortress. The advance-guard of the Federals
is received by a formidable discharge of shot and shells. Panic! Cries
of rage! A regular rout to the words, “We are betrayed!”[35] The army
of the Commune is divided into two fragments: one—scarcely three
battalions strong—flies in the direction of Versailles, the other
regains Paris with praiseworthy precipitation. Must the Parisian
combatants be accused of cowardice for this flight? No! They were
surprised; had never expected such a reception from Mont Valérien; had
they been warned, they would have held out better. After all, there was
more fright than harm done in the affair; the huge fortress could have
annihilated the Communists, and it was satisfied with dispersing them.
But what has become of the three battalions that passed Mont Valérien?
Bravely they went forward.

In the meantime another movement was being made upon Versailles by
Meudon and Clamart. A small number of battalions had marched out during
the night, and are massed under cover of the forts of Issy and Vanves.
They have managed to establish a battery of a few guns on a wooded
eminence, at the foot of the glacis of Fort. Issy, and their pieces are
firing upon the batteries of the Versailles troops at Meudon, which are
answering them furiously. It is a duel of artillery, as in the time—the
good time, alas!—of the Prussians.

Up to this moment the information is tolerably clear; probable even,
and one is able to come to some idea of the respective positions of the
belligerents. But towards two o’clock in the afternoon all the reports
get confused and contradictory.

An estafette, who has come from the Porte Maillot, cried to a group
formed on the place of the New Opera-house, “We are victorious!
Flourens has entered Versailles at the head of forty thousand men. A
hundred deputies have been taken. Thiers is a prisoner.”

Elsewhere it is said that in the rout of that morning, at the foot of
Mont Valérien, Flourens had disappeared. And where could he have found
the forty thousand men to lead them to Versailles?

At the same time a rumour spreads that General Bergeret has been
grievously wounded by a shell. “Pure exaggeration!” some one answers.
“The General has only had two horses killed under him.”

Before him, rather, since he drives to battle. What appears most
certain of all is that there is furious fighting going on between
Sèvres and Meudon. I hear it said that the 118th of the line have
turned the butts of their guns into the air, and that the Parisians
have taken twelve mitrailleuses from the Versailles troops.

There is fighting, too, at Châtillon. The Federals have won great
advantages. Nevertheless an individual who went out that side to
investigate, announces that he saw three battalions return with very
little air of triumph, and that other battalions, forming the reserve,
had refused to march.

A shower of contradictions, in which the news for the most part has no
other source than the opinion and desire of the person who brings it.
It is by the result alone that we can appreciate what is passed. At one
moment I give up trying to get information as a bad job, but I begin
questioning again in spite of myself; the desire to know is even
stronger than the very strong certainty that I shall be able to learn
nothing.

I turn to the Champs Elysées. The cannon is roaring; ambulance waggons
descend the Avenue, and stop before the Palais de l’Industrie; over the
way Punch is making his audience roar with laughter as usual. Oh! the
miserable times! The horrible fratricidal struggle! May those who were
its cause be accursed for ever!

While some are killing and others dying, the members of the Commune are
rendering decrees, and the walls are white with official proclamations.

“Messieurs Thiers, Favre, Picard, Dufaure, Simon and Pothuan are
impeached; their property will be seized and sequestrated until they
deliver themselves up to public justice.”

This impeachment and sequestration, will it bring back husbands to the
widows and fathers to the orphans?

“The Commune of Paris adopts the families of citizens who have fallen
or may fall in opposing the criminal aggression of the Royalists,
directed against Paris and against the French republic.”

Infinitely better than adopting the orphans would be to save the
fathers from death. Oh, these absurd decrees! You separate the Church
from the State; you suppress the budget of public worship; you
confiscate the property of the clergy. A pretty time to think about
such acts! What is necessary, what is indispensable, is to restore
quiet, to avoid massacres, and to stifle hatred. That you will not
decree. No! no! That which is now happening you have desired, and you
still desire it; you have profited by the provocations you have
received to bring about the most frightful conflict which the history
of unfortunate France records; and you will persevere, and in order to
revive the fainting courage of those whom you have devoted to
inevitable defeat and death, you bring into action all the hypocrisy
with which you have charged your enemies!

“Bergeret and Flourens have joined their forces; they are marching on
Versailles. Success is certain!”

You cause this announcement to be placarded in the street—false news,
is it not? But men can only be led to their ruin by being deceived. You
add:

“The fire of the army of Versailles has not occasioned us any
appreciable loss.”

Ah! As to this let us ask the women who await at the gates of the city
the return of your soldiers, and crowd sobbing round the bloody
litters!

NOTES:

[34] The combined plan of the three generals of the Commune consisted,
like the famous plan of General Boum, in proceeding by three different
roads: the first column, under the orders of Bergeret, seconded by
Flourens, went by Rueil; the second, commanded by Duval, marched upon
Versailles by lower Meudon, Chaville, and Viroflay; covered by the
fire of Fort Issy, and the redoubt of Moulineaux; and lastly, the
third, with General Eudes at its head, took the Clamart road,
protected by the fort of Vanves.

[35] Though no fort covered Bergeret’s eight battalions with its fire,
yet Bergeret was so sure that the artillerymen of Mont Valérien would
do as the line did on the 18th of March, i.e., refuse to fire, that he
advanced boldly as far as the bridge of Neuilly, and had made a halt
at the Rond-Point des Bergères, when a heavy cannonading from Mont
Valérien separated a part of the column from its main body.

XXVIII.

Every hour that flies by, becomes more sinister than the last. They
fight at Clamart as they fight at Neuilly, at Meudon and at Courbevoie.
Everywhere rage the mitrailleuses, the cannon, and the rifle; the
victories of the Communalists are lyingly proclaimed. The truth of
their pretended triumphs will soon be known; and unhappily victory will
be as detestable as defeat.

General Duval has been made prisoner and put to death. “If you had
taken me,” asked General Vinoy, “would you not have shot me?”—“Without
hesitation,” replied Duval. And Vinoy gave the word of command, “Fire!”

But this anecdote, though widely spread, is probably false. It is
scarcely likely that a Commander-in-Chief of the Versailles troops
would have consented to hold such a dialogue with an “_insurgent_.”

Flourens also is killed. Where and how is not yet known with any
certainty. Several versions are given. Some speak of a ball in the
head, or the neck, or the chest; others spread the report that his
skull was cut open by a sword.

Flourens is thought about and talked of by men of the most opposite
opinions. This singular man inspires no antipathy even amongst those
who might hold him in the greatest detestation. I shall one day try to
account for the partiality of opinion in favour of this young and
romantic insurgent.

Duval shot, Flourens killed, Bergeret lying in the pangs of death; the
enthusiasm of the Federals might well be cooled down. Not in the least!
The battalions that march along the boulevards have the same resolute
air, as they sing and shout “_Vive la Commune!_” Are they the dupes of
their chiefs to that extent as to believe the pompous proclamations
with their hourly announcements of attacks repelled, of redoubts taken,
of soldiers of the line made prisoners? It is not probable. And
besides, the guards of the respective quarters must see the return of
those who have been to the fight, and whose anxious wives are waiting
on the steps of the doors; must learn from them that the forward
marches have in reality been routs, and that many dead and wounded have
been left on the field, when the Commune reports only declare “losses
of little importance.” Whence comes this ardour that the first rush and
defeat cannot check? Is it nourished by the reports, true or false, of
the cruelties of the Versaillais which are spread by the hundred? The
“murder” of Duval, the “assassination” of Flourens, prisoners shot,
_vivandières_ violated, all these culpable inventions—can they be
inventions, or does civil war make such barbarians of us?—are indeed of
a nature to excite the enthusiasm of hate, and the men march to a
probable defeat with the same air as they would march to certain
victory. Ah! whether led astray or not, whether guilty, even, or
whatever the motive that impels them, they are brave! And when they
pass thus they are grand. Yes! in spite of the rags that serve the
greater number of them for uniforms, in spite of the drunken gait of
some, as a whole they are superb! And the reason of the coldest
partisan of order at any price, struggles in vain against the
admiration which these men inspire as they march to their death.

It must be admitted, too, that there is much less disorder in the
command than might be expected. The battalions all know whom they are
to obey. Some go to the Hôtel de Ville, others to the Place Vendôme,
many to the forts, a few to the advanced posts; marches and
counter-marches are managed without confusion, and the combatants are
in general well provided with ammunition, and supplied with provisions.
Far as one is from esteeming the chiefs of the Federals, one is obliged
to admit that there is something remarkable in this rapid organisation
of a whole army in the midst of one of the most complete political
convulsions. Who, then, directs? Who commands? The members of the
Commune, divided as they are in opinion, do not appear capable, on
account of their number and lamentable inexperience, of taking the sole
lead in military affairs. Is there not some one either amongst them or
in the background, who knows how to think, direct, and act? Is it
Bergeret? Is it Cluseret? The future perhaps will unravel the mystery.
In the meantime, and in spite of the reverses to which the Federals
have had to submit during these last days, the whole of Paris unites in
unanimous surprise at the extreme regularity with which the
administrative system of the war seems to work, the surprise being the
greater that, during the siege, the “legitimate” chiefs with much more
powerful means, and having disciplined troops at their command, did not
succeed in obtaining the same striking results.

But would it not have been better far that that order had never
existed? Better a thousand times that the command had been less precise
than that those commanded should have been led to a death without
glory? For the last few days Neuilly, so joyous in times gone by with
its busy shops, its frequented _restaurants_ and princely parks;
Neuilly, with the Versailles batteries on one side and the Paris guns
on the other, under an incessant rain of shells and _mitraille_ from
Mont Valérien; Neuilly, with her bridge taken and re-taken, her
barricades abandoned and re-conquered, has been for the last few days
like a vast abyss, into which the Federal battalions, seized with
mortal giddiness, are precipitated one after another. Each house is a
fortress. Yesterday, the _gendarmes_ had advanced as far as the market
of Sablonville; this morning they were driven back beyond the church.
Upon this church, a child; the son of Monsieur Leullier, planted a red
flag amidst a shower of projectiles. “That child will make a true man,”
said Cluseret, the war delegate. Ah, yes! provided he is not a corpse
ere then. Shots are fired from window to window. A house is assaulted;
there are encounters, on the stairs; it is a horrible struggle in which
no quarter is given, night and day, through all hours. The rage and
fury on both sides are terrific. Men that were friends a week ago have
but one desire—to assassinate each other. An inhabitant of Neuilly, who
succeeded in escaping, related this to me: Two enemies, a soldier of
the line and a Federal, had an encounter in the bathing establishment
of the Avenue de Neuilly, a little above the Rue des Huissiers. Now
pursuing, now flying from each other in their bayonet-fight, they
reached the roof of the house, and there, flinging down their arms,
they closed in a mad struggle. On the sloping roof, the tiles of which
crush beneath them, at a hundred feet from the ground, they struggled
without mercy, without respite, until at last the soldier felt his
strength give way, and endeavoured to escape from the gripe of his
adversary. Then, the Federal—the person from whom I learnt this was at
an opposite window and lost not a single one of their movements—the
Federal drew a knife from his pocket and prepared himself to strike his
half-prostrate antagonist, who, feeling that all hope was lost, threw
himself flat on the roof, seized his enemy by the leg, and dragging him
with him by a sudden movement, they rolled over and fell on to the
pavement below. Neither was killed, but the soldier had his face
crimsoned with blood and dust, and the Federal, who had fallen across
his adversary, despatched him by plunging his knife in his chest.

Such is this infamous struggle! Such is this savage strife! Will it not
cease until there is no more blood to shed? In the meantime, Paris of
the boulevards, the elegant and fast-living Paris, lounges, strolls,
and smiles. In spite of the numerous departures there are still enough
blasé dandies and beauties of light locks and lighter reputation to
bring the blush to an honest man’s cheek. The theatres are open; “_La
Pièce du Pape_” is being played. Do you know “The Pope’s Money?” It is
a suitable piece for diverting the thoughts from the horrors of civil
war. A year ago the Pope was supported by French bayonets, but his
light coinage would not pass in Paris. Now Papal zouaves are killing
the citizens of Paris, and we take light silver and lighter paper. The
piece is flimsy enough. It is not its political significance that makes
it diverting, but the _double-entendre_ therein. One must laugh a
little, you understand. Men are dying out yonder, we might as well
laugh a little here. Low whispers in the _baignoires_, munching of
sugared violets in the stage boxes—everything’s for the best.
Mademoiselle Nénuphar (named so by antithesis) is said to have the most
beautiful eyes in the world. I will wager that that handsome man behind
her has already compared them to mitraille shot, seeing the ravages
they commit. It would be impossible to be more complimentary,—more
witty and to the point. Ah! look you, those who are fighting at this
moment, who to-day by their cannon and chassepots are exposing Paris to
a terrible revenge, guilty as these men are, I hold them higher than
those who roar with laughter when the whole city is in despair, who
have not even the modesty to hide their joys from our distresses, and
who amuse themselves openly with shameless women, while mothers are
weeping for their children!

On the boulevards it is worse still; there, vice exhibits itself and
triumphs. Is it then true what a young fellow, a poor student and
bitter philosopher, said to me just now: “When all Paris is destroyed,
when its houses, its palaces, and its monuments thrown down and
crushed, strew its accursed soil and form but one vast ruin beneath the
sky, then, from out of this shapeless mass will rise as from a huge
sepulchre, the phantom of a woman, a skeleton dressed in a brilliant
dress, with shoulders bared, and a toquet on its head; and this
phantom, running from ruin to ruin, turning its head every now and then
to see if some libertine is following her through the waste—this
phantom is the leprous soul of Paris!”

When midnight approaches, the _cafés_ are shut. The delegates of the
Central Committee at the ex-prefecture have the habit of sending
patrols of National Guards to hasten and overlook the closing of all
public places. But this precaution, like so many others, is useless.
There are secret doors which escape the closest investigations. When
the shutters are put up, light filters through the interstices of the
boards. Go close up to them, apply your eye to one of those lighted
crevices, listen to the cannon roaring, the mitrailleuses horribly
spitting, the musketry cracking, and then look into the interior of the
closed rooms. People are talking, eating, and smoking; waiters go to
and fro. There are women too. The men are gay and silly. Champagne
bottles are being uncorked. “Ah! ah! it’s the fusillade!” Lovers and
mistresses are in common here. This orgie has the most telling effect,
I tell you, in the midst of the city loaded with maledictions, a few
steps from the battle-field where the bayonets are dealing their death
thrusts, and the shells are scattering blood. And later, after the
laughter and the songs and the drink, they take an open carriage, if
the night is fine, and go to the Champs Elysées, and there mount upon
the box by the coachman to try and see the fight—if “those people” knew
how to die as well as they know how to laugh it would be better for
them.

Other _bons viveurs_, more discreet, hide themselves on the first
floors of some houses and in some of the clubs. But they are betrayed
by the sparkle of the chandeliers which pierces the heavy curtains. If
you walk along by the walls you will hear the conversation of the
gamesters and the joyous clink of the gold pieces.

Ah! the cowardice of the merry ones! Oh, thrice pardonable anger of
those who starve!

XXIX.

At one o’clock this morning, the 5th of April, on my return from one of
these nightly excursions through Paris, I was following the Rue du Mont
Thabor so as to gain the boulevards, when on crossing the Rue
Saint-Honoré I perceived a small number of National Guards ranged along
the pavement. The incident was a common one, and I took no notice of
it. In the Rue du Mont Thabor not a person was to be seen; all was in
silence and solitude. Suddenly a door opened a few steps in front of
me; a man came out and hurried away in the direction opposite to that
of the church. This departure looked like a flight. I stopped and lent
my attention. Soon two National Guards rushed out by the same door,
ran, shouting as they went, after the fugitive, who had had but a short
start of them, and overtaking him, without difficulty brought him back
between them, while the National Guards that I had seen in the Rue
Saint-Honoré ran up at the noise. The exclamations and insults of all
kinds that were vociferated led me to ascertain that the man they had
arrested was the Abbé Deguerry, _curé_ of the Madeleine. He was dragged
into the house, the door was shut, and all sank into silence again.

That morning I learned that Monseigneur Darboy, the Archbishop of
Paris, was taken at the same hour and in almost similar circumstances.

[Illustration: ABBÉ DEGUERRY, Curé of the Madeleine.]

The arrests of several other ecclesiastics are cited. The _curé_ of St.
Séverin and the _curé_ of St. Eustache have been made prisoners, it is
said; the first in his own house, the second at the moment when he was
leaving his church. The _curé_ of Notre-Dame-des-Victoires was to have
been arrested also, but warned in time, he was able to place himself in
safety.

Monseigneur Darboy, being conducted to the ex-prefecture (why the
_ex_-prefecture? It seems to me it works just as well as when it was
purely and simply a prefecture), was cross-examined there by the
citizen delegate Rigault. It must be said that Monsieur Rigault had
begun to make himself talked about during these last few days. He is
evidently a man who has a natural vocation for the employment he has
chosen, for he arrests, and arrests, and still arrests. He is young,
cold, and cynical. But his cynicism does not exclude him from a certain
gaiety, as we shall see. It was the Citizen Rigault, then, who examined
the Archbishop of Paris. I am not inordinately curious, but I should
very much like to know what the cynical member of the Commune could ask
of Monseigneur Darboy. Having committed apparently but one crime, that
of being a priest, and having no inclination to disguise it, it is
difficult to know what the interrogatory could turn upon. Monsieur
Rigault’s imagination furnished him no doubt with ample materials for
the interview, and he has probably as much vocation for the part of a
magistrate as for that of a police officer. But however it may be, the
journals of the Commune record this fragment with ill-disguised
admiration.

[Illustration: Raoul Rigault[36]]

[Illustration: Monseigneur Darboy, Archbishop of Paris.]

“My children”—the white-haired Archbishop of Paris is reported to have
said at one moment.

“Citizen,” interrupted the Citizen Rigault, who is not yet thirty, “you
are not before children, but before magistrates.”

That was smart! And I can conceive the enthusiasm with which Monsieur
Rigault inspires the members of the Commune. But this excellent citizen
did not confine himself to this haughty repartee. I am informed (and I
have reason to believe with truth) that he added: “Moreover, that’s too
old a tale. You have been trying it on these eighteen hundred years.”

Now everyone must admit that this is as remarkable for its wit as for
its elegance, and it is just what might be expected of the amiable
delegate, who, the other day, in a moment of exaggerated clemency,
permitted an abbé to visit a prisoner in the Conciergerie, and
furnished him with a _laisser-passer_ that ran thus: “Admit the bearer,
who styles himself the servant of one of the name of God.” Oh! what
graceful, charming wit!

NOTES:

[36] Rigault became connected with Rochefort in the year 1869, and
with him was engaged on the journal called the _Marseillaise_, and
produced articles which subjected him more than once to fine and
imprisonment. In the month of September, 1870, he was appointed by the
Government of the National Defence, Commissaire of Police, but having
taken part in the insurrection of the 31st of October, he was, on the
following day, dismissed from office. Shortly after this he made his
appearance as a writer in Blanqui’s paper the _Patrie en Danger_; but,
presently, he took a military turn, and got himself elected to the
command of a battalion of the National Guard. He seems to have been
born an informer or police spy, for we are told when at school, he
used to amuse himself by filling up lists of proscriptions, with the
names of his fellow-pupils. With such charming natural instincts, it
is not at all surprising that he was on the 18th of March, appointed
by the Commune Government, Prefect of Police.

XXX.

I am beginning to feel decidedly uncomfortable. This new decree of the
Commune seriously endangers the liberty of all those who are so
unfortunate as to have incurred the ill-will of their concierge, or
whose dealings with his next-door neighbour have not been of a strictly
amicable nature. Let us copy the 1st article of this ferocious decree.

“All persons accused of complicity with the Government of Versailles
shall be immediately taken and incarcerated.”[37]

Pest! they do not mince matters! Why, the first good-for-nothing
rascal—to whom, perhaps, I refused to lend five francs seven years
ago—may go round to Citizen Rigault and tell him that I am in regular
communication with Versailles, whereupon I am immediately incarcerated.
For, I beg it may be observed, it is not necessary that the complicity
with “the traitors” should be proved. The denunciation is quite
sufficient for one to be sent to contemplate the blue sky through the
bars of the Conciergerie.[38] Besides, what do the words “complicity
with the Government of Versailles” mean? All depends upon the way one
looks at those things. I am not sure that I am innocent. I remember
distinctly having several times bowed to a pleasant fellow—I say
pleasant fellow, hoping that these lines will not fall under the
observation of any one at the Prefecture of Police—who at this very
moment is quite capable, the rogue, of eating a comfortable dinner at
the Hôtel des Réservoirs at Versailles in company with one or more of
the members of the National Assembly. You can understand now why I am
beginning to feel rather uncomfortable. To know a man who knows a
deputy, constitutes, I am fully persuaded—otherwise I am unworthy to
live under the paternal government of the Commune—a most decided
complicity with the men of Versailles. I really think it would be only
commonly prudent to steal out of Paris in a coal sack, as a friend of
mine did the other day, or in some other agreeable fashion.[39] See
what may come of a bow!

NOTES:

[37] DECREE CONCERNING THE SUSPECTED.

“Commune of Paris:

“Considering that the Government of Versailles has wantonly trampled on
the rights of humanity, and set at defiance the rights of war; that it
has perpetrated horrors such as even the invaders of our soil have
shrunk from committing;
“Considering that the representatives of the Commune of Paris have
an imperative duty devolving upon them,—that of defending the lives
and honour of two millions of inhabitants, who have committed their
destinies to their charge; and that it behoves them at once to take
measures equal to the gravity of the situation;
“Considering that the politicians and magistrates of the city ought
to reconcile the general weal with respect for public liberty,
“Decrees:
“Art. 1. All persons charged with complicity with the Government of
Versailles will be immediately brought to justice and incarcerated.
“Art. 2. A ‘jury, of accusation’ will be summoned within the
twenty-four hours to examine the charges brought before it.
“Art. 3. The jury must pass sentence within the forty-eight hours.
“Art. 4. All the accused, convicted by the jury, will be retained
as hostages by the People of Paris.
“Art. 6. Every execution of a prisoner of war, or of a member of
the regular Government of the Commune of Paris, will be at once
followed by the execution of a triple number of hostages, retained
by virtue of article 4, who will be chosen by lot.
“Art. 6. All prisoners of war will be summoned before the ‘jury of
accusation,’ who will decide whether they be immediately set at
liberty or retained as hostages.”

[38] Prison of Detention.

[39] The following is still more naïve:—A man takes a return-ticket
for the environs, and sometimes finds a guard silly enough to allow
him to pass on the supposition that such a ticket was sufficient proof
of his intention of returning to Paris.
Others get into the waiting-room without tickets, under the pretext
of speaking to some one there.
M. Bergerat, a poet, passed the barrier in a cart-load of charcoal.

[Illustration: Colonel Flourens.[40]]

XXXI.

Flourens is dead: we heard that last night for certain. A National
Guard had previously brought back the colonel’s horse from Bougival,
but it was only a few hours ago that we heard any details. An attempt
was made to take him prisoner at Rueil. A gendarme called out to him to
surrender, he replied by a pistol shot; another gendarme advanced, and
wounded him in the side, a third cleft his skull with a sabre out. Some
people do not believe in the pistol shot, and talk of assassination.
How many such events are there, the truth of which will never be
clearly proved! One thing certain is, that Flourens is dead. His body
was recognised at Versailles by some one in the service of Garnier
frères. His mother started this morning to fetch the corpse of her son.
It is strange that one is so painfully affected by the violent death of
this man. He has been mixed up in all the revolutionary attempts of the
last few years, and ought to be particularly obnoxious to all peaceful
and order-loving citizens; but the truth is, his was a sincerely ardent
and enthusiastic spirit. He was a thorough believer in the principles
he maintained. Whatever may be the religion he professes, the apostle
inspires esteem, and the martyr compassion. This apostle, this martyr,
was born to affluence; son of an illustrious savant, he may be almost
said to have been born to hereditary distinction. He was still quite
young when he threw himself heart and soul into politics. There was
fighting in Crete, and so off he went. There he revolted against the
revolt itself, got imprisoned, escaped, outwitted the gendarmes, got
retaken: his adventures sound like a legend or romance. It is because
he was so romantic, that he is so interesting. He returned to France
full of generous impulses. He was as prodigal of his money as he had
been of his blood. In the bitter cold winters he fed and clothed the
poor of Belleville, going from attic to attic with money and
consolation. You remember what Victor Hugo says of the sublime Pauline
Roland. The spirit of Flourens much resembled hers. The patriot could
act the part of a sister of charity. At other times, an enthusiast in
search of a social Eldorado, he would put himself at the service of the
most forlorn cause; never was anyone so imprudent. He was of a most
active and critical disposition: it was impossible for him to remain
quiet. When he was not seemingly employed, he was agitating something
in the shade. His friendship for Rochefort was great. These two
turbulent spirits, one with his pen, the other with his physical
activity, remind us each of the other. Both ran to extremes, Rochefort
in his literary invectives, Flourens in his hairbreadth adventures.
Although they were often allied, these two, they were sometimes
opposed. Have you never, seen two young artists in a studio performing
the old trick, one making a speech, while the other, with his head and
body hidden in the folds of a cloak, stretches forth his arms and
executes the most extravagant gestures? Rochefort and Flourens
performed this farce in politics, the former talking, the latter
gesticulating; but on the day of the burial of Victor Noir they went
different ways. On that day Rochefort, to do him justice, saved a large
multitude of men from terrible danger. Flourens, always the same,
wished the body to be carried to Père Lachaise; on the road there must
have been a collision; that was what he desired, but he was defeated.
The tongue prevailed, a hundred thousand cries of vengeance filled the
air, but they were only cries, and no mischief was done, except to a
few graves in the Neuilly cemetery. Flourens awaited a better occasion,
but by no means passively. He was a man of barricades; he did not seem
to think that paving-stones were made to walk on, he only cared to see
them heaped up across a street for the protection of armed patriots.
Although he always wore the dress of a gentleman, he was not one of
those black-coated individuals who incite the men to rebellion and keep
out of the way while the fight is going on; he helped to defend the
barricades he had ordered to be thrown up. Wherever there was a chance
of being killed, he was sure to be; and in the midst of all this he
never lost his placid expression, nor the politeness of a gentleman,
nor the look of extreme youth which beamed from his eyes, and must have
been on his face even when he fell under the cruel blows of the
gendarmes. Now he is dead. He is judged harshly, he is condemned, but
he cannot be hated. He was a madman, but he was a hero. The conduct of
Flourens at the Hôtel de Ville in the night of the 31st October is
hardly in keeping with so favourable a view. The French forgive and
forget with facility—let that pass.

NOTES:

[40] Flourens was born in 1838, and was the son of the well-known
_savant_ and physiologist of this name. He completed his studies with
brilliancy, and succeeded his father as professor of the Collège de
France. His opening lecture on the History of Man made a profound
impression on the scientific world. However, he retired from this post
in 1864, and turned his undivided attention to the political questions
of the day. Deeply compromised by certain pamphlets written by him, he
left France for Candia, where he espoused the popular cause against
the Turks. On his return to France he was imprisoned for three months
for political offences. Rochefort’s candidature was hotly supported by
him. In 1870 he rose against the Government, with a large force of the
Belleville _faubouriens_. He was prosecuted, and took refuge in
London. After the fourth of September he was placed at the head of
five battalions of National Guards. He was again imprisoned for having
instigated the rising of October, and it was not till the
twenty-second of March that he was set at liberty. On the second of
April he set out for Versailles at the head of an insurgent troop. He
was met midway by a mounted patrol, and in the _mêlée_ that ensued he
was killed.

XXXII.

In the midst of so many horrible events, which interest the whole mass
of the people, ought I to mention an incident which broke but one
heart? Yes, I think the sad episode is not without importance, even in
so vast a picture. It was a child’s funeral. The little wooden coffin,
scantily covered with a black pall, was not larger, as Théophile
Gautier says, “than a violin case.” There were few mourners. A woman,
the mother doubtless, in a black stuff dress and white crimped cap,
holding by the hand a boy, who had not yet reached the age of sorrowing
tears, and behind them a little knot of neighbours and friends. The
small procession crept along the wide street in the bright sunlight.

When it reached the church they found the door closed, and yet the
money for the mass had been paid the night before, and the hour for the
ceremony fixed. One of the women went forward towards the door of the
vestry, where she was met by a National Guard, who told her with a
superfluity of oaths that she must not go in, that the —— curé, the
sacristan, and all the d—— fellows of the church were locked up, and
that they would no longer have anything to do with patriots. Then the
mother approached and said, “But who will bury my poor child if the
curé is in prison?” and then she began to weep bitterly at the thought
that there would be no prayers put up for the good of the little
spirit, and that no holy water would be sprinkled on its coffin. Yes,
members of the Commune, she wept, and she wept longer and more bitterly
later at the cemetery, when she saw them lower the body of her child
into the grave, without a prayer or a recommendation to God’s mercy.
You must not scoff at her, you see she was a poor weak woman, with
ideas of the narrowest sort; but there are other mothers like her,
quite unworthy of course to bear the children of patriots, who do not
want their dear ones to be buried like dogs; who cannot understand that
to pray is a crime, and to kneel down before God an offence to
humanity, and who still are weak enough to wish to see a cross planted
on the tombs of those they have loved and lost! Not the cross of the
nineteenth century—a red flag! such as now graces the dome of the
church of the Pantheon.[41]

NOTES:

[41] Early in April the Commune forbade divine service in the
Pantheon. They cut off the arms of the cross, and replaced it by the
red flag during a salute of artillery.

[Illustration: Colonel Assy.]

XXXIII.

Communal fraternity is decidedly in the ascendant; it is putting into
practice this admirable precept, “Arrest each other.” They say M.
Delescluze has been sent to the Conciergerie. Yesterday Lullier was
arrested, to-day Assy. It was not sufficient to change Executive
Committees—if I may be allowed to say so—with no more ceremony than one
would change one’s boots; the Commune conducts itself, in respect to
those members that become obnoxious to it, absolutely as if they were
no more than ordinary archbishops.

[Illustration: Placing the Red Flag on the Pantheon. (The hole in the
dome was occasioned by a Prussian shell.)]

What! Assy—Assy[42] of Creuzot—who signed before all his comrades the
proclamations of the Central Committee, in virtue, not only of his
ability, but in obedience to the alphabetical order of the thing—Assy
no longer reigns at the Hôtel de Ville!—publishes no more decrees,
discusses no longer with F. Cournet, nor with G. Tridon. Wherefore this
fall after so much glory? It is whispered about that Assy has thought
it prudent to put aside a few rolls of bank notes found in the drawers
of the late Government. What, is that all? How long have politicians
been so scrupulous? Members of the Commune, how very punctilious you
have grown. Now if the Citizen Assy were accused of having in 1843 been
intimately acquainted with a lady whose son is now valet to M. Thiers’
first cousin, or if he had been seen in a church, and it were clearly
proved that he was there with any other intention than that of
delicately picking the pockets of the faithful, then I could understand
your indignation. But the idea of arresting a man because he has
appropriated the booty of the traitors, is too absurd; if you go on
acting in that way people will think you are growing conscientious!

As to Citizen Lullier,[43] who was one of the first victims of
“fraternity,” he is imprisoned because he did not succeed in capturing
Mont Valérien. I think with horror that if I had been in the place of
Citizen Lullier I should most certainly have had to undergo the same
punishment, for how in the devil’s name I could have managed to
transport that impregnable fortress on to the council-table at the
Hôtel de Ville I have not the least conception. It is as bad as if you
were in Switzerland, and asked the first child you met to go and fetch
Mont Blanc; of course the child would go and have a game of marbles
with his companions, and come back without the smallest trace of Mont
Blanc in his arms, thereupon you would whip the youngster within an ace
of his life. However, it appears that M. Lullier objected to being
whipped, or rather imprisoned, and being as full of cunning as of
valour he managed to slip out of his place of confinement, without drum
or trumpet. “Dear Rochefort,” he writes to the editor of _Le Mot
d’Ordre_, “you know of what infamous machinations I have been the
victim.” I suppose M. Rochefort does, but I am obliged to confess that
I have not the least idea, unless indeed M. Lullier means by
“machinations” the order that was given him to bring Mont Valérien in
his waistcoat pocket. “Imprisoned without motive,” he continues, “by
order of the Central Committee, I was thrown ...” (Oh! you should not
have _thrown_ M. Lullier) “into the Prefecture of Police,” (the
ex-Prefecture, if you please), “and put in solitary confinement at the
very moment when Paris was in want of men of action and military
experience.” Oh, fie! men of the Commune, you had at your disposal a
man of action—who does not know the noble actions of Citizen Lullier? A
man of military experience—who does not know what profound experience
M. Lullier has acquired in his numerous campaigns—and yet you put him,
or rather throw him, into the Prefecture! This is bad, very bad. “The
Prefecture is transformed into a state prison, and the most rigorous
discipline is maintained.” It appears then that the Communal prison is
anything but a fool’s paradise. “However, in spite of everything, I and
my secretary managed to make our escape calmly ...”—the calm of the
high-minded—“from a cell where I was strictly guarded, to pass two
court-yards and a dozen or two of soldiers, to have three doors opened
for me while the sentinels presented arms as I passed ...” What a
wonderful escape: the adventures of Baron Munchausen are nothing to it.
What a fine chapter poor old Dumas might have made of it. The door of
the cell is passed under the very nose of the jailer, who has doubtless
been drugged with some narcotic, of which M. Lullier has learnt the
secret during his travels in the East Indies; the twelve guards in the
court-yards are seized one after another by the throat, thrown on the
ground, bound with cords, and prevented from giving the alarm by twelve
gags thrust into their twelve mouths; the three doors are opened by
three enormous false keys, the work of a member of the Commune,
locksmith by trade, who has remained faithful to the cause of M.
Lullier; and last, but not least, the sentinels, plunged in ecstasy at
the sight of the glorious fugitive, present arms. What a scene for a
melodrama! The most interesting figure, however, in my opinion, is the
secretary. I have the greatest respect for that secretary, who never
dreamt one instant of abandoning his master, and I can see him, while
Lullier is accomplishing his miracles, calmly writing in the midst of
the danger, with a firm hand, the faithful account of these immortal
adventures. “I have now,” continues the ex-prisoner of the
ex-Prefecture, “two hundred determined men, who serve me as a guard,
and three excellent revolvers, loaded, in my pocket. I had foolishly
remained too long without arms and without friends; now I am resolved
to blow the brains out of the first man who tries to arrest me!” I
heard a bourgeois who had read this exclaim, that he wished to Heaven
each member of the Commune would come to arrest him in turn. Oh!
blood-thirsty bourgeois! Then Lullier finishes up by declaring that he
scorns to hide, but continues to show himself freely and openly on the
boulevards. What a proud, what a noble nature! Oh, ye marionettes, ye
fantoccini! Yet let me not be unjust; I will try and believe in you
once more, in spite of armed requisitions, in spite of arrests, of
robberies—for there have been robberies in spite of your decrees—I will
try and believe that you have not only taken possession of the Hôtel de
Ville for the purpose of setting up a Punch and Judy show and playing
your sinister farces; I want to believe that you had and still have
honourable and avowable intentions; that it is only your natural
inexperience joined to the difficulties of the moment which is the
cause of your faults and your follies; I want to believe that there are
among you, even after the successive dismissal of so many of your
members, some honourable men who deplore the evil that has been done,
who wish to repair it, and who will try to make us forget the crimes
and forfeits of the civil war by the benefits which revolution
sometimes brings in its train. Yes, I am naturally full of hope, and
will try and believe this; but, honestly, what hope can you have of
inspiring confidence in those who are not prejudiced as I am in favour
of innovators, when they see you arrest each other in this fashion, and
know that you have among you such generals as Bergeret, such honest
citizens as Assy, and such escaped lunatics as Lullier?

NOTES:

[42] Assy, who first became publicly known as the leader of the strike
at Messrs. Schneider’s works at Creuzot, was an engineer. He was born
in 1840. He became a member of the International Society, and was
selected in 1870 to organise the Creuzot strike. Being threatened with
arrest, he went to Paris, but did not remain there long, and on the
21st of March in that year, a few days after his return to Creuzot,
the strike of the miners commenced. Assy was, finally, arrested and
tried before the Correctional Tribune of Paris as chief and founder of
a secret society, but he was acquitted of that charge.
At the siege of Paris, Assy was appointed as an officer in a free
guerilla corps of the Isle of France. Subsequently he was a
lieutenant in the 192nd battalion of the National Guard. Getting on
the Central Committee, he took an active share in the events that
occurred. Appointed commander of the 67th battalion on the 17th
March, we find him on the morning of the 18th as Governor of the
Hôtel de Ville, and colonel of the National Guard, organising with
the members of the committee the means of a serious
resistance—giving orders for the construction of
barricades—stopping the transport of munitions and provisions from
Paris. Becoming a member of the Commune, he took an active part in
carrying into effect the decrees which led, among other things, to
the demolition of the Vendôme Column and of the house of M. Thiers.
He was arrested in April, and was succeeded as Governor of the
Hôtel de Ville by one Pindy, who retained the office till the army
entered Paris. Assy was held prisoner, _sur parole_, at the Hôtel
de Ville, till the 19th April, when he was liberated. After this
Assy was engaged in superintending the manufacture of munitions of
war. He was the sole superintendent of the supply, especially as
regards quality. Among the warlike stores manufactured were
incendiary shells filled with petroleum, intended to be thrown into
Paris during the insurrection. It is certain that these engines of
destruction could only have been made at the factory superintended
by Assi. He was arrested on the 21st May. Assy was one of the
chiefs of the insurrection; he denied signing the decrees for the
execution of the hostages, or order for the enrolment of the
military in the National Guard. Assy was condemned by the tribunal
of Versailles, Sept. 2, to confinement for life in a French
fortress—a light penalty for the deeds of this important insurgent.

[43] Memoir, see Appendix 5.

[Illustration: General Cluseret.]

XXXIV.

The fighting still continues, the cannonading is almost incessant.
However, the damage done is but small. To-day, the 7th April, things
seem to be in pretty much the same position as they were after Bergeret
had been beaten back and Flourens killed. The forts of Vanves and Issy
bombard the Versailles batteries, which in their turn vomit shot and
shell on Vanves and Issy. Idle spectators, watching from the Trocadéro,
see long lines of white smoke arise in the distance. Every morning,
Citizen Cluseret,[44] the war delegate, announces that an assault of
gendarmes has been victoriously repulsed by the garrisons in the forts.
It is quite certain that if the Versaillais do attack they are
repulsed, as they make no progress whatever; but do they attack, that
is the question? I am rather inclined to think that these attacks and
repulses are mere inventions. It seems evident to me that the generals
of the National Assembly, who are now busy establishing batteries and
concentrating their forces, will not make a serious attempt until they
are certain of victory. In the meantime they are satisfied to complete
the ruin of the forts which were already so much damaged by the
Prussians.

Between Courbevoie and the Porte Maillot the fighting is continual.
Ground is lost and gained, such and such a house that was just now
occupied by the Versaillais is now in the hands of the Federals, and
_vice versâ_. Neither side is wholly victorious, but the fighting goes
on. What! is there no one to cry out “Enough! Enough blood, enough
tears! Enough Frenchmen killed by Frenchmen, Republicans killed by
Republicans.” Men fall on each side with the same war cry on their
lips. Oh! when will all this dreadful misunderstanding cease?

NOTES:

[44] The biography of this general of the Commune is very imperfect,
down to the time when he was elected for the 1st Arrondissement of
Paris, and was thereupon appointed Minister of War, or in Communal
phraseology, Delegate at the War Department. He seems to have been one
of those beings, without country or family, but who are blessed, by
way of compensation, with a plurality of names; we do not know whether
Cluseret was really his own, or how many aliases he had made use of.
It is said that he was formerly captain in a battalion of Chasseurs
d’Afrique, but was dismissed the army upon being convicted of
defalcations, in connection with the purchase of horses, and, that
soon after his dismissal from the French army, he went to the
United States, where he served in the revolutionary war, and
attained to the rank of General. Then we have another story, to the
effect that having been entrusted with the care of a flock of
lambs, the number of the animals decreased so rapidly, that nothing
but the existence of a large pack of wolves near at hand, could
possibly have accounted for it in an honest way; this affair is
said to have occurred at Churchill, Such vague charges as these
however deserve but little credit.
After closing his career as a shepherd, he became a defender of the
Pope’s flock, enlisting in the brigade against which Garibaldi took
the field. The next we hear of him is that he joined the Fenians,
and made an attempt to get possession of Chester Castle, but that
he fell under suspicion of being a traitor, and was glad to escape
to France, where, report says, he found refuge with a religious
community.

“When the devil was sick,
The devil a monk would be;
But when the devil was well,
The devil a monk was he!

XXXV.

Thirty men carrying muffled drums, thirty more with trumpets draped in
crape, head a long procession; every now and then the drums roll
dismally, and the trumpets give a long sad wail.

Numerous detachments of all the battalions come next, marching slowly,
their arms reversed. A small bunch of red immortelles is on every
breast. Has the choice of the colour a political signification, or is
it a symbol of a bloody death?

Next appears an immense funeral car draped with black, and drawn by
four black horses; the gigantic pall is of velvet, with silver stars.
At the corners float four great trophies of red flags.

Then another car of the same sort appears, another, and again another;
in each of them there are thirty-two corpses. Behind the cars march the
members of the Commune bare-headed, and wearing red scarfs. Alas!
always that sanguinary colour! Last of all, between a double row of
National Guards, follows a vast multitude of men, women, and children,
all sorrowful and dejected, many in tears.

The procession proceeds along the boulevards; it started from the
Beaujon hospital, and is going to the Père Lachaise: as it passes all
heads are bared. One man alone up at a window remains covered; the
crowd hiss him. Shame on him who will not bow before those who died for
a cause, whether it may be a worthy one or not! On looking on those
corpses, do not remember the evil they caused when they were alive.
They are dead now, and have become sacred. But remember, oh! remember,
that it is to the crimes of a few that are due the deaths of so many,
and let us help to hasten the hour when the criminals, whoever they be,
and to whatever party they belong; will feel the weight of the
inexorable Nemesis of human destiny.

XXXVI.

We are to have no more letters! As in the time of the siege, if you
desire to obtain news of your mother or your wife, you have no other
alternative than to consult a somnambulist or a fortune-teller. This is
not at all a complicated operation; of course you possess a ribbon or a
look of hair, something appertaining to the absent person. This
suffices to keep you informed, hour by hour, of what she says, does,
and thinks. Perhaps you would prefer the ordinary course of things, and
that you would rather receive a letter than consult a charlatan. But if
so, I would advise you not to say so. They would accuse you of being,
what you are doubtless, a reactionist, and you might get into trouble.

Yesterday a young man was walking in the Champs Elysées, a Guard
National stalked up to him and asked him for a light for his cigar.—“I
am really very sorry,” said he, “but my cigar has gone out.”—“Oh! your
cigar is out, is it? Oh! so you blush to render a service to a patriot!
Reactionist that you are!” Thereupon a torrent of invectives was poured
on the poor young man, who was quickly surrounded by a crowd of eager
faces: One charming young person exclaimed, “Why, he is a disguised
sergent-de-ville!”—“Yes, yes; he is a gendarme!” is echoed on all
sides.—“I think he looks like Ernest Picard,” says one.—“Throw him into
the Seine,” says another.—“To the Seine, to the Seine, the spy!” and
the unfortunate victim is pushed, jostled, and hurried off. A dense
crowd of National Guards, women, and children had by this time
collected, all crying out at the top of their voices, and without any
idea of what was the matter, “Shoot him! throw him the water! hang
him!” Superstitious individuals leaned towards hanging for the sake of
the cords. As to the original cause of the commotion, no one seemed to
remember anything about it. I overheard one man say,—“It appears that
they arrested him just as he was setting fire to the ambulance at the
Palais de l’Industrie!” As to what became of the young man I do not
know; I trust he was neither hanged, shot, nor drowned. At any rate,
let it be a lesson to others not to get embroiled in dangerous
adventures of that kind; and whatever your anxiety may be concerning
your family or affairs, you would do well to hide it carefully under a
smiling exterior. Suppose you meet one of your friends, who says to
you, “My dear fellow, how anxious you must be?” You must answer,
“Anxious! oh, not at all. On the contrary, I never felt more free of
care in my life.”—“Oh! I thought your aunt was ill, and as you do not
receive any letters ...”—“Not receive any letters!” you continue in the
same strain, “who told you that? Not receive any letters! why, I have
more than I want! what an idea!”—“Then you must be strangely favoured,”
says your mystified companion; “for since Citizen Theiz[45] has taken
possession of the Post-office, the communications are stopped.”—“Don’t
believe it. It is a rumour set on float by the reactionists. Why, those
terrible reactionists go so far as to pretend that the Commune has
imprisoned the priests, arrested journalists, and stopped the
newspapers!”—“Well, you may say what you please, but a proclamation of
Citizen Theiz announces that communication with the departments will
not be re-established for some days.”—“Nothing but modesty on his part;
he has only to show himself at the Post-office, and the service, which
has been put out of order by those wretched reactionists, will be
immediately reorganised.”—“So I am to understand that you have news
every day of your aunt.”—“Of course.”—“Well, I am delighted to hear it;
for one of my friends, who arrived from Marseilles this morning, told
me that your aunt was dead.”—“Dead, good heavens! what do you mean? Now
I think of it, I did not get a letter this morning.”—“There you see!”

You must not, however, allow your sorrow to carry you away, at the risk
of your personal safety, but answer readily. “I see it all, for a
wonder I did not get a letter this morning; Citizen Theiz is a
kind-hearted man, and did not want to make me unhappy.”

NOTES:

[45] A working chaser, and one of the most active and influential
members of the International Society. He was among the accused who
were tried in July, 1870, and was condemned to two years’
imprisonment. On the formation of the Central Committee, he was
appointed Vice-President. It was Theiz who saved the General Post
Office, Rue J.J. Rousseau, from the total destruction decreed by other
members of the Commune. His fate is not well known. Director of the
General Post-office in the Rue J.J. Rousseau, he is said to have saved
that important establishment, doomed to destruction by the Commune.
Theiz escaped from Paris to London on the 29th of July; he took an
active part in the struggle to the last, and was close to Vermorel
when wounded at the barricade of the Château d’Eau.

XXXVII.

The queen of the age is the Press. Lately dethroned and somewhat shorn
of her majesty, but still a queen. It is in vain that the press has
sometimes degraded itself in the eyes of honest men by stooping to
applaud and approve of crimes and excesses, that journalists have done
what they can to lower it; still the august offspring of the human
mind, the press, has really lost neither its power nor its fascination.
Misunderstood, misapplied, it may have done some harm, but no one can
question the signal service which it has been able to render, or the
nobility of its mission. If it has sometimes been the organ of false
prophets, its voice has also been often raised to instruct and
encourage.

When last night you went secretly, in a manner worthy of the act, to
seize on the printing presses of the _Journal des Débats_, the _Paris
Journal_, and the _Constitutionnel_, were you aware of what you were
doing? You imagined, perhaps, this act would have no other result than
that of suppressing violently a private concern—which is one kind of
robbery—and of reducing to a state of beggary—which is a crime—the
numerous individuals, journalists, printers, compositors, and others
who are employed on the journal, and who live by its means. You have
done worse than this. You have stopped, as far as it was in your power,
the current of human progress. You have suppressed man’s noblest.
right—the right of expressing his opinions to the world; you are no
better than the pickpocket who appropriates your handkerchief. You have
taken our freedom of thought by the throat, and said, “It is in my way,
I will strangle it.” Wherefore have you acted thus? To shut the mouths
of those who contradict you, is to admit that you are not so very sure
of being in the right. To suppress the journals is to confess your fear
of them; to avoid the light is to excite our suspicion concerning the
deeds you are perpetrating in the darkness. We shut our windows when we
do not desire to be seen. Little confidence is inspired by closed
doors. Your councils at the Hôtel de Ville are secret as the
proceedings of certain legal cases, the details of which might be
hurtful to public morality. Again I say, wherefore this mystery? What
strange projects have you on foot? Do you discuss among you,
propositions of a nature which your modesty declines to make known to
the world? This fear of publicity, of opposition, you have proved
afresh, by the nocturnal visits of your National Guards to the printing
offices, wherein they forced an entrance like housebreakers. Shall we
be reduced to judge of your acts, and of the bloody incidents of the
civil war, only by your own asseverations and those of your
accomplices? You must be very determined to act guiltily and to be
obliged to tell lies, as you take so much trouble to get rid of those,
who might pass sentence on you, and who might convict you of falsehood.
Therefore you have not only committed a crime in so doing, but made a
great mistake as well. No one can meddle with the liberty of the press
with impunity. The persecution of the press always brings with it its
own punishment. Look back to the many years of the Imperial Government,
to the few months of the Government of the 4th of September; of all the
crimes perpetrated by the former, of all the errors committed by the
latter, those crimes and errors which most particularly hastened the
end were those that were levelled against the freedom of the press. The
most valable excuse in favour of the revolt of the 18th of March was
certainly the suppression of several journals by General Vinoy, with
the consent of M. Thiers. How can you be so rash as to make the very
same mistakes which have been the destruction of former governments,
and also so unmindful of your own honour as to commit the very crime
which reduces you to the same level as your enemies?

Ah I truly those who were ready to judge you with patience and
impartiality, those who at first were perhaps, on the whole, favourable
to you, because it seemed to them that you represented some of the
legitimate aspirations of Paris, even those, seeing you act like
thoughtless tyrants, will feel it quite impossible to blind themselves
any longer to your faults; those who having wished to esteem you for
the sake of liberty, will for the sake of liberty, be obliged to
despise you!

XXXVIII.

It cannot be true. I will not believe it. It cannot be possible that
Paris is to be again bombarded: and by whom? By Frenchmen! In spite of
the danger I was told there was to be apprehended near Neuilly, I
wished to see with my own eyes what was going on. So this morning, the
8th April, I went to the Champs Elysées.

Until I reached the Rond Point there was nothing unusual, only perhaps
fewer people to be seen about. The omnibus does not go any farther than
the corner of the Avenue Marigny. An Englishwoman, whom the conductor
had just helped down, came up to me and asked me the way; she wanted to
go to the Rue Galilée, but did not like to walk up the wide avenue. I
pointed out to her a side-street, and continued my way. A little higher
up a line of National Guards, standing about ten feet distant from each
other, had orders to stop passengers from going any farther. “You can’t
pass.”—“But ...,” and I stopped to think of some plausible motive to
justify my curiosity. However, I was saved the trouble. Although I had
only uttered a hesitating “but,” the sentinel seemed to consider that
sufficient, and replied, “Oh, very well, you can pass.”

The avenue seemed more and more deserted as I advanced. The shutters of
all the houses were closed. Here and there a passenger slipped along
close to the walls of the houses, ready to take refuge within the
street-doors, which had been left open by order, directly they heard
the whizzing of a shell. In front of the shop of a carriage-builder,
securely closed, were piled heaps of rifles; most of the National
Guards were stretched on the pavement fast asleep, while some few were
walking up and down smoking their pipes, and others playing at the
plebeian game of “bouchon.”[46] I was told that a shell had burst a
quarter of an hour before at the corner of the Rue de Morny. A captain
was seated there on the ground beside his wife, who had just brought
him his breakfast; the poor fellow was literally cut in two, and the
woman had been carried away to a neighbouring chemist’s shop
dangerously wounded. I was told she was still there, so I turned my
steps in that direction. A small group of people were assembled before
the door. I managed to get near, but saw nothing, as the poor thing had
been carried into the surgery. They told me that she had been wounded
in the neck by a bit of the shell, and that she was now under the care
of one of the surgeons of the Press Ambulance. I then continued my walk
up the avenue. The cannonading, which had seemed to cease for some
little time, now began again with greater intensity than ever. Clouds
of white smoke arose in the direction of the Porte Maillot, while bombs
from Mont Valérien burst over the Arc de Triomphe. On the right and
left of me were companies of Federals. A little further on a battalion,
fully equipped, with blankets and saucepans strapped to their
knapsacks, and loaves of bread stuck aloft on their bayonets, moved in
the direction of Porte Maillot. By the side of the captain in command
of the first company marched a woman in a strange costume, the skirt of
a vivandière and the jacket of a National Guard, a Phrygian cap on her
head, a chassepot in her hand, and a revolver stuck in her belt. From
the distance at which I was standing she looked both young and pretty.
I asked some Federals who she was; one told me she was the wife of
Citizen Eudes,[47] a member of the Commune, and another that she was a
newspaper seller in the Avenue des Ternes, whose child had been killed
in the Rue des Acacias the night before by a fragment of a shell, and
that she had sworn to revenge him. It appeared the battalion was on its
way to support the combatants at Neuilly, who were in want of help.
From what I hear the gendarmes and sergents de ville had fought their
way as far as the Rue des Huissiers. Now I had no doubt the Versailles
generals had made use of the gendarmes and sergents de ville, who were
most of them old and tried soldiers, but if in very truth they were
wherever the imagination of the Federals persisted in placing them,
they must either have been as numerous as the grains of sand on the
sea-shore, or else their leaders must have found out a way of making
them serve in several places at once. Having followed the battalion, I
found myself a few yards in front of the Arc de Triomphe. Suddenly a
hissing, whizzing sound is heard in the distance, and rapidly
approaches us; it sounds very much like the noise of a sky-rocket. “A
shell!” cried the sergeant, and the whole battalion to a man, threw
itself on the ground with a load jingling of saucepans and bayonets.
Indeed there was some danger. The terrible projectile lowered as it
approached, and then fell with a terrific noise a little way from us,
in front of the last house on the left-hand side of the avenue. I had
never seen a shell burst so near me before; a good idea of what it is
like may be had from those sinister looking paintings, that one sees
sometimes suspended round the necks of certain blind beggars, supposed
to represent an explosion in a mine. I think no one was hurt, and the
mischief done seemed to consist in a Wide hole in the asphalte and a
door reduced to splinters. The National Guards got up from the ground,
and several of them proceeded to pick up fragments of the shell. They
had, however, not gone many yards when another cry of alarm was given,
and again we heard the ominous Whizzing sound; in an instant we were
all on our faces. The second shell burst, but we did not see it; we
only saw at the top of the house that had already been struck, a window
open suddenly and broken panes fall to the ground. The shell had most
likely gone through the roof and burst in the attic. Was there anyone
in those upper stories? However, we were on our legs again and had
doubled the Arc de Triomphe. I had succeeded in ingratiating myself
with the men of the rear-guard, and I hoped to be able to go as far
with them as I pleased. Strange enough, and I confess it with _naif_
delight, I did not feel at all afraid. Although half an inch difference
in the inclination of the cannon might have cost me my life, still I
felt inclined to proceed on my way. I begin to think that it is not
difficult to be brave when one is not naturally a coward! Beneath the
great arch were assembled a hundred or so of persons who seemed to
consider themselves in safety, and who from time to time ventured a few
steps forward, for the purpose of examining the damage done to Etex’s
sculptured group by three successive shells. But in the Avenue de la
Grande Armée only three Federals were to be seen, and I think I was the
only man in plain clothes they had allowed to go so far. I could
distinctly perceive a small barricade erected in front of the Porte
Maillot on this side of the ramparts. The bastion to the right was hard
at work cannonading the heights of Courbevoie; great columns of smoke,
succeeded by terrific explosions, testified to the zeal of the
Communist artillerymen. Beyond the ramparts the Avenue de Neuilly
extended, dusty and deserted. Unfortunately the sun blinded me, and I
could not distinguish well what was going on in the distance. By this
time the sound of musketry was heard distinctly. I was told they were
fighting principally at Saint James and in the park of Neuilly. I tried
to pass out of the gates with the battalion, but an officer caught
sight of me, and in no measured tones ordered me back. I ought not to
complain, however, he rendered me good service; for although the fire
of the Versaillais had somewhat diminished, I do not think the place
could have been much longer tenable, to judge from the quantities of
bits of shell that strewed the road; from the numerous litters that
were being borne away with their bloody burthens; from the
railway-station in ruins, and the condition of the neighbouring houses,
which had nearly all of them great black holes in their fronts. The
Federals did not seem at all impressed by their critical position;
sounds of laughter reached me from the interior of a casemate, from the
chimney of which smoke was arising, and guards running hither and
thither were whistling merrily the _Chant du Départ_, with a look of
complete satisfaction.

[Illustration: The Arc de Triomphe, East Side (the Finest), Uninjured.]

Damaged on the other side. During the Prussian siege it was defended
from injury, though no shells reached it. Uncovered before the civil
war.

I managed to reach the Rue du Débarcadère, which is situated close to
the ramparts. An acquaintance of mine lives there. I knew he was away,
but I thought the porter would recognise and allow me to take up a
position at one of the windows. Next door, the corner house, I found a
shell had gone into a wine-merchant’s shop there, who could very well
have dispensed with such a visitor, and had behaved in the most unruly
fashion, breaking the glass, smashing the tables and counter, but
neither killing nor wounding anybody. The porter knew me quite well,
and invited me to walk upstairs to the apartments of my friend,
situated on the third floor. From the windows I could not see the
bastion, which was hidden by the station; but to the left, in the
distance, beyond the Bois de Boulogne, wherein I fancied I perceived
troops moving between the branches, but whether Versaillais or
Parisians I could not tell, arose the tremendous Mont Valérien bathed
in sunlight. The flashes from the cannon, which in daylight have a pale
silver tint, succeeded each other rapidly; the explosions were
formidable, and the fort was crowned with a wreath of smoke. They
appeared to be firing in the direction of Levallois, rather than on the
Porte Maillot. The Federals did not seem to attempt to reply. Turning
myself towards the right I could scan nearly the whole length of the
Avenue de Neuilly. The bare piece of ground which constitutes the
military zone was completely deserted; several shells fell there that
had been aimed doubtless at the Porte Maillot or the bastion. The
position I had taken up at the window was rather a perilous one. I was
just behind the bastion. Beyond the military zone most of the houses
seemed uninhabited, but I saw distinctly the National Guards in front
of the Restaurant Gilet, making their soup on the side-walk. I was too
far away to judge of the extent of the mischief done by the
cannonading, but I was told that several roofs had fallen in and many
walls had been thrown down in that quarter. All that I could see of the
market-place was empty; but the sound of musketry, and the smoke which
issued from the houses on one side of it, told me that the Federals
were there in sufficient numbers. A little further on I saw the barrels
of the rifles sticking out of the windows, with little wreaths of smoke
curling out of them; small knots of armed men every now and then
marched hurriedly across the avenue, and disappeared into the opposite
houses. Partly on account of the distance, and partly on account of the
blinding sun, and partly, perhaps, on account of the emotion I
experienced, which made me desire and yet fear to see, I could
distinguish the bridge but indistinctly, with the dark line of a
barricade in front of it. What surprised me most in the battle which I
was busily observing, was the extraordinarily small number of
combatants that were visible, when suddenly—it was about two o’clock in
the afternoon—the Versailles batteries at Courbevoie, which had been
silent for some time, began firing furiously. The horrid screech of the
mitrailleuse drowned the hissing of the shells; the whole breadth of
the long avenue was covered by a kind of white mist. The bastion in
front of me replied energetically. It seemed to me as if the interior
part of my ear was being rent asunder, when suddenly I heard a dull
heavy sound, such as I had not heard before, and I felt the house
tremble beneath me. Loud cries arose from the National Guards on the
ramparts. I fancied that a rain of shot and shell had destroyed the
drawbridge of the Porte Maillot; but it was not so; in the distance I
saw that the clouds of smoke were rolling nearer and nearer, and that
the roar of the musketry, which had greatly increased, sounded close
by. I felt sure that a rush was being made from Courbevoie—that the
Versaillais were advancing. The shells were flying over our heads in
the direction of the Champs Elysées. I began to distinguish that a
tumultuous mass of human beings were marching on in the smoke, in the
dust, in the sun. The guns on the bastion now thundered forth
incessantly. There was no mistaking by this time, there were the
Versaillais; I could see the red trowsers of the men of the line. The
Federals were shooting them down from the windows. Then I saw the
advanced guard stop, hesitate beneath the balls which seemed to rain on
them from the Place du Marché, and presently retire. Whereupon a large
number of Federals poured forth from the houses, and, walking close to
the walls, to be as much as possible out of the way of the projectiles,
hurried after the retreating enemy. But suddenly, when they had arrived
a little too far for me to distinguish anything very clearly, they in
their turn came to a standstill, and then retraced their steps, and
returned to their positions within the houses. The fire from the
Versaillais then sensibly diminished, but that of the bastions
continued its furious attack. It was thus that I witnessed one of those
_chassé-croisés_ under fire, which have become so frequent since this
dreadful civil war was concentrated at Neuilly.

[Illustration: Horse Chasseur acting as a communist artillery man,
attended by a gamin sponger.]

As it would have been most imprudent to follow the railway cutting, or
to have gone back by the Avenue de la Grande Armée, where the
Versailles shells were still falling, I walked up the Rue du
Débarcadère, and then turned into the Rue Saint-Ferdinand, and soon
found myself in the Place des Ternes, in front of the church. There was
a most dismal aspect about the whole of this quarter. Situated close to
the ramparts, it is very much exposed, and had suffered greatly. Nearly
all the shops were shut; some of the doors, however, of those where
wine or provisions, are sold, were standing open, while on the shutters
of others were inscribed in chalk, “The entrance is beneath the
gateway.” I was astonished to see that the church was open, a rare
sight in these days. Why, is it possible that the Commune has committed
the unqualifiable imprudence of not arresting the curé of
Saint-Ferdinand, and that she is weak enough—may she not have to regret
it!—to permit the inhabitants of Ternes to be baptised, married, and
buried according to the deplorable rites and ceremonies of Catholicism,
which has happily fallen into disuse in the other quarters of Paris? I
can now understand why the shells fall so persistently in this poor
arrondissement: the anger of the goddess of Reason (shall we not soon
have a goddess of Reason?) lies heavily on this quarter, the shame of
the capital, where the inhabitants still try to look as if they
believed in heaven! In spite of everything, however, I entered the
church; there were a great many women on their knees, and several men
too. The prayers of the dead were being said over the coffin of a woman
who, I was told, was killed yesterday by a ball in the chest, whilst
crossing the Avenue des Ternes, just a little above the railway bridge.
A ball, how strange! yet I was assured such was the case. It is pretty
evident, then, that the Versaillais were considerably nearer to Paris,
on this side at least, than the official despatches lead us to suppose.

On returning to the street I directed my steps in the direction of the
Place d’Eylau. Two National Guards passed me, bearing a litter between
them.—“Oh, you can look if you like,” said one. So I drew back the
checked curtain. On the mattress was stretched a woman, decently
dressed, with a child of two or three years lying on her breast. They
both looked very pale; one of the woman’s arms was hanging down; her
sleeve was stained with blood; the hand had been carried away.—“Where
were they wounded?” I asked.—“Wounded! they are dead. It is the wife
and child of the velocipede-maker in the Avenue de Wagram; if you will
go and break the news to him you will do us a good service.”

It was therefore quite true, certain, incontestable. The balls and
shells of the Versaillais were not content with killing the combatants
and knocking down the forts and ramparts. They were also killing women
and children, ordinary passers-by; not only those who were attracted by
an imprudent curiosity to go where they had no business, but
unfortunates who were necessarily obliged to venture into the
neighbouring streets, for the purpose of buying bread. Not only do the
shells of the National Assembly reach the buildings situated close to
the city walls, but they often fall considerably farther in, crushing
inoffensive houses, and breaking the sculpture on the public monuments.
No one can deny this. I have seen it with my own eyes. Anyhow, the
projectiles fall nearer and nearer the centre. Yesterday they fell in
the Avenue de la Grande Armée; to-day they fly over the Arc de
Triomphe, and fall in the Place d’Eylau and the Avenue d’Uhrich. Who
knows but what to-morrow they will have reached the Place de la
Concorde, and the next day perhaps I may be killed by one on the
Boulevard Montmartre? Paris bombarded! Take care, gentlemen of the
National Assembly! What the Prussians did, and what gave rise to such a
clamour of indignation on the part of the Government of the 4th
September, it will be both infamous and imprudent for you to attempt.
You kill Frenchmen who are in arms against their countrymen,—alas! that
is a horrible necessity in civil war,—but spare the lives and the
dwellings of those who are not arrayed against you, and who are perhaps
your allies. It is all very well to argue that guns are not endowed
with the gifts of intelligence and mercy, and that one cannot make them
do exactly what one likes; but what have you done with those marvellous
marksmen who, during the siege, continually threw down the enemy’s
batteries and interrupted his works with such extraordinary precision,
and who pretended that at a distance of seven thousand metres they
could hit the gilded spike of a Prussian helmet? Wherefore have they
become so clumsy since they changed places with their adversaries?
Joking apart, in a word, you are doing yourself the greatest injury in
being so uselessly cruel; every shell overleaping the fortifications is
not only a crime, but a great mistake. Remember, that in this horrible
duel which is going on, victory will not really remain with that party
which shall have triumphed over the other, by the force of arms (yours
undoubtedly), but to the one who, by his conduct, shall have succeeded
in proving to the neutral population, which observes and judges, that
right was on his side. I do not say but what your cause is the best;
for although we may have to reproach you with an imprudent resistance,
unnecessary attacks, and a wilful obstinacy not to see what was
legitimate and honourable in the wishes of the Parisians, still we must
consider that you represent, legally, the whole of France. I do not
say, therefore, but what your cause is the best; frankly though, can
you hope to bring over to your side that large body of citizens, whose
confidence you had shaken, by massacring innocent people in the
streets, and destroying their dwellings? If this bombardment continues,
if it increases in violence as it seems likely to do, you will become
odious, and then, were you a hundred times in the right, you will still
be in the wrong. Therefore, it is most urgent that you give orders to
the artillerymen of Courbevoie and Mont Valérien, to moderate their
zeal, if you do not desire that Paris—neutral Paris—should make
dangerous comparisons between the Assembly which flings us its shells,
and the Commune which launches its decrees, and come to the conclusion
that decrees are less dangerous missiles than cannon-balls. As to the
legality of the thing, we do not much care about that; we have seen so
many governments, more or less legal, that we are somewhat _blasés_ on
that point; and a few millions of votes have scarcely power enough to
put us in good humour with shot and shell. Certainly the Commune, such
as the men at the Hôtel de Ville have constituted it, is not a
brilliant prospect. It arrests priests, stops newspapers, wishes to
incorporate us, in spite of ourselves, in the National Guard; robs
us—so we are told; lies inveterately—that is incontestable, and
altogether makes itself a great bore; but what does that matter?—human
nature is full of weaknesses, and prefers to be bored than bombarded.

[Illustration: Marine Gunner and Street-boy.]

During the Prussian siege the sailors of the French navy played an
important part, their bravery, activity, and ingenuity being much
esteemed by the Parisians. Some, of them took the red side, and manned
the gun-boats on the Seine. Knowing the prestige attached to the brave
marines, the Communist generals made use of the naval clothes found in
the marine stores, and dressed therein some of the valliant heroes of
Belleville and Montmartre.

NOTES:

[46] The game of pitch-halfpenny, in, which, in France, a cork
(_bouchon_), with halfpence on the top of it, is placed on the ground.

[47] General Eudes was the Alcibiades, or rather the Saint Just, of
the Commune. He had the face and manners of a fashionable _tenorino_,
the luxurious taste of the Athenian, the cruel inflexibility of
Robespierre’s protégé. He was born at Bonay, in the arrondissement of
Coutances. His father was a tradesman of the Boulevard des Italians.
In his examination before the Council of War in August, 1870, Eudes
called himself a shorthand writer and law student, though his real
position was said to be that of a linendraper’s clerk. His first
notable exploit was the assassination of a fireman at La Villette. For
this crime he was brought before the First Council of War at Paris.
Here he informed the President, in somewhat unparliamentary terms,
that “the betrayers of the country were not the Republicans, and that
to destroy the Imperial Government was to annihilate the Prussians.”
In spite of the eloquent appeal of his counsel, he was condemned to
death. The events of the fourth of September prevented the execution
of this sentence, and he lived to take an active part in the agitation
of the thirty-first of October. He was again tried for this conduct
and acquitted, together with Vermorel, Ribaldi, Lefrançais and others.
Eudes’ name figures in the first decrees of the Commune, and on the
last of those of the Committee of Public Safety. On the second of
April he was appointed Delegate for War, and, conjointly with
Cluseret, organised ten corps of the Enfants Perdus of Belleville. He
promised to each of his volunteers an annuity of 300 francs and a
decoration. Eudes was an atheist of the most violent type, and sayings
are attributed to him which make one shudder.

XXXIX.

Where is Bergeret? What have they done with Bergeret? We miss Bergeret.
They have no right to suppress Bergeret, who, according to the official
document, was “himself” at Neuilly; Bergeret, who drove to battle in an
open carriage; who enlivened our ennui with a little fun. They were
perfectly at liberty to take away his command and give it to whomsoever
they chose; I am quite agreeable to that, but they had no right to take
him away and prevent him amusing us. Alas! we do not have the chance so
often![48]

Rumours are afloat that he has been taken to the Conciergerie. Poor
Bergeret! and why is he so treated? Because he got the Federals beaten
in trying to lead them to Versailles?

[Illustration: CORPS LEGISLATIF.—THE HEAD-QUARTERS OF GENERAL BERGERET]

Citizens, if you will allow me to express my humble opinion on the
subject, I shall take the opportunity of insinuating that the plan of
Citizen Bergeret—which has, I acknowledge, been completely
unsuccessful—was the only possible one capable of transforming into a
triumphant revolution, the émeute of Montmartre, now the Commune of
Paris.

Let us look at it from a logical point of view, if you please. Does it
seem possible to you, that Paris can hold its own against the whole of
the rest of France? No, most certainly not. Today, especially, after
the disasters that have occurred to the communal insurrectionists of
Marseilles, Lyons, and Toulouse—disasters which your lying official
reports have in vain tried to transform into successes; today, I say,
you cannot possibly nourish any delusive hopes of help from the
provinces. In a few days, you will have the whole country in array in
front of your ramparts and your ruined fortresses, and then you are
lost; yes, lost, in spite of all the blinded heroism of those whom you
have beguiled to the slaughter. The only hope you could reasonably have
conceived was that of profiting by the first moment of surprise and
disorder, which the victorious revolt had occasioned among the small
number of hesitating soldiery which then constituted the whole of the
French army; to surprise Versailles, inadequately defended, and seize,
if it were possible, on the Assembly and the Government. Your sudden
revolution wanted to be followed up by a brusque attack, there would
then have been some hope—a faint one, I confess, but still a hope, and
this plan of Bergeret, by the very reason of its audacity, should not
have been condemned by you, who have only succeeded through violence
and audacity, and can only go on prospering by the same means. Now what
do you mean to do? To resist the whole of France? To resist your
enemies inside the walls, besides those enemies outside, who increase
in numbers and confidence every day? Your defeat is certain, and from
this day forth is only a question of time. You were decidedly wrong to
put Bergeret “in the shade” as they say at the Hôtel de Ville,—firstly,
because he amused us; and secondly, because he tried the only thing
that could possibly have succeeded—an enterprise worthy of a brilliant
madman.

NOTES:

[48] General Bergeret, Member of the Central Committee, Delegate of
War, &c., was a bookseller’s assistant. He emerged in 1869 from a
printing-office to support the irreconcileable candidates in the
election meetings.
Events progressed, and on the 18th of March Victor Bergeret
reappeared, resplendent in gold lace and embroidery, happy to have
found at last a government, to which Jules Favre did not belong.
When Bergeret, who never had any higher grade than that of sergeant
in the National Guard, was made general, he believed himself to be
a soldier. A friend of this pasteboard officer said one day, “If
Bergeret were to live a hundred years, he would always swear he had
been a general.”
On the 8th April, Victor Bergeret was arrested by order of the
Executive Commission for having refused obedience to Cluseret, a
general too, and his superior, and he was incarcerated in the
prison of Mazas, where he remained for a short time, until the day
when Cluseret was shut up there himself. In fact, Cluseret went
into the very cell which Bergeret had just quitted, and found an
autograph note written on the wall by his predecessor, and
addressed to himself. The words ran thus:—

“CITIZEN CLUSERET,—
“You have had me shut up here, and you will be here yourself before
eight days are over.

“GÉNÉRAL BERGERET.”

On leaving the prison of Mazas, Bergeret was still kept a prisoner for
a time in a magnificent apartment of the Hôtel de Ville, decorated with
gilded panneling and cerise-coloured satin. His wife was allowed to
join him here, and he also obtained permission to keep with him a
little terrier, of which he was extremely fond. Shortly afterwards he
was reinstated, took his place again in the Communal Assembly, and was
attached to the commission of war. The beautiful palace of the
president of the Corps Législatif was now his residence, and there he
delighted in receiving the friends who had known him when he was poor.
His invariable home-dress in palace as in prison, was red from head to
foot: red jacket, red trousers, and red Phrygian cap.
One day, a short time after his release from prison, he said to an
intimate friend:—“Affairs are going well, but the Commune is in
need of money, I know it, and they are wrong not to confide in me.
I would lend them ten thousand francs willingly.” The generalship
had singularly enriched Jules Bergeret (himself).

[Illustration: General Dombrowski.]

XL.

Who takes Bergeret’s place? Dombrowski.[49] Who had the idea of doing
this? Cluseret. First of all we had the Central Committee, then we had
the Commune, and now we have Cluseret. It looks as if Cluseret had
swallowed the Commune, which had previously swallowed and only half
digested the Central Committee. We are told that Cluseret is a great
man, that Cluseret is strong, that Cluseret will save Paris. Cluseret
issues decrees, and sees that they are executed. The Commune says, “_we
wish_;” but Cluseret says, “_I wish_.” It is he who has conceived and
promulgated the following edict:

“In consideration of the patriotic demands of a large number of
National Guards, who, although they are married men, wish to have the
honour of defending their municipal rights, even at the expense of
their lives ...”

I should like to know some of those National Guards who attach so
little importance to their lives! Show me two, and I will myself
consent to be the third. But I am interrupting Dictator Cluseret.

“The decree of the fifth of April is therefore modified:”

The decree of the fifth of April was made by the Commune, but Cluseret
does not care a straw for that.

“From seventeen to nineteen, service in the marching-companies is
voluntary, but from nineteen to forty it is obligatory for the
National Guards, married or unmarried.
“I recommend all good patriots to be their own police, and to see
that this edict is carried out in their respective quartern, and to
force the refractory to serve.”

As to the last paragraph of Cluseret’s decree it is impossible to joke
about it, it is by far too odious. This exhortation in favour of a
press-gang,—this wish that each man should become a spy upon his
neighbour (he says it in so many words), fills me with anger and
disgust. What! I may be passing in the streets, going about my own
business, and the first Federal who pleases, anybody with dirty hands,
a wretch you may be sure, for none but a wretch would follow the
recommendations of Cluseret,—an escaped convict, may take me by the
collar and say, “Come along and be killed for the sake of my municipal
independence.” Or else I may be in bed at night, quietly asleep, as it
is clearly my right to be, and four or five fellows, fired with
patriotic ardour, may break in my door, if I do not hasten to open it
on the first summons like a willing slave, and, whether I like it or
not, drag me in night-cap and slippers, in my shirt perhaps, if it so
pleases the brave _sans-culottes_, to the nearest outpost. Now I swear
to you, Cluseret, I would not bear this, if I had not, during the last
few hungry days of the siege, sold to a curiosity dealer—your colleague
now in the Commune—my revolver, which I had hoped naïvely might defend
me against the Prussians! Think, a revolver with six balls, if you
please, and which, alas! I forgot to discharge!

We can only hope that even at this moment, when the revolution has
brought out of the darkness into the light, so many rascals and
cowards, just as the sediment rises to the top when the wine is shaken,
we must hope, that there will be found in Paris, nobody to undertake
the mean office of spy and detective; and that the decree of M.
Cluseret will remain a dead-letter, like so many other decrees of the
Commune. I will not believe all I am told; I will not believe that last
night several men, without any precise orders, without any legal
character whatever, merely National Guards, introduced themselves into
peaceful families; waking the wife and children, and carrying off the
husband as one carries off a housebreaker or an escaped convict. I am
told that this is a fact, that it has happened more than fifty times at
Montmartre, Batignolles, and Belleville; yet I will not believe it.[50]
I prefer to believe that these tales are “inventions of Versailles”
than to admit the possibility of such infamy.

Come now, Cluseret, War Delegate, whatever he likes to call himself.
Where does he come from, what has he done, and what services has he
rendered, to give him a right thus to impose his sovereign wishes upon
us?

He is not a Frenchman; nor is he an American; for the honour of France
I prefer his being an American. His history is as short as it is
inglorious. He once served in the French army, and left, one does not
know why; then went to fight in America during the war. His enemies
affirm that he fought for the Slave States, his friends the contrary.
It does not seem very clear which side he was on—both, perhaps. Oh,
America! you had taken him from us, why did you not keep him? Cluseret
came back to us with the glory of having forsworn his country.
Immediately the revolutionists received him with open arms. Only think,
an American! Do you like America? People want to make an America
everywhere. Modern Republics have had formidable enemies to contend
with—America and the revolution of ’98. We are sad parodists. We cannot
be free in our own fashion, but are always obliged to imitate what has
been or what is. But that which is adapted to one climate or country,
is it always that which is the fittest thing for another? I will
return, however, to this subject another time. America, who is so
vaunted, and whom I should admire as much as could reasonably be
wished, if men did not try to remodel France after her image, one must
be blind not to see what she has of weakness and of narrowness, amid
much that is truly grand. It was said to me once by some one, “The
American mind may be compared to a compound liqueur, composed of the
yeast of Anglo-Saxon beer, the foam of Spanish wines, and the dregs of
the _petit-bleu_ of Suresnes, heated to boiling point by the applause
and admiration given by the genuine pale ale, the true sherry, and
authentic Château-Margaux to these their deposits. From time to time
the caldron seethes with a little too much violence, and the bubbling
drink pours over upon the old world, bringing back to the pure source,
to the true vintage, their deteriorated products. Oh! The poor wines of
France! How many adulterations have they been submitted to!” Calumny
and exaggeration no doubt; but I am angry with America for sending
Cluseret back, as I am angry with the Commune for having imposed him on
Paris. The Commune, however, has an admirable excuse: it has not,
perhaps, found among true Frenchmen one with an ambition criminal
enough to direct, according to her wishes, the destruction of Paris by
Paris, and France by France.

NOTES:

[49] There are two versions of Dombrowski’s earlier history. By his
admirers he was said to have headed the last Polish insurrection: the
party of order stigmatise him as a Russian adventurer, who had fought
in Poland, but against the Poles, and in the Caucasus, in Italy, and
in France—wherever; in fine, blows were to be given and money earned.
He entered France, like many other adventurous knights, in Garibaldi’s
suite, came to Paris after the siege, and immediately after the
outbreak of the eighteenth of March was created general by the
Commune, and gathered round him in guise of staff the most
illustrious, or least ignoble, of those foreign parasites and
vagabonds, who have made of Paris a grand occidental Bohemian Babel.
These soldiers of fortune, most of whom had been “unfortunate” at
home, formed the marrow of the Commune’s military strength.
Dombrowski had gained a name for intrepidity even among these men
of reckless courage and adventurous lives. He maintained strict
discipline, albeit to a not very moral purpose. Whoever dared
connect his name with the word defeat was shot. Like many other
Communist generals he took the most stringent measures for
concealing the truth from his soldiers, and thus staved off total
demoralisation until the Versailles troops were in the heart of
Paris. His relations with the Federal authorities were not of an
uniformly amiable character.

[50] A poor Italian smith told me he had three men seized. They had
taken a stove near the fortifications of Ternes, when they were
arrested. “But we are Italians!” they cried. It was no excuse, for the
Federals replied, “Italians! so much the better; you shall serve as
Garibaldians!”

XLI.

It was not enough that men should be riddled with balls and torn to
pieces by shells. The women are also seized with a strange enthusiasm
in their turn, and they too fall on the battle-field, victims of a
terrible heroism. What extraordinary beings are these who exchange the
needle for the needle-gun, the broom for the bayonet, who quit their
children that they may die by the sides of their husbands or lovers?
Amazons of the rabble, magnificent and abject, something between
Penthesilea and Théroigne de Méricourt. There they are seen to pass as
cantinières, among those who go forth to fight. The men are furious,
the women are ferocious,—nothing can appal, nothing discourage them. At
Neuilly, a vivandière is wounded in the head; she turns back a moment
to staunch the blood, then returns to her post of danger. Another, in
the 61st Battalion, boasts of having killed three _gardiens de la
paix_[51] and several _gendarmes_. On the plain of Châtillon a woman
joins a group of National Guards, takes her stand amongst them, loads
her gun, fires, re-loads and fires again, without the slightest
interruption. She is the last to retire, and even then turns back again
and again to fire. A _cantinière_ of the 68th Battalion was killed by a
fragment of shell which broke the little spirit-barrel she carried, and
sent the splinters into her stomach. After the engagement of the 3rd of
April, nine bodies were brought to the _mairie_ of Vaugirard. The poor
women of the quarter crowd there, chattering and groaning, to look for
husbands, brothers and son’s. They tear a dingy lantern from each
other, and put it close to the pale faces of the dead, amongst whom
they find the body of a young woman literally riddled with shot. What
means the wild rage that seizes upon these furies? Are they conscious
of the crimes they commit; do they understand the cause for which they
die? Yesterday, in a shop of the Rue de Montreuil, a woman entered with
her gun on her shoulder and her bayonet covered with blood. “Wouldn’t
you do better to stay at home and wash your brats?” said an indignant
neighbour. Whereupon arose a furious altercation, the virago working
herself into such a fury that she sprang upon her adversary, and bit
her violently in the throat, then withdrew a few steps, seized her gun,
and was going to fire, when she suddenly turned pale, her weapon fell
from her hands, and she sank back dead. In her wild passion she had
broken a blood vessel. Such are the women of the people in this
terrible year of 1871. It has its _cantinières_ as ’93 had its
_tricoteuses_,[52] but the cantinières are preferable, for the horrible
in them partakes of a savage grandeur. Fighting as they are against
brothers and kinsfolk, they are revolting, but against a foreign enemy,
they would have been sublime.

Children, even, do not remain passive in this fearful conflict. The
children! you cry,—but do not smile; one of my friends has just seen a
poor boy whose eye has been knocked in with the point of a nail. It
happened thus. It was on Friday evening in the principal street of
Neuilly. Two hundred boys—the eldest scarcely twelve years old—had
assembled there; they carried sticks on their shoulders, with knives
and nails stuck at the end of them. They had their army roll, and their
numbers were called over in form, and their chiefs—for they had
chiefs—gave the order to form into half sections, then to march in the
direction of Charenton; a mite of a child trudged before, blowing in a
penny trumpet bought at a toy-shop, and they had a cantinière, a little
girl of six. Soon, they met another troop of children of about the same
numbers. Had the encounter been previously arranged? Had it been
decided that they should give battle? I cannot tell you this, but at
all events the battle took place, one party being for the Versailles
troops, the other for the Federals. Such a battle, that the inhabitants
of the quarter had the greatest difficulty in separating the
combatants, and there were killed and wounded, as the official
despatches of the Commune would give it; Alexis Mercier, a lad of
twelve, whom his comrades had raised to the dignity of captain, was
killed by the blow of a knife in the stomach.

Ah! believe it, these women drunk with hate, these children playing at
murder, are symptoms of the terrible malady of the times. A few days
hence, and this fury for slaughter will have seized all Paris.

NOTES:

[51] The Gardiens de la Paix replaced the Sergents de Ville. They
carried no sword, and wore a cap with a tricoloured band and cockade;
in fact were the policemen of Paris. The Gendarmerie are the country
police.

[52] Tricoteuses (knitters), women who attended political
clubs—working whilst they listened—1871 refined upon the idea of 1793.
The first revolution had its Tricoteuses, that of 1871 its
Petroleuses!!!

XLII.

May conciliation be hoped for yet? Alas! I can scarcely think so. The
bloody fight will have a bloody end. It is not alone between the
Commune of Paris and the Assembly of Versailles that there lies an
abyss which only corpses can fill. Paris itself, at this moment—I mean
the Paris sincerely desirous of peace—is no longer understood by
France; a few days of separation have caused strange divisions in men’s
minds; the capital seems to speak the country’s language no longer.
Timbuctoo is not as far from Pekin, as Versailles is distant from
Paris. How can one hope under such circumstances, that the
misunderstanding, the sole cause of our misfortunes, can be cleared
away? How can one believe that the Government of Monsieur Thiers will
lend an ear to the propositions carried there by the members of the
Republican Union of the rights of Paris,[53] by the delegates of
Parisian trade and by the emissaries of the Freemasons;[54] when the
principal object of all these propositions is the definitive
establishment of the Republic, and the fall and entire recognition of
our municipal liberties. The National Assembly is at the same point as
it was on the eve of the 18th of March; it disregards now, as it did
then, the legitimate wishes of the population, and, moreover, it will
not perceive the fact that the triumphant insurrection—in spite of the
excesses that everyone condemns—has naturally added to the validity of
our just revendications. The “Communists” are wrong, but the Commune,
the true Commune, is right; this is what Paris believes, and,
unhappily, this is what Versailles will not understand; it wants to
remain, as to the form of its government, weakly stationary; it makes a
municipal law that will be judged insufficient; and, as it obstinately
persists in errors which were worn out a month ago and are rotten now,
they will soon consider the “conciliators” whose ideas have progressed
from day to day, as the veritable agents of the insurrection, and send
them, purely and simply, about their business.

Nevertheless, the desire of seeing this fratricidal war at an end, is
so great, so ardent, so general, that convinced as we are of the
uselessness of their efforts, we admire and encourage those who
undertake the almost hopeless task of pacification with persistent
courage. True Paris has now but one flag, which is neither the crimson
rag nor the tricolour standard, but the white flag of truce.

NOTES:

[53] The citizens, united under the denomination of the League of
Republican Union of the Rights of Paris, had adopted the following
programme, which seemed to them to express the wishes of the
population:—
“Recognition of the Republic.
“Recognition of the rights of Paris to govern itself, to regulate
its police, its finances, its public charities, its public
instruction, and the exercise of its religious liberty by a council
freely elected and all-powerful within the scope of its action.
“The protection of Paris exclusively confided to the National
Guard, formed of all citizens fit to serve.
“It is to the defence of this programme that the members of the
League wish to devote their efforts, and they appeal to all
citizens to aid them in the work, by making known their adhesion,
so that the members of the League, thereby strengthened and
supported, may exercise a powerful mediatory influence, tending to
bring about the return of peace, and to secure the maintenance of
the Republic.
“Paris, 6th April, 1871.”
Here follow the signatures of former representatives, _maires_,
doctors, lawyers, literary men, merchants, and others.

[54] MANIFESTO OF THE FREEMASONS.

“In the presence of the fearful events which make all France shudder
and mourn, in the sight of the precious blood that flows in streams,
the Freemasons, who represent the sentiments of humanity and have
spread them through the world, come once more to declare before you,
government and members of the Assembly, and before you, members of the
Commune, these great principles which are their law and which ought to
be the law of every one who has the heart of a man.
“The flag of the Freemasons bears inscribed upon it, the noble
device—Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, Union. The Freemasons uphold
peace among men, and, in the name of humanity, proclaim the
inviolability of human life. The Freemasons detest all wars, and
cannot sufficiently express grief and horror at civil warfare.
Their duty and their right are to come between you and to say:
“‘In the name of humanity, in the name of fraternity, in the name
of the distracted country, put a stop to this effusion of blood; we
ask of you, we implore of you, to listen to our appeal.’”

XLIII.

Do you know what the Abbaye de Cinq-Pierres is, or rather what it was?
Mind, not Saint-Pierre, but Cinq-Pierres (Five Stones). Gavroche,[55]
who loves puns and is very fond of slang, gave this nickname to a set
of huge stones which stood before the prison of La Roquette, and on
which the guillotine used to be erected on the mornings when a capital
punishment was to take place. The executioner was the Abbé de
Cinq-Pierres, for Gavroche is as logical as he is ingenious. Well! the
abbey exists no longer, swept clean away from the front of the Roquette
prison. This is splendid! and as for the guillotine itself, you know
what has been done with that. Oh! we had a narrow escape! Would you
believe that that infamous, that abominable Government of Versailles,
conceived the idea, at the time it sat in Paris, of having a new and
exquisitely improved guillotine, constructed by anonymous carpenters?
It is exactly as I have the honour of telling you. You can easily
verify the fact by reading the proclamation of the “_sous-comité en
exercice._” What is the “active under-committee?” I admit that I am in
total ignorance on the subject; but, what does it matter! In these
times when committees spring up like mushrooms, it would be absurd to
allow oneself to be astonished at a committee—and especially a
sub-committee—more or less. Here is the proclamation:—

“CITIZENS,—Being informed that a guillotine is at this moment in course
of construction,...” Dear me, yes, while you were fast asleep and
dreaming, with no other apprehension than that of being sent to prison
by the members of the Commune, a guillotine was being made. Happily,
the sub-committee was not asleep. No, not they! “... a guillotine
ordered and paid for ...”. Are you quite sure it was paid for, good
sub-committee? For that Government, you know, had such a habit of
cheating poor people out of their rights. “... by the late odious
government; a portable and rapid guillotine.” Ha! What do you say to
that? Does not that make your blood run cold? Rapid, you understand;
that is to say, that the guillotining of twelve or fifteen hundred
patriots in a morning would have been play to the Abbé of Cinq-Pierres.
And portable, too! A sort of pocket guillotine. When the members of the
Government had a circuit to make in the provinces, they would have
carried their guillotine with their seals of office, and if, at Lyons,
Marseilles, or any other great town, they had met a certain number of
scoundrels—Snip, snap! In the twinkling of an eye, no more scoundrels
left. Oh! how cunning! But let us go on reading. “The sub-committee of
the eleventh arrondissement ...” Oh! so there is a sub-committee for
each arrondisement, is there? “... has had these infamous instruments
of monarchical domination ...” One for you, Monsieur Thiers! “...
seized, and has voted their destruction for ever.” Very good
intentions, sub-committee, but you can’t write grammar. “In
consequence, they will be burnt in front of the _mairie_, for the
purification of the arrondissement and the preservation of the new
liberties.” And accordingly, a guillotine was burnt on the 7th of
April, at ten o’clock in the morning, before the statue of Voltaire.

The ceremony was not without a certain weirdness. In the midst of a
compact crowd of men, women, and children, who shook their fists at the
odious instrument, some National Guards of the 187th Battalion fed the
huge flames with broken pieces of the guillotine, which crackled,
blistered, and blazed, while the statue of the old philosopher, wrapped
in the smoke, must have sniffed the incense with delight. When nothing
remained but a heap of glowing ashes, the crowd shouted with joy; and
for my own part, I fully approved of what had just been done as well as
of the approbation of the spectators. But, between you and me, do you
not think that many of the persons there had often stationed themselves
around the guillotine with rather different intentions than that of
seeing it burnt? And then, if in reducing this instrument of death to
ashes, they wished to prove that the time is past when men put men to
death, it seems to me that they ought not to stop at this. While we are
at it, let us burn the muskets too,—what say you?

NOTES:

[55] Gavroche is a street boy of Paris, a _gamin_ immortalized by
Victor Hugo in “Les Misérables,” a master of Parisian _argot_ (slang).

XLIV.

I have just witnessed a horrible scene. Alas! what harrowing spectacles
meet our eyes on every side, and will still before all this comes to an
end. I accompanied a poor old woman to a cemetery in the east of Paris.
Her son, who had engaged himself in a battalion of Federal guards, had
not been home for five days. He was most likely dead, the neighbours
said, and one bade her “go and look at the Cimetière de l’Est, they
have brought in a load of bodies there.” Imagine a deep trench and
about thirty coffins placed side by side. Numbers of people came there
to claim their own among the dead. To avoid crowding, the National
Guards made the people walk in order, two or three abreast, and thus
they were marshalled among the tombs and crosses. The poor woman and I
followed the others. From time to time I heard a burst of sobs; some
one amongst the dead had been recognised. On we go slowly, step by
step, as if we were at the doors of a theatre. At last we arrive before
the first coffin. The poor mother I have come with is very weak and
very sad; it is I who lift up the thin lid of the coffin. A grey-haired
corpse is lying within it, from the shoulders downwards nothing but a
heap of torn flesh, and clothes, and congealed blood. We continue on.
The second coffin also contains the body of an old man; no wounds are
to be seen; he was probably killed by a ball. Still we advance. I
observe that the old men are in far greater number than the young. The
wounds are often fearful. Sometimes the face is entirely mutilated.
When I had closed the lid of the last coffin the poor mother uttered a
cry of relief; her son was not there! For myself, I was stupefied with
horror, and only recovered my senses on being pushed on by the men
behind me, who wanted to see in their turn. “Well! when will he have
done?” said one. “I suppose he thinks that it is all for him.”

[Illustration: Burning the Guillotine. April]

XLV.

What is absolutely stupefying in the midst of all this, is the smiling
aspect of the streets and the promenades. The constantly increasing
emigration is only felt by the diminution in the number of depraved
women and dissipated men; enough, however, remain to fill the cafés and
give life to the boulevards. It might almost be said that Paris is in
its normal state.

Every morning, from the Champs Elysées, Les Ternes, and Vaugirard,
families are seen removing into the town, out of the way of the
bombardment, as at the time when Jules Favre anathematised the
barbarity of the Prussians. Some pass in cabs, others on foot, walking
sadly, with their bedding and household furniture piled on a cart. If
you question these poor people, they will all tell you of the shells
from the Versailles batteries, destroying houses and killing women and
children. What matters it? Paris goes her usual round of business and
pleasure. The Commune suppresses journals and imprisons journalists.
Monsieur Richardet, of the _National_, was marched off to prison
yesterday, for the sole crime of having requested a passport of the
savage Monsieur Rigault; the Commune thrusts the priests into cells,
and turns out the young girls from the convents, imprisons Monsieur
O’yan, one of the directors of the Seminary of St. Sulpice; hurls a
warrant of arrest at Monsieur Tresca, who escapes; tries to capture
Monsieur Henri Vrignault, who however, succeeds in reaching a place of
safety; the Commune causes perquisitions to be made by armed men in the
banking houses, seizes upon title deeds and money; has strong-boxes
burst open by willing locksmiths; when the locksmiths are tired, the
soldiers of the Commune help them with the butt-ends of their muskets.
They do worse still, these Communists—they do all that the
consciousness of supreme power can suggest to despots without
experience; each day they send honest fathers of families to their
death, who think they are suffering for the good cause, when they are
only dying for the good pleasure of Monsieur Avrial and Monsieur
Billioray. Well! and what is Paris doing all this time? Paris reads the
papers, lounges, runs after the last news and ejaculates: “Ah! ah! they
have put Amouroux into prison! The Archbishop of Paris has been
transferred from the Conciergerie to Mazas! Several thousand francs
have been stolen from Monsieur Denouille! Diable! Diable!” And then
Paris begins the same round of newspaper reading, lounging, and
gossiping again. Nothing seems changed. Nothing seems interrupted. Even
the proclamation of the famous Cluseret, who threatens us all with
active service in the marching regiments, has not succeeded in
troubling the tranquillity and indifference of the greater number of
Parisians. They look on at what is taking place, as at a performance,
and only bestow just enough interest upon it to afford them amusement.
This evening the cannonading has increased; on listening attentively,
we can distinguish the sounds of platoon-firing; but Paris takes its
glass of beer tranquilly at the Café de Madrid and its Mazagran at the
Café Riche. Sometimes, towards midnight, when the sky is clear, Paris
goes to the Champs Elysées, to see things a little nearer, strolls
under the trees, and smoking a cigar exclaims: “Ah! there go the
shells.” Then leisurely compares the roar of the battle of to-day to
that of yesterday. In strolling about thus in the neighbourhood of the
shells, Paris exposes itself voluntarily to danger; Paris is
indifferent, and use is second nature. Then bed-time comes, Paris looks
over the evening papers, and asks, with a yawn, where the devil all
this will end? By a conciliation? Or the Prussians perhaps? And then
Paris falls asleep, and gets up the next morning, just as fresh and
lusty as if Napoleon the Third were still Emperor by the grace of God
and the will of the French nation.

XLVI.

An insertion in the _Journal Officiel_ of Versailles has justly
irritated the greater part of the French press. This is the paragraph.
“False news of the most infamous kind has been spread in Paris where no
independent journal is allowed to appear.” From these few lines it may
be concluded, that in the eyes of the Government of Versailles the
whole of the Paris newspapers, whose editors have not deserted their
posts, have entirely submitted to the Commune, and only think and say
what the Commune permits them to think and say. This is an egregious
calumny. No, thank heaven! The Parisian press has not renounced its
independence, and if no account is taken (as is perfectly justifiable)
of a heap of miserable little sheets which no sooner appear than they
die, and of some few others edited by members of the Commune, one would
be obliged to acknowledge, on the contrary, that since the 18th of
March the great majority of journals have exhibited proofs of a proud
and courageous independence. Each day, without allowing themselves to
be intimidated, either by menaces of forcible suppression or threats of
arrest, they have fearlessly told the members of the Commune their
opinion without concealment or circumlocution. The French press has
undoubtedly committed many offences during the last few years, and is
not altogether irresponsible for the troubles which have overwhelmed
the unhappy country; but reparation is being made for these offences in
this present hour of danger, and the fearless attitude which it has
maintained before these men of the Hôtel de Ville, atones nobly for the
past. It has constituted itself judge; condemns what is condemnable,
resists violence, endeavours to enlighten the masses. Sometimes too—and
this is perhaps its greatest crime in the eyes of the Versailles
Government—it permits itself to disapprove entirely of the acts of the
National Assembly; some journals going as far as to insinuate that the
Government is not altogether innocent of the present calamities. But
what does this prove? That the press is no more the servant of the
Assembly than it is the slave of the Commune; in a word, that it is
free.

And what false news is this of which the _Journal Officiel_ of
Versailles complains, and against which it seems to warn us? Does it
think it likely that we should be silly enough to give credence to the
shouts of victory that are recorded each morning, on the handbills of
the Commune? Does it suppose that we look upon the deputies as nothing
but a race of anthropophagi who dine every day off Communists and
Federals at the _tables d’hôte_ of the Hôtel des Réservoirs? Not at
all. We easily unravel the truth, from the entanglement of
exaggerations forged by the men of the Hôtel de Ville; and it is
precisely this just appreciation of things that we owe to those papers
which the _Journal Officiel_ condemns so inconsiderately.

But it is not of fake news alone, probably, that the Versailles
Assembly is afraid. It would not perhaps be sorry that we should ignore
the real state of things, and I wager that if it had the power it would
willingly suppress ill-informed journals—although they are not
Communist the least in the world—who allow themselves to state that for
six days the shells of Versailles have fallen upon Les Ternes, the
Champs Elysées and the Avenue Wagram, and have already cost as many
tears and as much bloodshed, as the Prussian shells of fearful memory.

XLVII.

Wednesday, 12th April.—Another day passed as yesterday was, as
to-morrow will be. The Versaillais attack the forts of Vanves and Issy
and are repulsed. There is fighting at Neuilly, at Bagneux, at
Asnières. In the town requisitions and arrests are being made. A
detachment of National Guards arrives before the Northern
railway-station. They inquire for the director, but director there is
none. Embarrassing situation this. The National Guards cannot come all
this way for nothing. Determined on arresting some one, they carry off
M. Félix Mathias, head of the works, and M. Coutin, chief inspector. An
hour later other National Guards imprison M. Lucien Dubois, general
inspector of markets, in the depôt of the ex-Prefecture of Police. Here
and there a few journalists are arrested without cause, to serve as
examples; some priests are despatched to Mazas, among others M.
Lartigues, _curé_ of _Saint Leu_. Yesterday the following was placarded
on the shut doors of the church at Montmartre:

“Since priests are bandits and churches retreats where they have
morally assassinated the masses, causing _France to cower beneath the
clutches of the infamous Bonapartes, Favres, and Trochus_, the
delegates of the stone masons at the ex-Prefecture of Police give
orders that the church of Saint-Pierre (not Cinq-Pierres this time)
shall be closed, and decrees the imprisonment of its priests and its
_Frères Ignorantins_. Signed by Le Mousau.”

To-day it is the turn of the church of Notre Dame de Lorette. A
considerable number of worshippers had assembled in the holy place. The
National Guards arrive, headed by men in plain clothes. Under the
Empire such men were called spies. The women found praying are turned
out, those who do not obey promptly enough, with blows. This done, the
guards retire. What they had come there for is not known. But what we
are certain of is, that they will begin again to-morrow in this same
church, or in another. The days resemble each other as the children of
an accursed family. What frightful catastrophe will break this shameful
monotony?

XLVIII.

Eh! What? It is impossible! Are your brains scattered? I speak
figuratively, awaiting the time when they will be scattered in earnest.
It must be some miserable jester who has worded, printed, and placarded
this unconscionable decree. But no, it is in the usual form, the usual
type. This is rather too much, Gentlemen of the Commune; it outsteps
the bounds of the ridiculous; you count a little too much this time on
the complicity of some of the population, and on the patience of
others. Here is the decree:

[Illustration: The Column in the Place Vendôme.]

Erected by the first Napoleon to commemorate his German campaign of
1805. An imitation of the Column of Trajan, at Rome, slightly taller.
It cost 1,500,000 francs!

“THE COMMUNE OF PARIS,

“Considering that the Imperial column of the Place Vendôme is a
monument of barbarian, a symbol of brute force, of false glory, an
encouragement of military spirit, a denial of international rights,
a permanent insult offered by the conquerors to the conquered, a
perpetual conspiracy against one of the great principles of the
French Republic, namely: Fraternity,
“Decrees:
“_Sole article_.—The Colonne Vendôme is to be demolished.”

Now I must tell you plainly, you are absurd, contemptible, and odious!
This sorry farce outstrips all one could have imagined, and all that
the Versailles papers said of you must have been true; for what you are
doing now is worse than anything they could ever have dared to imagine.
It was not enough to violate the churches, to suppress the
liberties,—the liberty of writing, the liberty of speaking, the liberty
of free circulation, the liberty of risking one’s life or not. It was
not enough that blood should be recklessly spilled, that women should
be made widows and children orphans, trade stopped and commerce ruined;
it was not enough that the dignity of defeat—the only glory
remaining—should be swallowed up in the shameful disaster of civil war;
in a word, it was not sufficient to have destroyed the present,
compromised the future; you wish now to obliterate the past! Funereal
mischief! Why, the Colonne Vendôme is France, and a trophy of its past
greatness,—alas, at present in the shade—is not the monument, but the
record of a victorious race who strode through the world conquering as
they went, planting the tricolour everywhere. In destroying the Colonne
Vendôme, do not imagine that you are simply overthrowing a bronze
column surmounted by the statue of an emperor; you disinter the remains
of your forefathers to shake their fleshless bones, and say to them,
“You were wrong in being brave and proud and great; you were wrong to
conquer towns, to win battles; you were wrong to astound the universe
by raising the vision of France glorified. It is scattering to the wind
the ashes of heroes! It is telling those aged soldiers, seen formerly
in the streets (where are they now? Why do we meet them no longer? Have
you killed them, or does their glory refuse to come in contact with
your infamy?) It is telling the maimed soldiers of the Invalides, “You
are but blockheads and brigands. So you have lost a leg, and you an
arm! So much the worse for you idle scamps. Look on these rascals
crippled for their country’s honour!” It is like snatching from them
the crosses they have won, and delivering them into the hands of the
shameless street urchins, who will cry, “A hero! a hero!” as they cry
“Thief! thief!” There is certainly purer and less costly grandeur than
that which results from war and conquests. You are free to dream for
your country a glory different to the ancient glory; but the heroic
past, do not overthrow it, do not suppress it, now especially, when you
have nothing with which to replace it, but the disgraces of the
present. Yet, no! Complete your work, continue in the same path. The
destruction of the Colonne Vendôme is but a beginning, be logical and
continue; I propose a few decrees:

“The Commune of Paris, considering that the Church of Notre Dame de
Paris is a monument of superstition, a symbol of divine tyranny, an
affirmation of fanaticism, a denial of human rights, a permanent
insult offered by believers to atheists, a perpetual conspiracy
against one of the great principles of the Commune, namely, the
convenience of its members,
“Decrees:
“The Church of Notre Dame shall be demolished.”

What say you to my proposition? Does it not agree with your dearest
desire? But you can do better and better: believe me you ought to have
the courage of your opinions.

“The Commune of Paris, considering that the Museum of the Louvre
contains a great number of pictures, of statues, and other objects
of art, which, by the subjects they represent, bring eternally to
the mind of the people the actions of gods, and kings, and priests;
that these actions indicated by flattering brush or chisel are
often delineated in such a way as to diminish the hatred that
priests, kings, and gods should inspire to all good citizens;
moreover, the admiration excited by the works of human genius is a
perpetual assault on one of the great principles of the Commune,
namely, its imbecility,
“Decrees:
“_Sole article_.—The Museum of the Louvre shall be burned to the
ground.”

Do not attempt to reply that in spite of the recollections of religion
and despotism attached to these monuments you would leave Notre Dame
and the Museum of the Louvre untouched for the sake of their artistic
importance. Beware of insinuating that you would have respected the
Colonne Vendôme had it possessed some merit as a work of art. You!
respect the masterpieces of human art! Wherefore? Since when, and by
what right? No, little as you may have been known before you were
masters, you were yet known enough for us to assert that one of
you—whom I will name: M. Lefrançais—wished in 1848 to set fire to the
_Salon Carré_; there is another of you—whom I will also name: M. Jules
Vallès—asserts that Homer was an old fool. It is true that M. Jules
Vallès is Minister of Public Instruction. If you have spared Notre Dame
and the Museum of the Louvre up to this moment, it is that you dared
not touch them, which is a proof, not of respect but of cowardice.

Ah! our eyes are open at last! We are no longer dazzled by the
chimerical hopes we nourished for a moment, of obtaining, through you
communal liberties. You did but adopt those opinions for the sake of
misleading us, as a thief assumes the livery of a house to enter his
master’s room and lay hands on his money. We see you now as you are. We
had hoped that you were revolutionists, too ardent, too venturous
perhaps, but on the whole impelled by a noble intention: you are
nothing but insurgents, insurgents whose aim is to sack and pillage,
favoured by disturbances and darkness. If a few well-intentioned men
were among you, they have fled in horror. Count your numbers, you are
but a handful. If there still remain any among you, who have not lost
all power of discriminating between justice and injustice, they look
towards the door, and would fly if they dared. Yet this handful of
furious fools governs Paris still. Some among us have been ordered to
their death, and they have gone! How long will this last? Did we not
surrender our arms? Can we not assemble, as we did a month ago near the
Bank, and deal justice ourselves without awaiting an army from
Versailles? Ah I we must acknowledge that the deputies of the Seine and
the Maires of Paris, misled like ourselves, erred in siding with the
insurrectionists. They wished to avert street fighting. Is the strife
we are witnessing not far more horrible than that we have escaped? One
day’s struggle, and it would have ended. Yes, we were wrong to lay down
our arms; but who could have believed—the excesses of the first few
days seemed more like the sad consequences of popular effervescence
than like premeditated crimes—who could have believed that the chiefs
of the insurrection lied with such impudence as is now only too
evident, and that before long the Commune would be the first to deprive
us of the liberties it was its duty to protect and develope? The
“Rurals” were right then,—they who had been so completely in the wrong
in refusing to lend an attentive ear to the just prayers of a people
eager for liberty, they were right when they warned us against the
ignorance and wickedness of these men. Ah! were the National Assembly
but to will it, there would yet be time to save Paris. If it really
wished to establish a definite Republic, and concede to the capital of
France the right, free and entire, of electing an independent
municipality, with what ardour should we not rally round the legitimate
Government! How soon would the Hôtel de Ville be delivered from the
contemptible men who have planted themselves there. If the National
Assembly could only comprehend us! If it would only consent to give
Paris its liberty, and France its tranquillity, by means of honourable
concessions!

XLIX.

The delegates of the League of the Republican Union of the Rights of
Paris returned from Versailles to-day, the 14th April, and published
the following reports:—

“CITIZENS,—The undersigned, chosen by you to present your programme
to the Government of Versailles, and to proffer the good offices of
the League to aid in the conclusion of an armistice, have the
honour of submitting you an account of their mission.
“The delegates, having made known to Monsieur Thiers the programme
of the League, he replied that as chief of the sole legal
government existing in France he had not to discuss the basis of a
treaty, but notwithstanding he was quite ready to treat with such
persons whom he considered as representing Republican principles,
and to acquaint them with the intentions of the chief of the
executive power.
“It is in accordance with these observations, which denote, in
fact, the true character of our mission, that Monsieur Thiers has
made the following declarations on different points of our
programme.
“Respecting the recognition of the Republic, Monsieur Thiers
answers for its existence as long as he remains in power. A
Republican state was put into his hands, and he stakes his honour
on its conservation.”

Ay! it is precisely that which will not satisfy Paris—Paris sighing for
peace and liberty. We have all the most implicit faith in Thiers’
honour. We are assured that the words, “French Republic” will head the
white Government placards as long as he remains in power. But when
Thiers is withdrawn from power—National Assemblies can be capricious
sometimes—what assures us that we shall not fall victims to a
monarchical or even an imperial restoration? Ghosts can appear in
French history as well as in Anne Radcliffe’s novels. To attempt to
consider the elected members who sit at Versailles as sincere
Republicans is an effort beyond the powers of our credulity. You see
that Thiers himself dares not speak his thoughts on what might happen
were he to withdraw from power. Thus we find ourselves, as before, in a
state of transition, and this state of transition is just what appals
us. We address ourselves to the Assembly, and ask of it, “We are
Republican; are you Republican?” And the Assembly pretends to be deaf,
and the deputies content themselves with humming under their breaths,
some the royal tune of “The White Cockade,” and others the imperial air
of “Partant pour la Syrie.” This does not quite satisfy us. It is true
that Thiers says he will maintain the form of government established in
Paris as long as he possibly can; but he only promises for himself, and
it results clearly from all this that we shall not keep the Republic
long, since its definite establishment depends in fact on the majority
in the Assembly, while the Assembly is royalist, with a slight sprinkle
of imperialism here and there. But let us continue the reading of the
reports.

“Respecting the municipal franchise of Paris, Monsieur Thiers declares
that Paris will enjoy its franchise on the same conditions as those of
the other towns, according to a common law, such as will be set forth
by the Assembly of the representatives of all France. Paris will have
the common right, nothing less and nothing more.”

This again is little satisfactory. What will this common right be? What
will the law set forth by the representatives of all France be worth?
Once more we have the most entire confidence in Thiers. But have we the
right to expect a law conformable to our wishes from an assembly of men
who hold opinions radically opposed to ours on the point which is in
fact the most important in the question—on the form of government?

“Concerning the protection of Paris, now exclusively confided to the
National Guards, Monsieur Thiers declares that he will proceed at once
to the organization of the National Guard, but that cannot be to the
absolute exclusion of the army.”

In my personal opinion, the President is perfectly right here; but from
the point of view which it was the mission of the delegates of the
Republican Union to take, is not this third declaration as evasive as
the preceding?

“Respecting the actual situation and the means of putting an end to the
effusion of blood, Monsieur Thiers declares that not recognising as
belligerents the persons engaged in the struggle against the National
Assembly, he neither can nor will treat the question of an armistice;
but he declares that if the National Guards of Paris make no hostile
attack, the troops of Versailles will make none either, until the
moment, yet undetermined, when the executive power shall resolve upon
action and commence the war.”

Oh, words! words! We are perfectly aware that Thiers has the right to
speak thus, and that all combatants are not belligerents. But what! Is
it as just as it is legal to argue the point so closely, when the lives
of so many men are at stake; and is a small grammatical concession so
serious a thing, that sooner than make it one should expose oneself to
all the horrible feelings of remorse that the most rightful conqueror
experiences at the sight of the battle-field?

“Monsieur Thiers adds: ‘Those who abandon the contest, that is to say,
who return to their homes and renounce their hostile attitude, will be
safe from all pursuit.’”

Is Thiers quite certain that he will not find himself abandoned by the
Assembly at the moment when he enters upon this path of mercy and
forgiveness?

“Monsieur Thiers alone excepts the assassins of General Lecomte and
General Clément Thomas, who if taken will be tried for the crime.”

And here he is undoubtedly right. We must have been blind indeed the
day that this double crime failed to open our eyes to the true
characters of the men who, if they did not commit it or cause it to be
committed, made at least no attempt to discover the criminals!

“Monsieur Thiers, recognising the impossibility for a great part of the
population, now deprived of work, to live without the allotted pay,
will continue to distribute that pay for several weeks longer. “Such,
citizens, is, etc., etc.”

This report is signed by A. Dessonnaz, A. Adam, and Donvallet. Alas! we
had foreseen what the result of the honourable attempt made by the
delegates of the Republican Union would be. And this result proves that
not only is the National Guard at war with the regular troops, but that
a persistent opposition is also made by the National Assembly of
Versailles to the most reasonable portion of the people of Paris. And
yet the Assembly represents France, and speaks and acts only as she is
commissioned to speak and act. The truth then is this,—Paris is
republican and France is not republican; there is division between the
capital and the country. The present convulsion, brought about by a
group of madmen, has its source in this divergence of feeling. And what
will happen? Will Paris, once more vanquished by universal suffrage,
bend her neck and accept the yoke of the provincials and rustics? The
right of these is incontestable; but will it, by reason of superiority
of numbers, take precedence of our right, as incontestable as theirs?
These are dark questions, which hold the minds of men in suspense, and
which, in spite of our desire to bring the National Assembly over to
our side, the greater part of whose members could not join us without
betraying their trust, cause us to bear the intolerable tyranny of the
men of the Hôtel de Ville, even while their sinister lucubrations
inspire us with disgust.

During this time the walls resound with fun. Paris of the street and
gutter—Paris, Gavroche and blackguard, rolls with laughter before the
caricatures which ingenious salesmen stick with pins on shutters and
house doors. Who designed these wild pictures, glaringly coloured and
common, seldom amusing and often outrageously coarse? They are signed
with unknown names—pseudonyms doubtless; their authors, amongst whom it
is sad to think that artists of talent must be counted, are like women,
high born and depraved, mixing with their faces masked in hideous
orgies.

These vile pictures with their infamous calumnies keep up and even
kindle contempt and hatred in ignorant minds. Laughter is often far
from innocent. But the passers-by think little of this, and are amused
enough when they see Jules Favre’s head represented by a radish, or the
_embonpoint_ of Monsieur Picard by a pumpkin. Where will all this
unwholesome stuff be scattered in a few days? Flown away and dispersed.
Eccentric amateurs will tear their hair at the impossibility of
obtaining for their collections these frivolous witnesses of troubled
times. I will make a few notes so as to diminish their despair as far
as I am able.

A green soil and a red sky—In a black coffin is a half-naked woman,
with a Phrygian cap on her head, endeavouring to push up the lid with
all her might. Jules Favre, lean, small, head enormous, under lip thick
and protruding, hair wildly flying like a willow in a storm, wearing a
dress coat, and holding a nail in one hand and a hammer in the other,
with his knee pressed upon the coffin-lid, is trying to nail it down,
in spite of the very natural protestations of the half-naked woman. In
the distance, and running towards them, is Monsieur Thiers, with a
great broad face and spectacles, also armed with a hammer. Below is
written: “If one were to listen to these accursed Republics, they would
never die.” Signed, Faustin. Same author—Same woman. But this time she
lies in a bed hung with red flags for curtains. Her shoulders a little
too bare, perhaps, for a Republic, but she must be made attractive to
her good friends the Federals. At the head of the bed a portrait of
Rochefort; Rochefort is the favoured one of this lady, it seems. Were I
he, I should persuade her to dress a little more decently. Three black
men, in brigands’ hats, their limbs dragging, and their faces
distorted, approach the bed, singing like the robbers in Fra Diavolo:
“Ad.... vance ... ad ... vance ... with ... pru ... dence ...!” The
first, Monsieur Thiers, carries a heavy club and a dark lantern; Jules
Favre, the second, brandishes a knife, and the third, carries nothing,
but wears a peacock’s feather in his hat, and.... I have never seen
Monsieur Picard, but they tell me that it is he.

The young Republic again, with shoulders bare and the style of face of
a _petite dame_ of the Rue Bossuet. She comes to beg Monsieur Thiers,
cobbler and cookshop-keeper, who “finds places for pretenders out of
employ, and changes their old boots for new at the most reasonable
prices,” to have her shoes mended. “Wait a bit! wait a bit!” says the
cobbler to himself, “I’ll manage ’em so as to put an end to her
walking.”

Here is a green monkey perched on the extreme height of a microscopic
tribune. At the end of his tail he wears a crown; on his head is a
Phrygian cap. It is Monsieur Thiers of course. “Gentlemen,” says he, “I
assure you that I am republican, and that I adore the vile multitude.”
But underneath is written: “We’ll pluck the Gallic cock!” The author of
this is also Monsieur Faustin. I have here a special reproach to add to
what I have already said of these objectionable stupidities. I do not
like the manner in which the author takes off Monsieur Thiers; he quite
forgets the old and well-known resemblance of the chief of the
executive power to Monsieur Prud’homme, or what is the same thing, to
Prud’homme’s inventor, Henri Monnier. One day Gil Perez the actor, met
Henri Monnier on the Boulevard Montmartre. “Well, old fellow!” cried
he, “are you back? When are you and I going to get at our practical
jokes again?” Henri Monnier looked profoundly astonished; it was
Monsieur Thiers!

The next one is signed Pilotel. Pilotel, the savage commissioner! He
who arrested Monsieur Chaudey, and who pocketed eight hundred and
fifteen francs found in Monsieur Chaudey’s drawers. Ah! Pilotel, if by
some unlucky adventure you were to succumb behind a barricade, you
would cry like Nero: “Qualis artifex pereo!” But let us leave the
author to criticise the work. A Gavroche, not the Gavroche of the
_Misérables_, but the boy of Belleville, chewing tobacco like a
Jack-tar, drunk as a Federal, in a purple blouse, green trousers, his
hands in his pockets, his cap on the nape of his neck; squat, violent,
and brutish. With an impudent jerk of the head he grumbles out: “I
don’t want any of your kings!” This coarse sketch is graphic and not
without merit.

Horror of horrors! “Council of Revision of the Amazons of Paris,” this
next is called. Oh! if the brave Amazons are like these formidable
monstrosities, it would be quite sufficient to place them in the first
rank, and I am sure that not a soldier of the line, not a guardian of
the peace, not a _gendarme_ would hesitate a moment at the sight, but
all would fly without exception, in hot haste and in agonised terror,
forgetting in their panic even to turn the butt ends of their muskets
in the air. One of these Amazons—but how has my sympathy for the
amateurs of collections led me into the description of these creatures
of ugliness and immodesty?—one of them.... but no, I prefer leaving to
your imagination those Himalayan masses of flesh, and pyramids of
bone—these Penthesileas of the Commune of Paris that are before me.

Ah! Here is choleric old “Father Duchesne” in a towering passion, with
short legs, bare arms, and rubicund face, topped with an immense red
cap. In one hand he holds a diminutive Monsieur Thiers and stifles him
as if he were a sparrow. Here, the drawing is not only vile, but stupid
too.

This time we have the nude, and it is not the Republic, but France that
is represented. If the Republic can afford to bare her shoulders,
France may dispense with drapery entirely. She has a dove which she
presses to her bosom. On one side is a portrait of Monsieur Rochefort.
Again! Why this unlovely-looking journalist is a regular Lovelace.
Finally, two cats (M. Jules Favre and M. Thiers) are to be seen outside
the garret window with their claws ready for pouncing. “Poor dove!” is
the tame inscription below the sketch.[56]

Next we find a Holy Family, by Murillo. Jules Favre, as Joseph, leads
the ass by the reins, and a wet-nurse, who holds the Comte de Paris in
her arms instead of the infant Jesus, is seated between the two
panniers, trying to look at once like Monsieur Thiers and the Holy
Virgin. The sketch is called “The Flight.... to Versailles.” Oh! fie!
fie! Messieurs the Caricaturists, can you not be funny without
trenching on sacred ground?

We might refer to dozens more. Some date from the day when Paris shook
off the Empire, and are so infamous that, by a natural reaction of
feeling, they inspire a sort of esteem for those they try to make you
despise; others, those which were seen by everyone during the siege,
are less vile, because, of the patriotic rage which originated them,
and excused them; but they are as odious as they can be nevertheless.
But the amateurs of collections who neglected to buy fly-sheets one by
one as they appeared, must be satisfied with the above.

NOTES:

[56] As a power for the encouragement of virtue and the suppression of
vice, caricature cannot be too highly estimated, though often abused.
It is doubtful which exercises the greater influence, poem or picture.
In England, perhaps, picture wields the greater power; in France,
song. Yet, “let me write the ballads and you may govern the people,”
is an English axiom which was well known before pictures became so
plentiful or so popular, or the refined cartoons of Mr. Punch were
ever dreamt of. In Paris, where art-education is highly developed,
fugitive designs seems to have, with but few exceptions, descended
into vile abuse and indecent metaphor, the wildest invective being
exhausted upon trivial matters—hence the failure.
The art advocates of the Commune, with but few exceptions, seem to
have been of the most humble sort, inspired with the melodramatic
taste of our Seven Dials or the New Out, venting itself in
ill-drawn heroic females, symbols of the Republic, clad in white,
wearing either mural crowns or Phrygian caps, and waving red flags.
They are the work of aspiring juvenile artists or uneducated men. I
allude to art favourable to the Commune, and not that coëval with
it, or the vast mass of pictorial unpleasantly born of gallic rage
during the Franco-Prussian war, including such designs as the
horrible allegory of Bayard, “Sedan, 1870,” a large work depicting
Napoleon III. drawn in a calèche and four, over legions of his
dying soldiers, in the presence of a victorious enemy and the
shades of his forefathers’, and the well-known subject, so popular
in photography, of “The Pillory,” Napoleon between King William and
Bismarck, also set in the midst of a mass of dead and dying
humanity. Paper pillories are always very popular in Paris, and
under the Commune the heads of Tropmann and Thiers were exhibited
in a wooden vice, inscribed Pantin and Neuilly underneath. And,
again, in another print, entitled “The Infamous,” we have Thiers,
Favre, and MacMahon, seen in a heavenly upper storey, fixed to
stakes, contemplating a dead mother and her child, slain in their
happy home, the wounds very sanguine and visible, the only
remaining relict being a child of very tender years in an
overturned cradle; beneath is the inscription “Their Works.”
Communal art seems also to have been very severe upon landlords,
who are depicted with long faces and threadbare garments, seeking
alms in the street, or flying with empty bags and lean stomachs
from a very yellow sun, bearing the words “The Commune, 1871.”
Whilst as a contrast, a fat labourer, with a patch on his blouse,
luxuriates in the same golden sunshine.
As a sample of the better kind of French art, we give two
fac-similes, by Bertal, from _The Grelot_, a courageous journal
started during the Commune; it existed unmolested, and still
continues. We here insert a fac-simile of a sketch called “Paris
and his Playthings.”
“What destruction the unhappy, spoiled, and ill-bred child whose
name is Paris has done, especially of late!
“France, his strapping nurse, put herself in a passion in vain, the
child would not listen to reason. He broke Trochu’s arms, ripped up
Gambetta, to see what there was inside. He blew out the lantern of
Rochefort; as to Bergeret himself, he trampled him under foot.
“He has dislocated all his puppets, strewed the ground with the
_débris_ of his fancies, and he is not yet content,—‘What do you
want, you wretched baby?’—‘I want the moon!’ The old woman called
the Assembly was right in refusing this demand,—‘The moon, you
little wretch, and what would you do with it if you had it?’—‘I
would pull it to bits, as I did the rest.’”
Further on will be found “Paris eating a General a day” (Chapter
LXXVIII). Early in June, 1871 there appeared in the same journal
“The International Centipede,” “John Bull and the Blanche Albion.”
The Queen of England, clad in white, holding in her hands a model
of the Palace of Westminster, and sundry docks, resists the
approach of an interminable centipede, on which she stamps, vainly
endeavouring to impede the progress of the coil of fire and blood
approaching to soil and fire her fair robe; beside her stands John
Bull, in a queer mixed costume, half sailor, with the smalls and
gaiters of a coalheaver. He bears the Habeas Corpus Act under his
arm, but stands aghast and paralysed, it never seeming to have
occurred to the artist that this “Monsieur John Boule, Esquire,”
was well adapted by his beetle-crushers to stamp out the vermin.
Perhaps, it is needless to add, that the snake-like form issues
from a hole in distant Prussia, meandering through many nations,
causing great consternation, and that M. Thiers is finishing off
the French section in admirable style.

[Illustration: Little Paris and his Playthings. Nurse. Mais! Sacré
mille noms d’un moutard! what will you want next?—PETIT PARIS: I’ll
have the moon!]

LI.

What has Monsieur Courbet to do among these people? He is a painter,
not a politician. A few beery speeches uttered at the Hautefeuille Café
cannot turn his past into a revolutionary one, and an order refused for
the simple reason that it is more piquant for a man to have his
button-hole without ornament than with a slip of red ribbon in it, when
it is well known that he disdains whatever every one else admires, is
but a poor title to fame. To your last, Napoleon Gaillard![57] To your
paint-brushes, Gustave Courbet! And if we say this, it is not only from
fear that the meagre lights of Monsieur Courbet are insufficient, and
may draw the Commune into new acts of folly,—(though we scarcely know,
alas! if there be any folly the Commune has left undone,)—but it is,
above all, because we fear the odium and ridicule that the false
politician may throw upon the painter. Yes! whatever may be our horror
for the nude women and unsightly productions with which Monsieur
Courbet[58] has honoured the exhibitions of paintings, we remember with
delight several, admirably true to nature, with sunshine and summer
breezes playing among the leaves, and streams murmuring refreshingly
over the pebbles, and rocks whereon climbing plants cling closely; and,
besides these landscapes, a good picture here and there, executed, if
not by the hand of an artist—for the word artist possesses a higher
meaning in our eyes—at least by the hand of a man of some power, and we
hate that this painter should be at the Hôtel de Ville at the moment
when the spring is awakening in forest and field, and when he would do
so much better to go into the woods of Meudon or Fontainebleau to study
the waving of the branches and the eccentric twists and turns of the
oak-tree’s huge trunk, than in making answers to Monsieur
Lefrançais—iconoclast in theory only as yet—and to Monsieur Jules
Vallès, who has read Homer in Madame Dacier’s translation, or has never
read it at all. That one should try a little of everything, even of
polities, when one is capable of nothing else, is, if not excusable, at
any rate comprehensible; but when a man can make excellent boots like
Napoleon Gaillard, or good paintings like Gustave Courbet, that he
should deliberately lay himself open to ridicule, and perhaps to
everlasting execration, is what we cannot admit. To this Monsieur
Courbet would reply: “It is the artists that I represent; it is the
rights and claims of modern art that I uphold. There must be a great
revolution in painting as in politics; we must federate too, I tell
you; we’ll decapitate those aristocrats, the Titians and Paul
Veroneses; we’ll establish, instead of a jury, a revolutionary
tribunal, which shall condemn to instant death any man who troubles
himself about the ideal—that king whom we have knocked off his throne;
and at this tribunal I will be at once complainant, lawyer, and judge.
Yes! my brother painters, rally around me, and we will die for the
Commune of Art. As to those who are not of my opinion, I don’t care the
snap of a finger about them.” By this last expression the friends of
Monsieur Gustave Courbet will perceive that we are not without some
experience of his style of conversation. Courbet, my master, you don’t
know what you are talking about, and all true artists will send you to
old Harry, you and your federation. Do you know what an artistic
association, such as you understand it, would result in? In serving the
puerile ambition of one man—its chief, for there will be a chief, will
there not, Monsieur Courbet?—and the puerile rancours of a parcel of
daubers, without name and without talent. Artist in our way we assert,
that no matter, what painter, even had he composed works superior in
their way to Courbet’s “_Combat de Cerfs_” and “_Femme au Perroquet_,”
who came and said, “Let us federate,” we would answer him plainly:
“Leave us in peace, messieurs of the federation, we are dreamers and
workers; when we exhibit or publish and are happy enough to meet with a
man who will buy or print a few thousand copies of our work without
reducing himself to beggary, we are happy. When that is done, we do not
trouble ourselves much about our work; the indulgence of a few friends,
and the indignation of a few fools, is all we ask or hope for. We
federate? Why? With whom? If our work is bad, will the association with
any society in the world make it good? Will the works of others gain
anything by their association with ours? Let us go home, _messieurs les
artistes_, let us shut our doors, let us say to our servants—if we have
any—that we are at home to no one, and, after having cut our best
pencil, or seized our best pen, let us labour in solitude, without
relaxation, with no other thought than that of doing the best we can,
with no higher judge than that of our own artistic conscience; and when
the work is completed, let us cordially shake hands with those of our
comrades who love us; let us help them, and let them bring help to us,
but freely, without obligation, without subscriptions, without
societies, and without statutes. We have nothing to do with these
free-masonries, absurd when brought into the domain of intelligence,
and in which two or three hundred people get together to do that, which
some new-comer, however unknown his budding fame, would accomplish at a
blow, in the face of all the associations in the world.” This is what I
should naïvely reply to Monsieur Courbet if he took it into his head to
offer me any advice or compact whatsoever to sign.

[Illustration: The Modern “Erostrate” Courbet. In progress of removal.
June 1871.]

The artists have done still better than we should; they have not
answered at all, for one cannot call the “General Assembly of all the
Artists in Design,” presided over by Monsieur Gustave Courbet, and held
on the 13th of April, 1871, in the great amphitheatre of the Ecole de
Médecine, a real meeting of French artists. We know several celebrated
painters, and we saw none of them there. The citizens Potier and
Boulaix had been named secretaries. We congratulate them; for this high
distinction may, perhaps, aid in founding their reputation, which was
in great want of a basis of some kind. But there were some sculptors
there, perhaps? We saw some long beards, beards that were quite unknown
to us, and their owners may have been sculptors, perhaps. For Paris is
a city of sculptors. But if artists were wanting, there were talkers
enough. Have you ever remarked that there are no orators so
indefatigable as those who have nothing to say? And the interruptions,
the clamour, the apostrophising, more highly coloured than courteous!
Such an overwhelming tumult was never heard:—

“No more jury!”
“Yes! yes! a jury! a jury!”
“Out with the reactionist!”
“Down with Cabanel!”
“And the women? Are the women to be on the jury?”
“Neither the women, nor the infirm.”

And all the time there is Monsieur Gustave Courbet, the chairman,
desperately ringing his bell for order, and launching some expressive
exclamation from time to time. And the result of all this? Absolutely
nothing at all! No! stop! There were a few statutes proposed—and every
one amused himself immensely. “Well! so much the better,” said one.
“Every one laughed, and no harm was done to anybody.”

We beg your pardon! There was a great deal of harm done—to Monsieur
Courbet.

NOTES:

[57] Gaillard Senior (a sort of Odger), cobbler of Belleville and
democratic stump orator. Appointed, April 8, to the Presidency of the
Commission of Barricades.

[58] As a painter Courbet has been very diversely judged. He was the
chief of the ultra-realistic school, and therefore a natural subject
for the contempt and abuse of the admirers of “legitimate art.” But
his later use of the political power entrusted to him has drawn down
upon him the wrath of an immense majority of the French public, which
his artistic misdemeanours had scarcely touched. On the sixteenth of
April he was elected a member of the Commune by the 6th arrondissement
of Paris, and forthwith appointed Director of the Beaux Arts. Until
this time his life had been purely professional, and consequently of
mediocre interest for the general public. He was born at Ornans,
department of the Doubs, in 1819, and received his primary
instructions from the Abbé Gousset, afterwards Archbishop of Rheims.
He first applied himself to the study of mathematics, painting the
while, and apparently aiming at a fusion of both pursuits. He
subsequently read for the bar for a short time, and, finally, adopting
art as his sole profession, threw himself heart and soul into a
Rénaissance movement as the apostle of a new style. The peculiarities
of his manner soon brought him into notoriety, and a school of
imitators grouped itself around him. His pride became a proverb. In
1870 he was offered the cross of the Legion of Honour, and refused it,
arrogantly declaring that he would have none of a distinction given to
tradesmen and ministers. The part he took in the destruction of the
Colonne Vendôme is familiar to all readers of the English press. Three
weeks after the fall of the Commune he was denounced by a Federal
officer, and discovered at the house of a friend hiding in a wardrobe,
and in September was condemned by the tribunal at Versailles to six
months’ imprisonment and a fine of 600 francs—a slight penalty that
astonished everyone.

LII.

It is forbidden to cross the Place Vendôme, and naturally, walking
there is prohibited too. I had been prowling about every afternoon for
the last few days, trying to pass the sentinels of the Rue de la Paix,
hoping that some lucky chance might enable me to evade the military
order; all I got for my pains was a sharply articulated “_Passes au
large!_” and I remained shut out.

To-day, as I was watching for a favourable opportunity, a _petite dame_
who held up her skirts to show her stockings, which were as red as the
flag of the Hôtel de Ville—out upon you for a female
Communist!—approached the sentinel and addressed him with her most
gracious, smile. And oh, these Federals! The man in office forgot his
duty, and at once began with the lady a conversation of such an
intimate description, that for discretion’s sake I felt myself obliged
to take a slight turn to the left, and a minute later I had slipped
into the forbidden Place.

A Place?—no, a camp it might more properly be called. Here and there,
are seen a crowd of little tents, which would be white if they were
washed, and littered about with straw. Under the tents lie National
Guards; they are not seen, but plainly heard, for they are snoring. You
remember the absurd old bit of chop-logic often repeated in the classes
of philosophy? One might apply it thus: he sleeps well who has a good
conscience; the Federals sleep well; ergo, the Federals have a good
conscience. Guards walk to and fro with their pipes in their mouths. If
I were to say that these honourable Communists show by their easy
manner, gentlemanly bearing, and superior conversation, that they
belong to the cream of Parisian society, you would perhaps be
impertinent enough not to believe one word of what I said. I think it,
therefore, preferable in every way to assert the direct contrary. There
is a group of them flinging away their pay at the usual game of
_bouchon_. “The Soldier’s Pay and the Game of Cork” is the title that
might be given by those who would write the history of the National
Guard from the beginning of the siege to the present time. And if to
the cork they added the bottle, they might pride themselves upon having
found a perfect one. This is how it comes to pass. The wife is hungry,
and the children are hungry, but the father is thirsty, and he receives
the pay. What does he do? He is thirsty, and he must drink; one must
think of oneself in this world. When he has satisfied his thirst, what
remains? A few sous, the empty bottle, and the cork. Very good. He
plays his last sou on the famous game, and in the evening, when he
returns home, he carries to his family—what?—the empty bottle!

On the Place two barricades have been made, one across the Rue de la
Paix, and the other before the Rue Castiglione. “Two formidable
barricades,” say the newspapers, which may be read thus: “A heap of
paving stones to the right, and a heap of paving stones to the left.” I
whisper to myself that two small field-pieces, one on the place of the
New Opera-house, and the other at the Rue de Rivoli, would not be long
before they got the better of these two barricades, in spite of the
guns that here and there display their long, bright cylinders.

The Federals have decidedly a taste for gallantry. About twenty women—I
say young women, but not pretty women—are selling coffee to the
National Guards, and add to their change a few ogling smiles meant to
be engaging.

As to the Column, it has not the least appearance of being frightened
by the decree of the Commune which threatens it with a speedy fall.
There it stands like a huge bronze I, and the emperor is the dot upon
it. The four eagles are still there, at the four corners of the
pedestal, with their wreaths of immortelles, and the two red flags
which wave from the top seem but little out of place. The column is
like the ancient honour of France, that neither decrees nor bayonets
can intimidate, and which in the midst of threats and tumult, holds
itself aloft in serene and noble dignity.

LIII.

Who would think it? They are voting. When I say “they are voting,” I
mean to say “they might vote;” for as for going to the poll, Paris
seems to trouble itself but little about it. The Commune, too, seems
somewhat embarrassed. You remember Victor Hugo’s song of the
Adventurers of the Sea:

“En partant du golfe d’Otrente
Nous étions trente,
Mais en arrivant à Cadix
Nous n’étions que dix.”[59]

The gentlemen of the Hôtel de Ville might sing this song with a few
slight variations. The Gulf of Otranto was not their starting point,
but the Buttes Montmartre; though to make up for it they were eighty in
number. On arriving at C——, no, I mean, the decree of the Colonne
Vendôme, they were a few more than ten, but not many. What charming
stanzas in imitation of Victor Hugo might Théodore de Banville and
Albert Glatigny write on the successive desertions of the members of
the Commune. The first to withdraw were the _maires_ of Paris,
frightened to death at having been sent by the votes of their
fellow-citizens into an assembly which was not at all, it appears,
their ideal of a municipal council. And upon this subject Monsieur
Desmarest, Monsieur Tirard, and their _adjoints_ will perhaps permit me
an unimportant question. What right had they to persuade their electors
and the Friends of Order, to vote for the Commune of Paris if they were
resolved to decline all responsibility when the votes had been given
them? Their presence at the Hôtel de Ville, would it not have
infused—as we hoped—a powerful spirit of moderation even in the midst
of excesses that could even then be foretold? When they have done all
they can to persuade people to vote, have they the right to consider
themselves ineligible? In a word, why did they propose to us to elect
the Commune of Paris if the Commune were a bad thing? and if it were a
good thing, why did they refuse to take their part in it? Whatever the
cause, no sooner were they elected than they sent in their
resignations. Then the hesitating and the timid disappeared one after
another, not having the courage to continue the absurdity to the end.
Add to all this the arrests made in its very bosom by the Assembly of
the Hôtel de Ville itself, and you will then have an idea of the extent
of the dilemma. A few days more and the Commune will come to an end for
want of Communists, and then we shall cry, “Haste to the poll, citizens
of Paris!” And the white official handbills will announce supplementary
elections for Sunday, 16th of April.

But here comes the difficulty; there may be elections, but not the
shadow of an elector. Of candidates there are enough, more than enough,
even to spare; Toting lists where the electors’ names are inscribed;
ballot-urns-no, ballot-boxes this time-to receive the lists; these are
all to be found, but voters to put the lists into the ballot-boxes, to
elect the candidates, we seek them in vain. The voting localities may
be compared to the desert of Sahara viewed at the moment when not a
caravan is to be seen on the whole extent of the horizon, so complete
is the solitude wherever the eager crowd of voters was expected to
hasten to the poll. Are we then so far from the day when the Commune of
Paris, in spite of the numerous absentees, was formed—thanks to the
strenuous efforts of the few electors left to us? Alas! At that time we
had still some illusions left to us, whilst now.... Have you ever been
at the second representation of a piece when the first was a failure?
The first day there was a cram, the second day only the claque
remained. People had found oat the worth of the piece, you see.
Nevertheless, though the place is peopled only with silence and
solitude, the claque continues to do its duty, for it receives its pay.
For the same reason one sees a few battalions marching to the poll, all
together, in step, just as they would march to the fighting at the
Porte Maillot; and as they return they cry, “Oh! citizens, how the
people are voting! Never was such enthusiasm seen!” But behind the
scenes,—I mean in the Hôtel de Ville,—authors and actors whisper to
each other: “There is no doubt about it, it is a failure!”

NOTES:

[59]
On leaving the gulf of Otranto
There were thirty of us there,
But on arriving at Cadiz
There were no more than ten.

LIV.

And what has become of the Bourse? What are the brokers and jobbers
saying and doing now? I ask myself this question for the first time, as
in ordinary circumstances, the Bourse is of all sublunary things that
which occupies me the least. I am one of those excessively stupid
people, who have never yet been able to understand how all those
black-coated individuals can occupy three mortal hours of every day, in
coming and going beneath the colonnade of the “temple of Plutus.” I
know perfectly well that stockbrokers and jobbers exist; but if I were
asked what these stockbrokers and jobbers do, I should be incapable of
answering a single word. We have all our special ignorances. I have
heard, it is true, of the _Corbeille_,[60] but I ingeniously imagined,
in my simple ignorance, that this famous basket was made in wicker
work, and crammed with sweet-scented leaves and flowers, which the
gentlemen of the Bourse, with the true gallantry of their nation, made
up into emblematical bouquets to offer to their lady friends. I was
shown, however, how much I was deceived by a friend who enlightened me,
more or less, as to what is really done in the Bourse in usual times,
and what they are doing there now.

I must begin by acknowledging that in using the worn metaphor of the
“temple of Plutus” just now, I knew little of what I was talking about.

The Bourse is not a temple; if it were it would necessarily be a church
or something like one, and consequently would have been closed long ago
by our most gracious sovereign, the Commune of Paris.

The Bourse, then, is open; but what is the good of that? you will say,
for all those who haunt it now, could get in just as well through
closed doors and opposing railings; spectres and other supernatural
beings never find any difficulty in insinuating themselves through
keyholes and slipping between bars. ‘Poor phantoms! Thanks to the
weakness of our Government, which has neglected to put seals on the
portals of the Bourse, they are under the obligation of going in and
coming out like the most ordinary individuals; and a Parisian, who has
not learned, by a long intimacy with Hoffmann and Edgar Poë, to
distinguish the living from the dead, might take these ghosts of the
money-market for simple _boursiers_. Thank heaven! I am not a man to
allow myself to be deceived by specious appearances on such a subject,
and I saw at once with whom I had to do.

On the grand staircase there were four or five of them, spectres lean
as vampires who have not sucked blood for three months; they were
walking in silence, with the creeping, furtive step peculiar to
apparitions who glide among the yew-trees in church-yards. From time to
time one of them pulled a ghost of a notebook from his ghost of a
waistcoat-pocket, and wrote appearances of notes with the shadow of a
pencil. Others gathered together in groups, and one could distinctly
hear the rattling of bones beneath their shadowy overcoats. They spoke
in that peculiar voice which is only understood by the _confrères_ of
the magi Eliphas Levy, and they recall to each other’s mind the
quotations of former days, Austrian funds triumphant, Government stock
at 70 (_quantum mutata ab illâ_), bonds of the city of Paris 1860-1869,
and the fugitive apotheosis of the Suez shares. They said with sighs:
“You remember the premiums? In former times there were reports made, in
former times there were settling days at the end of the month, and huge
pocket-book’s were so well filled, that they nearly burst; but now, we
wander amidst the ruins of our defunct splendour, as the shade of
Diomedes wandered amid the ruins of his house at Pompeii. We are of
those who were; the imaginary quotations of shares that have
disappeared, are like vain epitaphs on tombs, and we, despairing
ghosts, we should die a second time of grief, if we were not allowed to
appear to each other in this deserted palace, here to brood over our
past financial glories!” Thus spoke the phantoms of the money market,
and then added: “Oh! Commune, Commune, give us back our settling days?”
From time to time a phantom, which still retains its haughty air, and
in which we recognise a defunct of distinction, passes near them. In
the days of Napoleon the Third and the Prussians this was a
stockbroker; it passed along with a mass of documents under its arm,—as
the father of Hamlet, rising from the grave, still wore his helmet and
his sword. It enters the building, goes towards the _Corbeille_, shouts
out once or twice, is answered only by an echo in the solitude, and
then returns, saluted on his passage by his fellow-ghost. And to think
that a little bombardment, followed by a successful attack, seven or
eight houses set on fire by the Versailles shells, seven or eight
hundred Federals shot, a few women blown to pieces, and a few children
killed, would suffice to restore these desolate spectres to life and
joy. But, alas! hope for them is deferred; the last circular of
Monsieur Thiers announces that the great military operations will not
commence for several days. They must wait still longer yet. The people
who cross the Place de la Bourse draw aside with a sort of religious
terror from the necropolis where sleep the three per cents and the
shares of the _Crédit Foncier_; and if the churches were not closed,
more than one charitable soul would perhaps burn a candle to lay the
unquiet spirits of these despairing jobbers.

NOTES:

[60] A circular space in the great hall of the Bourse, enclosed with a
railing, and in which the stockbrokers stand to take bids. It is
nicknamed the basket (_corbeille_).

LV.

The game is played, the Commune is _au complet_. In the first
arrondissement 21260 electors, are inscribed, and there were 9 voters!
Monsieur Vésinier had 2 votes, and Monsieur Vésinier was elected.
Monsieur Lacord—more clever still—has no votes at all, and, triumphing
by the unanimity of his electors, Monsieur Lacord will preside over the
Commune of Paris in future. A very logical arrangement. It must be
evident to all serious minds that the legislators of the Hôtel de Ville
have promulgated _in petto_ a law which they did not think it necessary
to make known, but which exists nevertheless, and most be couched
somewhat in the following terms:—“Clause 1st. The elections will not be
considered valid, if the number of voters exceed a thousandth part of
the electors entered.—Clause 2nd. Every candidate who has less than
fifteen votes will be elected; if he has sixteen his election will be a
matter of discussion.” The poll is just like the game called, “He who
loses gains, and he who gains loses!” and the probable advantages of
such an arrangement are seen at once. Now let us do a bit of Communal
reasoning. By whom was France led within an inch of destruction? By
Napoleon the Third. How many votes did Napoleon the Third obtain? Seven
millions and more. By whom was Paris delivered into the hands of the
Prussians? By the dictators of the 4th September. How many votes did
the dictators of the 4th September get for themselves in the city of
Paris? More than three hundred thousand. _Ergo_, the candidates who
obtain the greatest number of votes are swindlers and fools. The
Commune of Paris cannot allow such abuses to exist; the Commune
maintains universal suffrage—the grand basis of republican
institutions—but turns it topsy-turvy. Michon has only had half a
vote,—then Michon is our master!

Ah! you do not only make us tremble and weep, you make us laugh too.
What is this miserable parody of universal suffrage? What is this farce
of the will of the people being represented by a half a dozen electors?
The unknown individual, who owes his triumph to the kindness of his
concierge and his water-carrier, becomes a member of the Commune. I
shall be governed by Vésinier, with Briosne and Viard as supporters. Do
you not see that the few men, with any sense left, who still support
you, have refused to present themselves as candidates, and that even
amongst those who were mad enough to declare themselves eligible, there
are some who dispute the validity of the elections? No; you see nothing
of all this, or rather it suits you to be blind. What are right and
justice to you? Let us reign, let us govern, let us decree, let us
triumph. All is contained in that. Rogeard pleases us, so we’ll have
Rogeard. If the people won’t have Rogeard, so much the worse for the
people. Beautiful! admirable! But why don’t you speak out your opinion
frankly? There were some honest brigands (_par pari refertur_) in the
Roman States who were perhaps no better than you are, but at least they
made no pretension of being otherwise than lawless, and followed their
calling of brigands without hypocrisy. When, by the course of various
adventures, the band got diminished in numbers, they stuck no handbills
on the walls to invite people to elect new brigands to fill up the
vacant places; they simply chose among the vagabonds and such like
individuals those, who seemed to them, the most capable of dealing a
blow with a stiletto or stripping a traveller of his valuables, and the
band, thus properly reinforced, went about its usual occupations. The
devil! _Messieurs_, one must say what is what, and call things by their
names. Let us call a cat a cat, and Pilotel a thief. The time of
illusions is past; you need not be so careful to keep your masks on; we
have seen your faces. We have had the carnival of the Commune, and now
Ash-Wednesday is come. You disguised yourselves cunningly, _Messieurs_;
you routed out from the old cupboards and corners of history the
cast-off revolutionary rags of the men of ’98; and, sticking some
ornaments of the present fashion upon them,—waistcoats à la Commune and
hats à la Federation,—you dressed yourselves up in them and then struck
attitudes. People perceived, it is true, that the clothes that were
made for giants, were too wide for you pigmies; they hung round your
figures like collapsed balloons; but you, cunning that you were, you
said, “We have been wasted by persecution.” And when, at the very
beginning, some stains of blood were seen upon your old disguises; “Pay
no attention,” said you, “it is only the red flag we have in our
pockets that is sticking out.” And it happened that some few believed
you. We ourselves, in the very face of all our suspicions, let
ourselves be caught by the waving of your big Scaramouche sleeves, that
were a great deal too long for your arms. Then you talked of such
beautiful things: liberty, emancipation of workmen, association of the
working-classes, that we listened and thought we would see you at your
task before we condemned you utterly. And now we have seen you at your
task, and knowing how you work, we won’t give you any more work to do.
Down with your mask, I tell you! Come, false Danton, be Rigault again,
and let Sérailler’s[61] face come out from behind that Saint Just mask
he has on. You, Napoléon Gaillard, though you are a shoemaker, you are
not even a Simon. Drop the Robespierre, Rogeard! Off with the trappings
borrowed from the dark, grand days! Be mean, small, and ridiculous,—be
yourselves; we shall all be a great deal more at our ease when you are
despicable and we are despising you again.

Paris said to you yesterday just what I am telling you now. This almost
general abstention of electors, compared with the eagerness of former
times, is but the avowal of the error to which your masquerade has
given rise. And what does it prove but the resolution to mix in your
carnival no more? We see clearly through it now, I tell you, that the
saturnalia is wearing to its end. In vain does the orchestra of cannon
and mitrailleuses, under the direction of the conductor, Cluseret, play
madly on and invite us to the fête. We will dance no more, and there is
an end of it!

But it will be fatal to Paris if, after saying this, she sit satisfied.
Contempt is not enough, there must be abhorrence too, and actual
measures taken against those we abhor. It is not sufficient to neglect
the poll, one abstains when one is in doubt, but now that we doubt no
longer it is time to act. While wrongful work is being done, those that
stand aside with folded arms become accomplices. Think that for more
than a fortnight the firing has not ceased; that Neuilly and Asnières
have been turned into cemeteries; that husbands are falling, wives
weeping, children suffering. Think that yesterday, the 18th of April,
the chapel of Longchamps became a dependance—an extra dead-house—of the
ambulances of the Press, so numerous were that day’s dead. Think of the
savage decrees passed upon the hostages and the refractory, those who
shunned the Federates; of the requisitions and robberies; of the
crowded prisons and the empty workshops, of the possible massacres and
the certain pillage. Think of our own compromised honour, and let us be
up and doing, so that those who have remained in Paris during these
mournful hours, shall not have stood by her only to see her fall and
die.

NOTES:

[61] Sérailler, a member of the International, intrusted with a
commission to London on behalf of the Central Committee to borrow cash
for the daily pay of thirty sous to the National Guard.

LVI.

Paris! for once I defy you to remain indifferent. You have had much to
bear, during these latter days; it has been said to you, that you
should kneel in your churches no more, and you have not knelt there;
that the newspapers that pleased you, should be read no more, and you
have not read them. You have continued to smile—with but the tips of
your lips, it is true—and to promenade on the boulevards. But now comes
stalking on that which will make you shudder indeed! Do you know what I
have just read in the _Indépendance Belge_? Ah! poor Paris, the days of
your glory are past, your ancient fame is destroyed, the old nursery
rhyme will mock you, “_Vous n’irez plus au Bois, vos lauriers sont
coupés._”[62] This is what has happened; you are supplanted on the
throne of fashion. The world, uneasy about the form of bonnet to be
worn this sorrowful year, and seeing you occupied with your internal
discords, anxiously turned to London for help, and London henceforth
dictates to all the modistes of the universe. City of desolation, I
pity you! No more will you impose your sovereign laws, concerning
_Suivez-moi-jeune-homme_[63] and dog-skin gloves. No more will your
boots and shirt-collars reach, by the force of their reputation, the
sparely-dressed inhabitants of the Sandwich Islands. And, deepest of
humiliations, it is your old rival, it is your tall and angular sister,
it is the black city of London, who takes your glittering sword and
transforms it into a policeman’s baton of wood! You are destined to see
within your walls—if any walls remain to you—your own wives and
daughters clog their dainty tread with encumbrances of English leather,
flatten their heads beneath mushroom-shaped hats, surround themselves
with crinoline and flounces, and wear magenta, that abominable mixture
of red and blue which always filled your soul with horror. Then, to
increase the resemblance of your Parisian women with the Londoners or
Cockneys (for it is time you learnt the fashionable language of
England), your dentists will sell them new sets of teeth, called
insular sets, which can be fitted over their natural front teeth, and
will protrude about a third of an inch beyond the upper lip. And they
will have corsets offered them whose aim is to prolong the waist to the
farthest possible limits and compress the fairest forms—a fact, for
report says they lace in London, whilst here we have nearly abandoned
the corset. Well, my Paris, do you tremble and shiver? Oh! when those
days of horror come to pass! when you see that not only have you
forfeited your pride, but your vanity too; when you are convinced that
the Commune has not only rendered you odious, but ridiculous as well;
ah! then, when you wear bonnets that you have not invented, how deeply
will you regret that you did not rebel on that day, when some of the
best of your citizens were put _au secret_ in the cells of Mazas
prison![64]

NOTES:

[62] The refrain of a nursery song,—

“Go no more to the wood, for all the laurels are cut.”

[63] The long floating ends of the neck ribbons.

[64] The Parisian play-writer’s English exhibits all the typical
peculiarities noted above. We have our ideal, if not typical,
Frenchman, little less truthful perhaps—taken from refugees and
excursionists, from the close-cropped, dingy denizen of Leicester
Square; our tourist suits, heavy pedestrian toots, “wide-awakes,” and
faded fashions, used up in travel—all these things are put down to
insular peculiarities.

LVII.

I have just heard or read, a touching story; and here it is as I
remember it. In the Faubourg Saint Antoine lives a community of women
with whom the aged of the poor find shelter; those who have become
infirm, or have dropped into helpless childishness, whether men or
women, are received there without question or payment. There they are
lodged, fed and clothed, and humbly prayed for.

Last evening, sleep was just beginning to reign in the little
community. The old people had been put to rest, each Little Sister had
done her duty and was asleep, when the report of a gun resounded at the
house-door. You can imagine the startings and the terror. The Little
Sisters of the poor are not accustomed to have such noises in their
ears, and there was a tumult and hubbub such as the house had never
known, while they hurriedly rose, and the old people stared at each
other from their white beds in the long dormitories. When the
house-door was got open, a party of men, with a menacing look about
them, strode in with their guns and swords, making a horrible racket.
One of them was the chief, and he had a great beard and a terrible
voice. All the Little Sisters gathered in a trembling crowd about the
superior.

“Shut the doors,” cried the captain, “and if one of these women attempt
to escape—one, two, three, fire!” Then the Good Mother—that is the
Little Sisters’ name for their superior—made a step forward and said,
“What do you wish, messieurs?”

“Citizens, _sacrebleu!_”

The Good Mother crossed herself and, repeated, “What do you wish, my
brothers?”

[Illustration: Federal Visit to the Little Sisters of The Poor.]

“That I will,” bravely answered the captain; “give me your hand. And
now, if any one wants to harm you, he will have me to deal with first.”

A few minutes later, the National Guards were gone, the Little Sisters
and the old nurslings were at rest again, and the house was just as
silent and peaceful as if it were no abominable resort of plotters and
conspirators.

But if I had been the Commune of Paris, would I not have shot that
captain!

LVIII.

The people of the Hôtel de Ville said to themselves, “All our fine
doings and talking come to nothing, the delegate Cluseret and the
commandant Dombrowski send us the most encouraging despatches in vain,
we shall never succeed in persuading the Parisian population, that our
struggle against the army of Versailles is a long string of decisive
victories; whatever we may do, they will finish by finding out that the
federate battalions gave way strangely in face of the iron-plated
mitrailleuses the day before yesterday at Asnières, and it would be
difficult to make them believe that this village, so celebrated for
fried fish and Paris Cockneys, is still in our possession, unless we
can manage to persuade them that although we have evacuated Asnières,
we still energetically maintain our position there. The fact is,
affairs are taking a tolerably bad turn for us. How are we to get over
the inconvenience of being vanquished? What are we to do to destroy the
bad impression produced by our doubtful triumphs?” And thereupon the
members of the Commune fell to musing. “Parbleu!” cried they, after a
few moments’ reflection—the elect of Paris are capable of more in a
single second than all the deputies of the National Assembly in three
years—“Let decrees, proclamations, and placards be prepared. By what
means, did we succeed in imposing on the donkeys of Paris? Why, by
decrees, by proclamations, by placards. Courage, then, let us
persevere. Ha! the traitors have taken the château of Bécon, and have
seized upon Asnières. What matters! quick, eighty pens and eighty
inkstands. To work, men of letters; painters and shoemakers, to work!
Franckel, who is Hungarian; Napoléon Gaillard, who is a cobbler;
Dombrowski, who is a Pole; and Billioray, who writes _omelette_ with an
h, will make perhaps rather a mess of it. But, thank heaven! We have
amongst us Félix Pyat, the great dramatist; Pierre Denis, who has made
such bad verses that he must write good prose; and lastly, Vermorel,
the author of ‘_Ces Dames_,’ a little book illustrated with photographs
for the use of schools, and ‘_Desperanza_,’ a novel which caused
Gustave Flaubert many a nightmare. To work, comrades, to work! We have
been asked for a long time what we understand by the words—La Commune.
Tell them, if you know. Write it, proclaim it, and we will placard it.
Even if you don’t know, tell them all the same; the great art of a good
cook consists in making jugged hare without hare of any kind.” And this
is why there appeared this morning on the walls an immense placard,
with the following words in enormous letters: “Declaration to the
French people.”

Twenty days ago a long proclamation, which pretended to express and
define the tendencies of the revolution of the eighteenth of March,
would perhaps have had some effect. To-day we have awaked from many
illusions, and the finest phrases in the world will not overcome our
obstinate indifference. Let us, however, read and note.

[Illustration: Vermorel,[65] Delegate of Public Safety.]

“In the painful and terrible conflict which once more imposes upon
Paris the horrors of the siege and the bombardment, which makes French
blood flow, which causes our brothers, our wives, our children, to
perish, crushed by shot and shell, it is urgent that public opinion
should not be divided, that the national conscience should not be
troubled.”

That’s right! I entirely agree with you; it is undoubtedly very urgent
that public opinion should not be divided. But let us see what means
you are going to take to obtain so desirable a result.

“Paris and the whole nation must know what is the nature, the reason,
the object of the revolution which is now being accomplished.”

Doubtless; but if that be indispensable to-day, would it have been less
useful on the very first day of the revolution; we do not see why you
have made us wait quite so long for it.

“The responsibility of the mourning, the suffering, and the misfortunes
of which we are the victims should fall upon those who, after having
betrayed France and delivered Paris to the foreigner, pursue with blind
obstinacy the destruction of the capital, in order to bury under the
ruins of the Republic and of Liberty the double evidence of their
treason and their crime.”

Heigho! what a phrase! These clear and precise expressions, that throw
so much light on the gloom of the situation, are these yours, Félix
Pyat? Did the Commune say “_Pyat Lux!_” Or were they yours, Pierre
Denis? Or yours, Vermorel? I particularly admire the double evidence
buried under the ruins of the Republic. Happy metaphor!

“The duty of the Commune is to affirm and determine the aspirations and
the views of the population of Paris; to fix precisely the character of
the movement of the 18th of March, misunderstood, misinterpreted, and
vilified by the men who sit at Versailles.”

Ah, yes, that is the duty of the Commune, but for heaven’s sake don’t
keep us waiting, you see we are dying with impatience.

“Once more, Paris labours and suffers for the whole of France, and by
her combats and her sacrifices prepares the way for intellectual,
moral, administrative and economic regeneration, glory and prosperity.”

That is so true that since the Commune existed in Paris, the workshops
are closed, the factories are idle, and France, for whom the capital
sacrifices herself, loses something like fifty millions a day. These
are facts, it seems to me; and I don’t see what the traitors of
Versailles can say in reply.

“What does Paris demand?”

Ah! yes, what does she ask? Truly we should not be sorry to know. Or
rather, what do you ask; for in the same way as Louis le Grand had the
right to say, “The State, I am the State,” you may say “Paris, we are
Paris.”

“Paris demands the recognition and the consolidation of the Republic,
the only form of government compatible with the rights of the people,
and the regular and free development of society.”

This once you are right. Paris demands the Republic, and must yearn for
it eagerly indeed, since neither your excesses nor your follies have
succeeded in changing its mind.

“It demands the absolute entirety of the Commune extended to all the
localities of France, ensuring to everyone the integrity of its rights,
and to every Frenchman the free exercise of his faculties and abilities
as man, citizen, and workman. The rights of the Commune should have no
other limit, but the equal rights of all other Communes adhering to the
contract, an association which would assure the unity of France.”

This is a little obscure. What I understand is something like this. You
would make France a federation of Communes, but what is the meaning of
words “adherence to the contract?” You admit then that certain Communes
might refuse their adhesion. In that case what would be the situation
of these rebels? Would you leave them free? Or would you force them to
obey the conventions of the majority? Do you think it would be
sufficient, in the case of such a town as Pezenas, for example,
refusing to adhere, that the association would be incomplete? That is
to say, that French unity would not exist? Are you very sure about
Pezenas? Who tells you that Pezenas may not have its own idea of
independence, and that, we may not hear presently that it has elected a
duke who raises an army and coins money. Duke of Pezenas! that sounds
well. Remember, also, that many other localities might follow the
example of Pezenas, and perhaps in order to insure the entirety of the
Commune, it might have been wise to have asked them if they wanted it.
Now, what do you understand by “localities?” Marseilles is a locality;
an isolated farm in the middle of a field is also a locality. So France
would be divided into an infinite number of Communes. Would they agree
amongst themselves, these innumerable little states? Supposing they are
agreed to the contract, it is not impossible that petty rivalries
should lead to quarrels, or even to blows; an action about a party-wall
might lead to a civil war. How would you reduce the recalcitrant
localities to reason? for even supposing that the Communes have the
right to subjugate a Commune, the disaffected one could always escape
you by declaring that it no longer adheres to the social compact. So
that if this secession were produced not only by the vanity of one or
more little hamlets, but by the pride of one or more great towns,
France would find herself all at once deprived of her most important
cities. Ah! messieurs, this part of your programme certainly leaves
something to be desired, and I recommend you to improve it, unless
indeed you prefer to suppress it altogether.

“The inherent rights of the Commune are ‘the vote of the Commmunal
budget, the levying and the division of taxes, the direction of the
local services, the organisation of the magistrature, of the police,
and of education, and of the administration of the property belonging
to the Commune.’”

This paragraph is cunning. It does not seem so at first sight, but look
at it closely, and you will see that the most Machiavellic spirit has
presided over its production. The ability consists in placing side by
side with the rights which incontestably belong to the Commune, other
rights which do not belong to it the least in the world, and in not
appearing to attach more importance to one than to the other, so that
the reader, carried away by the evident legitimacy of many of your
claims, may say to himself, “Really all that is very just.” Let us
unravel if you please this skein of red worsted so ingeniously tangled.
The vote of the Communal budget, receipts and expenses, the levying and
division of taxes, the administration of the Communal property, are
rights which certainly belong to the Commune; if it had not got them it
would not exist. And why do they belong to it? Because it alone could
know what is good for it in these matters, and could come to such
decision upon them, as it thought fit, without injuring the whole
country. But it is not the same as regards measures concerning the
magistracy, the police, and education. Well, suppose one fine day a
Commune should say, “Magistrates? I don’t want any magistrates; these
black-robed gentry are no use to me; let others nourish these idlers,
who send brave thieves and honest assassins to the galleys; I love
assassins and I honour thieves, and more, I choose that the culprits
should judge the magistrates of the Republic.” Now, if a Commune were
to say that, or something like that, what could you answer in reply?
Absolutely nothing; for, according to your system, each locality in
France has the right to organise its magistracy as it pleases. As
regards the police and education, it would be easy to make out similar
hypotheses, and thus to exhibit the absurdity of your Communal
pretensions. Should a Commune say, “No person shall be arrested in
future, and it is prohibited under pain of death to learn by heart the
fable of the wolf and the fox.” What could you say to that? Nothing,
unless you admitted that you were mistaken just now in supposing, that
the integrity of the Commune ought to have no other limit but the right
of equal independence of all the other Communes. There exists another
limit, and that is the general interests of the country, which cannot
permit one part of it to injure the rest, by bad example or in any
other way; the central power alone can judge those questions where a
single absurd measure—of which more than one “locality” may probably be
guilty—might compromise the honour or the interests of France; the
magistracy, the police, and education, are evidently questions of that
nature.

The other rights of the Commune are, always be it understood, according
to the declaration made to the French people:

“The choice by election or competition; with the responsibility and
the permanent right of control over magistrates and communal
functionaries of every class;
“The absolute guarantee of individual liberty, of liberty of
conscience, and of liberty of labour;
“The permanent participation of the citizens in Communal affairs by
the free manifestations of their opinions, and the free defence of
their interests: guarantees to this effect to be given by the
Commune, the only power charged with the surveillance and the
protection of the full and just exercise of the rights of meeting
and publicity;
“The organisation of the city defences and of the National Guard,
which elects its own officers, and alone ensures the maintenance of
order in the city.”

With regard to the affirmation of these rights we may repeat that which
we have said above, that some of them really belong to the Commune, but
that the greater part of them do not.

“Paris desires nothing more in the way of local guarantees, on
condition, let it be understood, of finding in the great central
administration ...”
“... In the great central administration appointed by the federated
Commune the realisation and the practice of the same principles.”

That is to say, in other words, that Paris will consent willingly to be
of the same opinion as others, if all the world is of the same opinion
as itself.

“But, thanks to its independence, and profiting by its liberty of
action, Paris reserves to itself the right of effecting, as it pleases,
the administrative and economic reforms demanded by the population; to
create proper institutions for the development and propagation of
instruction, production, commerce, and credit; to universalize power
and property,...”

Whew! Universalize property! Pray what does that mean, may I ask?
Communalism here presents a singular likeness to Communism!

“... According to the necessities of the moment, the desire of
those interested, and the lessons famished by experience:
“Our enemies deceive themselves or the country when they accuse
Paris of wishing to impose its will or its supremacy on the rest of
the nation, and to pretend to a dictatorship which would be a
positive offence against the independence and the sovereignty of
the other Communes:
“They deceive themselves, or they deceive the country, when they
accuse Paris of desiring the destruction of French unity,
constituted by the Revolution amid the acclamations of our fathers
hurrying to the Festival of the Federation from all points of
ancient France:
“Political unity as imposed upon us up to the present time by the
empire, the monarchy, and parliamentarism, is nothing more than
despotic centralization, whether intelligent, arbitrary, or
onerous.
“Political unity, such as Paris demands, is the voluntary
association of all local initiatives, the spontaneous and free
cooperation of individual energies with one single common
object—the well-being and the security of all.
“The Communal revolution, inaugurated by the popular action of the
18th of March, ushers in a new era of experimental, positive, and
scientific politics.”

Do you not think that during the last paragraphs the tone of the
declaration is somewhat modified? It would seem as though Felix Pyat
had become tired, and handed the pen to Pierre Denis or to
Delescluze,—after Communalism comes socialism.

“Communal revolution is the end of the old governmental and clerical
world, of militarism, of officialism (this new editor seems fond of
words ending in ism), of exploitation, of commission, of monopolies,
and of privileges to which the proletariat owes his thralldom, and the
country her misfortunes and disasters.”

Of course there is nothing in the world that would please me better;
but if I were very certain that Citizen Rigault did not possess an
improved glass enabling him to observe me from a distance of several
miles, without leaving his study or his armchair, if I were very
certain that Citizen Rigault could not read over my shoulder what I am
writing at this moment, I might perhaps venture to insinuate, that the
revolution of the 18th of March appears to me to be, at the present
moment, the apotheosis of most of the crimes which it pretends to have
suppressed.

“Let then our grand and beloved country, deceived by falsehood and
calumnies, be reassured!”

Well, in order that she may be reassured there is only one thing to be
done,—be off with you!

“The struggle going on between Paris and Versailles is one of those
which can never be terminated by deceitful compromises. There can
be no doubt as to the issue. (Oh, no! there is no doubt about it.)
Victory, pursued with indomitable energy by the National Guard,
will remain with principle and justice.
We ask it of France.”

Where is the necessity, since you have the indomitable energy of the
National Guard?”.

“Convinced that Paris under arms possesses as much calmness as bravery
...”

You will find that a very difficult thing to persuade France to
believe.

“... That it maintains order with equal energy and enthusiasm ...”

Order? No doubt, that which reigned at Warsaw; the order that reigned
on the day after the 2nd of December.

“... That it sacrifices itself with as much judgment as heroism ...”

Yes; the judgment of a man who throws himself out of a fourth-floor
window to prove that his head is harder than the paving-stones.

“... That it is only armed through devotion for the glory and liberty
of all—let France cause this bloody conflict to cease!”

She’ll cause it to cease, never fear, but not in the way you understand
it.

“It is for France to disarm Versailles ...”

Up to the present time she has certainly done precisely the contrary.

“... by the manifestations of her irresistible will. As she will be
partaker in our conquests, let her take part in our efforts, let her be
our ally in this conflict, which can only finish by the triumph of the
Communal idea, or the ruin of Paris.”

The ruin of Paris! That is only, I suppose, a figurative expression.

“For ourselves, citizens of Paris, it is our mission to accomplish
the modern revolution, the grandest and most fruitful of all those
that have illuminated history.
“Our duty is to struggle and to conquer!
“THE COMMUNE OF PARIS.”

Such is this long, emphatic, but often obscure declaration. It is not
wanting, however, in a certain eloquence; and, although frequently
disfigured by glaring exaggerations, it contains here and there some
just ideas, or at least, such as conform to the views of the great
majority. Will it destroy the bad effect produced by the successive
defeats of the Federals at Neuilly and at Asnières? Will it produce any
good feeling towards the Commune in the minds of those who are daily
drawing farther and farther from the men of the Commune? No; it is too
late. Had this proclamation been placarded fifteen or twenty days
sooner, some parts of it might have been approved and the rest
discussed. Today we pass it by with a smile. Ah! many things have
happened during the last three days. The acts of the Commune of Paris
no longer allow us to take its declarations seriously, and we look upon
its members as too mad—if not worse—to believe that by any accident
they can be reasonable. These men have finished by rendering detestable
whatever good there originally was in their idea.

NOTES:

[65] He was born in 1841, in the department of the Rhône. His
education was completed very early. At the age of twenty he was
engaged on two journals of the opposition, _La Jeune France_, and _La
Jeunesse_. Those papers were soon suppressed, and their young
contributor was imprisoned for three months. In 1864 he became one of
the staff of the _Presse_, whence he passed to the _Liberté_ in 1866.
Two years later he founded the _Courrier Français_; but from the
multiplicity of fines imposed upon it, and from the imprisonment of
its founder, the new journal expired very shortly. After a year’s
incarceration at Sainte-Pélagie, Vermorel was engaged on the
_Réforme_, which continued to appear until the fall of the Empire.
During the siege he served as a private in the National Guard. He
became a member of the Committee of Justice under the Commune, and was
one of those who, at its fall, neither deserted nor disgraced it. He
is reported to have mounted a barricade armed only with a cane, crying
“I come here to die and not to fight.” His mother obtained permission
to transport his remains to Venice.

LIX.

We have a court-martial; it is presided over by the citizen Rossel,
chief of the grand staff of the army. It has just condemned to death
the Commandant Girod, who refused to march against the “enemy.” The
Executive Committee, however, has pardoned Commandant Girod. Let us
look at this matter a little. If the Executive Committee occupies its
time in undoing what the court-martial has done, I can’t quite
understand why the executive has instituted a court-martial at all. If
I were a member of the latter I should get angry. “What! I should say,
they instal me in the hall where the courts-martial are held, they
appoint guards to attend upon me, and my president has the right to
say, ‘Guards, remove the prisoner.’ In a word, they convert me into
something which resembles a judge as much as a parody can resemble the
work burlesqued, and when I, a member of the court-martial, desire to
take advantage of the rights that have been conferred upon me, and
order the Commandant Girod to be shot, they stand in the way of
justice, and save the life of him I have condemned. This is absurd! I
had a liking for this commandant, and I wished him to die by my hands.”

Never mind, court-martial, take it coolly; you will have your revenge
before long. At this moment there are at least sixty-three
ecclesiastics in the prisons of Mazas, the Conciergerie, and La Santé.
Although they are not precisely soldiers, they will be sent before you
to be judged, and you may do just what you like with them, without any
fear of the executive commission interposing its veto. The refractory
also will give you work to do, and against them you can exercise your
pleasure. As to the Commandant Girod, his is a different case, you
understand. He is the friend of citizen Delescluze. The members of the
Commune have not so many friends that they can afford to have any of
them suppressed. But don’t be downcast; a dozen priests are well worth
a major of the National Guard.

LX.

It is precisely because the men that the Commune sends to the front,
fight and die so gloriously, that we feel exasperated against its
members. A curse upon them, for thus wasting the moral riches of Paris!
Confusion to them, for enlisting into so bad a service, the first-rate
forces which a successful revolt leaves at their disposal. I will tell
you what happened yesterday, the 22nd of April, on the Boulevard
Bineau; and then I think you will agree with me that France, who has
lost so much, still retains some of the bright, dauntless courage which
was her. pride of old.

A trumpeter, a mere lad of seventeen, was marching at the head of his
detachment, which had been ordered to take possession of a barricade
that the Versailles troops were supposed to have abandoned. When I say,
“he marched,” I am making a most incorrect statement, for he turned
somersets and executed flying leaps on the road, far in advance of his
comrades, until his progress was arrested by the barricade; this he
greeted with a mocking gesture, and then, with a bound or two, was on
the other side. There had been some mistake, the barricade had not been
abandoned. Our young trumpeter was immediately surrounded by a pretty
large number of troops of the line, who had lain hidden among the sacks
of earth and piles of stones, in the hope of surprising the company
which was advancing towards them. Several rifles were pointed at the
poor boy, and a sergeant said: “If you move a foot, if you utter a
sound, you die!” The lad’s reply was to leap to the highest part of the
barricade and cry out, with all the strength of his young voice, “Don’t
come on! They are here!” Then he fell backwards, pierced by four balls,
but his comrades were saved!

LXI.

Another, and a sadder scene happened in the Avenue des Ternes. A
funeral procession was passing along. The coffin, borne by two men, was
very small, the coffin of a young child. The father, a workman in a
blouse, walked behind with a little knot of other mourners. A sad
sight, but the catastrophe was horrible. Suddenly a shell from Mont
Valérien fell on the tiny coffin, and, bursting, scattered the remains
of the dead child upon the living father. The corpse was entirely
destroyed, with the trappings that had surrounded it. Massacring the
dead! Truly those cannons are a wonderful, a refined invention!

LXII.

At last the unhappy inhabitants of Neuilly are able to leave their
cellars. For three weeks, they have been hourly expecting the roofs of
their houses to fall in and crush them; and with much difficulty have
managed during the quieter moments of the day to procure enough to keep
them from dying of starvation. For three weeks they have endured all
the terrors, all the dangers of battle and bombardment. Many are
dead—they all thought themselves sure to die. Horrible details are
told. A little past Gilet’s restaurant, where the omnibus office used
to be, lived an old couple, man and wife. At the beginning of the civil
war, two shells burst, one after another, in their poor lodging,
destroying every article of furniture. Utterly destitute, they took
refuge in the cellar, where after a few hours of horrible suspense, the
old man died. He was seventy, and the fright killed him; his wife was
younger and stronger, and survived. In the rare intervals between the
firing she went out and spoke to her neighbours through the cellar
gratings—“My husband is dead. He must be buried; what am I to
do?”—Carrying him to the cemetery was of course out of the question; no
one could have been found to render this mournful duty. Besides, the
bearers would probably have met a shell or a bullet on the way, and
then others must have been found to carry them. One day, the old woman
ventured as far as the Porte Maillot, and cried out as loud as she
could, “My husband is dead in a cellar; come and fetch him, and let us
both through the gates!”—The sentinel facetiously (let us hope it was
nothing worse) took aim at her with his rifle, and she fled back to her
cellar. At night, she slept by the side of the corpse, and when the
light of morning filtered into her dreary place of refuge, and lighted
up the body lying there, she sobbed with grief and terror. Her husband
had been dead four days, when putrefaction set in, and she, able to
bear it no longer, rushed out screaming to her neighbours: “You must
bury him, or I will go into the middle of the avenue and await death
there!”—They took pity on her, and came down into her cellar, dug a
hole there and put the corpse in it. During three weeks she continued
there, resting herself on the newly-turned earth. To-day, when they
went to fetch her she fainted with horror; the grave had been dug too
shallow, and one of the legs of the corpse was exposed to gaze.

[Illustration: Female Curiosity at Porte Maillot.
“Prenez Garde, Mam’zelle”]

This morning, the 25th of April, at nine o’clock, a dense crowd moved
up the Champs Elysées: pedestrians of all ages and classes, and
vehicles of every description. The truce obtained by the members of the
_Republican Union of the rights of Paris_ was about to begin, and
relief was to be carried to the sufferers at Neuilly. However, some
precautions were necessary, for neither the shooting nor the cannonade
had ceased yet, and every moment one expected to see some projectile or
other fall among the advancing multitude. In the Avenue de la Grande
Armée a shell had struck a house, and set fire to it. Gradually the
sound of the artillery diminished, and then died away entirely; the
crowd hastened to the ramparts.

[Illustration: Porte Maillot and Chapel of St. Ferdinand.]

The chapel was erected by Louis Philippe in memory of the Duke of
Orleans, killed on the spot, July 18th, 1842.

The Porte Maillot has been entirely destroyed for some time, in spite
of what the Commune has told us to the contrary; the drawbridge is torn
from its place, the ruined walls and bastions have fallen into the
moat. The railway-station is a shapeless mass of blackened bricks,
broken stones, glass, and iron-work; the cutting where the trains used
to pass is half filled up with the ruins. It is impossible to get along
that way. Fancy the hopeless confusion here, arising among this myriad
of anxious beings, these hundreds of carts and waggons, all crowding to
the same spot. Each one presses onwards, pushing his neighbour,
screaming and vociferating; the National Guards try in vain to keep
order. To add to the difficulties there is some form to be gone through
about passes. I manage to hang on to a cart which is just going over
the bridge; after a thousand stoppages and a great deal of pushing and
squeezing, I succeeded in getting out, my clothes in rags. A desolate
scene meets my eyes. In front of us, is the open space called the
military zone, a dusty desert, with but one building remaining, the
chapel of Longchamps; it has been converted into an ambulance, and the
white flag with the red cross is waving above it. Truly the wounded
there must be in no little danger from the shells, as it lies directly
in their path. To the left is the Bois de Boulogne, or rather what used
to be the wood, for from where I stand but few trees are visible, the
rest is a barren waste. I hasten on, besides I am hard pressed from
behind. Here we are in Neuilly, at last. The desolation is fearful, the
reality surpassing all I could have imagined. Nearly all the roofs of
the houses are battered in, rafters stick out of the broken windows;
some of the walls, too, have fallen, and those that remain standing are
riddled with blackened holes. It is there that the dreadful shells have
entered, breaking, grinding furniture, pictures, glasses, and even
human beings. We crunch broken glass beneath our feet at every step;
there is not a whole pane in all the windows. Here and there are houses
which the bullets seemed to have delighted to pound to atoms, and from
which dense clouds of red and white dust are wafted towards us. Well,
Parisians, what do you say to that? Do you not think that Citizen
Cluseret, although an American, is an excellent patriot, and “In
consideration of Neuilly being in ruins, and of this happy result being
chiefly due to the glorious resistance organized by the delegate
Citizen Cluseret, decrees: That the destroyer of Neuilly, Citizen
Cluseret, has merited the gratitude of France and the Republic.”

[Illustration: The Inhabitants of Neuilly Entering Paris During The
Armisctice of the 18th of April.]

The firing ceased from nine in the morning until five in the afternoon,
when Paris cabs, furniture-vans, ambulance-waggons, band-barrows, and
all sorts of vehicles were requisitioned to bring in the sad remains
and dilapidated household goods of the suburban bombardés. They entered
by the gate of Ternes—for that of Porte Maillot was in ruins and
impassable. Many went to the Palais de l’Industrie, in the Champs
Elysées, where a commission sat to allot vacant apartments in Paris. On
this occasion some robberies were committed, and refractories escaped:
it is even said that hard-hearted landlords wished to prevent their
lodgers from departing—an object in which the proprietors were not very
successful. The poor woman perched on the top of her relics, saved from
the cellar in which she had lived in terror for fourteen days, deplores
the loss of her husband and the shapeless mass of ruin and rubbish she
once called her happy home; whilst her boys bring in green stuff from
the surburban gardens, and a middle-aged neighbour stalks along with
his pet parrot, the bird all the while amusing himself with elaborate
imitations of the growl of the mitrailleuse and the hissing of shells
ending with terrific and oft-repeated explosions.

Out of all the houses, or rather from what was once the houses, emerge
the inhabitants carrying different articles of furniture, tables,
mattresses, boxes. They come out as it were from their graves.
Relations meet and embrace, after having suffered almost the bitterness
of death. Thousands run backwards and forwards; the carts are heaped up
to overflowing, everything that is not destroyed must be carried away.
A large van filled with orphan children moves on towards the barrier; a
sister of charity is seated beside the driver. The most impatient of
the refugees are already through the Porte Maillot; who will give them
hospitality there? No one seems to think of that. The excitement caused
by all this movement is almost joyous under the brilliant rays of the
sun. But time presses, in a few minutes the short truce will have
expired. Stragglers hurry along with heavy loads. At the gates, the
crowding and confusion are greater than in the morning. Carts heavily
laden, move slowly and with difficulty; the contents of several are
spilled on the highway. More shouting, crowding, and pushing, until the
gates are passed at last, and the emigrant crowd disperses along the
different streets and avenues into the heart of Paris. A happy release
from bondage, but what a dismal promised land!

Then the cannonading and musketry on either side recommences. Destroy,
kill, this horrible quarrel can only end with the annihilation of one
of the two parties engaged. Go on killing each other if you will have
it so, combatants, fellow-countrymen. Some wretched women and children
will at least sleep in safety to-night, in spite of you!

[Illustration: _Federal Officer_. Pardon, Monsieur, but we cannot allow
civilians to remain here.
_Monsieur_. I wait for Valérien to open upon us.]

Yes, my good friends and idlers, the sad scene would not have been
complete without your presence to relieve its sadness. If respect for
your persons kept you away from danger, it at least gives zest to the
place, a locality that in a few short minutes will be dangerous again.
At five the armistice was over, but for all that, the National Guard
had great difficulty in clearing the ground, until real danger, the
excitement sought for, arrived, and sent the spectators much further up
the Avenue de la Grande Armée.

[Illustration: Mdlle, et Ses Cousines.]

5.30. Great Guns of Valérien, Why do you not begin? Know you that tubes
charged with bright eyes are directed against you?

LXIII.

I had almost made up my mind not to continue these notes. Tired and
weary, I remained two days at home, wishing to see nothing, hear
nothing, trying to absorb myself in my books, and to take up the lost
thread of my interrupted studies, but all to no purpose.

It is ten in the morning, and I am out again in search of news. How
many things may have happened in two days! Not far from the Hôtel de
Ville excited groups are assembled at the corners of the streets that
lead out of the Rue de Rivoli. They seem waiting for something—what are
they waiting for? Vague rumours, principally of a peaceful and
conciliatory nature, circulate from group to group, where women
decidedly predominate.

“If _they_ help us we are saved!” says a workwoman, who is holding a
little boy in the dress of a national guard by the hand.—“Who?” I
ask.—“Ah! Monsieur, it is the Freemasons who are taking the side of the
Commune; they are going to cross Paris before our eyes. The Commune
must be in the right if the Freemasons think so.”—“Here they come!”
says the little boy, pulling his mother along with all his strength.

[Illustration: Protot[66], Delegate of Justice.]

The vehicles draw up on one side to make room, the crowd presses to the
edge of the pavement. The drums beat, a military band strikes up the
“Marseillaise.” First come five staff-officers, and then six members of
the Commune, wearing their red scarfs, fringed with gold. I fancy I
recognize Citizens Delescluze and Protot among them. “They are going to
the Hôtel de Ville!” cries an enthusiastic butcher-boy, holding a large
basket of meat on his head, which he steadies with one hand, while with
the other he makes wild signs to two companions on the other side of
the way. “I saw them this morning in the Place du Carrousel,” he
continues in the same strain. “That was fine, I tell you! And then this
battalion came to fetch them, with the music and all. Now they are
going to salute the Republic; come along, I say. Double quick time!” So
the butcher-boy, and the woman with the child, and myself, and all the
rest of the bystanders, turn and follow the eight or ten thousand
members of Parisian freemasonry who are crowding along the Rue de
Rivoli. In the front and rear of the procession I notice a large number
of unarmed men, dressed in loose Zouave trousers of dark-blue cloth,
with white gaiters, white bands, and blue jackets. Their heads are
mostly bare. I am told these are the Communist sharpshooters. Ever so
far on in front of us a large white banner is floating, bearing an
inscription which I cannot manage to read on account of the distance.
However, the butcher-boy has made it out, and informs us that “Love one
another” is written there. Happy, delusive Freemasons! “Tolerate one
another” is scarcely practicable! In the meantime we continue to follow
at the heels of the procession. There is much shouting and noise, here
and there a feeble “_Vive la Commune!_” But the principal cries are,
“Down with the murderers! Death to assassins! Down with Versailles!” A
Freemason doffs his hat and shouts, “_Vive la Paix!_ It is peace we are
going to seek!”

I am still sadly confused, and cannot make up my mind what all this is
about. Patience, however, I shall know all at the Hôtel de Ville. Here
we are. The National Guard keeps the ground, and the whole procession
files into the Cour d’Honneur. Carried on by the crowd, I find myself
near the entrance and can see what is going on inside. The whole of the
Commune is out on the balcony, at the top of the grand staircase, in
front of the statue of the Republic, which like the Communists wears a
red scarf. Great trophies of red flags are waving everywhere. Men
bearing the banners of the society are stationed on every step; on each
is inscribed, in golden letters, mottos of peace and fraternity. A
patriarchal Freemason, wearing his collar and badges, has arrived in a
carriage; they help him to alight with marks of the greatest respect.
The court is by this time full to overflowing, an enthusiastic cry of
“Vive la Franc Maçonnerie! Vive la République Universelle!” is
re-echoed from mouth to mouth. Citizen Félix Pyat, member of the
Commune, who is on the balcony, comes forward to speak. I congratulate
myself on being at last about to hear what all this means. But I am
disappointed. The pushing and squeezing is unbearable. I have
vigorously to defend my hat, stick, purse, and cigar-case, and am half
stifled besides. I almost despair of catching a single word, but at
last succeed in hearing a few detached sentences:—“Universal
nationality.... liberty, equality, and fraternity.... manifestos of the
heart....” (what is that?) “the standard of humanity.... ramparts....”
If I could only get a little nearer—the words “homicidal balls....
fratricidal bullets.... universal peace....” alone reach me. Is it to
hear such stuff as this, that the Freemasons have come to the Hôtel de
Ville? I suppose so, for after a little more of the same kind the whole
is drowned in a stupendous roar of “Vive la Commune!” and “Vive la
République!” I have given up all hope of ever understanding.

[Illustration: Félix Pyat.[67]]

“They have come to draw lots to see who is to go and kill M. Thiers,”
cries a red-haired gamin.—“Idiot,” retorts his comrade, “they have no
arms!”—“Listen, and you will hear,” says the first, which is capital
advice, if I could but follow it. The pushing becomes intolerable, when
suddenly the bald head of an unfortunate citizen executes a fatal
plunge—I can breathe at last—and the following words reach me pretty
clearly:—“The Commune has decided that we shall choose five members who
are to have the honour of escorting you, and we are to draw
lots....”—“There! was I not right?” cries he of the carrotty hair; “I
knew they were going to draw lots!” A cleverly administered blow,
however, soon silences his elation, and we hear that the lots have been
drawn, and that five members are chosen to aid “this glorious, this
victorious act.” There seems more rhyme than reason in this. “An act
that will be read of in the future history of France and of humanity.”
Here the irrepressible breaks out again:—“Now I am sure they are going
to kill M. Thiers!” Whereupon his irritated adversary seizes him by the
collar, gives his head some well-applied blows against the curb-stone,
and then, pushing through the crowd, carries him off bodily. As for me,
my curiosity unsatisfied, I grow resigned—may the will of the Commune
be done—and I give it up. More hopeless mystification from the Citizen
Beslay, who regrets not having been chosen to aid in this “heroic act.”
He also alludes to the drawing of lots, and I begin after all to fancy
poor M. Thiers must be at the bottom of it all, but he
continues:—“Citizens, what can I say after the eloquent discourse of
Félix Pyat? You are about to interest yourselves in an act of
fraternity....” (then something horrible is surely contemplated) “in
hoisting your banner on the walls of our city, and mixing in our ranks
against our enemies of Versailles.” A sudden light breaks upon me. In
the meantime Citizen Beslay is embracing the nearest Freemason, while
another begs the honour of being the first to plant his banner, the
Persévérance, which was unfurled in 1790, on the ramparts. Here a band
plays the “Marseillaise,” horribly out of tune; a red flag is given to
the Freemasons, with an appropriate harangue; then the Citizen Térifocq
takes back the flag, with another harangue, and ends by waving it aloft
and roaring, “Now, citizens, no more words; to action!”

This is clear, the Freemasons are to hoist their banner on to the walls
of Paris side by side with the standard of the Commune; and who is
blind enough to imagine, that the shells and bullets, indiscriminately
homicidal, fratricidal, and infanticidal as they prove, are imbued with
tact sufficient to steer clear of the Freemasons’ banners, and injure
in their flight only those of the Commune? As the Versailles
projectiles have only one end in view, that of piercing both the
Parisians and their standards, as a national consequence if both
Parisians and standards are pierced, it is likewise most probable that
the Masonic banners will not remain unscathed in so dangerous a
neighbourhood. And if so, what will be the result? According to Citizen
Térifocq “the Freemasons of Paris will call to their aid the direst
vengeance; the Masons of all the provinces of France will follow their
example; everywhere the brothers will fraternise with the troops which
are marching on to help Paris. On the other hand, if the Versailles
gunners do not aim at the Masons, but only at the National Guards
(_sic!_), then the Masons will join the battalions in the field, and
encourage by their example the gallant soldiers, defenders of the
city.” This is all rather complicated—what can come of it? Escorted by
an ever-increasing crowd, we reach the Place de la Bastille. Several
discourses are spouted forth at the foot of the column, but the
combined effects of noise, dust, and fatigue have blunted my senses,
and I hear nothing; it seems, however to be about the same thing over
again, for the same acclamations of the crowd greet the same gestures
on the part of the orators.

We are off again down the Boulevards; the long procession, with its
waving banners and glittering signs, is hailed by the populace with
delight. Having reached the Place de la Concorde, I loiter behind.
Groups are stationed here and there. I go from one to another, trying
to gather what these open-air politicians think of all this Masonic
parade. Shortly fugitives are seen hurrying back from the Champs
Elysées, shouting, and gesticulating. “Horror! Abomination! They
respect nothing! Vengeance!” I hear a brother-mason has been killed by
a shell opposite the Rue du Colysée; that the white flag is riddled
with shot; that the Versailles rifles have singled out, killed and
wounded several masons.

In a very short time the terrible news, increased and exaggerated as it
spread, filled every quarter of Paris with consternation. I returned
home in a most perplexed state of mind, from which I could not arouse
myself until the arrival, towards evening, of a friend, a freemason,
and consequently well informed. This, it appears, is what took place.

“At the moment when the procession arrived in the Champs Elysées it
formed itself into several groups, each choosing a separate avenue or
street. One followed the Faubourg St. Honoré and the Avenue Friedland
as far as the Triumphal Arch, till it reached the Porte Maillot; a
second proceeded to the Porte des Ternes by the Avenue des Ternes; a
third to the Porte Dauphine by the Avenue Ührich. Not a single
freemason was wounded on the way, though shells fell on their passage
from time to time. The VV.·. of each lodge marched at the head,
displaying their masonic banners.

[Illustration: The Freemasons at the Ramparts. Gamins collecting
shells.]

“As soon as the white flag was seen flying from the bastion on the
right of the Porte Maillot, the Versailles batteries ceased firing. The
freemasons were then able to pass the ramparts and proceed towards
Neuilly. There they were received rather coldly by the colonel in
command of the detachment. The officers, including those in high
command, were violently indignant against Paris. But the soldiers
themselves seemed utterly weary of war.

“After some parleying the members of the manifestation obtained leave
to send a certain number of delegates to Versailles, in order to make a
second attempt at conciliation with the Government.”

Will this new effort be more successful than the preceding one? Will
the company of freemasons obtain what the Republican Union failed in
procuring? I would fain believe it, but cannot. The obstinacy of the
Versailles Assembly has become absolute deafness, though we must admit
that the freemasons’ way of trying to bring about reconciliation was
rather singular, somewhat like holding a knife at Monsieur Thiers’
throat and crying out, “Peace or your life!”

NOTES:

[66] Memoir, see Appendix 6.

[67] Félix Pyat was born in 1810 at Vierzon. He came to Paris for the
purpose of studying law, but soon abandoned his intention for the more
genial profession of journalist. He contributed to the _Figaro_, the
_Charivari_, the _Revue de Paris_, and the _National_. In 1848 he was
named Commissary-General, and subsequently deputy of the department of
the Cher. Having signed Ledru-Rollin’s call to arms, he was obliged
after the events of June to take refuge in England. Profiting by the
amnesty of the fifteenth of August, 1869, he returned to France, but
made himself so obnoxious to the Government by his virulent abuse of
the Empire, that he was again expelled. The revolution of the fourth
of September allowed him to re-enter France. He commenced an immediate
and violent attack on the new government, which he continued until his
journal, _Le Combat_, was suppressed. Needless to say that he was one
of the chief actors in the insurrections of the thirty-first of
October and the twenty-second of January. He was elected deputy, but
soon resigned, for the purpose of connecting himself with the cause of
the Commune. He edited the _Vengeur_ and the _Commune_ newspapers, and
obtained a decree suppressing nearly all rival or antagonistic
publications. At the fall of the Commune he fled no one knows where.

LXIV.

No! no! Monsieur Félix Pyat, you must remain, if you please. You have
been of it, you are of it, and you shall be of it. It is well that you
should go through all the tenses of the verb, I am not astonished that
a man as clever as you, finding that things were taking a bad turn,
should have thought fit to give in your resignation. When the house is
burning, one jumps out of window. But your cleverness has been so much
pure loss, for your amiable confederates are waiting in the street to
thrust you back into the midst of the flames again. It is in vain that
you have written the following letter, a chef-d’oeuvre in its way, to
the president of

“CITIZEN PRESIDENT,—If I had not been detained at the Ministry of
War on the day when the election took place, I should have voted
with the minority of the Commune. I think that the majority, for
this once, is in the wrong.”
“For this once” is polite.
“I doubt if she will ever retrieve her error.”
If the Commune were to retrace its steps at each error it made, it
would advance slowly.
“I think that the elected have not the right of replacing the
electors. I think that the representatives have not the right of
taking the place of the sovereign power. I think that the Commune
cannot create a single one of its own members, neither make them
nor unmake them; and, therefore, that it cannot of itself furnish
that which is wanted to legalise their nominations’.”

Oh! Monsieur Félix Pyat, legality is strangely out of fashion, and it
is well for Versailles that it is so.

“I think also, seeing that the war has changed the population....”

Yes; the war has changed the population, if not in the way you
understand it, at least in this sense, that a great many reasonable
people have gone mad, and that many—ah! how many?—are now dead.

“I think that it was more just to change the law than to violate it.
The ballot gave birth to the Commune, and in completing itself without
it, the Commune commits suicide. I will not be an accomplice in the
fault.”

We understand that; it is quite enough to be an accomplice in the
crime.

“I am so convinced of this truth, that if the Commune persist in
what I call an usurpation of the elective power, I could not
reconcile the respect due to the rote of the majority with the
respect due to my own conscience; I shall therefore be obliged,
much to my regret, to give in my resignation to the Commune before
the victory.

“_Salut et Fraternité_.
“FÉLIX PYAT.”

“Before the victory” is exquisitely comic! But, carried away by the
desire of exhibiting the wit of which he is master, Monsieur Félix Pyat
fails to perceive that his irony is a little too transparent, that
“before the victory” evidently meant “before the defeat,” and that
consequently, without taking into account the excellent reasons given
in his letter to the president of the Commune, we shall only recollect
that rats run away when the vessel is about to sink. But this time the
rats must remain at the bottom of the hold. Tour colleagues, Monsieur
Pyat, will not permit you to be the only one to withdraw from the
honours, since you have been with them in the strife. Not daring to fly
themselves, they will make you stay. Vermorel will seize you by the
collar at the moment you are about to open the door and make your
escape; and Monsieur Pierre Denis,[68] who used to be a poet as well as
a cobbler, will murmur in your ear these verses of Victor Hugo[69],
which, with a few slight modifications, will suit your case exactly:—

“Maintenant il se dit: ‘L’empire est chancelant;
La victoire est peu sûre.’
Il cherche à s’en aller, furtif et reculant.
Reste dans la masure!”

“Tu dis: ‘Le plafond croule; ils vont, si l’on me voit,
Empêcher que je sorte.’
N’osant rester ni fuir, tu regardes le toit,
Tu regardes la porte.

“Tu mets timidement la main sur le verrou;
Reste en leurs rangs funèbres!
Reste! La loi qu’ils ont enfouie en un trou
Est là dans les ténèbres.

“Reste! Elle est là, le flanc percé de leurs couteaux,
Gisante, et sur sa bière
Ils ont mis une dalle. Un pan de ton manteau
Est pris sous cette pierre.

“Tu ne t’en iras pas! Quoi! quitter leur maison!
Et fuir leur destinée!
Quoi! tu voudrais trahir jusqu’à la trahison
Elle-même indignée!

“Quoi! n’as-tu pas tenu l’échelle à ces fripons
En pleine connivence?
Le sac de ces voleurs ne fut-il pas, réponds,
Cousu par toi d’avance?

“Les mensonges, la haine au dard froid et visqueux,
Habitent ce repaire;
Tu t’en vas! De quel droit, étant plus renard qu’eux
Et plus qu’elle vipère?”

And Monsieur Félix Pyat will remain, in spite of the thousand and one
good reasons he would find to make a short tour in Belgium. His
colleagues will try persuasion, if necessary—“You are good, you are
great, you are pure; what would become of us without you?” and they
will hold on to him to the end, like cowards who in the midst of danger
cling to their companions, shrieking out, “We will die together!” and
embrace them convulsively to prevent their escape.

NOTES:

[68] A writer in the _Vengeur_.

[69] For translation, see Appendix 7.

LXV.

An anonymous writer, who is no other, it is said, than the citizen
Delescluze, has just published the following:—

“The Commune has assured to itself the receipt of a sum of 600,000
francs a day—eighteen millions a month.”

There was once upon a time a French forger, named Collé, celebrated for
the extent and importance of his swindling, and who possessed, it was
said, a very large fortune. When questioned upon the subject, he used
to answer: “I have assured to myself a receipt of a hundred francs a
day—three thousand francs a month.”

Between Collé and the Commune there exists a difference, however: in
the first place, Collé affected a particular liking for the clergy,
whose various garbs he used frequently to assume, and the Commune
cannot endure _curés_ and secondly, while Collé, in assuring himself a
receipt of three thousand francs a month, had done all that was
possible for him to do, the Commune puts up with a miserable eighteen
millions, when it might have ensured to itself a great deal more. It is
astounding, and, I may add, little in accordance with its dignity, that
it should be satisfied with so moderate an allowance. You show too much
modesty; it is not worth while being victorious for so little. Eighteen
millions—a mere nothing! Your delicacy might be better understood were
you more scrupulous as to the choice of your means. Thank Heaven! you
do not err on that score. Come! a little more energy, if you please.
“But!” sighs the Commune, “I have done my best, it seems to me. Thanks
to Jourde,[70] who throws Law into the shade, and to Dereure,[71] the
shoemaker—Financier and Cobbler of La Fontaine’s Fable—I pocket daily
the gross value of the sale of tobacco, which is a pretty speculation
enough, since I have had to pay neither the cost of the raw materials
nor of the manufacture. I have besides this, thanks to what I call the
‘regular income from the public departments,’ a good number of little
revenues which do not cost me much and bring me in a good deal. Now
there’s the Post, for instance. I take good care to despatch none of
the letters that are confided to me, but I manage to secure the price
of the postage by an arrangement with my employés. This shows
cleverness and tact, I think. Finally, in addition to this, I get the
railway companies to be kind enough to drop into my pockets the sum of
two millions of francs: the Northern Railway Company will supply me
with three hundred and ninety-three thousand francs; the Western, with
two hundred and seventy-five thousand; the Eastern, three hundred and
fifty-four thousand francs; the Lyons Railway Company, with six hundred
and ninety-two thousand francs; the Orleans Railway, three hundred and
seventy-six thousand francs. It is the financial delegate, Monsieur
Jourde, who has the most brains of the whole band, who planned this
ingenious arrangement. And, in truth, I consider that I have done all
that is in my power, and you are wrong in trying to humiliate me by
drawing comparisons between myself and Collé, who had some good, in
him, but who was in no way equal to me.” My dear, good Commune, I do
not deny that, you have the most excellent intentions; I approve the
tobacco speculation and the funds drawn from the public service money,
in which you include, I suppose, the profits made in your nocturnal
visits to the public and other coffers, and your fruitful rounds in the
churches. As to the tax levied on railways, it inspires me with an
admiration approaching enthusiasm. But, for mercy’s sake, do not allow
yourself to stop there. Nothing is achieved so long as anything remains
to be done. You waste your time in counting up the present sources of
your revenues, while so many opportunities remain of increasing them.
Are there no bankers, no stock-brokers, no notaries, in Paris? Send a
few of these honest patriots of yours to the houses of the
reactionaries. A hundred thousand francs from one, two hundred thousand
francs from another; it is always worth the taking. From small streams
come great rivers. In your place I would not neglect the shopkeepers’
tills either, or the money-chests of the rich. They are of the
_bourgeoisie_, those people, and the _bourgeois_ are your enemies. Tax
them, _morbleu!_ Tax them by all means. Have you not all your friends
and your friends’ friends to look after? Is it false keys that fail
you? But they are easily made, and amongst your number you will
certainly find one or two locksmiths quite ready to help you. Take
Pilotel, for instance: a sane man, that! There were only eight hundred
francs in the escritoire of Monsieur Chaudey, and he appropriated the
eight hundred francs. Thus, you see, how great houses and good
governments are founded. And when there is no longer any money, you
must seize hold of the goods and furniture of your fellow-citizens. You
will find receivers of stolen goods among you, no doubt. They told me
yesterday that you had sent the Titiens and Paul Veroneses of the
Louvre to London, in order to be able to make money out of them. A most
excellent measure, that I can well explain to myself, because I can
understand that Monsieur Courbet must have a great desire to get rid of
these two painters, for whom he feels so legitimate and profound a
hatred. But, alas! it was but a false report. You confined yourselves
to putting up for sale the materials composing the Column of the Place
Vendôme; dividing them into four lots, two lots of stone and cement,
and two lots of metal. Two lots only? Why! you know nothing about
making the best of your merchandise. There is something better than
stone and metal in this column. There is that in it which a number of
silly people used to call in other times the glory of France. What a
pretty spectacle—when the sale by auction is over—to see the buyers
carrying away under their arms—one, a bit of Wagram; another, a bit of
Jena; and some, who had thought to be buying a pound or two of bronze,
having made the acquisition of the First Consul at Arcole or the
Emperor at Austerlitz. It is a sad pity that you did not puff up the
value and importance of your sale to the bidders. Your speculation
would then have turned out better. You have managed badly, my dear
Commune; you have not known how to take advantage of your position.
Repair your faults, impose your taxes, appropriate, confiscate! All may
be yours, disdain nothing, and have no fear of resistance; everyone is
afraid of you. Here! I have five francs in my own pocket, will you have
them?

NOTES:

[70] Jourde occupied the position of financial Minister under the
Commune Government. He is well-educated, and is said to be one of the
most intellectually distinguished of the Federal functionaries. He is
a medical student, and said to be twenty-seven years of age. See
Appendix 8.

[71] A working cobbler, and member of the International Society, which
he represented at the Congress of Bâle. He occupied a post on the
_Marseillaise_ newspaper, became a Commissary of Police after the
fourth of September, and took part on the popular side in the outbreak
of the thirty-first of October. He was deprived of his office by
General Trochu’s government, and appointed one of the delegates for
justice, by the authorities of the Commune.

LXVI.

“The social revolution could end but in one great catastrophe, of
which the immediate effects would be—
“To make the land a barren waste:
“To put a strait jacket upon society:
“And, if it were possible that such a state of things could be
prolonged for several weeks—
“To cause three or four millions of human beings to perish by
horrible famine.
“When the Government shall be without resources, when the country
shall be without produce and without commerce:
“When starving Paris, blockaded by the departments, will no longer
discharge its debts and make payments, no longer export nor import:
“When workmen, demoralised by the politics taught at the clubs and
the closing of the workshops, will have found a means of living, no
matter how:
“When the State appropriates to itself the silver and ornaments of
the citizens for the purpose of sending them to the Mint:
“When perquisitions made in the private houses are the only means
of collecting taxes:
“When hungry bands spread over the country, committing robbery and
devastation:
“When the peasant, armed with loaded gun, has to neglect the
cultivation of his crops in order to protect them:
“When the first sheaf shall have been stolen, the first house
forced, the first church profaned, the first torch fired, the first
woman violated:
“When the first blood shall have been spilt:
“When the first head shall have fallen:
“When abomination and desolation shall have spread over all France—
“Oh! then you will know what we mean by a social revolution:
“A multitude let loose, arms in hand, mad with revenge and fury:
“Soldiers, pikes, empty homes, knives and crowbars:
“The city, silent and oppressed; the police in our very homes,
opinions suspected, words noted down, tears observed, sighs counted,
silence watched; spying and denunciations:
“Inexorable requisitions, forced and progressive loans, paper money
made worthless:
“Civil war, and the enemy on the frontiers:
“Pitiless proconsuls, a supreme committee, with hearts of stone—
“This would be the fruits of what they call democratic and social
revolution.”

Who wrote this admirable page?—Proudhon.

O all-merciful Providence! Take pity on France, for she has come to
this.

LXVII.

A balloon! A balloon! Quick! A balloon! There is not a moment to be
lost. The inhabitants of Brive-la-Gaillarde and the mountaineers of
Savoy are thirsting for news; let us shower manna on them. Write away!
Pierre Denis! Pump in your gas, emulators of Godard! And may the four
winds of heaven carry our “Declarations” to the four quarters of
France! Ah! ah! The Versaillais—band of traitors that they are!—did not
calculate on this. They raise soldiers, the simpletons; they bombard
our forts and our houses, the idiots! But we make decrees, and
distribute our proclamations throughout the country by means of an
unlimited number of revolutionary aeronauts. May they be guided by the
wind which blows across the mountains! How the honest labourers, the
good farmers, the eager workers of the departments will rejoice when
they receive, dropping, from the sky, the pages on which are inscribed
the rights and duties of the man of the present day! They will not
hesitate one single instant. They will leave their fields, their homes,
their workshops, and cry, “A musket! a musket!” with no thought that
they leave behind them women without husbands, and children without
fathers! They will fly to us, happy to conquer or die for the glory of
Citizen Delescluze and Citizen Vermorel! What ardour! What patriotism!
Already they are on their way; they are coming, they are come! Those
who had no fire-arms have seized their pickaxes or pieces of their
broken ploughs! Hurrah! Forward! March! To arms, citizens, to arms!
Hail to France, who comes to the rescue of Paris!

All to no purpose. I tell you the people of Brive-la-Gaillarde and the
mountaineers of Savoy have not once thought of taking up arms. They
have never been more tranquil or more resolute on remaining in peace
and quiet than now. When they see one of your balloons—always supposing
that it has any other end in view than of depositing repentant
communists in safe, snug corners, pass the lines of the Versailles
troops—when they see one of your balloons, they simply exclaim,
“Hulloa! Here’s a balloon! Where in the world can it come from?” If
some printed papers fall from the sky, the peasant picks them up,
saying, “I shall give them to my son to read, when he returns from
school.” The evening comes, the son spells them out, while the father
listens. The son cannot understand; the father falls asleep. “Ah! those
Parisians!” cries the mother. Can you wonder? These people are born to
live and die without knowing all that is admirable in the men of the
Hôtel de Ville. They are fools enough to cling to their own lives and
the lives of those near them. They do not go to war amongst themselves;
they are poor ignorant creatures, and you will never make them believe
that when once they have paid their taxes, worked, fed their wives and
children, there still remains to them one duty to fulfil, more holy,
more imperative than all others,—that of coming to the Porte-Maillot to
receive a ball or a fragment of shell in their skulls.

But these balloons might be made of some use, nevertheless. Pick out
one, the best made, the largest in size, the best rigged; put in
Citizen Félix Pyat—who, you may be sure, will not be the last to sit
down—and Citizen Delescluze too, nor must we omit Citizen Cluseret, nor
any of the citizens who at the present moment constitute the happiness
of Paris and the tranquillity of France! Now inflate this admirable
balloon, which is to bear off all your hopes, with the lightest gases.
Then blow, ye winds, terrifically, furiously, and bear it from us!
Balloons can be capricious at times. Have you read, the story of Hans
Pfaal? Good Heavens! if the wind could only carry them away, up to the
moon, or even a great deal further still.

LXVIII.

I’m surprised myself, as I re-read the preceding pages, at the strange
contradictions I meet with. During the first few days I was almost
favourable to the Commune; I waited, I hoped. To-day all is very
different. When I write down in the evening what I have seen and
thought in the day, I allow myself to blame with severity men that
inspired me formerly with some kind of sympathy. What has taken place?
Have my opinions changed? I do not think so. Besides, I have in reality
but one opinion. I receive impressions, describing these impressions
without reserve, without prejudice. If these stray leaves should ever
be collected in a volume, they will at least possess the rare merit of
being thoroughly sincere. Is it then, that my nature is modified? By no
means. If I were indulgent a month ago, it was that I did not know
those of whom I spoke, and that I am of a naturally hopeful and
benevolent disposition: if I now show myself severe, it is that—like
the rest of Paris—I have learned to know them better.

LXIX.

The Commune has naturally brought an infinite number of journals into
existence. Try, if you will, to count the leaves of the forest, the
grains of sand on the seashore, the stars in the heavens, but do not,
in your wildest dreams, attempt to enumerate the newspapers that have
seen the light since the famous day of the 18th of March. Félix Pyat
has a journal, _Le Vengeur_; Vermorel has a journal, _Le Cri du
People_; Delescluze has a journal, _Le Reveil_; there is not a member
of the Commune but indulges in the luxury of a sheet in which he tells
his colleagues daily all the evil he thinks of them. It must be
acknowledged that these gentlemen have an extremely bad opinion one of
the other. I defy even the _Gaulois_ of Versailles—yes, the _Gaulois_
itself—to treat Félix Pyat as Vermorel treats him, and if it be
remembered on the other hand what Félix Pyat says of Vermorel, the
_Gaulois_ will be found singularly good-natured. Napoleon cautioned us
long ago “to wash our dirty linen at home,” but good patriots cannot be
expected to profit by the counsels of a tyrant. So the columns of the
Commune papers are devoted to the daily and mutual pulling to pieces of
the Commune’s members. But where will these ephemeral sheets be in six
months, in one month, or in a week’s time perhaps? The wind which wafts
away the leaves of the rose and the laurel, will be no less cruel for
the political leaves. Let us then, for the sake of posterity, offer a
specimen of what is—or as we shall soon say, what was—the Communalist
press of to-day. Be they edited by Marotteau, or Duchesne, or Paschal
Grousset, or by any other emulator of Paul-Louis Courier, these worthy
journals are all much alike, and one example will suffice for the
whole.

[Illustration: Vermesch (père Duchesne).[72]]

First of all, and generally in enormous type, stand the LATEST NEWS,
the news from the Porte Maillot where the friends of the Commune are
fighting, and the news from Versailles where the enemies of the country
are sitting. They usually run somewhat in this style:—

“It is more and more confirmed that the Assembly of Versailles is
surrounded and made prisoner by the troops returned from Germany.
The generals of the Empire have newly proclaimed Napoleon: the
Third, Emperor. After a violent quarrel about two National Guards
whom Marshal MacMahon had had shot, but had omitted to have cooked
for his soldiers, Monsieur Thiers sent a challenge to the Marshal,
by his two seconds. These seconds were no other than the Comte de
Chambord and the Comte de Paris. Marshal MacMahon chose the
ex-Emperor and Paul de Cassagnac. The duel took place in the Rue
des Reservoirs, in the midst of an immense crowd. The Marshal was
killed, and was therefore obliged to renounce the command of the
troops. But the Assembly would not accept his resignation.
“We are in the position to assert that a company of the 132nd
Battalion has this morning surrounded fifteen thousand gendarmes
and sergents-de-ville, in the park of Neuilly. Seeing that all
resistance was useless, the supporters of Monsieur Thiers
surrendered without reserve. Among them were seventeen members of
the National Assembly, who, not content with ordering the
assassination of our brothers, had wished also to be present at the
massacre.
“A person worthy of credit has related to us the following fact:—A
_cantinière_ of the 44th Battalion (from the Batignolles quarter),
was in the act of pouring out a glass of brandy for an artilleryman
of the Fort of Vanves, when suddenly the artilleryman was out in
two by a Versailles shell; the brave _cantinière_ drank off the
contents of the glass just poured out for the dead man who lay in
bits at her feet, and took his place at the guns. She performed her
new part of artilleryman so bravely, that ten minutes later there
was not a single gun uninjured in the Meudon battery. As to those
who were serving the pieces there, they were all hurled to a
distance of several miles, and amongst them were said to have been
recognised—we give this news however with great reserve—Monsieur
Ollivier, the ex-minister of the ex-Emperor, and Count von
Bismarck, who wished to verify for himself the actual range of the
guns that he had lent to his good friends of Versailles.”

[Illustration: PASCHAL GROUSSET, DELEGATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS.[73]]

After the LATEST NEWS come the reports of the day, the _bulletin du
jour_ as it is called now, and it is in this that the editor, a member
of the Commune, reveals his talent. We trust that the following example
is not quite unworthy of the pen of Monsieur Félix Pyat, or the
signature of Monsieur Vermorel:—

“Paris, 29th April, 1871.

“They are lying in wait for us, these tigers athirst for blood.
“They are there, these Vandals, who have sworn that in all Paris
not a single man shall be spared, nor a single stone, left
standing.
“But we are not in their power yet. No, nor shall we ever be.
“The National Guard is on the watch; victorious and sublime, their
soldierly breasts are not of flesh and blood, but of bronze, from
which the balls rebound as they stand, dauntless, before the enemy.
“Ah! so these lachrymose Jules Favres, these fat Picards, these
hungry Jules Ferrys, said amongst themselves, ‘We will take Paris,
we will tear it up, and its soil shall be divided after the victory
between the wives of the _sergents de ville!_’ “They are beginning
to understand all the insanity of their plan. Why, it is Paris that
will take Versailles, that will take all those blear-eyed old men
who, because they cannot look steadily at Monsieur Thiers’ face,
fancy that it is the sun.
“It is in vain that they gorge with blood and wine their deceived
soldiers; the moment is approaching when these men will no longer
consent to march against the city which is fighting for them.
Already, yesterday, the mêlée of a battle could be distinguished
from the fort of Vanves; the line had come to blows with the
_gendarmes_ of Valentin and Charette’s Zouaves. Courage, Parisians!
A few more days and you will have triumphed over all the infamy
that dares to stop the march of the victorious Commune!
“But it is not enough to vanquish the enemies without, we must get
rid also of the enemies that are within.
“No more pity! no more vacillation! The justice of the people is
wearied of formalities, and cries out for vengeance. Death to
spies! Death to the _réactionaires_! Death to the priests! Why does
the Commune feed this collection of malefactors in your prisons,
while the money they cost us daily would be so useful to the women
and children of those who are fighting for the cause of Paris? We
are assured that one of the prisoners ate half a chicken for his
dinner yesterday; how many good patriots might have been saved from
suffering with the sum which was taken from the chests of the
Republic for this orgie! There is no longer time to hesitate; the
Versaillais are shooting and mutilating the prisoners; we must
revenge ourselves! We must show them such an example, that in
perceiving from afar the heads of their infamous accomplices, the
traitors of Versailles, stuck upon our ramparts, confounded by the
magnanimity of the Commune, they will lay down their arms at last,
and deliver themselves up as prisoners.
“As to the refractory of Paris, we cannot find words to express the
astonishment we experience at the weakness that has been shown with
regard to them.
“What! we permit that there should still be cowards in Paris? I
thought they were all at Versailles. We allow still to remain
amongst us men who are not of our opinion? This state of things has
lasted too long. Let them take their muskets or die. Shoot them
down, those who refuse to go forward. They have wives and children,
they are fathers of families, they say; a fine reason indeed! The
Commune before everything! And, besides, there must be no pity for
the wives of _réactionaires_ and the children of spies!”

The _bulletins du jour_ are sometimes set forth in gentler terms; but
we have chosen a fair average specimen between the lukewarm and the
most violent.

Then comes the solid, serious article, generally written by a pen
invested with all due authority, by the man who has the most head in
the place. The subject varies according to circumstances; but the main
point of the article is generally to show that Paris has never been so
rich, so free, nor so happy, as under the government of the Commune;
and this is a truth that is certainly not difficult to prove. Is not
the fact of being able to live without working the best possible proof
that people are well off? Well! look at the National Guards; they have
not touched a tool for a whole month, and they have such a supply of
money that they are obliged to make over some of it to the
wineshop-keepers in exchange for an unlimited number of litres and
sealed bottles. Then, who could say that we are not free? The journals
that allowed themselves to assert the contrary have been prudently
suppressed. Besides, is it not being free to have shaken off the
shameful yoke of the men who sold France; to be no longer subjected to
the oppression of snobs, _réactionaires_, and traitors? And as to the
most perfect happiness, it stands to reason, since we are both free and
rich, that we must be in the incontestable enjoyment of it. Finally,
after the official dispatches edited in the style you are acquainted
with, and after the accounts of the last battles, come the
miscellaneous news, the _faits divers_; and here it is that the
ingenuity of the writers displays itself to the greatest advantage.

“Yesterday evening, towards ten o’clock, the attention of the
passers-by in the Rue St. Denis was attracted by cries which seemed
to proceed from a four-storied house situated at the corner of the
Rue Sainte-Apolline. The cries were evidently cries of despair.
Some people went to the nearest guardhouse to make the fact known,
and four National Guards, preceded by their corporal, entered the
house. Guided by the sound of the cries they arrived at the fourth
storey, and broke open the door. A horrible spectacle was then
exposed to the view of the Guards and of the persons who had
followed them in their quest. Three young children lay stretched on
the floor of the room, the disorder of which denoted a recent
struggle. The poor little things were without any covering
whatever, and there were traces of blows upon their bodies; one of
them had a cut across the forehead. The National Guards questioned
the children with an almost maternal kindness. They had not eaten
for four days, and, in consequence of this prolonged fast, they
were in such a state of moral and physical abasement that no
precise information could be obtained from them. The corporal then
addressed himself to the neighbours, and soon became acquainted
with a part of the terrible truth.
“In this room lived a poor work-girl, young and pretty. One day, as
she was carrying back her work to the shop, she observed that she
was followed by a well-dressed man, whose physiognomy indicated the
lowest passions. He spoke to her, and was at first repulsed; but,
like the tempter Faust offering jewels to Marguerite, he tempted
her with bright promises, and the poor girl, to whom work did not
always come, listened to the base seducer. Blame her not too
harshly, pity her rather, and reserve all your indignation for the
wretch who betrayed her.
“After three years, which were but anguish and remorse to the
miserable woman, and during which she had no other consolation but
the smiles of the children whose very existence was a crime, she
was becoming reconciled at last to her life, when the father of her
children deserted her.
“This desertion coincided with the glorious revolution of the 18th
of March; and the poor work-girl, who had still room in her heart
for patriotism, found some consolation in reflecting that the day,
so miserable for her, had at least brought happiness to France.
“A fortnight passed, the poor abandoned mother had given up all
hope of ever seeing the father of her three children again, when
one evening—it was last Friday—a man, wrapped in a black cloak,
introduced himself into the house, and made inquiries of the
_concierge_—a great patriot, and commander of the 114th
Battalion—whether Mademoiselle O... were at home? Upon an answer in
the affirmative from the heroic defender of Right and Liberties of
Paris, the man mounted the stairs to the poor workwoman’s rooms. It
was he—the seducer; the _concierge_ had recognised him. What passed
between the murderer and his victims? That will be known,
perhaps—never! But certain it is, that an hour afterwards he went
out, still enveloped in his black mantle.
“The next day, and the days following, the _concierge_ was much
astonished not to see his lodger of the fourth floor, who was
accustomed to stop and talk with him on her way to fetch her _café
au lait_. But his deep sense of duty as commander of the 114th
Battalion occupied his mind so thoroughly, that he paid but little
attention to the incident. Neither did he regard the sighs and sobs
which were heard from the upper stories. He can scarcely be blamed
for this negligence; he was studying his _vade-mecum_.
“On the fourth day, however, the cries were so violent that they
began to inspire the passers-by with alarm, and we have related how
four men, headed by their _caporal_, were sought for to inquire
into the cause.
“We have already told what was seen and heard, but the explanations
of the neighbours were not sufficient to clear up the darkest side
of the mystery, and perhaps the truth would never have been known
if the _caporal_—exhibiting, by a rare proof of intelligence, how
far he was worthy of the grade with which his comrades had honoured
him—had not been inspired with the idea of lifting up the curtain
of the bed.
“Horror! Upon the bed lay stretched the corpse of the unhappy
mother, a dagger plunged into her heart, and in her clutched hand
was found a paper upon which the victim, before rendering her last
breath, had traced the following lines:—
“‘I die, murdered by him who has betrayed me; he would have
murdered also my three children, if a noise in the next room had
not caused him to take flight. He had come from Versailles for the
express purpose of accomplishing this quadruple crime, and, by this
means, obliterate every trace of his past villany. His name is
Jules Ferry. You who read this, revenge me!’”

NOTES:

[72] Vermesch, who was born at Lille, in 1846, though not an official
member of the Commune, was one of its most powerful champions. He was
founder and principal editor of the _Père Duchesne_, a poor imitation
of the journal, published under the same title, by Hébert, in the time
of the first Revolution. This paper, one of the most characteristic of
the Commune, was filled with trivialities, in the vilest taste and
slang, which cannot be rendered in English. The first number of
Vermesch’s journal was published on the 6th of March, but was
suppressed by General Vinoy; it re-appeared, however, on the
eighteenth of the same month, and met with such prodigious success,
that even its editor himself was astonished. Intoxicated with the
result, the writers became more and more virulent, and not content
with penning the vilest personal abuse, Vermesch assumed the _rôle_ of
public informer. For instance, he denounced M. Gustave Chaudey, a
writer in the _Siècle_, in the _Père Duchesne_ of the 12th of April,
and that journalist was arrested in consequence on the following day.
The journal became, not only the medium of all kinds of personal abuse
and vengeance, but did the duty of inquisitor for the Communal
Government, for whom it produced a terrible crop of victims. The
_Official Journal_ contained a number of decrees, the drafts of which
at first appeared in _Père Duchesne_.
Amongst other acts, Vermesch organised what he called the battalion
of the Enfants of the _Père Duchesne_, and considering the origin
of this corps, the character of the rabble which filled its ranks
may easily be imagined. The children of such a father could only be
found amidst the lowest dregs of the Parisian population; fit
instruments for the infamous work which was afterwards to be done.

[73] Paschal Grousset prepared himself for politics by the study of
medicine; from the anatomy of heads he passed to the dissection of
ideas. Having turned journalist, he wrote scientific articles in
_Figaro_, contributed to the _Standard_, and was one of the editors of
the _Marseillaise_ when the challenge, which gave rise to the death of
Victor Noir and the famous trial at Tours, was sent to Prince Pierre
Bonaparte. Immediately after the revolution of the eighteenth of March
he started the _Nouvelle République_, an ephemeral publication which
only lived a week. On the second of April he commenced the
_Affranchi_, or journal of free men, as he called it, Vesinier joining
him in the management of it. The popularity of Grousset caused him to
be elected a member of the Commune in April, and the Government soon
appointed him Minister of Foreign Affairs. He communicated circulars
to the representatives of different nations at Paris, in order to
obtain a recognition of the Commune; he also sent proclamations to the
large towns of France, appealing to arms. But his means of
communication with other governments, and indeed with his own envoys,
was very restricted.
He was one of those who took refuge at the _Mairie_ of the Eleventh
Arrondissement, and who, knowing well that the struggle was really
over, said to the silly heroes who protected them, “All is well.
The Versailles mob is turned, and you will soon join your brethren
in the Champs Elysées.” Many of them that night entered the valley
of the shadow of death! On the third of June the ex-Minister of
Foreign Affairs was arrested in the Rue Condorcet, dressed as a
woman, and marched off to Versailles.

LXX.

“Issy is taken! Issy is not taken! Mégy[74] has delivered it up! Eudes
holds it still.”

I have heard nothing but contradictory news since this morning. Is Fort
Issy in the hands of the Versailles troops—yes or no? Hoping to get
better information by approaching the scene of conflict, I went to the
Porte d’Issy, but returned without having succeeded in learning
anything.

There were but few people in that direction; some National Guards,
sheltered by a casemate, and a few women, watching for the return of
their sons and husbands, were all I saw. The cannonading was terrific;
in less than a quarter of an hour I heard five shells whistle over my
head.

Towards twelve o’clock the drawbridge was lowered, and I saw a party of
about sixty soldiers, dusty, tired, and dejected, advancing towards me.
These were some of the “revengers of the Republic.”

“Where do you come from?” I asked them.

“From the trenches. There were four hundred of us, and we are all that
remain.”

But when I asked them whether the Fort of Issy were taken, they made no
answer.

Following the soldiers came four men, bearing a litter, on which a dead
body lay stretched; and it was with this sad procession that I
re-entered Paris. From time to time the men deposited their load on the
ground, and went into a wine-shop to drink. I took advantage of one of
these moments when the corpse lay abandoned, to lift the cloak that had
been spread over it. It was the body of a young man, almost a lad; his
wound was hidden, but the collar of his shirt was dyed crimson with
blood. When the men returned for the third time, their gait was so
unsteady that it was with difficulty they raised the poor boy’s bier,
and then went off staggering. At the turning of a street the corpse
fell, and I ran up as it was being picked from the ground; one of the
drunken men was shedding tears, and maudling out, “My poor brother!”

NOTES:

[74] Mégy, the famous governor of the Fort of Issy, was implicated in
the last, supposed, plot against the life of Napoleon III. Having shot
one of the police agents charged with his arrest, he was tried and
condemned to death. He was, however, delivered from prison on the
fourth of September, and appointed to the command of a battalion of
National Guards, with which he marched against the Hôtel de Ville on
the thirty-first of October and the twentieth of January. He was named
a member of the Commune on the eighteenth of March, and set fire to
the Cour des Comptes and the Palace of the Légion d’Honneur on the
twenty-third of May, 1871.

LXXI.

We shall see no more of Cluseret! Cluseret is done for, Cluseret is in
prison![75] What has he done? Is he in disgrace on account of Fort
Issy? This would scarcely be just, considering that if the fort were
evacuated yesterday it was reoccupied this morning; by the bye, I
cannot explain satisfactorily to myself why the Versaillais should have
abandoned this position, which they seem to have considered of some
importance. If it is not on account of Fort Issy that Cluseret was
politely asked to go and keep Monseigneur Darboy company, why was it? I
remember hearing yesterday and the day before something about a letter
of General Fabrice, in which that amiable Prussian, it is reported,
begged General Cluseret to intercede with the Commune in behalf of the
imprisoned priests. Is it possible that the Communal delegate, at the
risk of passing for a Jesuit, could have made the required demand? Why,
M. Cluseret, that was quite enough for you to be put in prison, and
shot too into the bargain. However, you did not intercede for anybody,
for the very excellent reason that General Fabrice no more thought of
writing to you, than of giving back Alsace and Lorraine. So we must
search somewhere else for the motive of this sudden eclipse. Some say
there was a quarrel with Dombrowski, that the latter thought fit to
sign a truce without the authority of Cluseret—a truce, what an idea!
Has Dombrowski any scruples about slaughter?—that Cluseret flew into a
great rage; but that his rival got the best of it in the end. You see
if one is an American and the other a Pole, the Commune must have a
hard time of it between the two!

No, neither the evacuation of Fort Issy—in spite of what the _Journal
Officiel_ says—Monseigneur Darboy, nor the quarrel with Dombrowski are
the real causes of the fall of Cluseret. Cluseret’s destiny was to
fall; Cluseret has fallen because he did not like gold lace and
embroidery—“that is the question,” all the rest are pretexts.

So the noble delegate imagined he could quietly issue a proclamation
one morning commanding all the officers under his orders to rip off the
gold and silver bands which luxuriantly ornament their sleeves and
caps![76] He thought his staff would forego epaulets and other military
gewgaws. Why, the man must have been mad! What would Cora or Armentine
have said if they had seen their military heroes stalk into the Café de
Suède or the Café de Madrid, shorn of all their brilliant appendages,
which made them look so wonderfully like the monkey-general at the
Neuilly fair, in the good old times, when there were such things as
fairs, and before Neuilly was a ruin. Ask any soldier, Federal or
otherwise, if he will give up his pay, or his jingling sword, or even
his rank; he may perhaps consent, but ask him to rip off his
embroidery, and he will answer, never! How can you imagine a man of
sense consenting not to look like a mountebank?

Another of these absurd prescriptions has done much to lower Cluseret
in public estimation. One day he took it into his head to prevent his
officers from galloping in the streets and boulevards, under the
miserable pretext that the rapid evolutions of these horsemen had
occasioned several accidents. Well, and if they had, do you think a
gallant captain of horse is going to deprive himself of the pleasure of
curvetting within sight of his lady love, for the pitiful reason, that
he may perchance upset an old woman or two or three children? Citizen
Cluseret does not know what he is talking about! It is certain that if
this valiant general has such a very great horror of accidents, he
should begin by stopping the firing at Courbevoie, which is a great
deal more dangerous than the galloping of a horse on the Boulevard
Montmartre. As you may imagine, the officers went on galloping and
wearing their finery under the very nose of the general, while he
walked about stoically in plain clothes. However, although they did not
obey him, they owed him a grudge for the orders he had given.
Opposition was being hatched, and was ready to burst forth on the first
opportunity, which happened to be the evacuation of Fort Issy. Cluseret
has fallen a victim to his taste for simplicity, but he carries with
him the regrets of all the illused cab-horses which, in the absence of
thoroughbreds, have to suffice the gallant staff, and who, poor
creatures, were only too delighted not to gallop.

NOTES:

[75] General Cluseret was a great personage for a time with the
Communists, and his military talents were lauded to the skies, but
suddenly he was committed to prison, and was succeeded in the command
of the army by Rossel. The cause of his imprisonment is not clear.
Some say that he was discovered to be in correspondence with the
Thiers government, others that he was suspected of aiming at the
Dictatorship. During the confusion that occurred on the first entry of
the Versailles troops into Paris, when the Archbishop of Paris and the
other so-called “hostages” had been barbarously assassinated, when the
Louvre, the Palais Royal, and the Hôtel de Ville were in flames,
Cluseret escaped from prison, and was not heard of again until it was
reported that his body had been found buried beneath the rubbish of
the last barricade. Was report correct?

[76] “THE MINISTER OF WAR TO THE NATIONAL GUARD.
“CITOYENS,—I notice with pain that, forgetful of our modest origin,
the ridiculous mania for trimmings, embroidery, and shoulder-knots
has begun to take hold upon you.
“To work! You have for the first time accomplished a revolution by,
and for, labour.
“Let us not forget our origin, and, above all, do not let us be
ashamed of it, Workmen we were! workmen let us remain!
“In the name of virtue against vice, of duty against abuse, of
austerity against corruption, we have triumphed; let us not forget
the fact.
“Let us be, above all, men of honour and duty; we shall then found
an austere Republic, the only one that has or can have reason for
its existence.
“I appeal to the good sense of my fellow-citizens: let us have no
more tags and lace, no more glitter, no more frippery which costs
so little at the shops yet is so dear to our responsibility.
“In future, anyone who cannot deduce proof of his right to wear the
insignia of his nominal rank, or, who shall add to the regular
uniform of the National Guard, tags, lace, or other vain
distinctions, will be liable to be punished.
“I profit by this occasion to remind each of you of the necessity
of absolute obedience to the authorities, for in obeying those whom
you have elected you are only obeying yourselves.

“The Delegate of War,
“Paris, April 7th, 1871,
(Signed) “E. CLUSERET.”

LXXII.

Suppose that a man in disguise goes into the opera ball intoxicated,
rushes hither and thither, gesticulating, insulting the women, mocking
the men, turns off the gas, then sets light to some curtains, until
such a hue and cry is raised that he is turned out of the place.
Whereupon our mask runs off to the nearest costumier’s, changes his
clown’s dress for that of a pantaloon, and returns to the opera to
recommence his old tricks, saying, “I have changed my dress, no one
will recognise me.” But he is wrong, there is no mistaking his way of
doing business.

The crowd surrounds him and cries, “We recognise you, _beau masque!_”
and if he has had the imprudence to secure the doors, they throw him
out of window.

We recognise you, Executive Commission;[77] it is in vain that you
disguise yourself in the bloody rags of the Committee of Public Safety,
your are still yourself, you are still Félix Pyat, you are still
Ranvier, you have never ceased to be Gérardin; you hope to make
yourself obeyed more readily under this lugubrious costume, but you
mistake. Command us to go and fight, and we will not budge; pursue us,
and we will hardly run away; put us in prison, and we will only laugh.
You are no more a Terror, than Gil-Pérez the actor is Talma; the knocks
you receive have pushed aside your false nose; it is in vain that you
decree, that you rob, that you incarcerate; you are too grotesque to be
terrible. Even if you carried the parody out to the end, and thought
fit to erect a guillotine and sharpen the knife, we should even then
decline to look seriously upon you, and were we to see one by one five
hundred heads fell into the basket, we should still persist in thinking
that your axe was of wood, and your guillotine of cardboard!

[Illustration: Dupont, Delegate of Trade and Commerce.]

NOTES:

[77] The affair of the 30th of April signally disappointed the chiefs
of the insurrection, who decreed the formation of a Committee of
Public Safety, and caused Cluseret to disappear. “The incapacity and
negligence of the Delegate of War having,” they said, “almost lost
them the possession of Fort Issy, the Executive Commission considered
it their duty to propose the arrest of Citizen Cluseret, which was
forthwith decreed by the Commune.”

LXXIII.

The Parisian _Official Journal_ says: “The members of the Commune are
not amenable to any other tribunal than their own” (that of the
Commune). Ah! truly, men of the Hôtel de Ville, you imagine that, do
you? Have you forgotten that there are such tribunals as court-martials
and assizes?

LXXIV.

M. Rossel is really very unfortunate! What is M. Rossel?[78] Why, the
provisional successor of Citizen Cluseret. It was not a bad idea to put
in the word _provisional_. The Commune had confided to him the care of
military matters, which he had accepted, but with an air of
condescension. This “Communeux” looks to me like an aristocrat. At any
rate he has not been fortunate. Scarcely had he taken upon himself the
safety of Paris, when the redoubt of Moulin-Saquet was surprised by the
Versaillais. This accident was not calculated to enhance the courage of
the Federals. The whole affair has been kept as dark as possible, but
the porter of the house where I live, who was there, has told me
strange things.

“Will you believe, Monsieur, that I had just finished a game of cards
with the captain, and was preparing to have a bit of sleep, for it was
near upon eleven o’clock, when I thought I heard something like the
noise of troops marching. I looked round to see if any one heard it
besides myself, but the men were already asleep, and a circular line of
boots was sticking out all round the tents. The captain said: ‘I
daresay it is the patrol from the Rue de Villejuif.’—‘Oh, yes,’ said I,
‘from the barricade,’ and I fell to sleep without a thought of danger.
In fact, there seemed nothing to fear, as the Moulin-Saquet overlooks
the whole of the plain which stretches from Vitry to Choisy-le-Roi, and
from Villejuif to the Seine. It was impossible for a man to approach
the redoubt without being seen by the sentinel. I had, therefore, been
asleep a few minutes when I was awoke by the following dialogue:—‘Stop!
who goes there?’—‘The patrol.’—‘Corporal, forward!’—Oh! said I to
myself, it is our comrades come to see us; there will be some healths
drunk before morning, and I got up to go and give them a welcome. The
captain was also astir. ‘The password!’ he cried. The chief of the
patrol came forward and answered—‘Vengeance!’ I remember wondering at
the moment why he spoke so loud in giving the pass-word, when suddenly
I saw three men rush forward, seize our captain, and throw him down. At
the same time two or three hundred men, dressed as National Guards,
threw themselves into the camp, rushed upon the sleeping artillery-men
with their bayonets, and then fired several volleys into the tents
where our poor comrades were asleep. What I had taken at first for
National Guards were only those devils of sergents-de-ville dressed up!
So, you see, as it was each man for himself, and the high road for
everybody, I just threw myself down on my face, and let myself drop
into the trenches. There was no fear of the noise of my fall being
heard in the riot. I managed to hide myself pretty well in a hole I
found there, and which had doubtless been made by a shell. I could not
see anything, but I heard all that was going on. Clic! clac! clic! went
the rifles, almost like the cracking of a whip, answered by the most
dismal cries from the wounded. I could hear also the grinding of
wheels, and made sure they were taking away our guns, the robbers! When
all was silent except the groans of the dying men, I crept out of my
hiding place. Would you believe it, Monsieur, I was the only one able
to stand up; the Versaillais had taken all those who had not run away
or were not wounded; I saw them, the pilfering thieves, making off
towards Vitry, as fast as their legs could carry them!”

“You have no idea, lieutenant,” I said to the porter, “how the
Versaillais got to know the pass-word?”—“No, only the captain, who is
an honest fellow enough, but rather too fond of the bottle, went in the
evening to the route d’Orléans where there are lots of wine-shops
...”—“And you think he got tipsy, and let the pass-word out to some spy
or other?”—“I would not swear he did not; but what I am more sure of,
is that we are betrayed!”

Alas! yes, unfortunates, you are betrayed, but not in the way you
think. You are being cheated by these madmen and criminals who are busy
publishing decrees at the Hôtel de Ville, while you are dying by scores
at Issy, Vanves, Montrouge, Neuilly, and the Moulin-Saquet; they betray
you when they talk of Royalists and Imperialists; they deceive you when
they tell you, that victory is certain, and that even defeat would be
glorious. I tell you, that victory is impossible, and that your defeat
will be without honour; for when you fell, crying, “Vive la Commune!”
“Vive la République!” the Commune is Félix Pyat, and the Republic,
Vermorel.

NOTES:

[78] Colonel Rossel was one of the most capable members of the Commune
Government. He was born in 1844, and was the son of Commandant Louis
Rossel, an officer who acquired a high reputation in the Chinese war.
The young Louis Rossel received a sound military education at the
Prytanée of La Flèche, and subsequently at the École Polytechnique, at
which latter institution he gained high honours. He served as captain
of engineers in the army of Metz, and was one of the officers who
signed the protestation against the surrender of Bazaine. He succeeded
in eluding the vigilance of the Prussians, and appeared at Tours to
offer his services to the Government of National Defence. Gambetta,
then Minister of War, appointed Rossel to the rank of colonel in the
so-called auxiliary army. After the signature of the peace
preliminaries, the new government refused to ratify the promotion
granted by Gambetta, but offered Rossel the rank of major. This
seriously offended the ex-Dictator’s ex-colonel, who shortly after the
tenth of March, put his sword at the disposition of the Commune. He
was at first appointed chief of the staff of General Cluseret, whom he
subsequently replaced as delegate for war. On April 16 he became
president of the Communist court-martial; he acted with great vigour
in all military affairs until the 10th of May, when the Commune
ordered his arrest.

[Illustration: Chapelle Expiatoire.]

LXXV.

Malediction on the man who imagined this decree; malediction on the
assembly that approved it; and cursed be the hand which shall first
touch a stone of that tomb! Oh I believe me, I am not among those who
regret the times of royal prerogatives, and who believe that everything
would have gone well, in the most peaceful country in the world, if
Louis XVII had only succeeded to the throne after his father, Louis
XVI. The author of the revolution of 1798 knew what he was about in
multiplying such terrible catastrophes. The name of that author was
Infallible Necessity. Indeed I am quite ready to confess that the
indolent husband of Marie Antoinette had none of those qualities which
make a great king, and I will even add, if you wish it absolutely, that
the solitary fact of being a king is a crime worthy a thousand deaths.
As to Marie Antoinette herself—“the Austrian,” _Père Duchesne_ would
call her—I allow that in history she is not quite so amiable as she
appears in the novels of Alexandra Dumas, and that her near
relationship to the queen Caroline-Marie, whose little suppers at
Naples, in company with Lady Hamilton, one is well acquainted with,
gives some excuse for the calumnies of which she has been the object.
Have I said enough to prevent myself being the recipient, in the event
of a Bourbon restoration, of the most modest pension that ever came out
of a royal treasury? Well, in spite of what I have said, and in spite
of what I think, I repeat, “Do not touch that tomb!” Like the Column
Vendôme, which is the symbol of an heroic and terrible epoch in
history, the Chapelle Expiatoire[79] is a souvenir of the old
monarchical reign, an age which was neither devoid of sorrow, nor of
honour for France. Can you not be republican without suppressing
history, which was royalist? The last remains of monarchy repose in
peace beneath that gloomy monument; may it be respected, as we respect
the ashes of those who respected it; and you, breakers of images,
profaners of past glory, do you not fear, in executing your decree, to
produce an effect diametrically opposed to that which you desire? By
persecuting kings even in their last resting-place, are you not afraid
to excite the pity, the regret perhaps, of those whose consciences
still hesitate? In the interest of the Republic, I say, take care! The
memory of the dead stalks forth from open sepulchres!

NOTES:

[79] This chapel was erected by Louis XVIII. upon the spot where,
during the Revolution of 1793, the remains of Louis XVI, and his Queen
had been obscurely interred.

LXXVI.

Rejoice, poor housewives, who, on days of poverty, were obliged to
carry to the Mont-de-Piété[80] the discoloured remains of your wedding
dress, or your husband’s Sunday coat; rejoice, artisans, who, after a
day of toil, thought your bed so hard since your last mattress was
taken to the Rue des Blancs-Manteaux, to rejoin your last pair of
sheets. The Commune has decreed that “all objects in pawn at the
Mont-de-Piété, for a sum not exceeding twenty francs, shall be given
back gratuitously to all persons who shall prove their legitimate right
to the said objects.” Thanks to this benevolent decree, you may now
hope that things you have pawned will be restored to you before three
or four hundred days!

Count on your fingers; the number of articles to which the decree
applies is at least 1,200,000. As there are only three offices for the
claimants to apply to, and considering the forms which have to be
observed, I do not think more than three thousand objects can be given
back daily; the Commune says four thousand, but the Commune does not
know what it is talking about. However, even if we calculate four
thousand a-day, the whole would take up ten or twelve months.

During this time men and women, whom poverty had long ere this taught
the road to the Mont-de-Piété, would have to get up early, neglect the
daily work by which they live, and go and stand awaiting their turn at
the office, frozen in winter, baked in summer, thankful to obtain a
moment’s rest upon one of the wooden benches in the great bare hall;
and when they have been there a long, weary time, to see their number,
drawn by lot, put off to the next day or the day after, or the week or
the month following perhaps.

Still we must not blame the Commune for the sad disappointment of this
long delay, it would be impossible to shorten it. One thing, which is
less impossible, is to indemnify the administration of the
Mont-de-Piété for this gratuitous restitution. Citizen Jourde, delegate
of the finances, says, “I will give 100,000 francs a-week.” Without
stopping to consider where this able political economist means to get
his weekly 100,000 francs, I will be content with remarking that this
sum would in no wise cover the loss to the Mont-de-Piété, and that the
Commune will only be giving alms out of other people’s purses. If,
however, thanks to this decree, some few poor creatures are enabled to
get back those goods and chattels which they were obliged to dispose of
in the hour of need, there will not be much cause to complain. The
Mont-de-Piété usually does a very good business, and there will always
be enough misery in Paris for it to grow rich upon. Besides, the
Commune owes the poor wounded, mutilated, dying fellows who have been
brought from Neuilly and Issy, at least a mattress to die in some
little comfort upon.

NOTES:

[80] The governmental pawnbroking establishments. All the pawnbroking
is carried on by the Government.

LXXVII.

They have put them into the prison of Saint-Lazare. Whom? The nuns of
the convent of Picpus. They have put them there because they have been
arrested. But why were they arrested? That is what Monsieur Rigault
himself could not clearly explain. Some of the nuns are old. They have
been living long in seclusion, and have only changed cells; having been
the captives of Heaven, they have become the prisoners of Citizen
Mouton. In such an abject place too, poor harmless souls! Victor Hugo
has said, speaking of that wretched prison, “Saint-Lazare! we must
crush that edifice.” Yes, later, when we have the time; we must now
pull down the Column Vendôme and the Chapelle Expiatoire. In the
meantime these poor ladies are very sad. One of my friends went to see
them; they have neither their prayer-books nor their crucifix; they
have had even the amulets they wore round their necks taken from them.
This seems nothing to you, citizens of the Commune. You are men of
advanced opinions. You care as much about a crucifix as a fish for an
apple; and perhaps you are right. You have studied the question, and
you say in the evening, looking up at the stars, “There is no God.” But
you must understand that with these poor nuns it is quite a different
matter. They have not read philosophical treatises; they still believe
that the Almighty created the world in six days, and that the Son died
on the cross for the sake of the world. When they were free, or rather
when they were in a prison of their own choosing, they prayed in the
morning, they prayed at noon, they prayed at night, and only
interrupted this most pernicious occupation for the purpose of teaching
poor little girls that it is good to be virtuous, honest, and grateful,
and that Heaven rewards those who do rightly. That was their
occupation, poor simple souls, and you have sent them to Saint Lazare
for that. You should have chosen another prison, for their presence
must be disagreeable to the usual female denizens of the place. But
there, or elsewhere, they do not complain; they only ask for a
prayer-book and a wooden crucifix. Come, Citizen Delegate of the
ex-Prefecture, one little concession, and unless the future of the
Republic is likely to be compromised by so doing, give them a cross. A
cross is only two pieces of wood placed one on the other. I promise you
there will be wood enough in the forest the day honest men make up
their minds to exercise their muscles on your backs, you bullying
slave-drivers!

LXXVIII.

After Bergeret came Cluseret; after Cluseret, Rossel. But Rossel has
just sent in his resignation. My idea is, that we take back Cluseret,
that we may have Bergeret, and so on, unless we prefer to throw
ourselves into the open arms of General Lullier. The choice of another
general for the defence of Paris is however no business of mine; and
the Commune, a sultan without a favourite, may throw his handkerchief
if he pleases, to the tender Delescluze, as some say he has the
intention—I have not the least objection. Why should not Delescluze[81]
be an excellent general? He is a journalist, and what journalist does
not know more about military matters than Napoleon I., or Von Moltke
himself? In the meantime we are in mourning for our third War Delegate,
and we shall no longer see Rossel on his dark bay, galloping between
the Place Vendôme and the Fort Montrouge. He has just written the
following letter to the members of the Commune:—

[Illustration: Quelle Gourmande! Paris at Table.]

Waiter, two or three more stewed generals. —We are out of them. —Very
well, then a dozen colonels in caper sauce. —A dozen? —Yes: directly!!

“CITIZENS, MEMBERS OF THE COMMUNE,—Having been charged by you with
the War Department, I feel myself no longer capable of bearing the
responsibility of a command wherein every one deliberates, and no
one obeys.
“When it was necessary to organise the artillery, the Central
Committee of Artillery deliberated, but nothing was done. After a
month’s revolution, that service is only carried on, thanks to the
energy of a very small number of volunteers.
“On my nomination to the Ministry, I wanted to further the search
for arms, the requisition of horses, and the pursuit of refractory
citizens; I asked help of the Commune.
“The Commune deliberated, but passed no resolutions.
“Later, the Central Committee came and offered its services to the
War Department; I accepted them in the most decisive manner, and
delivered up to its members all the documents I had concerning its
organisation. Since then the Central Committee has been
deliberating, and has done nothing. During this time the enemy
multiplied its venturesome attacks on Fort Issy; had I had the
smallest military force at my command, I would have punished them
for it.
“The garrison, badly commanded, took flight; the officers
deliberated, and sent away from the fort Captain Dumont, an
energetic man, who had been ordered to command them. Still
deliberating, they evacuated the fort, after having stupidly talked
of blowing it up,—as difficult a thing for them to do as to defend
it.
“Even that was not enough. Yesterday, when every one ought to have
been at work or fighting, the chiefs were deliberating upon another
system of organisation from that which I had adopted, so as to make
up for their want of forethought and authority. The results of
their council were a project, when we want men, and a declaration
of principles, when we wanted acts.
“My indignation brought them back to other thoughts, and they
promised me for to-day the largest force they could possibly
muster,—an organised one of not more than 12,000 men. With these I
undertook to march on the enemy. These men were to muster at eleven
o’clock: it is now one, and they are not ready, and the promised
12,000 has dwindled to about 7,000, which is not at all the same
thing.
“Thus, the utter uselessness of the artillery committee prevented
the organization of the artillery; the hesitation of the Central
Committee stopped all arrangements; the petty discussions of the
officers, paralyses the concentration of the troops.
“I am not a man to mind having recourse to violence. Yesterday,
while the chiefs discussed, a company of men with loaded rifles
awaited in the court. But I did not want to take upon myself the
initiative of so energetic a measure, or draw upon myself the odium
of such executions as would have been necessary to extricate
obedience and victory from such a chaos. Even if I had been
protected by the publicity of my acts, I need not have given up my
position.
“But the Commune has not had the courage to confront publicity.
Twice I wished to give some necessary explanations, and twice, in
spite of me, it insisted on a secret council.
“My predecessor was wrong to remain in so absurd a position.
“Enlightened by his example, and knowing that the strength of a
revolutionary, only consists in the clearness of his position, I
have only two alternatives, either to break the chains which impede
my actions, or to retire.
“I will not break the chains, because those chains are you, and
your weakness,—I will not touch the sovereignty of the people.
“I retire; and have the honour to beg for a cell at Mazas.

“ROSSEL.”[82]

[Illustration: Delescluze, Delegate of War.[83]]

Most certainly I do not like the Paris Commune, such as the men of the
Hôtel de Ville understand it. Deceived at first by my own delusive
hopes, I now am sure that we have nothing to expect from it but follies
upon follies, crimes upon crimes. I hate it on account of the
suppressed newspapers, of the imprisoned journalists, of the priests
shut up at Mazas like assassins, of the nuns shut up at Saint-Lazare
like courtesans; I hate it because it incites to the crime of civil war
those who would have been ready to fight against the Prussians, but who
do not wish to fight against Frenchmen; I hate it on account of the
fathers of families sent to battle and to death; on account of our
ruined ramparts, our dismantled forts, each stone of which as it falls
wounds or destroys; on account of the widowed women and the orphaned
children, all of whom they can never pension in spite of their decrees;
I cannot pardon them the robbing of the banks, nor the money extorted
from the railway companies, nor the loan-shares sold to a money-changer
at Liège; I hate it on account of Clémence the spy, and Allix the
madman. I am sorry to think that two or three intelligent men should be
mixed up with it, and have to share in its fall. I hate it particularly
on account of the just principles it at one time represented, and of
the admirable and fruitful ideas of municipal independence, which it,
was not able to carry out honestly, and which, because of the excesses
that have been committed in their name, will have lost for ever,
perhaps, all chance of triumphing. Still, great as is my horror of this
parody of a government to which we have had to submit for nearly two
months, I could not forbear a feeling of repulsion on reading the
letter of Citizen Rossel. It is a capitally written letter, firm,
concise, conclusive, differing entirely from the bombastic,
unintelligible documents to which the Commune has accustomed us; and
besides, it brings to light several details at which I rejoice, because
it permits me to hope that the reign of our tyrants is nearly at an
end. I am glad to hear that the Commune, if it possesses artillery, is
short of artillerymen. It delights me to learn that they can only
dispose of seven thousand combatants. I had feared that it would be
enabled to kill a great many more; and as to what Citizen Rossel says
of the committees and officers who deliberate but do not act, it is
most pleasant news, for it convinces me, that the Commune has not the
power to continue much longer a war, which can but result in the death
of Paris; and yet I highly disapprove of the letter of Citizen Rossel,
because it is on his part an act of treachery, and it is not for the
friends and servants of the Commune to reveal its faults and to show up
its weaknesses. Who obliged Rossel, commander of the staff, to take the
place of his general, disgraced and imprisoned? Did he not accept
willingly a position, the difficulties of which he had already
recognised? He says himself that his predecessor was wrong to have
stayed in so absurd a position, and why did he voluntarily put himself
there, where he blamed another for remaining? If the new delegate hoped
by his own cleverness to modify the position, he ought not, the
position remaining the same, accuse anything but his own incapacity. In
a word, the conclusion at which we arrive is, that he only accepted
power to be able to throw it off with effect, like Cato, who only went
to the public theatres for the purpose of fussily leaving the place, at
the moment when the audience called the actors before the curtain. Not
being able or perhaps willing to save the Commune, M. Rossel desired to
save himself at its expense. There is something ungentlemanly in this.
Do not, however, imagine for a moment that I believe in M. Rossel
having been bought by M. Thiers. All those ridiculous stories of sums
of money having been offered to the members of the Commune, are merely
absurd inventions.[84] What do you think they say of Cluseret? That he
was in the habit of taking his breakfast at the Café d’Orsay, and
afterwards playing a game of dominoes. One day his adversary is
reported to have said to him, “If you will deliver the fort of
Montrouge to the Versaillais, I will give you two millions.” What fools
people must be to believe such absurdities! Rossel has not sold
himself, for the very good reason that nobody ever thought of buying
him. It was his own idea to do what he did. For the pleasure of being
insolent and showing his boldness, he has pulled down from its pedestal
what he adored, consequently the most criminal among the members of the
Commune, once a swindler, now a pilferer, is free to say to M. Rossel,
who is, I am told, a man of intelligence and honesty, “You are worse
than I am, for you have betrayed us!”

NOTES:

[81] PARIS AT DINNER.—An ogress, gentleman! A famished creature,
faring sumptuously; her face flushed with wine, her eyes bright, her
hands trembling. Madame Lutetia is a strapping woman still, with a
queenly air about her, in spite of the red patches on her tunic;
somewhat shorn of her ornaments, it is true, as she has had to pawn
the greater part of her jewelry, but the orgie once over she will be
again what she was before.
For the time being she is wholly absorbed in her gastronomic
exertions. She has already devoured a Bergeret with peas, a Lullier
with anchovy sauce, an Assy and potatoes, a Cluseret with tomatos,
a Rossel with capers, besides a large quantity of small fry, and
she is not yet appeased. The _maître-d’hôtel_ Delescluze waits upon
her somewhat in trepidation, with a sickly smile on his face. What
if, after such a meal of generals and colonels, the ogress were to
devour the waiter!—_Fac simile of design from the “Grelot,” 17th
May, 1871_.

[82] He was convinced of the hopelessness of any further struggle
after the capture of Fort Issy; gave in his resignation, and hid
himself to escape the vengeance of his former colleagues. He was
supposed to be in England or Switzerland, whereas, in fact, he had
fled no farther than the Boulevard Saint Germain. He was arrested by
the police on the ninth of June, disguised as an employé of the
Northern Railway. He was first interrogated at the Petit Luxembourg,
and afterwards conducted handcuffed to Versailles, where three mouths
after he was tried by court-martial and sentenced to military
degradation and death.

[83] Delescluze’s wild life began at Dreux, in 1809. Driven from home
on account of his bad conduct, he came to Paris, and obtained
employment in an attorney’s office, from which he was very soon
afterwards, it is said, discharged for robbery. In 1834, he underwent
the first of his long list of imprisonments, for the part he took in
the April revolution, and in the following year, being compromised in
a conspiracy against the safety of the state, he took refuge in
Belgium, Where he obtained the editorship of the _Courrier de
Charleroi_. In 1840 he returned to Paris, where he founded a journal
called the _Révolution Démocratique et Sociale_, which brought him
fifteen months’ imprisonment and twenty thousand francs fine. After a
long period of liberty of nearly eight years, he was condemned to
transportation by the High Court of Justice, but the condemnation was
given in his absence, for he had slipped over to England, where he
remained until 1853. On his returning in that year to France he was
immediately imprisoned at Mazas, transferred afterwards to Belle-Isle,
and then successively to the hulks of Corte, Ajaccio, Toulon, Brest,
and finally to Cayenne. These sojourns lasted until 1868, when the
amnesty permitted him to return to France, where he made haste to
bring out another new journal, _Le Réveil_, which of course earned him
fines and imprisonments with great rapidity, three of each within the
twelvemonth.
In the month of February, 1871, he was elected deputy by a large
number of votes; and later, when the Assembly went to Bordeaux, sat
there for some time, and then gave in his resignation, in order to
take part with the Commune.
By the Commune he was made delegate at the Ministry of War, after
the pretended flight of Rossel, and in a sitting of the 20th of
April, in which the project of burning Paris was discussed,
Delescluze ended his speech with the words—“If we must die, we will
give to Liberty a pile worthy of her.”

[84] “A plot had just been discovered between Bourget of the
Internationale, Billioray, member of the Commune, and Cérisier,
captain of the 101st Battalion of the insurgent National Guard. For a
certain sum of money they were to deliver Port Issy into the hands of
General Valentin, of the Versailles army. The succession of Rossel to
the Ministry of War frustrated the whole project.
“In the night of the 17th of May another attempt of the same kind
met with failure. The Communists Bourget, Billioray, Mortier,
Cérisier, and Pilotel, the artist, traitors to their own
treacherous cause, were to open the gates to the soldiers of
Versailles, an hour after midnight, at the Point du Jour; the
soldiers to be disguised as National Guards. But, at the appointed
hour, Cérisier took fright, and contented himself with the money he
had received on account (twenty-five thousand francs) in payment
for his treachery, and did no more. When the Versailles troops
presented themselves at the gates, they had to beat a retreat under
a heavy fire of mitrailleuses.” _Guerre des Communeux_.]

LXXIX.

I was told the following by an eye-witness of the scene. In a small
room at the Hôtel de Ville five personages were seated round a table at
dinner. The repast was of the most modest kind, and consisted of soup,
one dish of meat, one kind of vegetable, cheese, and a bottle of vin
ordinaire each. One would have thought, oneself in a restaurant at two
francs a head, if it had not been that the condiments had got musty
during the siege; besides, there was something solemn and official in
the very smell of the viands which took away one’s appetite. However,
our five personages swallowed their food as fast as they could. At the
head of the table sat Citizen Jourde. Jourde looks about eight and
twenty; he has a delicate looking, mathematical head, with brown curly
hair and sallow complexion, a kind of Henri Heine of the Finance. Tall
and thin, with his red scarf tied round his waist, he reminds us of one
of the old Convention of ’89. They sat for some time in silence, as if
they were observing each other. At the end of the first course, Jourde
took up a spoon and examined it, saying, “Silver! true there is silver
at the Hôtel de Ville, I will send for it to-morrow!” One of the other
guests said, “Pardon me, I have to answer for it, and shall not give it
up.”—“Oh, yes you will,” answered Jourde, “I will have an order sent to
you from the Domaine,”[85] and then, as if he were thinking aloud, goes
on to express his satisfaction at having found an unexpected sum of
three hundred thousand francs, as it were on the dinner-table. A whole
day’s pay! He will be able to put by four millions at the end of the
week; he tries to be economical, but the war runs away with everything.
“You must at least give me three days’ notice for the payment of sums
amounting to more than a hundred thousand francs,” says he, with a
shrug of the shoulders, particularly addressed to Beslay. Then he
speaks of his hopes of reducing the Prussian debt before the year is
out, if the Commune lives so long; touches on subjects connected with
the taxes, patents and duties, “or else bank-notes worth fire hundred
francs in the morning, will only be worth twenty sous in the evening;
money is scarce, it is leaving the city. I do not see much copper
about, but if you leave me alone, I promise to succeed.” All this was
said in a tone of the most sincere conviction. When the dinner was
over, he hastily bowed and rushed off, without having taken any notice
of what was said to him. Every now and then cries arose in the streets,
and made the members of the Commune start as they sat there behind
their sombre curtains. “Do you think they can come in?” asked some one
of Johannard, to which he replies, “What a wild idea! Delescluze knows
it is impossible, and Dombrowski, a cold unexcitable fellow, only
laughs when people mention it; does he not, Rigault?” Thereupon the
personage addressed, who has not yet spoken, bows his head in sign of
acquiescence. He looks young in spite of his thick, black beard; his
eyes are weak, his expression is sly and disagreeable, and looks as if
he might sometimes have his hours of coarse joviality. Then a portière
was lowered, or a door shut, and the person who had overheard the
preceding heard and saw no more.

[Illustration: Fontaine, Director of Public Domains And
Registration[86]]

NOTES:

[85] The Commune occupied the Mint, and directed Citizen Camelinat,
bronze-fitter, to manufacture gold and silver coin to the amount of
1,500,000 francs. Of that sum, 76,000 francs only was saved by the
Versailles troops on their entry. The different articles of gold and
silver found at the Hôtel des Monnaies represented a total weight of
1,186 lbs., and consisted of objects taken from the churches,
religious houses, and government offices, Imperial plate, and presents
to the city of Paris. All these objects have been sent to the
repository of the Domaine, where they maybe claimed on identification
by their owners.

[86] Fontaine was nominated on the 18th of March director of the
public domains and of registration. His name figures in the history of
the revolutions, émeutes, and insurrections of Paris from 1848. He was
a professional insurgent.

LXXX.

I am beginning to regret Cluseret. He was impatient, especially in
speech. He used to say “Every man a National Guard!” But with Cluseret,
as with one’s conscience, there were possible conciliations. You had
only to answer the decrees of the war-delegate by an enthusiastic “Why
I am delighted, indeed I was just going to beg you to send me to the
Porte-Maillot;” which having done, one was free to go about one’s
business without fear of molestation. As to leaving Paris, in spite of
the law which condemned every man under forty to remain in the city;
nothing was easier. You had but to go to the Northern Railway Station,
and prefer your request to a citizen, seated at a table behind a
partition in the passport office.[87] When he asked you your age you
had only to answer “Seventy-eight,” passing your hand through your
sable locks as you spoke—“Only that? I thought you looked older,” the
accommodating individual would answer, at the same time putting into
your hand a paper on which was written some cabalistic sign. One day I
had taken it into my head to go and spend two hours at Bougival, and my
pass bore the strange word “Carnivolus” written on it. Provided with
this mysterious document, I was enabled to procure a first-class ticket
and jump into the next train that started. I was free, and nothing
could have prevented my going, if such had been my wish, to proclaim
the Commune at Mont Blanc or Monaco.

How the times are changed! The Committee of Public Safety and the
Central Committee now join together in making the lives of the poor
_réfractaires_[88] a burthen to them. I do not speak of the
disarmaments, which have nothing particularly disagreeable about them,
for an unarmed man may clearly nourish the hope that he is not to be
sent to battle. But there are other things, and I really should not
object to be a little over eighty for a few days. Domiciliary visits
have become very frequent. Four National Guards walk into the house of
the first citizen they please, and politely or otherwise, explain to
him that it is his strict duty to go into the trenches at Vanves and
kill as many Frenchmen as he can. If the citizen resists he is carried
off, and told that on account of his resistance he will have the honour
of being put at the head of his battalion at the first engagement.
These visits often end in violence. I am told that in the Rue Oudinot a
young man received a savage bayonet thrust because he resisted the
corporal’s order; and as these occurrences are not uncommon, the
_réfractaires_ cannot be said to live in peace and comfort. They are
subject to continual terror, the sour visage of their _concierge_ fills
them with misgivings, he may be one of the Commune. As to going to bed,
it must not be thought of; it is during the hours of night that the
Communal agents are particularly active. This necessity of changing
domicile has lead to certain Amélias and Rosalines and other ladies of
that description having the words “Hospitality to _Réfractaires_”
written in pencil on their cards. Men who decline to take advantage of
such opportunities have to go about from hôtel to hôtel, giving
imaginary names, suspicious of the waiters, and awaking at the least
sound, thinking it is the noise of feet ascending the stairs, or the
rattle of muskets on the landing. The day before yesterday a number of
_réfractaires_, having the courage of despair, walked to the Porte
Saint-Ouen—“Will you let us out?” asked they of the commanding officer,
who answered in a decided negative; whereupon the party, which was
three hundred strong, fell upon the captain and his men, whom they
disarmed, and five minutes afterwards they were running free across the
fields.

Others employ softer means of corruption; resort to the wine-shops of
Belleville, where they make themselves agreeable in every way, and soon
succeed in entering into friendly conversation with some of the least
ferocious among the Federals of the place.

[Illustration: Réfractaires Escaping from Paris]

“You are on duty, Tuesday, at the Porte de la Chapelle?”—“Why,
yes.”—“So that you might very easily let a comrade out who wants to go
and pay a visit at Saint-Denis?”—“Quite out of the question; the others
would prevent me, or denounce me to the captain.”—“You think there is
nothing to be done with the captain?”—“Oh! no; he is a staunch patriot,
he is!”—“How very tiresome; and I wanted most particularly to go to
Saint-Denis on Tuesday evening. I would gladly give twenty francs out
of my own pocket for the sake of a little walk outside the
fortifications.”—“There is only one way.”—“And how is that?”—“You don’t
care much about going out by the door, do you?”—“Well, no; what I want
is to get outside.“—“Oh! then listen to me; come to La-Chapelle early
on Tuesday evening, and walk up and down the rampart. I will try and be
on duty at eight o’clock, and look out for you. When I see you I will
take care not to say _qui vive_.”—“That’s easy enough; and what
then?”—“Why, then I will secure around you a thick rope which of course
you will have with you!”—“The devil!”—“And I will throw you into the
trench.”—“By Jove! That will be a leap.”—“Oh! I will do it very
carefully, without hurting you. I will let you slip softly down the
wall.”—“Humph!”—“When you reach the ground below, in an instant you can
be up and off into the darkness. Do you accept? Yes or no?”—“I should
certainly prefer to drive out of the city in a coach and six, but
nevertheless I accept.”

Generally, this plan answers admirably. They say that the Federals of
Belleville and Montmartre make a nice little income with this kind of
business. Sometimes, however, the plan only half succeeds, and either
the rope breaks, or the Federal considers, he may manage capitally to
reconcile his interest with his duty, by sending a ball after the
escaped _réfractaire_.

Disguises are also the order of the day. A poet, whose verses were
received at the Comédie Française with enthusiasm during the siege,
managed to get away, thanks to an official on the Northern Railway, who
lent him his coat and cap. Another poet—they are an ingenious
race—conceived a plan of greater boldness. One day on the Boulevard he
called a fiacre, having first taken care to choose a coachman of
respectable age, “_Cocher_, drive to the Rue Montorgueil, to the best
restaurant you can find.” On the way the poet reasoned thus to himself:
“This coachman has in his pocket, as they all have, a Communal
passport, which allows him to go out and come into Paris as he pleases;
let me remember the fourth act of my last melodrama, and I am saved.”

The cab stopped in front of a restaurant of decent exterior not far
from Philippe’s. The young man went in, asked for a private room, and
told the waiter to send up the coachman, as he had something to say to
him, and to procure a boy to hold the horse. The coachman walked into
the room, where the breakfast was ready served.

“Now, coachman, I am going to keep you all day, so do not refuse to
drink a glass with me to keep up your strength.”

An hour after the poet and the coachman had breakfasted like old
friends; six empty bottles testified that neither one nor the other
were likely to die of thirst. The poet grumbled internally to himself
as he thought of the three bottles of Clos-Vougeot, one of Léoville,
two of Moulin-au-Vent, that had been consumed, and the fellow not drunk
yet. Then he determined to try surer means, and called to the waiter to
bring champagne. “It is no use, young fellow,” laughed the coachman,
who was familiar at least, if he was not drunk; “champagne won’t make
any difference; if you counted on that to get my passport, you reckoned
without your host!”—“The devil I did,” cried the poor young man,
horrified to see his scheme fall through, and to think of the
prodigious length of the bill he should have to pay for
nothing.—“Others, have tried it on, but I am too wide awake by half,”
said the coachman, adding as he emptied the last bottle into his glass,
“give me two ten-franc pieces and I will get you through.”—“How can I
be grateful enough?” cried the poet, although in reality he felt rather
humiliated to find that the grand scene in his fourth act had not
succeeded.—“Call the waiter, and pay the bill.” The waiter was called,
and the bill paid with a sigh. “Now give me your jacket.”—“My
jacket?”—“Yes, this thing in velvet you have on your back.” The poet
did as he was bid. “Now your waistcoat and trousers.”—“My trousers! Oh,
insatiable coachman!”—“Make haste will you, or else I shall take you to
the nearest guard-room for a confounded _réfractaire_, as you are.” The
clothes were immediately given up. “Very well; now take mine, dress
yourself in them, and let’s be off.” While the young man was putting on
with decided distaste the garments of the _cocher_, the latter managed
to introduce his ponderous bulk into those of the poet. This done, out
they went. “Get up on the box.”—“On the box?”—“Yes, idiot,” said the
coachman, growing more and more familiar; “I am going to get into the
cab, now drive me wherever you please.” The plan was a complete
success. At the Porte de Châtillon the disguised poet exhibited his
passport, and the National Guard who looked in at the window of the
carriage cried out, “Oh, he may pass; he might be my grandfather.” The
cab rolled over the draw-bridge, and it was in this way that M ...,—ah!
I was just going to let the cat out of the bag—it was in this way that
our young poet broke the law of the Commune, and managed to dine that
same evening at the Hôtel des Réservoirs at Versailles, with a deputy
of the right on his left hand, and a deputy of the left on his right
hand.

Shall I go away? Why not? Do I particularly wish to be shut up one
morning in some barrack-room, or sent in spite of myself to the
out-posts? My position of _réfractaire_ is sensibly aggravated by the
fact of my being in rather a dangerous neighbourhood. For the last few
days, I have felt rather astonished at the searching glances that a
neighbour always casts upon me, when we met in the street. I told my
servant to try and find out who this man was. Great heavens! this
scowling neighbour of mine is Gérardin—Gérardin of the Commune! Add to
this the perilous fact, that our _concierge_ is lieutenant in a Federal
battalion, and you will have good reason to consider me the most
unfortunate of _réfractaires_. However, what does it matter? I decide
on remaining; I will stay and see the end, even should the terrible
Pyat and the sweet Vermorel both of them be living under the same roof
with me, even if my _concierge_ be M. Delescluze himself!

NOTES:

[87] The decree which rendered obligatory the service in the marching
companies of the National Guard, and the establishment of
courts-martial, spread terror among the population, and thousands of
people thronged daily to the Prefecture of Police. Sometimes, the
queue extended from the Place Dauphine to beyond the Pont Neuf. But
soon afterwards, stratagems of every kind were put into requisition to
escape from the researches of the Commune, which became more eager and
determined, from day to day, after the publication of the following
decree, the chef-d’oeuvre of the too famous Raoul Rigault:—

“EX-PREFECTURE OF POLICE.
“Delivery of Passports.

“Considering that the civil authority cannot favour the non-execution
of the decrees of the Commune, without failing in its duty, and that it
is highly necessary that all communications with those who carry on
this savage war against us should be prevented,
“The member of the Committee of Public Safety, Delegate at the
Prefecture of Police,
“Decrees:—
“Art. 1. Passports can only be delivered on the production of
satisfactory documents.
“Art. 2. No passport will be delivered to individuals between the
ages of seventeen and thirty-five years, as such fall within the
military law.
“Art. 3. No passport will be issued to any member of the old
police, or who are in relation with Versailles.
“Art. 4. Any persons who come within the conditions of Articles 2
or 3, and apply for passports, will be immediately sent to the
dépôt of the ex-Prefecture of Police.

(Signed) “RAOUL RIGAULT,
“Member of the Committee of Public Safety.”]

[88] Those who decline to join the Commune.

LXXXI.

Glorious news! I have seen Lullier again. We had lost Cluseret, lost
Rossel; Delescluze does not suffice, and except for Dombrowski and La
Cécilia with his prima-donna-like name, the company of the Commune
would be sadly wanting in stars. Happily! Lullier has been restored to
us. What had become of him? he only wrote seven or eight letters a day
to Rochefort and Maroteau, that I can find out. How did he manage to
employ that indomitable activity of his, and that of his two hundred
friends, who with their red Garibaldis and blue sailor trousers made
him the most picturesque escort you can imagine? Was he meditating some
gigantic enterprises the dictatorship that Cluseret had dreamed of and
Rossel disdained, was he about to assume it for the good of the
Republic? I have no idea; but whatever he has been doing, I have seen
him again at the club held in the church of Saint Jacques.

[Illustration: General La Cécilia.[89]]

Ha! ha! Worthless hypocrites and inquisitors, who for the last eighteen
hundred years have crushed, degraded, and tortured the poor; you
thought our turn was never to come, you monks, priests, and
archbishops! Thanks to the Commune you now preach in the prisons of the
Republic; you may confess, if you like, the spiders of your dungeons,
and give the holy viaticum to the rats which play around your legs! You
can no longer do any harm to patriots. No more churches, no more
convents! Those who have not houses in the Champs Elysées shall lodge
in your convents; in your churches shall be held honest assemblies,
which will give the people their rights; as to their duties, that is an
invention of reactionists. No more of your sermons or speeches: after
Bossuet, Napoléon Gaillard!

[Illustration: The Church of Saint Eustache. Used As a Red Club. Partly
destroyed by fire.]

On entering the church of Saint Eustache yesterday, I was agreeably
surprised to find the font full of tobacco instead of holy-water, and
to see the altar in the distance covered with bottles and glasses. Some
one informed me that was the counter. In one of the lateral chapels, a
statue of the Virgin had been dressed out in the uniform of a
vivandière, with a pipe in her mouth. I was, however, particularly
charmed with the amiable faces of the people I saw collected there. The
sex to which we owe the _tricoteuses_ was decidedly in the majority. It
was quite delightful not to see any of those elegant dresses and
frivolous manners, which have for so long disgraced the better half of
the human race. Thank heaven! my eyes fell with rapture on the heroic
rags of those ladies who do us the honour of sweeping our streets for
us. Many of these female patriots were proud to bear in the centre of
their faces a rubicund nose, that rivalled in colour the Communal flag
on the Hôtel de Ville. Oh, glorious red nose, the distinguished sign of
Republicanism! As to the men, they seemed to have been chosen among the
first ranks of the new aristocracy. It was charming to note the
military elegance with which their caps were slightly inclined over one
ear; their faces, naturally hideous, were illuminated with the joy of
freedom, and certainly the thick smoke which emanated from their pipes,
must have been more agreeable as an offering, than the faint vapours of
incense that used to arise from the gilded censers. “Marriage,
citoyennes, is the greatest error of ancient humanity. To be married is
to be a slave. Will you be slaves?”—“No, no!” cried all the female part
of the audience, and the orator, a tall gaunt woman with a nose like
the beak of a hawk, and a jaundice-coloured complexion, flattered by
such universal applause, continued, “Marriage, therefore, cannot be
tolerated any longer in a free city. It ought to be considered a crime,
and suppressed by the most severe measures. Nobody has the right to
sell his liberty, and thereby to set a bad example to his fellow
citizens. The matrimonial state is a perpetual crime against morality.
Don’t tell me that marriage may be tolerated, if you institute divorce.
Divorce is only an expedient, and if I may be allowed to use the word,
an Orleanist expedient!” (Thunders of applause.) “Therefore, I propose
to this assembly, that it should get the Commune of Paris to modify the
decree, which assures pensions to the legitimate or illegitimate
companions of the National Guards, killed in the defence of our
municipal rights. No half measures. We, the illegitimate companions,
will no longer suffer the legitimate wives to usurp rights they no
longer possess, and which they ought never to have had at all. Let the
decree be modified. All for the free women, none for the slaves!”

[Illustration: Interior of the Church Of St. Eustache—communist Club.]

The orator descends from the pulpit amidst the most lively
congratulations. I am told by some one standing near me, that the
orator is a monthly nurse, who used to be a somnambulist in her youth.
But the crowd opens now to give place to a male orator, who mounts the
spiral staircase, passes his hand through his hair, and darts a
piercing glance on the multitude beneath. It is Citizen Lullier.

This young man has really a very agreeable physiognomy; his forehead is
intelligent, his eyes pleasant. Looking on M. Lullier’s sympathetic
face, one is sorry to remember his eccentricities. But what is all this
noise about? What has he said? what has he done? I only heard the words
“Dombrowski,” and “La Cécilia.” Every one starts to his feet,
exasperated, shouting. Several chairs are about to be flung at the
orator. He is surrounded, hooted. “Down with Lullier! Long live
Dombrowski!” The tumult increases. Citizen Lullier seems perfectly calm
in the midst of it all, but refuses to leave the pulpit; he tries in
vain to speak and explain. Two women, two amiable hags, throw
themselves upon him; several men rush up also; he is taken up bodily
and carried away, resisting to the utmost and shouting to the last. The
people jump up on the chairs, Lullier has disappeared, and I hear him
no more; what have they done with him!

What do you think of all this, gentlemen and Catholics! Do you still
regret the priests and choristers who used awhile ago to preach and
chant in the Parisian churches? Where is the man, who at the very sight
of this new congregation, so tolerant, so intelligent, listening with
such gratitude to these noble lessons of politics and morality; where
is the man, who could any longer blind himself to the admirable
influence of the present revolution? Innumerable are the benefits that
the Paris Commune showers upon us! As I leave the church, a little
vagabond walks up to the font, and taking a pinch of tobacco,—“In the
name of the...!” says he, then fills his pipe; “In the name of the
...!” proceeding to strike a lucifer, adds, “In the name of the
...!”—“Confound the blasphemous rascal!” say I, giving him a good box
on the ears. After having written these lines I felt inclined to erase
them; on second thoughts I let them remain—they belong to history!

NOTES:

[89] A political refugee, who left his country in 1869 for Prussia,
where he taught mathematics in the University of Ulm, and afterwards
accepted service under Garibaldi.

LXXXII.

This morning I took a walk in the most innocent manner, having
committed no crime that I knew of. It was lovely weather, and the
streets looked gay, as they generally do when it is very bright, even
when the hearts of the people are most sad. I passed through the Rue
Saint-Honoré, the Palais Royal, and finally the Rue Richelieu. I beg
pardon for these details, but I am particularly careful in indicating
the road I took, as I wish the inhabitants of the places in question,
to bear witness that I did not steal in passing a single quartern loaf,
or appropriate the smallest article of jewellery. As I was about to
turn on to the boulevards, one of the four National Guards who were on
duty, I do not know what for, at the corner of the street, cried out,
“You can’t pass!” All right, thought I to myself; there is nothing
fresh I suppose, only the Commune does not want people to pass; of
course, it has right on its side. Thereupon I began to retrace my
steps. “You can’t pass,” calls out another sentinel, by the time I have
reached the other side of the street.

This is strange, the Commune cannot mean to limit my walk to a
melancholy pacing up and down between two opposite pavements. A
sergeant came up to me; I recognised him as a Spaniard, who during the
siege belonged to my company. “Why are you not in uniform?” he asked
me, with a roughness that I fancied was somewhat mitigated by the
remembrance of the many cigars I had given him, the nights we were on
guard during the siege. I understood in an instant what they wanted
with me, and replied unhesitatingly, “Because it is not my turn to be
on guard,”—“No, of course it’s not, it never is. You have been taking
your ease this long time, while others have been getting killed.” It
was evident this Spaniard had not taken the cigars I had given him, in
good part, and was now revenging himself.—“What do you want with me?” I
said; “let’s have done with this.” Instead of answering, he signed to
two Federals standing near, who immediately placed themselves one on
each side of me, and cried, “March!” I was perfectly agreeable,
although this walk was not exactly in the direction I had intended. On
the way I heard a woman say, “Poor young man I They have taken him in
the act.” I was conducted to the church of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, and
marched into the vestry, where about fifty _réfractaires_ were already
assembled.

Behind a deal table, on which were placed a small register, an inkstand
stuck in a great bung, and two quill pens, sat three young men, almost
boys, in uniform. You might have imagined them to be Minos, Aeacus, and
Rhadamanthus, at the age when they played at leap-frog. “Your name?”
said Rhadamanthus, addressing me. I did not think twice about it, but
gave them a name which has never been mine. Suddenly some one behind me
burst out laughing; I turned round and recognised an old friend, whom I
had not noticed among the other prisoners. “Your profession?” inquired
Minos.—“Prizefighter,” I answered, putting my arms akimbo and looking
as ferocious as possible, by way of keeping up the character I had
momentarily assumed. To the rest of the questions that were addressed
to me, I replied in the same satisfactory manner. When it was over,
Minos said to me, “That is enough; now go and sit down, and wait until
you are called.”—“Pardon me, my young friend, but I shall not go and
sit down, nor shall I wait a moment more.”—“Are you making fun of us?
We are transacting most serious business, our lives are at stake. Go
and sit down.”—“I have already had the honour to remark, my dear
Rhadamanthus, that I did not mean to sit down. Be kind enough to allow
me to depart instantly.”—“You ask _me_ to do this?”—“Yes! you!” I
shouted in a tremendous voice. The three judges looked at me in great
perplexity, and began whispering amongst themselves. A prize fighter,
by jingo! I thought the moment had come to strike a decisive blow, so I
pulled out of my pocket a little green card, which I desired them to
examine. Immediately Minos, Aeacus, and Rhadamanthus got up, bowed to
me most respectfully, and called out to two National Guards who were at
the door, “Allow the citizen to pass.”—“By-the-bye,” said I, pointing,
to my friend, “this gentleman is with me.”—“Allow both the citizens to
pass,” shouted the lads in chorus.—“This is capital,” cried my friend
as soon as we were well outside the door.—“How did you manage?”—“I have
a pass from the Central Committee.”—“In your own name?”—“No, I bought
it of the widow of a Federal; who was on very good terms with Citizen
Félix Pyat.”—“Why, it is just like a romance.”—“Yes, but a romance that
allows me to live pretty safely in the midst of this strange reality.
Anyhow, I think we had better look out for other lodgings.”

[Illustration: House of M. Thiers, Palace Saint-Georges.]

LXXXIII.

At ten o’clock in the evening I was walking up the Rue
Notre-Dame-de-Lorette. In these times the streets are quite deserted at
that hour. Looking on in front I saw that the Place Saint-Georges was
lighted up by long tongues of flame, that the wind blew hither and
thither. I hastened on, and was soon standing in front of M. Thiers’
house.[90] At the open gate stood a sentinel; a large fire had been
lighted in the court by the National Guards; not that the night was
cold, they seemed to have lighted it merely for the pleasure of burning
furniture and pictures, that had been left behind by the Communal
waggoners. They had already begun to pull down the right side of the
house; a pickaxe was leaning against a loosened stone; the roof had
fallen in, and a rafter was sticking out of one of the windows. The
fire rose higher and higher; would it not be better that the flames
should reach the house and consume it in an hour or two, than to see it
being gradually pulled down, stone by stone, for many days to come? In
the court I perceived several trucks full of books and linen. A
National Guard picked up a small picture that was lying near the gate;
I bent forward and saw that it was a painting of a satyr playing on a
flute. How sad and cruel all this seemed! The men lounging about looked
demoniacal in the red light of the fire. I turned away, thinking not of
the political man, but of the house where he had worked, where he had
thought, of the books that no longer stood on the shelves, of the
favourite chair that had been burnt on the very hearth by which he had
sat so long; I thought of all the dumb witnesses of a long life
destroyed, dispersed, lost, of the relatives, and friends whose traces
had disappeared from the rooms empty to-day, in ruins to-morrow; I
thought of all this, and of all the links that would be broken by a
dispersion, and I trembled at the idea that some day—in these times
anything seems possible—men may break open the doors of my modest
habitation, knock about the furniture of which I have grown fond,
destroy my books which have so long been the companions of my studies,
tear the pictures from my walls, and burn the verses that I love for
the sake of the trouble they have given me to make,—kill, in a word,
all that renders life agreeable to me, more cruelly than if four
Federals were to take me off and shoot me at the corner of a street.
But I am not a political man. I belong to no party—who would think of
doing me any injury? I am perfectly harmless, with my lovesick
metaphor. Ah I how egotistical one is! It was of my own home that I
thought while I stood in front of the ruin in the Place Saint-Georges.
I confess that I was particularly touched by the misfortunes of that
house, because it awakened in me the fear of my own, misfortune, most
improbable, and most diminutive, it is true, in comparison with that.

[Illustration: House of M. Thiers During Demolition and Removal.]

NOTES:

[90] It should be remarked that the destruction of M. Thiers’ house
coincided with the first success of the Versailles army; it was the
spirit of hatred and mad destructiveness which dictated the following
decree, issued by the Committee of Public Safety on the 10th of May:—
“Art. 1. The goods and property of Thiers (they even denied him the
appellation of citizen) are seized by order of the administration
of public domains.
“Art. 2. The house of Thiers, situated at the Place Saint-Georges,
to be demolished.”
“On the following day the National Assembly, in presence of the
activity exhibited by M. Thiers, declared that the proscribed,
whose house was demolished, had exhibited proofs of an amount of
patriotism and political ability which inspired every confidence in
the future. On the 12th of the same month works were commenced at
Versailles for the formation of a railway-station sufficient for
all the wants of an important army, the initiation of which was due
to M. Thiers; a conference was opened on the 19th April with the
Western Railway Company, the plans were approved on the 22nd of the
same month, and the preliminary works were commenced on the 12th of
May. When these are terminated, they will consist of thirty-five
parallel lines of rails, more than a mile in length. But the
principal point in the plan is, that by means of branches to
Pontoise and Chevreuse, this immense station may be placed in
direct communication with all the lines of railway in France. It is
easy enough to draw the following conclusion, namely, that if the
necessity should ever again arise, Paris would cease to be the
central depot for all commercial movements, and thus the paralysis
of the affairs of the whole country would be avoided, in case the
Parisian populace should again be bitten by the barricade mania. At
one time it was feared that the collections of M. Thiers were
destroyed in the conflagration at the Tuileries; but M. Courbet
reports that on the 12th of May he asked what he ought to do about
the different things taken at the house of M. Thiers, and if they
were to be sent to the Louvre or to be publicly sold, and he was
then appointed a member of the commission to examine the case.
Regarding his conduct at the time of the demolishing of the house
of M. Thiers, he arrived too late, he says, to make an inventory;
the furniture and effects had been already packed by the _employés_
of the Garde Meuble; “I made some observations about it, and on
going through the empty apartments, I noticed two small figures
that I packed in paper, thinking they might be private _souvenirs_,
and that I would return them some day to their owner. All the other
things were already destroyed or gone.”

LXXXIV.

An anecdote: Parisian all over; but with such stuff are they amused!

Raoul Rigault, the man who arrests, was breakfasting with Gaston
Dacosta, the man who destroys. These two friends are worthy of each
other. Rigault has incarcerated the Archbishop of Paris, but Dacosta
claims the merit of having loosened the first stone in M. Thiers’
house. But however, Rigault would destroy if Dacosta were not there to
do so; and if Rigault did not arrest, Dacosta would arrest for him.

They talked as they ate. Rigault enumerated the list of people he had
sent to the Conciergerie and to Mazas, and thought with consternation
that soon there would be no one left for him to arrest. Suddenly he
stopped his fork on its way to his mouth, and his face assumed a most
doleful expression.—“What’s the matter?” cried Dacosta, alarmed.—“Ah!”
said Rigault, tears choking his utterance, “Papa is not in
Paris.”—“Well, and what does it matter if your father is not
here?”—“Alas!” exclaimed Rigault, bursting out crying, “I could have
had him arrested!”[91]

NOTES:

[91] The illegality of his conduct, however, was complaint made by
Arthur Arnould, to the committee, concerning the arbitrary arrest of a
number of persons. Cournet was appointed to the Prefecture in
Rigault’s stead, but the amateur policeman and informer did not
renounce work; he found the greatest pleasure, as he himself expressed
it, in acting the spy over the official spies. This man was a
well-known frequenter of the low cafés of the Quartier Latin, and his
face bore such evidences of his debauched life, that though only
twenty-eight years of age, he looked nearer forty.

[Illustration: Cournet, Member of Committee Of General Safety.]

LXXXV.

The horrible cracking sound that is heard at sea when a vessel splits
upon a rock, is not a surer sign of peril to the terrified crew, than
are the vain efforts, contradictions and agitation at the Hôtel de
Ville, the forerunners of disaster to the men of the Commune. Listen!
the vessel is about to heave asunder. Everybody gives orders, no one
obeys them. One man looks defiantly at another; this man denounces
that, and Rigault thinks seriously of arresting them both. There is a
majority which is not united, and a minority that cannot agree amongst
themselves. Twenty-one members retire, they do well.[92] I am glad to
find on the list the names of the few that Paris’ still believes in,
and whom, thanks to this tardy resignation, it will not learn to
despise. For instance, Arthur Arnould. But why should they take the
trouble to seek out a pretext? Why did they not say simply: “We have
left them because we find them full of wickedness; we were blinded as
you were at first, but now we in our turn see clearly; a good cause has
been lost by madmen or worse, and we have abandoned it because, if we
were to stay a moment longer, now that we are no longer blinded, we
should be committing a criminal act” Such words as these would have
opened the eyes of so many wretched beings, who are going to their
deaths and think they do well to die! As to those who remain, they must
feel that their power is slipping from them. They did not arrest or
detain Rossel; it would seem as if they dared not touch him because he
was right in thinking what he said, although he was very wrong to say
it as he did. While the Commune hesitates, the military plans of the
Versaillais are being carried out. Vanves taken, Montrouge in ruins,
breaches opened at the Point-du-Jour, at the Porte-Maillot, at
Saint-Ouen; the Communists have only to choose now, between flight and
the horrors of a terrible death struggle! May they fly, far, far away,
beyond the reach of vengeance, despised, forgotten if that be possible!
I am told that the Central Committee is trying now to substitute itself
for the Commune, which was elected by its desire.[93] One born of the
other, they will die together.

[Illustration: Arthur Arnould, Commissioner of Foreign Affairs.[94]]

[Illustration: Foundered Craft on the Seine.
Porte Maillot et Avenue de la Grande Armée]

NOTES:

[92] An important document has just made the round of the Communal
press—the manifesto of the minority of the Commune, in which
twenty-one members declare their refusal to take any farther part in
the deliberations of the body, which they accuse of having delivered
its powers into the hands of the Committee of Public Safety, and thus
rendering itself null. This declaration is signed by:—Arthur Arnould,
Avrial, Andrieux, Arnold, Clémence, Victor Clément, Courbet, Franckel,
Eugène Gérardin, Jourde, Lefrançais, Longuet, Malon, Ostyn, Pindy,
Sérailler, Tridon, Theisz, Varlin, Vermorel, Jules Vallès.
Adding to these twenty-one secessionists, twenty-one members who
have resigned:—Adam, Barré, Brelay, Beslay, De Bouteiller, Chéron,
Desmarest, Ferry, Fruneau, Goupil, Loiseau-Pinson, Leroy, Lefèvre,
Méline, Murat, Marmottan, Nast, Ulysse Parent, Robineat, Rane,
Tirard;
Three who have not sat: Briosne, Menotti Garibaldi, Rogeard;
Two dead: Duval, Flourens;
One captured: Blanqui;
One escaped: Charles Gérardin;
Five incarcerated: Allix, Panille dit Blanchet, Brunel, Emile
Clément, Cluseret;—
Out of 101 members elected to the Commune on the 26th of March and
the 16th of April, only forty-seven now remain:—Amouroux, Ant.
Arnaud, Assy, Babick, Billioray, Clément, Champy, Chardon, Chalain,
Demay, Dupont, Decamp, Dereure, Durant, Delescluze, Eudes, Henry
Fortuné, Ferré, Gambon, Geresme, Paschal Grousset, Johannard,
Ledroit, Langevin, Lonclas, Mortier, Léo Meiller, Martelet, J.
Miot, Oudet, Protot, Paget, Pilotel, Félix Pyat, Philippe, Parisel,
Pottier, Régère, Raoul Rigault, Sicard, Triquet, Urbain, Vaillant,
Verdure, Vésmier, Viart.

[93] “REPUBLICAN FEDERATION OF THE NATIONAL GUARD.

“Central Committee.
“To the People of Paris! To the National Guard!

“Rumours of dissensions between the majority of the Commune and the
Central Committee have been spread by our common enemies with a
persistency which, once for all, must be crushed by public compact.
“The Central Committee, appointed to the administration of military
affairs by the Committee of Public Safety, will enter upon office
from this day.
“This Committee, which has upheld the standard of the Communal
revolution, has undergone no change and no deterioration. It is
today what it was yesterday, the legitimate defender of the
Commune, the basis of its power, at the same time as it is the
determined enemy of civil war; the sentinel placed by the people to
protect the rights that they have conquered,
“In the name, then, of the Commune, and of the Central Committee,
who sign this pact of good faith, let these gross suspicions and
calumnies be swept away. Let hearts beat, let hands be ready to
strike in the good cause, and may we triumph in the name of union
and fraternity.
“Long live the Republic!
“Long live the Commune!
“Long live the Communal Federation!

“The Commission of the Commune, BERGERET, CHAMPY, GERESME, LEDROIT,
LONGLAS, URBAIN.
“The Central Committee.
“Paris, 18th May, 1871.”

[94] Arnould is a man of about forty-seven years of age, small in
stature, lively and intelligent. He has written in many of the
Democratic journals of Paris and the provinces; and his literary
talents are of a good kind. Being connected with Rochefort’s journal,
the _Marseillaise_, he was sent by the latter to challenge Pierre
Bonaparte, and was a witness at the trial which followed the murder of
Victor Noir.
Although naturally drawn by his connections into the movement of
the eighteenth of March, he always protested loudly against the
arbitrary acts of the Commune, and it is surprising that he did not
fall under accusation, by his colleagues. He opposed particularly
the proposals for the suppression of newspapers. “It is prodigious
to me,” he said, in full meeting of the committee, “that people
will still talk of arresting others for expressing their opinions.”
He voted against the organisation of the Committee of Public Safety
on the ground:—
“That such an institution would be directly opposed to the
political opinions of the electoral body, of which the Commune is
the representative.”
He protested most energetically against secret imprisonment—
“Secret incarceration has something immoral in it; it is moral
torture substituted for physical.
“I cannot understand men who have passed their life in combating
the errors of despotism, falling into the same faults when they
arrive at power. Of two things one: either secret imprisonment is
an indispensable and good thing; or, it is odious. If it was good
it was wrong to oppose it, and if it be odious and immoral, we
ought not to continue it.”
What on earth had he then to do in the Commune?
“Que diable allait-il faire dans cette galère?”

LXXXVI.

It was five o’clock in the afternoon. The day had been splendid and the
sun shone brilliantly on Caesar still standing on the glorious pedestal
of his victories. Outside the barricades of the Rue de la Paix and the
Rue Castiglione, the crowd was standing in a compact mass, as far as
the Tuileries on one side and the New Opera House on the other. There
must have been from twenty to twenty-fire thousand people there.
Strangers accosted each other by the title of Citizen, I heard some
talking about an eccentric Englishman who had paid three thousand
francs for the pleasure of being the last to climb to the summit of the
column. Nearly every one blamed him for not having given the money to
the people. Others said that Citizen Jourde would not manage to cover
his expenses; Abadie[95] the engineer had asked thirty-two thousand
francs to pull down the great trophy, and that the stone and plaster
was after all, not covered with more than an inch or two of bronze,
that it was not so many metres high, and would not make a great many
two-sous pieces after all. These sous seemed to occupy the public mind
exceedingly, but the principal subjects of conversation, were the fears
concerning the probable effects of the fall.

[Illustration: Barricade of the Rue Castiglione, from The Place
Vendôme.]

The event was slow in accomplishment. The wide Place was thinly
sprinkled with spectators, not more than three hundred in all,
privileged beings with tickets, or wearing masonic badges; or officers
of the staff. Bergeret at one of the windows was coolly smoking a
cigarette; military bands were assembled at the four angles of the
Place; the sound of female laughter reached us from the open windows of
the Ministère de la Justice. The horses of the mounted sentinels
curvetted with impatience; bayonets glittered in the sun; children
gaped wearily, seated on the curbstone. The hour of the ceremony was
past; a rope had broken. Around the piled faggots on which the column
was to fall, great fascines of flags of the favourite colour were
flying.

The crowd did not seem to enjoy being kept in suspense, and proclaimed
their impatience by stamping with measured tread, and crying “Music!”

At half-past five there was a sudden movement and bustle around the
barricade of the Rue Castiglione. The members of the Commune appeared
with their inevitable red scarfs.[96] Then there was a great hush. At
the same instant the windlass creaked; the ropes which hung from the
summit of the column tightened; the gaping hole in the masonry below,
gradually closed; the statue bent forward in the rays of the setting
sun, and then suddenly describing in the air a gigantic sweep, fell
among the flags with a dull, heavy thud, scattering a whirlwind of
blinding dust in the air.

Then the bands struck up the “Marseillaise,” and cries of “Vive la
Commune” were re-echoed on all sides by the terror or the indifference
of the multitude. In a marvellously short time, however, all was quiet
again, so quiet, indeed, that I distinctly heard a dog bark as it ran
frightened across the Place.

I daresay the members of the Commune, who presided over the
accomplishment of this disgraceful deed, exclaimed in the pride of
their miserable hearts, “Caesar, those whom you salute shall live!”

Everybody of course wished to get a bit of the ruin, as visitors to
Paris eagerly bought bits of siege bread framed and glazed, and there
was a general rush towards the place; but the National Guards crossed,
their bayonets in front of the barricade, and no one was allowed to
pass. So that the crowd quickly dispersed to its respective dinners.
“It is fallen!” said some to those who had not been fortunate enough to
see the sight. “The head of the statue came off—no one was killed.” The
boys cried out, “Oh, it was a jolly sight all the same!” But the
greater part of the people were silent as they trudged away.

Then night came on, and next day a land-mark and a finger-post seemed
missing in our every-day journey. Until we lose a familiar object we
hardly appreciate its existence.

NOTES:

[95] Abadie arranged to demolish the Colonne Vendôme for 32,000 or
38,000 francs, forfeiting 600 francs for every day’s delay after the
fourth of May. This reduced the sum to be paid to him by 6000 francs.

[96] Regarding Courbet and the destruction of the Column, he rejects
the accusation on the ground that this decree had been voted
previously to his admission in the Commune, and on the request he had
made under the Government of the 4th of May of removing the column to
the esplanade of the Invalides. He affirms that the official paper has
altered his own words at the Commune, and he pretends having proposed
to the Government to rebuild the column at his own expense, if it can
be proved that he has been the cause of its destruction.

LXXXVII.

On the sixteenth, I received a prospectus through my concierge. There
was to be a concert, mixed with speeches—a sort of popular fête at the
Tuileries. The places varied in price from ten sous to five francs.
Five francs the Salle des Maréchaux; ten sous the garden, which was to
be illuminated with Venetian lamps among the orange-trees; the whole to
be enlivened by fireworks from the Courbevoie batteries.

I had tact enough not to put on white gloves, and set out for the
palace.

It was not a fairy-like sight; indeed, it was a most depressing
spectacle. A crowd of thieves and vagabonds, of dustmen and
rag-pickers, with four or five gold bands on their sleeves and caps,
(the insignia of officers of the National Guard), were hurrying along
down the grand staircase, chewing “imperiales,” spitting, and repeating
the old jokes of ’93. As to the women—they were sadly out of place.
They simpered, and gave themselves airs, and some of them even beat
time with their fans, as Mademoiselle Caillot was singing, to look as
if they knew something about music.

[Illustration: The Palace of the Tuileries, from The Garden.]

The Last concert held in the Tuileries by the Commune took place on
Sunday, the 21st March, when Auteuil and Passy had been in the power of
the army for several hours. Two days later the old palace was in
flames. Citizen Félix Pyat had advocated the preservation of the
Tuileries in the “Vengeur”, proposing to convert it into an “asylum”
for the victims of work and the martyrs of the Republic. “This
residence”, he wrote, “ought to be devoted to people, who had already
taken possession of it.”

The concert took place in the Salle des Maréchaux: a platform had been
erected for the performers. The velvet curtains with their golden bees
still draped the windows. From the gallery above I could see all that
was going on. The Imperial balcony opens out of it; I went there, and
leaned on the balustrade with a certain feeling of emotion. Below were
the illuminated gardens, and far away at the end of the Champs Elysées,
almost lost in the purple of the sky, rose the Arc de Triomphe de
l’Etoile.

The roaring of the cannon at Vanves and Montrouge reached me where I
stood. When the duet of the “_Maître de Chapelle_” was over, I returned
into the hall; the distant crashing of the mitrailleuse at Neuilly,
borne towards us on the fresh spring breeze, in through the open
windows, joined its voice to the applause of the audience.

Oh! what an audience! The faces in general looked fit subjects for the
gibbet; others were simply disgusting: surprise, pleasure, and fear of
Equality were reflected on every physiognomy. The carpenter, Pindy,
military governor of the Hôtel de Ville, was in close conversation with
a girl from Philippe’s. The ex-spy Clémence muttered soft speeches into
the ear of a retired _chiffonnière_, who smiled awkwardly in reply. The
cobbler Dereure was intently contemplating his boots; while Brilier,
late coachman, hissed the singers by way of encouragement, as he would
have done to his horses. They were going to recite some verses: I only
waited to hear—

“PUIS, QUEL AVEUGLEMENT! QUEL NON-SENS POLITIQUE!”

an Alexandrine, doubtless, launched at the National Assembly, and made
my way to the garden as quickly as I could.

There, in spite of the Venetian lamps, all was very dull and dark. The
walks were almost deserted, although it was scarcely half-past nine. I
took a turn beneath the trees: the evening was cold; and I soon left
the gardens by the Rue de Rivoli gate. A good many people were standing
there “to see the grand people come from the fête”—a fête given by
lackeys in a deserted mansion!

LXXXVIII.

I was busy writing, when suddenly I heard a fearful detonation,
followed by report on report. The windows rattled: I thought the house
was shaking under me. The noise continued: it seemed as if cannon were
roaring on all sides. I rushed down into the street; frightened people
were running hither and thither, and asking questions. Some thought
that the Versaillais were bombarding Paris on all sides. On the
Boulevards I was told it was the fort of Vanves that had been blown up.
At last I arrived on the Place de la Concorde: there the consternation
was great, but nothing was known for certain. Looking up, I saw high up
in the sky what looked like a dark cloud, but which was not a cloud. I
tried again and again to obtain information. It appeared pretty certain
that an explosion had taken place near the Ecole Militaire-doubtless at
the Grenelle powder-magazine, I then turned into the Champs Elysées. A
distant cracking was audible, like the noise of a formidable battery of
mitrailleuses. Puffs of white smoke arose in the air and mingled with
the dark cloud there. I no longer walked, I ran: I hoped to be able to
see something from the Rond Point de l’Etoile. Once there, a grand and
fearful sight met my eyes. Vast columns of smoke rolled over one
another towards the sky. Every now and then the wind swept them a
little on one side, and for an instant a portion of the city was
visible beneath the rolling vapours. Then in an instant a flame burst
out—only one, but that gigantic, erect, brilliant, as one that might
dart forth from a Tolcano suddenly opened, up through the smoke which
was reddened, illumined by the eruption of the fire. At the same moment
there were explosions as of a hundred waggons of powder blown up one
after another. All this scene, in its hideous splendour, blinded and
deafened me. I wanted to get nearer, to feel the heat of the burning,
to rush on. I had the fire-frenzy!

[Illustration: Razoua, Governor of the Ecole militaire[97]]

Going down to the Quai de Passy, I found a dense crowd there. Some one
screamed out: “Go back! go back! the fire will soon reach the
cartridge-magazine.” The words had scarcely been uttered, when a storm
of balls fell like hail amongst us. Each person thought himself
wounded, and many took to their heels. It did not enter into my head to
run away. From where I was then, the sight was still more terribly
beautiful, and the crowd that had withdrawn from the spot soon
re-assembled again. Dreadful details were passed from mouth to mouth.
Four five-storied houses had fallen; no one dared to think even of the
number of the victims. Bodies had been seen to fall from the windows,
horribly mutilated; arms and legs had been picked up in different
places. Near the powder-magazine is a hospital, which was shaken from
foundation to roof: for an instant it had trembled violently as if it
were going to fall. The nurses, dressers, and even the sick had rushed
from the wards, shrieking in an agony of fear; the frightened horses,
too, with blood streaming down their sides, pranced madly among the
fugitives, or galloped away as fast as they could from the awful scene.

As to the cause of the explosion, opinions varied much. Some said it
was owing to the negligence of the overseers or the imprudence of the
workwomen; others, that the fire was caused by a shell. A woman rushed
up to us, screaming out that she had just seen a man arrested in a shed
in the Champ de Mars, who acknowledged having blown up the
powder-magazine, by order of the Versailles government. Of course this
was inevitable. The Commune would not let such a good opportunity pass
for accusing its enemies. A few innocent people will be arrested, tried
with more or less form, and shot; when they are so many corpses, the
Commune will exclaim, “You see they must have been guilty: they have
been shot!”

As evening came on I turned home, thinking that the cup was now filled
to overflowing, and that the devoted city had had to suffer defeat,
civil war, infamy, and death; but that this last disaster seemed almost
more than divine justice. Ever and anon I turned my head to gaze again.
In the gathering gloom, the flames looked blood-red, as if the Commune
had unfurled its sinister banner over that irreparable disaster.

NOTES:

[97] Razoua served in a regiment of Spahis in Africa. Becoming
acquainted with the journalists who used to frequent the Café de
Madrid, he was a constant attendant there. He took up literature, and
in 1867 published some violent articles in the _Pilori_ of Victor
Noir. He afterwards went with Delescluze to the _Réveil_, where his
revolutionary principles were manifested. In the month of February,
1871, he was elected a member of the National Assembly by the people
of Paris. After having sat for some time at Bordeaux, he gave his
resignation, and became one of the Communal council.
Appointed governor of the École Militaire, he distinguished himself
in no way in his position, except by the sumptuous dinners and
déjeûners with which he regaled his friends.

LXXXIX.

I have gazed so long on what was passing around me that my eyes are
weary. I have watched the slow decline of joy, of comfort and luxury,
almost without knowing how everything has been dying around me, as a
man in a ball-room where the candles are put out, one by one, may not
perceive at first the gathering gloom. To see Paris, as it is at the
present moment, as the Commune has made it, requires an effort. Let me
shut my eyes, and evoke the vision of Paris as it was, living, joyous,
happy even in the midst of sadness. I have done so—I have brought it
all back to me; now I will open my eyes and look around me.

In the street that I inhabit not a vehicle of any kind is visible. Men
in the uniform of National Guards pass and repass on the pavement; a
lady is talking with her _concierge_ on the threshold of one of the
houses. They talk low. Many of the shops are closed; some have only the
shutters up; a few are quite open. I see a woman at the bar of the
wine-shop opposite, drinking.

Some quarters still resist the encroachments of silence and apathy.
Some arteries continue to beat. Some ribbons here and there brighten up
the shop-windows: bare-headed shopgirls pass by with a smile on their
lips; men look after them as they trip along. At the corner of the
Boulevards a sort of tumult is occasioned by a number of small boys and
girls, venders of Communal journals, who screech out the name and title
of their wares at the top of their voices. But even there where the
crowd is thickest, one feels as if there were a void. The two contrary
ideas of multitude and solitude seem to present themselves at once in
one’s mind. A weird impression! Imagine a vast desert with a crowd in
it.

The Boulevards look interminable. There used to be a hundred obstacles
between you and the distance; now there is nothing to prevent your
looking as far as you like. Here and there a cab, an omnibus or two,
and that is all. The passers-by are no longer promenaders. They have
come out because they were obliged: without that they would have
remained at home. The distances seem enormous now, and people who used
to saunter about from morning till night will tell you now that “the
Madeleine is a long way off.” Very few men in black coats or blouses
are to be seen; only very old men dare show themselves out of uniform.
In front of the café’s are seated officers of the Federal army,
sometimes seven or eight around a table. When you get near enough, you
generally find they are talking of the dismissal of their last
commander. Here and there a lady walks rapidly by, closely veiled,
mostly dressed in black, with an unpretending bonnet. The gallop of a
horse is distinctly audible—in other times one would never have noticed
such a thing; it is an express with despatches, a Garibaldian, or one
of the _Vengeurs de Flourens_, who is hoisted on a heavy cart-horse
that ploughs the earth with its ponderous forefeet. Several companies
of Federals file up towards the Madeleine, their rations of bread stuck
on the top of their bayonets. Look down the side-streets, to the right
or the left, and you will see the sidewalks deserted, and not a vehicle
from one end to the other of the road. Even on the Boulevards there are
times when there is no one to be seen at all. However, beneath it all
there is a longing to awaken, which is crushed and kept down by the
general apathy.

In the evening one’s impulses burst forth; one must move about; one
must live. Passengers walk backwards and forwards, talking in a loud
voice. But the crowd condenses itself between the Rue Richelieu and the
Rue du Faubourg Montmartre. Solitude has something terrible about it
just now. People congregate together for the pleasure of elbowing each
other, of trying to believe they are in great force. Quite a crowd
collects round a little barefooted girl, who is singing at the corner
of a street. A man seated before a low table is burning _pastilles_;
another offers barley-sugar for sale; another has portraits of
celebrities. Everybody tries hard to be gay; but the shops are closed,
and the gas is sparingly lighted, so that broad shadows lie between the
groups.

Some few persons go to the theatres; the playbills, however, are not
seductive. If you go in, you will find the house nearly empty; the
actors gabble their parts with as little action as possible. You see
they are bored, and they bore us. Sometimes when some actor, naturally
comic, says or does something funny, the audience laughs, and then
suddenly leaves off and looks more serious than before. Laughter seems
out of place. One does not know how to bear it; so one walks up and
down the corridors, then instead of returning to the play, wanders out
again on to the Boulevard. It is ten o’clock—dreadfully late. Many of
the cafés are already closed for the night. At Tortoni’s and the Café
Anglais, not a glimmer is visible. The crowd has nearly disappeared.
Only a few officers remain, who have been drinking all the evening in
an _estaminet_. They call to each other to hurry on; perhaps one of
them is drunk, but even he is not amusing. Let us go home. Scarcely
anyone is left in the street. A bell is rung here and there, as the
last of us reach our respective homes.

That, Commune de Paris, is what you have made of Paris! The Prussians
came, Paris awaited them quietly with a smile; the shells fell on its
houses, it ate black bread, it waited hours in the cold to obtain an
ounce of horse-flesh or thirty pounds of green wood; it fought, but was
vanquished; it was told to surrender, and “it was given up,” as they
say at the Hôtel de Ville; and yet through all, Paris had not ceased to
smile. And this, they say, constitutes its greatness; it was the last
protestation against unmerited misfortunes; it was the remembrance of
having once been proud and happy, and the hope of becoming so again; it
was, in a word, Paris declaring it was Paris still. Well, what neither
defeats, nor famine, nor capitulation could do, thou hast done! And
accursed be thou, O Commune; for, as Macbeth murdered sleep, thou hast
murdered our smiles!

XC.

The roaring of cannon close at hand, the whizzing of shells, volleys of
musketry! I hear this in my sleep, and awake with a start. I dress and
go out. I am told the troops have come in. “How? where? when?” I ask of
the National Guards who come rushing down the street, crying out, “We
are betrayed!” They, however, know but very little. They have come from
the Trocadero, and have seen the red trousers of the soldiers in the
distance. Fighting is going on near the viaduct of Auteuil, at the
Champ de Mars. Did the assault take place last night or this morning?
It is quite impossible to obtain any reliable information. Some talk of
a civil engineer having made signals to the Versaillais; others say a
captain in the navy was the first to enter Paris.[98] Suddenly about
thirty men rush into the streets crying, “We must make a barricade.” I
turn back, fearing to be pressed into the service. The cannonading
appears dreadfully near. A shell whistles over my head. I hear some one
say, “The batteries of Montmartre are bombarding the Arc de Triomphe;”
and strange enough, in this moment of horror and uncertainty, the
thought crosses my mind that now the side of the arch on which is the
bas-relief of Rude will be exposed to the shells. On the Boulevard
there is only here and there a passenger hurrying along. The shops are
closed; even the café’s are shut up. The harsh screech of the
mitrailleuse grows louder and nearer. The battle seems to be close at
hand, all round me. A thousand contradictory suppositions rush through
my brain and hurry me along, and here on the Boulevard there is no one
that can tell me anything. I walk in the direction of the Madeleine,
drawn there by a violent desire to know what is going on, which
silences the voice of prudence. As I approach the Chaussée d’Antin I
perceive a multitude of men, women, and children running backwards and
forwards, carrying paving-stones. A barricade is being thrown up; it is
already more than three feet high. Suddenly I hear the rolling of heavy
wheels; I turn, and a strange sight is before me—a mass of women in
rags, livid, horrible, and yet grand, with the Phrygian cap on their
heads, and the skirts of their robes tied round their waists, were
harnessed to a mitrailleuse, which they dragged along at full speed;
other women pushing vigorously behind. The whole procession, in its
sombre colours, with dashes of red here and there, thunders past me; I
follow it as fast as I can. The mitrailleuse draws up a little in front
of the barricade, and is hailed with wild clamours by the insurgents.
The Amazons are being unharnessed as I come up. “Now,” said a young
_gamin_, such as one used to see in the gallery of the Théâtre Porte
St. Martin, “don’t you be acting the spy here, or I will break your
head open as if you were a Versaillais.”—“Don’t waste ammunition,”
cried an old man with a long white beard—a patriarch of civil
war—“don’t waste ammunition; and as for the spy, let him help to carry
paving-stones. Monsieur,” said he, turning to me with much politeness,
“will you be so kind as to go and fetch those stones from the corner
there?”

[Illustration: Café Life Under the Commune.
Spectacles of Paris.]

I did as I was bid, although I thought, with anything but pleasure,
that if at that moment the barricade were attacked and taken, I might
be shot before I had the time to say, “Allow me to explain.” But the
scene which surrounds me interests me in spite of myself. Those grim
hags, with their red headdresses, passing the stones I give them
rapidly from hand to hand, the men who are building them up only
leaving off for a moment now and then to swallow a cup of coffee, which
a young girl prepares over a small tin stove; the rifles symmetrically
piled; the barricade, which rises higher and higher; the solitude in
which we are working—only here and there a head appears at a window,
and is quickly withdrawn; the ever-increasing noise of the battle; and,
over all, the brightness of a dazzling morning sun—all this has
something sinister and yet horribly captivating about it. While we are
at work, they talk; I listen. The Versaillais have been coming in all
night.[99] The Porte de la Muette and the Porte Dauphine have been
surrendered by the 13th and the 113th battalions of the first
arrondissement. “Those two numbers 13 will bring them ill-luck,” says a
woman. Vinoy is established at the Trocadéro, and Douai at the Point du
Jour: they continue to advance. The Champ de Mars has been taken from
the Federals after two hours’ fighting. A battery is erected at the Arc
de Triomphe, which sweeps the Champs Elysées and bombards the
Tuileries. A shell has fallen in the Rue du Marché Saint Honoré. In the
Cours-la-Reine the 188th battalion stood bravely. The Tuileries is
armed with guns, and shells the Arc de Triomphe. In the Avenue de
Marigny the gendarmes have shot twelve Federals who had surrendered;
their bodies are still lying on the pavement in front of the
tobacconist’s. Rue de Sèvres, the _Vengeurs de Flourens_ have put to
flight a whole regiment of the line: the _Vengeurs_ have sworn to
resist to a man. They are fighting in the Champs Élysées, around the
Ministère de la Guerre, and on the Boulevard Haussman. Dombrowski has
been killed at the Château de la Muette. The Versaillais have attacked
the Western Saint Lazare station, and are marching towards the
Pépinière barracks. “We have been sold, betrayed, and surprised; but
what does it matter, we will triumph. We want no more chiefs or
generals; behind the barricades every man is a marshal!”

[Illustration: Poor Pradier’s statues.
Place de La Concorde: LILLE suffers from her friends in fight, whilst
STRASBOURG, in crape, mourns the foe of France.]

[Illustration: Fire And Water—The effect of fire on the fountains of the
Place de la Concorde and the Château d’Eau—Hirondelles de Paris]

Eight or ten men come flying down the Chaussée d’Antin; they join,
crying out, “The Versaillais have taken the barracks; they are
establishing a battery. Delescluze has been captured at the Ministère
de la Guerre.”—“It is false!” exclaims a vivandière; “we have just seen
him at the Hôtel de Ville.”—“Yes, yes,” cry out other women, “he is at
the Hôtel de Ville. He gave us a mitrailleuse. Jules Vallès embraced
us, one after another; he is a fine man, he is! He told us all was
going well, that the Versaillais should never have Paris, that we shall
surround them, and that it will all be over in two days.”—“Vive la
Commune!” is the reply. The barricade is by this time finished. They
expect to be attacked every second. “You,” said a sergeant, “you had
better be off, if you care for your life.” I do not wait for the man to
repeat his warning. I retrace my steps up the Boulevard, which is less
solitary than it was. Several groups are standing at the doors. It
appears quite certain that the troops of the Assembly have been pretty
successful since they came in. The Federals, surprised by the
suddenness and number of the attacks, at first lost much ground. But
the resistance is being organised. They hold their own at the Place de
la Concorde; at the Place Vendôme they are very numerous, and have at
their disposal a formidable amount of artillery. Montmartre is shelling
furiously. I turn up the Rue Vivienne, where I meet several people in
search of news. They tell me that “two battalions of the Faubourg Saint
Germain have just gone over to the troops, with their muskets reversed.
A captain of the National Guard has been the first in that quarter to
unfurl the tricolour. A shell had set fire to the Ministère des
Finances, but the firemen in the midst of the shot and shell had
managed to put it out.” At the Place de la Bourse I find three of four
hundred Federals constructing a barricade; having gained some
experience, I hurry on to escape the trouble of being pressed into the
service. The surrounding streets are almost deserted; Paris is in
hiding. The cannonading is becoming more furious every minute. I cross
the garden of the Palais Royal. There I see a few loiterers, a knot of
children are skipping. The Rue de Rivoli is all alive with people. A
battalion marches hurriedly from the Hôtel de Ville; at the head rides
a young man mounted on a superb black horse. It is Dombrowski. I had
been told he was dead. He is very pale. “A fragment of shell hit him in
the chest at La Muette, but did not enter the flesh,” says some one.
The men sing the _Chant du Départ_ as they march along. I see a few
women carrying arms among the insurgents; one who walks just behind
Dombrowski has a child in her arms. Looking in the direction of the
Place de la Concorde, I see smoke arising from the terrace of the
Tuileries. In front of the Ministère des Finances, this side of the
barricade is a black mass of something; I think I can distinguish
wheels; it is either cannon or engines. All around is confusion. I can
hear the musketry distinctly, but the noise seems to come from the
Champs Élysées; they are not firing at the barricade. I turn and walk
towards the Hôtel de Ville: mounted expresses ride constantly past;
companies of Federals are here and there lying on the ground around
their piled muskets. By the Rue du Louvre there is another barricade; a
little further there is another and then another.[100] Close to Saint
Germain l’Auxerrois women are busy pulling down the wooden seats;
children are rolling empty wine-barrels and carrying sacks of earth. As
one nears the Hôtel de Ville the barricades are higher, better armed,
and better manned. All the Nationals here look ardent, resolved, and
fierce. They say little, and do not shout at all. Two guards, seated on
the pavement, are playing at picquet. I push on, and am allowed to
pass. The barricades are terminated here, and I have nothing to fear
from paving-stones. Looking up, I see that all the windows are closed,
with the exception of one, where two old women are busy putting a
mattress between the window and the shutter. A sentinel, mounting guard
in front of the Café de la Compagnie du Gaz, cries out to me, “You
can’t pass here!” I therefore seat myself at a table in front of the
café, which has doubtless been left open by order, and where several
officers are talking in a most animated manner. One of them rises and
advances towards me. He asks me rudely what I am doing there. I will
not allow myself to be abashed by his tone, but draw out my pass from
my pocket and show it him, without saying a word. “All right,” says he,
and then seats himself by my side, and tells me, “I know it already,
that a part of the left bank of the river is occupied by the troops of
the Assembly, that fighting is going on everywhere, and that the army
on this side is gradually retreating.—Street fighting is our affair,
you see,” he continues. In such battles as that, the merest gamin from
Belleville knows more about it than MacMahon.... It will be terrible.
The enemy shoots the prisoners.” (For the last two months the Commune
had been saying the same thing.) “We shall give no quarter.”—I ask him,
“Is it Delescluze who is determined to resist?”—“Yes,” he answers.[101]
“Lean forward a little. Look at those three windows to the left of the
trophy. That is the Salle de l’État-Major. Delescluze is there giving
orders, signing commissions. He has not slept for three days. Just now
I scarcely knew him, he was so worn out with fatigue. The Committee of
Public Safety sits permanently in a room adjoining, making out
proclamations and decrees.”—“Ha, ha!” said I, “decrees!”—“Yes, citizen,
he has just decreed heroism!”[102] The officer gives me several other
bits of information. Tells me that “Lullier this very morning has had
thirty _réfractaires_ shot, and that Rigault has gone to Mazas to look
after the hostages.” While he is talking, I try to see what is going on
in the Place de l’Hôtel de Ville. Two or three thousand Federals are
there, some seated, some lying on the ground. A lively discussion is
going on. Several little barrels are standing about on chairs; the men
are continually getting up and crowding round the barrels, some have no
glasses, but drink in the palms of their hands. Women walk up and down
in bands, gesticulating wildly. The men shout, the women shriek.
Mounted expresses gallop out of the Hôtel, some in the direction of the
Bastille, some towards the Place de la Concorde. The latter fly past us
crying out, “All’s well!” A man comes out on the balcony of the Hôtel
de Ville and addresses the crowd. All the Federals start to their feet
enthusiastically.—“That’s Vallès,” says my neighbour to me. I had
already recognised him. I frequently saw him in the students’ quarter
in a little _crémerie_ in the Rue Serpente. He was given to making
verses, rather bad ones by-the-bye; I remember one in particular, a
panegyric on a green coat. They used to say he had a situation in the
_pompes funèbres_.[103] His face even then wore a bitter and violent
expression. He left poetry for journalism, and then journalism for
politics.

[Illustration: Jules Vallès, Commissioner Of Public instruction[104]]

To-day he is spouting forth at a window of the Hôtel de Ville. I cannot
catch a word of what he says; but as he retires he is wildly applauded.
Such applause pains me sadly. I feel that these men and these women are
mad for blood, and will know how to die. Alas! how many dead and dying
already! neither the cannonading nor the musketry has ceased an
instant. I now see a number of women walk out of the Hôtel, the crowd
makes room for them to pass. They come our way. They are dressed in
black, and have black crape tied round their arms and a red cockade in
their bonnets. My friend the officer tells me that they are the
governesses who have taken the places of the nuns. Then he walks up to
them and says, “Have you succeeded?”—“Yes,” answers one of them, “here
is our commission. The school children are to be employed in making
sacks and filling them with earth, the eldest ones to load the rifles
behind the barricades. They will receive rations like National Guards,
and a pension will be given to the mothers of those who die for the
Republic. They are mad to fight, I assure you. We have made them work
hard during the last month, this will be their holiday!” The woman who
says this is young and pretty, and speaks with a sweet smile on her
lips. I shudder. Suddenly two staff officers appear and ride furiously
up to the Hôtel de Ville; they have come from the Place Vendôme. An
instant later and the trumpets sound. The companies form in the Place,
and great agitation reigns in the Hôtel. Men rush in and out. The
officers who are in the café where I am get up instantly, and go to
take their places at the head of their men. A rumour spreads that the
Versaillais have taken the barricades on the Place de la Concorde.—“By
Jove! I think you had better go home,” says my neighbour to me, as he
clasps his sword belt; “we shall have hot work here, and that shortly.”
I think it prudent to follow this advice. One glance at the Place
before I go. The companies of Federals have just started off by the Rue
de Rivoli and the quays at a quick march, crying “Vive la Commune!” a
ferocious joy beaming in their faces. A young man, almost a lad, lags a
little behind, a woman rushes up to him, and lays hold of his collar,
screaming, “Well, and you, are you not going to get yourself killed
with the others?”

[Illustration: Barricade Dividing the Rue de Rivoli and The Place De La
Concorde]

I reach the Rue Vieille-du-Temple, where another barricade is being
built up. I place a paving-stone upon it and pass on. Soon I see open
shops and passengers in the streets. This tradesmen’s quarter seems to
have outlived the riot of Paris. Here one might almost forget the
frightful civil war which wages so near, if the conversation of those
around did not betray the anguish of the speakers, and if you did not
hear the cannon roaring out unceasingly, “People of Paris, listen to
me! I am ruining your houses. Listen to me! I am killing your
children.”

On the boulevards more barricades; some nearly finished, others
scarcely commenced. One constructed near the Porte Saint Martin looks
formidable. That spot seems destined to be the theatre of bloody
scenes, of riot and revolution. In 1852, corpses laid piled up behind
the railing, and all the pavement tinged with blood. I return home
profoundly sad; I can scarcely think.—I feel in a dream, and am tired
to death; my eyelids droop of themselves; I am like one of those houses
there with closed shutters.

Near the Gymnase I meet a friend whom I thought was at Versailles. We
shake hands sadly. “When did you come back?” I ask.—“To-day; I followed
the troops.”—Then turning back with me he tells me what he has seen. He
had a pass, and walked into Paris behind the artillery and the line, as
far as the Trocadéro, where the soldiers halted to take up their line
of battle. Not a single man was visible along the whole length of the
quays. At the Champ de Mars he did not see any insurgents. The musketry
seemed very violent near Vaugirard on the Pont Royal and around the
Palais de l’Industrie. Shells from Montmartre repeatedly fell on the
quays. He could not see much,—however only the smoke in the distance.
Not a soul did he meet. Such frightful noise in such solitude was
fearful. He continued his way under shelter of the parapet. In one
place he saw some gamins cutting huge pieces of flesh off the dead body
of a horse that was lying in the path. There must have been fighting
there. Down by the water a man fishing while two shells fell in the
river, a little higher up, a yard or two from the shore. Then he
thought it prudent to get nearer to the Palais de l’Industrie. The
fighting was nearly over then, but not quite. The Champs Elysées was
melancholy in the extreme; not a soul was there. This was only too
literally true; for several corpses lay on the ground. He saw a soldier
of the line lying beneath a tree, his forehead covered with blood. The
man opened his month as if to speak as he heard the sound of footsteps,
the eyelids quivered and then there was a shiver, and all was over. My
friend walked slowly away. He saw trees thrown down and bronze
lamp-posts broken; glass crackled under his feet as he passed near the
ruined kiosques. Every now and then turning his head he saw shells from
Montmartre fall on the Arc de Triomphe and break off large fragments of
stone. Near the Tuileries was a confused mass of soldiery against a
background of smoke. Suddenly he heard the whizzing of a ball and saw
the branch of a tree fall. From one end of the avenue to the other, no
one; the road glistened white in the sun. Many dead were to be seen
lying about as he crossed the Champs Elysées. All the streets to the
left were full of soldiery; there had been fighting there, but it was
over now. The insurgents had retreated in the direction of the
Madeleine. In many places tricolor flags were hanging from the windows,
and women were smiling, and waving their handkerchiefs to the troops.
The presence of the soldiery seemed to reassure everybody. The
concierges were seated before their doors with pipes in their mouths,
recounting to attentive listeners the perils from which they had
escaped; how balls pierced the mattresses put up at the windows, and
how the Federals had got into the houses to hide. One said, “I found
three of them in my court; I told a lieutenant they were there, and he
had them shot. But I wish they would take them away; I cannot keep dead
bodies in the house.” Another was talking with some soldiers, and
pointing out a house to them. Four men and a corporal went into the
place indicated, and an instant afterwards my friend heard the cracking
of rifles. The concierge rubbed his hands and winked at the bystanders,
while another was saying, “They respect nothing those Federals; during
the battle they came in to steal. They wanted to take away my clothes,
my linen, everything I have, but I told them to leave that, that it was
not good enough for them, that they ought to go up to the first floor,
where they would find clocks and plate, and I gave them the key. Well,
Messieurs, you would never believe what they have done, the rascals!
They took the key and went and pillaged everything on the first floor!”
My friend had heard enough, and passed on. The agitation everywhere was
very great. The soldiers went hither and thither, rang the bells, went
into the houses; and brought out with them pale-faced prisoners. The
inhabitants continued to smile politely, but grimly. Here and there
dead bodies were lying in the road. A man who was pushing a truck
allowed one of the wheels to pass over a corpse that was lying with its
head on the curbstone. “Bah!” said he, “it won’t do him any harm.” The
dead and wounded were, however, being carried away as quickly as
possible.

[Illustration: Shell Hole—a Convenient Seat. Shot marks: en profil—In
the rues—On the boulevards: Plus de lumière!! Plus d’ombre!!—Bullet
hole: en face.]

The cannon had now ceased roaring, and the fight was still going on
close at hand—at the Tuileries doubtless. The townspeople were tranquil
and the soldiery disdainful. A strange contrast; all these good
citizens smiling and chatting, and the soldiers, who had come to save
them at the peril of their lives, looking down upon them with the most
careless indifference. My friend reached the Boulevard Haussmann; there
the corpses were in large numbers. He counted thirty in less than a
hundred yards. Some were lying under the doorways; a dead woman was
seated on the bottom stair of one of the houses. Near the church of “La
Trinité” were two guns, the reports from which were deafening; several
of the shells fell on a bathing establishment in the Rue Taitbout
opposite the Boulevard. On the Boulevard itself, not a person was to be
seen. Here and there dark masses, corpses doubtless. However, the
moment the noise of the report of a gun had died away, and while the
gunners were reloading, heads were thrust out from doors to see what
damage had been done—to count the number of trees broken, benches torn
up, and kiosques overturned. From some of the windows rifles were
fired. My friend then reached the street he lived in and went home. He
was told that during the morning they had violently bombarded the
Collège Chaptal, where the Zouaves of the Commune had fortified
themselves; but the engagement was not a long one, they made several
prisoners and shot the rest.

My friend shut himself up at home, determined not to go out. But his
impatience to see and hear what was going on forced him into the
streets again. The Pépinière barracks were occupied by troops of the
line; he was able to get to the New Opera without trouble, leaving the
Madeleine, where dreadful fighting was going on, to the right. On the
way were to be seen piled muskets, soldiers sitting and lying about,
and corpses everywhere. He then managed, without incurring too much
danger, to reach the Boulevards, where the insurgents, who were then
very numerous, had not yet been attacked. He worked for some little
time at the barricade, and then was allowed to pass on. It was thus
that we had met. Just as we were about to turn up the Faubourg
Montmartre a man rushed up saying that three hundred Federals had taken
refuge in the church of the Madeleine, followed by gendarmes, and had
gone on fighting for more than an hour. “Now,” he finished up by
saying, “if the _curé_ were to return he would find plenty of people to
bury!”

I am now at home. Evening has come at last; I am jotting down these
notes just as they come into my head. I am too much fatigued both in
mind and body to attempt to put my thoughts into order. The cannonading
is incessant, and the fusillade also. I pity those that die, and those
that kill! Oh! poor Paris, when will experience make you wiser?

NOTES:

[98] It was known by this time at Versailles in what a desperate
condition was the Commune, by the information of persons devoted to
order, but who remained amongst the insurgents to keep watch over and
restrain them as much as possible.
The Versailles authorities know that, thanks to the well-directed
fire of Montretout, the bastions of the Point du Jour were no
longer tenable, and that their defenders had abandoned them and had
organized new works of defence; nevertheless, the operations were
earned on just as systematically as if the fire of the besieged had
not ceased for several days, when, on Sunday, the 21st May, about
midday, an officer on duty in the trenches, in course of formation
in the Bois de Boulogne, perceived a man making signs with a white
handkerchief near the military post of Saint Cloud; the officer
immediately approached near enough to hear the bearer of the flag
of truce, say:—
“My name is Ducatel, and I belong to the service of the Engineers
of Roads and Bridges, and I have been a soldier. I declare that
your entrance into Paris is easy, and as a guarantee of the truth
of what I say, I am about to give myself up;” so saying, he passed
over the fosse by means of one of the supports of the drawbridge,
in spite of several shots fired at him by Federals hidden in the
houses at Auteuil, but none of which reached him.
A few resolute men now passed over the fosse, and arrived without
accident on the other side. A few insurgents, who were still there,
made off without loss of time, leaving the invaders to establish
themselves, and wait for reinforcements.
A short time after a white flag was exhibited in the neighbouring
bastion, which bore the number 62, and the fire from Montretout and
Mont Valérien was stopped, the infantry of the Marine took
possession of the gate, out the telegraphic wires which were
supposed to be in communication with torpedoes, while information
was immediately despatched to Versailles of these important events.
The division of General Vergé, placed for the time under the orders
of General Douay, entered the gate at half-past three in the
afternoon, and took possession of Point du Jour, after having taken
several barricades; at one of these, Ducatel was sent with a flag
of trace towards the insurgents, who offered to surrender, but he
received a bayonet wound, was carried off to the École Militaire,
tried by court-martial and condemned to death, from which he was
fortunately snatched by the arrival of the Versailles troops at the
Trocadéro at two o’clock in the morning.
At the same time, the first corps d’armée (that of General
L’Admirault), made its way into the city by the Portes d’Auteuil
and Passy, and took up a strong position in the streets of Passy.

[99] At ten o’clock at night, the army had taken possession of the
region comprised between the _ceinture_, or circular railway, and the
fortifications, the streets of Auteuil to the viaduct, and the bridge
of Grenelle.
At midnight, the movement which had been suspended for a time to
rest the troops, was recommenced all along the line.
At two o’clock in the morning, General Douay occupied the
Trocadéro; and at about four o’clock his soldiers, after a short
struggle, captured the chateau of La Muette, making about six
hundred prisoners, and then, advancing in the direction of Porte
Maillot, they joined the troops of General Clinchant, who had got
within the ramparts on that side.
At the break of day, the tricolour floated over the Arc de
Triomphe, without the Versailles forces having sustained sensible
loss. All this passed on the right bank of the Seine.

[100] The insurrectionists followed a decided and pre-conceived plan.
The barricades, which intersected the streets of Paris in every
direction, were arranged on a general system which showed considerable
skill. Was this ensemble a conception of Cluseret? or a plan of
Gaillard, or Eudes, or Rossel? No one now could say which, but at any
rate we are able to deduce the plan from the facts and set it out as
follows:—
Within the line of the fortifications the insurgents had formed a
second line of defence, which runs on the right bank of the river,
by the Trocadero, the Triumphal Arch, the Boulevard de Courcelles,
the Boulevard de Batignolles, and the Boulevard de Rochechouart;
and on the left across the bridge of Iéna, the Avenue de la
Bourdonnaye, the École Militaire, the Boulevard des Invalides, the
Boulevard Montparnasse, and the Western Railway Station. Along the
whole extent of this circuit the entrances of the streets were
barricades, and the “Places” turned into redoubts.
From this double _enceinte_ of fortifications the lines of defence
converged along the great boulevards, the Rue Royale, by the
Ministry of Marine, the terrace of the Tuileries Gardens, the Place
de la Concorde, the Palace of the Corps Législatif, the Rue de
Bourgogne, and the Rue de Varenne. This third _enceinte_ of defence
was the pride of the insurgents; they were never tired of admiring
their celebrated barricade of the Rue St. Florentin, and that which
intercepted the quay at the corner of the Tuileries Gardens on the
Place de la Concorde.
This is not all. Supposing that the third line were forced, the
insurgents would not even then be without resource. On the left
bank of the Seine they fell back successively on the Rue de
Grenelle, Rue Saint Dominique, and Rue de Lille, all three closed
by barricades; on the right bank they could carry on the struggle
by the Rue Neuve-des-Petits-Champs, the Rue de la Paix, and the
Place Vendôme, and even when beaten back from these last retreats,
they could still defend the Rue St. Honoré and operate a retreat by
the Palace of the Tuileries, the Louvre, and the Hôtel de Ville.

[101] In the following proclamation, published on the 21st May,
Delescluze stimulated the Communist party, which felt its power
melting away on all sides:

“TO THE PEOPLE OF PARIS, TO THE NATIONAL GUARD.

“CITIZENS,—We have had enough of militaryism; let us have no more
stuffs embroidered and gilt at every seam!
“Make room for the people, the real combatants, the bare arms! The
hour of the revolutionary war has struck!
“The people know nothing of scientific manoeuvres, but with a rifle
in hand and the pavement beneath their feet, they fear not all the
strategists of the monarchical school.
“To arms, citizens! To arms! You must conquer, or, as you well
know, fall again into the pitiless hands of the _réactionaires_ and
clericals of Versailles; those wretches who with intention
delivered France up to Prussia, and now make us pay the ransom of
their treason!
“If you desire the generous blood which you have shed like water
during the last six weeks not to have been shed in vain, if you
would see liberty and equality established in France, if you would
spare your children sufferings and misery such as you have endured,
you will rise as one man, and before your formidable bands the
enemy who indulges the idea of bringing you again under his yoke,
will reap nothing but the harvest of the useless crimes with which
he has disgraced himself during the past two months.
“Citizens! your representatives will fight and die with you, if
fall we must; but, in the name of our glorious France, mother of
all the popular revolutions, the permanent source of ideas of
justice and unity, which should be and which will be the laws of
the world, march to the encounter of the enemy, and let your
revolutionary energy prove to him that Paris may he sold, but can
never be delivered up or conquered.
“The Commune confides in you, and you may trust the Commune!
“The civil delegate at the Ministry of War,

“(Signed)
“CH. DELESCLUZE.

“Countersigned by the Committee of Public Safety:—Antoine Arnauld,
Billioray, E. Eudes, F. Gambon, G. Ranvier.”

Such was the despairing cry of the insurrection at bay.

[102] See Appendix, No. 9.

[103] There are no private undertakers and funeral furnishers in
Paris. It is all done by a company, under the supervision of
Government, a very large concern, called the _Pompes Funèbres_.

[104] Jules Vallès was one of the most conspicuous among the men of
the 18th of March. He had been journalist, working printer, a clerk at
the Hôtel de Ville, editor of a newspaper, pamphleteer, and café
orator in turn, but always noisy and boastful. André Gill, the
caricaturist, once drew him as an undertaker’s dog, dragging a
saucepan behind him, and the caricature told Vallès’ story well
enough. In face he was ugly, but energetic in expression, almost to
ferociousness.
He was born at Puy, in 1833, and on leaving the college of Nantes,
came to study law in Paris, but politics occupied him chiefly, and
he soon got himself shut up in Mazas as a political prisoner. After
some time spent in confinement, he obtained his liberty, and
published at Nantes, a pamphlet under the title of “Money: by a
literary man become a journalist;” and the pamphlet, having gained
him some slight popularity, he was engaged, later, on the _Figaro_,
to write the reports of the Bourse, and in the meantime he eked out
his slender salary by working as a clerk at the Hôtel de Ville.
When Ernest Feydeau brought out the _Epoque_, in 1864, Jules Vallès
published a few articles in its columns, and a little later became
a writer on the _Evénement_, with the magnificent salary of
eighteen thousand francs a year. A month afterwards, he was without
occupation again, but he soon re-appeared with a new journal of his
own, _La Rue, La Sue_, in its turn, however, only lived during a
few numbers, and Jules Vallès now took up café politics, and
practised table oratory at the _Estaminet de Madrid_, where he
fostered and expounded the projects which he has since brought to
so fearful a result.
In 1869, he became one of the most inveterate speakers at election
meetings, and presented himself as a candidate for the Corps
Législatif. He was not elected, but the profession of opinions that
he then made was certain to obtain him a seat in the Communal
Assembly. One of the last articles in the _Cri du People_ of Jules
Vallès announced the fatal resolution of defending Paris by all
possible means. An article finishing with this prophetic sentence,
“M. Thiers, if he is chemist enough will understand us.”

XCI.

It is imprudent to go out; the night was almost peaceable, the morning
is hideous. The roar of musketry is intense and without interruption. I
suppose there must be fighting going on in the Rue du Faubourg
Montmartre. I start back, the noise is so fearful. In the Cour Trévise
not a person to be seen, the houses are closely shut and barred. On a
second floor I hear a great moving of furniture, and hear quite
distinctly the sound of sobbing, of female sobbing. I hear that the
second floor of the house is inhabited by a member of the Commune and
his family. I am about to go up and see if I can be of any help to the
women in case of danger, when I see a man precipitately enter the
Court. He wears a uniform of lieutenant; I recognise him, it is the
porter. He stops, looks around him, and seeing that he is alone, takes
his rifle in both hands and throws it with all his strength over the
high wall which is on the left hand of the Court. That done, he rushes
into the house. There I distinctly hear him say to his wife, “The
barricade is taken, give me a _blouse_, they are at Montmartre. We are
done for!” I think, the porter must have made a mistake, and that the
battery is not taken yet, for I hear the whistling of a shell that,
seems to come from Montmartre. The deafening clamour on all sides
redoubles, all the separate noises seem to confound themselves in one
ceaseless roar, like the working of a million of hammers on a million
of anvils. I can scarcely bear it; my hands clutch the door-posts
convulsively. I lean out as far as I can, but see nothing but a company
of soldiers preceded by two gendarmes, who are entering the Court. They
stop before the door of the house. Several of them go in, and then I
hear the sound of a door suddenly opened and shut, and heavy steps on
the wooden floor. I feel myself trembling; this man they have come to
arrest—are they going to shoot him here, in his own apartment, before
his wife? Thank God, no! The two gendarmes reappear in the street
holding the prisoner between them; his hands are bound; the soldiers
surround them, and they are going to march away, when the man, lifting
up his arms, cries fiercely, “I have but one regret, that I did not
blow up the whole of the quarter.” At this instant the window above is
opened, and a woman with grey hair leans out, crying, “Die in peace, I
will avenge you!” At these words the soldiers arrest their steps, and
the two gendarmes re-enter the house. They are going to take the wife
prisoner after having taken the husband. I fall back into a chair
horrified; I shut my eyes not to see, and I press my hands on my ears,
not to hear the dreadful sound of the musketry, but the horrible shrill
noise is triumphant, and I hear it all the same.

XCII.

Oh! those that hear it not, how happy they must be; they will never
understand how fearful this continuous, this dreadful noise is, and to
feel that each ball is aimed at some breast, and each shell brings ruin
in its train. Fear and horror wrings one’s heart and maddens one’s
brain. Visions pass before one’s eyes of corpses, of houses crushing
sleeping inmates, of men falling and crying out for mercy! and one
feels quite strange to go on living among the crowds that die!

I have been out a little while, a ball whistled over my shoulder, and
flattened itself against an iron bar on a shop front. I heard a mass of
glass shiver into fragments on the pavement. I determined to return
home.

On my way back, I had to pass in front of a liqueur shop, the door of
which was open, and several men were talking there. I stopped to learn
the news. Montmartre is taken; the Federals had not opposed much
resistance; but a great deal of firing had gone on in the side streets
and lanes. Seven insurgents were surrounded. “Give yourselves up, and
your lives will be saved,” cried out the soldiers. They replied, “We
are prisoners;” but one of them drew his revolver and shot an officer
in the leg. Then the soldiers took the seven men, threw them into a
large hole, and shot them from above like so many rabbits. Another man
told me that he had seen a child lying dead at the corner of the Rue de
Rome. “A pretty little fellow,” he said, “his brains were strewed on
the pavement beside him.” A third, that when all the fighting was over
at the Place Saint-Pierre a rifle shot was heard, and a captain of
Chasseurs fell dead. The major who was there, looked up and saw a man
trying to hide himself behind a chimney pot; the soldiers got into the
house, seized him on the roof, and brought him down into the Place.
What did the insurgent do, but walked up to the major, smiling, and hit
him a blow on the cheek. The major set him up against a wall, and blew
his brains out with a revolver. Another insurgent who was arrested,
made an insulting grimace at the soldiers; they shot him. On the
southern sides of Paris, the operations of the army have not been so
fortunate as on this. In the Faubourg St. Germain it advances very
slowly, if it advance at all. The Federals fight with heroic courage at
the Mont-Parnasse Station, the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, and the
Croix-Rouge; from the corners of the streets, from the windows, from
the balconies proceed shots rarely ineffective. This sort of warfare
fatigues the soldiers, particularly as the discipline prevents them
from using the same measures. At Saint-Quen, likewise, the march of the
troops is stayed; the barricade of the Rue de Clichy holds out, and
will hold out some time. In other quarters the advantages gained by the
Versaillais are evident. Here and there some small show of resistance
is offered, but the insurgents are flying. I cannot tell whether all
these floating rumours are true. As I return home, I look round; in the
Rue Geoffrey-Marie, near the Faubourg Montmartre, I see a National
Guard alone in the middle of the street, nothing to screen him
whatsoever; he loads his rifle and fires, loads and fires again; again
and again! Thirty-three times! Then the rifle slips to the ground, and
the man staggers and falls.

XCIII.

This morning, the 23rd, after a combat of three hours, the barricade of
the Place de Clichy has not yet yielded. Yet two battalions of National
Guards had, at the beginning of the fight, reversed their arms, and
were fraternising with the soldiers on the Place de la Maine, a hundred
and fifty yards from the scene of the fray. The cracking of the rifles,
the explosion of shells, and the sound of mitrailleuses filled the air.
The smell of powder was stifling. Dreadful cries arose from the poor
wounded wretches; and the whizzing projectiles from Montmartre rent the
air above in their fiery course. “Beneath us,” said an inhabitant of
Batignolles who gave me these particulars, “beneath us the city lay
like a seething caldron.”

The beating of drums and the sharp trumpet-calls mixed in this
monstrous din, and were every now and then lost in the tremendous noise
of the firing.

About half-past one the sounds grew quieter; the barricade was taken.
The insurgents were retreating to La Chapelle and Belleville in
disorder; the soldiers of the line rushed like a torrent into the
Avenue de Clichy, leaving a tricolour flag hoisted upon the dismantled
barricade.

Here and there, in the streets, the struggle had not ceased. In the Rue
Blanche a rifle-shot proceeded from a ground-floor; the man was taken
and executed outside his own door. The artillery was moving up the Rue
Chaptal towards Montmartre and La Chapelle. The day was very hot; pails
of water were thrown over the guns to quench their burning thirst. All
the young men who were found in the streets were provisionally put
under arrest, for they feared everyone, even children, and horrible
vengeance and thirst for blood had seized upon all. Suddenly an
isolated shot would be heard, followed a minute or two after by five or
six others. One knew reprisal had been done.

At about four o’clock in the afternoon, when the quarters of Belleville
and Clichy were pretty well cleared of troops, two insurgents were
walking, one behind the other, in the Rue Léonie. The one who walked
last lifted his rifle and fired carelessly in the direction of the
windows; the report sounded very loudly in the silent street, and a
pane of glass fell in fragments to the ground. The insurgent who was in
front did not even turn his head; these men seem to have become quite
reckless and deaf to everything.

What the troops feared the most were the sharp-shooters hidden in the
houses, aiming through little holes and cracks; suddenly a snap would
be heard, and the officers would lift their glassed to their eyes; more
often nothing was to be seen at all, but if the slightest shadow were
visible behind a window curtain, the order was, “Search that house!”
The executions did not take place in the apartments. Now and then an
inhabitant or two were brought down into the street, and those never
returned!

XCIV.

It is the middle of the night; and I awake with a terrible start. A
bright red light streams through the panes. I throw open the window;
the sky to the left is one mass of dark smoke and lurid streaks of
light—it is a fire, Paris on fire![105] I dress and go out. At the
corner of the Rue de Trévise a sentinel stops me, “You can’t pass.” I
am so bewildered that I do not think of noticing whether he is a
Federal or a soldier. What am I to do, where am I to go? Although an
hour ago balls were whistling around, there are now people at every
window. “The Ministère des Finances is on fire! the Rue Royale! the
Louvre!” The Louvre! I can scarcely avoid a cry of horror. In a minute
the enormity of the disaster has broken upon me. Oh! _chefs-d’oeuvre_
without number! I see you devoured, consumed, reduced to ashes! I see
the walls tottering, the canvases fall from the frames and shrivel up;
the “Marriage of Canaan” is in flames! Raphael is struggling in the
burning furnace! Leonardo da Vinci is no more! This was, indeed, an
unexpected calamity! Fortune had reserved this terrible surprise for
us! But I will not believe it, these rumours are false, doubtless! How
should these people who inhabit this quarter know what I am ignorant
of? Yet over our heads the sky is tinged with black and red!

[Illustration: Ruins of the Rue Royale, Looking Towards The Place de La
Concorde and across the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré.]

A strange smell fills the air, like that of a monstrous petroleum lamp
just lighted. That dreaded word, petroleum, makes me shudder. Once
distinctly I hear the sound of a vast body falling heavily. Not to be
able to obtain information is terrible; not to know what is going on,
while all around seems on fire; the day is beginning to break, the
musketry and the cannonading commences afresh, it is a hell, with death
for its girdle! In front of me I see the corner of a building lighted
up by the fire, on which little spirals of smoke are reflected from the
distant conflagration. I rush home, I want to hide myself, to sleep, to
forget. When I am in my room, I see through the white curtains of the
window a bright light. I tremble and rush to the window! It is the gilt
letters of a signboard, on the opposite side of the way, that are
darting forth brilliant flashes, borrowed from the distant flames.

[Illustration: A Bay of the Tuileries—from The Place Du Carrousel. A
warm corner approching the Louvre]

[Illustration: Millière[106]]

NOTES:

[105] The 24th May the COMMITTEE FOR PUBLIC SAFETY issued these
cold-blooded decrees:—

“Citizen Millière, at the head of one hundred and fifty fuse-bearers,
is to set fire to all houses of suspicious aspect, as well as to the
public monuments of the left bank of the Seine.
“Citizen Dereure, with one hundred and fifty fuse-bearers, is
charged with the 1st and 2nd Arrondissement.
“Citizen Billioray, with one hundred men, is charged with the 9th,
10th, and 20th Arrondissements.
“Citizen Vésinier, with fifty men, has the Boulevards of the
Madeleine and of the Bastille especially entrusted to him.
“These Citizens are to come to an understanding with the officers
commanding the barricades, for the execution of these orders.

“DELESCLUZE, RÉGÈRE, RANVINE, JOHANNARD, VÉSINIER, BRUNEL, DOMBROWSKI.
“Paris, 3 Prairial, year 79.”

[106] This Millière, formerly an advocate and writer on the
_Marseillaise_, was a native of St-Etienne, and fifty-four years of
age, a cool speaker, and advocate of advanced ideas, that got him
several imprisonments. In March 1870 he was taken from the prison of
Sainte-Pélagie to give evidence at Tours against Pierre Bonaparte for
the murder of Victor Noir, where his lucid depositions told greatly
against the prisoner. When regaining his liberty he became more
revolutionary than ever, writing during the siege in the _Patrie en
Danger_. At the peace he became one of the members for Paris, and sat
at Bordeaux and Versailles, agitating social subjects and the law of
lodgers. About the 10th of April he took part with the Commune, and at
the entrance of the troops was taken at the Luxembourg after having
fired six rounds from a revolver, was shot on the steps of the
Pantheon, and died as he opened his shirt front, shouting, “_Vive la
République! Vive la Liberté! Vive l’Humanité!_”

XCV.

Certainly I nursed no vain illusions. What you had done, gentlemen of
the Commune, had enlightened me as to your value, and as to the purity
of your intentions. Seeing you lie, steal, and kill, I had said to you,
“You are liars, robbers, and murderers;” but truly, in spite of Citizen
Félix Pyat, who is a coward, and Citizen Miot, who is a fool; in spite
of Millière, who shot _réfractaires_, and Philippe, whose trade shall
be nameless; in spite of Dacosta, who amused himself with telling the
Jesuits at the Conciergerie, “Mind, you are to be shot in an hour,” and
then an hour afterwards returning to say, “I have thought about it, and
it is for tomorrow;” in spite of Johannard, who executed a child of
fifteen guilty of selling a suppressed newspaper; in spite of Rigault,
who, chucking the son of Chaudey under the chin, laughingly said to
him, “Tomorrow, little one, we shall shoot papa;” in spite of all the
madmen and fools that constituted the Commune de Paris, who after being
guilty of more extravagances than are necessary to get a man sent to
the Madhouse of Charenton, and more crimes than are sufficient to shut
him up in prison at Sainte-Pélagie, had managed, by means of every
form, of wickedness and excess, to make our beloved Paris a frightened
slave, crouching to earth under their abominable tyranny; in spite of
everything, I could not have dreamed that even their demoniac fury
could have gone so far as to try to burn Paris, after having ruined it!
Nero of the gutter! Sardanapalus drunk with vitriol! So your vanity
wanted such a volcano to engulf you, and you wished to die by the light
of such an _auto-da-fé_. Instead of torches around your funeral car,
you wished the Tuileries, the library of the Louvre, and the Palace of
the Legion of Honour burnt to ashes, the Rue Royale one vast
conflagration, where the walls as they fell buried alive women and
children, and the Rue de Lille vomiting fire and smoke like the crater
of Vesuvius.

[Illustration: Palais de Justice, Partly Destroyed. Sainte Chapelle,
Saved.]

It has pleased you that thousands of families should be ruined, their
savings scattered in the ashes of the vanished papers of the burnt
Ministère des Finances and the _Caisse des dépôts_. In seeing that the
art-galleries of the Louvre had remained intact, only its library
burnt, you must have been seized with mad rage. How! Notre Dame not yet
in flames? Sainte-Chapelle not on fire? Have you no more petroleum, no
more flaming torches? The cry “To Arms!” is not enough, you must shout
“To Fire!” Would you consume the entire city, and make of its ruins a
horrible monument to your memory?

Do not say, “We have not done this; it is the people who are working
out their own revenge, and we stand for nothing, we are as gentle as
lambs. Ranvier would not hurt a fly.” Away with all this pretence; were
you not on the balcony of the Hôtel de Ville with your blood-red
scarfs, uttering your commands? The populace, deceived and blinded,
have but obeyed you. Do not all the circumstances leading to this
stupendous catastrophe, reveal an elaborate and digested plan,
determined long beforehand? Did we not read this notice, daily, in your
official journal: “All those who have petroleum are requested
immediately to declare the quantities in their possession?” Was there
not a quick-match extinguished in the quarter of the Invalides that was
to have communicated the flames to barrels of powder placed, long ago,
in the great sewers? Yes, what has taken place you had decreed. If the
disasters have not been more terrible, is it not, that, surprised at
the sudden arrival of the troops, you had not the time to finish your
preparations? Yes, you are the criminals! It was Eudes who gave out the
petroleum to the _Pétroleuses_; it was Felix Pyat who laid the train of
gunpowder. It is Tridon who said: “Take care that the phials be not
uncorked.” The public incendiary committee has well performed its duty!
Wicked criminals! Execrable madmen! May Heaven bear me witness that my
heart abhors revenge, is always inclined to pardon—but for these! What
chastisement can be great enough to appease the wrath of justice! What
vow of repentance could be offered up fervent enough to be received in
Heaven, even at the moment when, struck down by balls, they offer their
lives as expiation? Misguided humanity!

[Illustration: Ministère Des Finances, Rue de Rivoli:
POLICE OF PARIS.
Au citoyen Lucas,
Faites de suite flamber Finances et venez nous retrouver.
4 prairial, an 79. Th: Ferré.]

[Illustration: Ferré[107]]

NOTES:

[107] Ferré, the friend of Raoul Bigault, and his colleague in the
Commission of General Safety, like the latter, had inhabited the
prisons for a considerable time for his political writings, seditious
proposals, plots against the state, etc. He is a small man about five
feet high, and very active. He signed with avidity the suppression of
nearly all the journals of Paris, and the sentence of death of a great
number of unfortunate prisoners, with the approbation of Raoul
Bigault. He willingly undertook to announce to the Archbishop of Paris
that his last hour had arrived. The following order, drawn up by him,
was found on the body of an insurgent:—“Set fire to the Ministry of
Finance immediately, and return here.
4 Prairial, An 79.
(Signed) TH. FERRÉ.”
See Appendix, No.10.]

XCVI.

With three friends I stood upon the roof of a house near the new opera,
watching what was passing around. The spectacle was such, that horror
paralyses every other sentiment, even that of self-preservation.
Consternation sits encircled by a blazing atmosphere of terror! The
Hôtel de Ville is in flames; the smoke, at times a deep red, envelops
all, so that it is impossible to distinguish more than the outlines of
immense walls; the wind brings, in heavy gusts, a deadly odour—of burnt
flesh, perhaps—which turns the heart sick and the brain giddy. On the
other side the Tuileries, the Légion d’Honneur, the Ministère de la
Guerre, and the Ministère des Finances are flaming still, like five
great craters of a gigantic volcano! It is the eruption of Paris!
Alone, a great black mass detaches itself from the universal
conflagration, it is the Tour Saint-Jacques, standing out like a
malediction.

One of the three friends, who are with me on the roof of the house, was
able, about an hour ago, to get near the Hôtel de Ville. He related to
me what follows:—

“At the moment of my arrival, the flames burst forth from all the
windows of the Hôtel de Ville, and the most intense terror seized upon
all the inhabitants blocked up in the surrounding quarters, for a
terrible rumour is spread; it is said that more than fifty thousand
pounds of powder is contained in the subterranean vaults. The
incendiaries must have poured the demoniacal liquid in rivers through
the great halls, down the great staircases, from the very garrets, to
envelop even the Salle du Trône. The great fire throws a blood-red
glare over the city, and on the quays of the Institute. Night is so
like day that a letter may be read in the street. Is this the end of
the famous capital of France? Have the infamous fiends of the committee
for public safety ordered, in their cowardly death-agony, that this
should be the end? Yes, it is the ruin of all that was grand, generous,
radiant, and consolatory for our country that they have decided to
consummate, with a chorus of hellish laughter, in which terror and
ferocity struggle with brutal degradation.
“In the midst of this horror, confused rumours are circulated. It
is said that the heat will penetrate to the cellars and cause an
explosion of whole quarters. Then what will become of the
inhabitants, and the riches that they have accumulated? The heat is
overwhelming between the Tuileries and the Hôtel de Ville—that is,
over the space of about a mile. The two barricades of the Rue de
Rivoli and of the Rue de la Coutellerie, near which are the offices
of the municipal services—the lighting of the city, the octroi,
waters, sewers, etc.,—will not be taken until too late, in spite of
the energy with which the army attacks them. It is feared that the
flame will reach the neighbourhood of the great warehouses, so
thickly do the burning flakes fall and scatter destruction. The
barricades of the quays are still intact, it will be another hour
yet before they are taken. The firemen are there furiously at work,
but their efforts are insufficient! It would take tons of ammonia
to slake the fury of the petroleum which flows like hot lava upon
the place from the Hôtel de Ville, and the horrible reflection
reddens the waters of the Seine, so that the current of the river
seems to flow with blood, which stains the stones as it dashes
against the arches of the bridge!”

These scenes are being pictured to me as I gaze upon the terrible
conflagration, and all that is told me I seem to see. An irresistible
longing to be near seizes me. I am under the power of an invincible
attraction. I lean forward, my arms outstretched; I run a great risk of
falling, but what matters? The sight of these almost sublime horrors
has burnt itself into my very brain!

XCVII.

She walks with a rapid step, near the shadow of the wall; she is poorly
dressed; her age is between forty and fifty; her forehead is bound with
a red checkered handkerchief, from which hang meshes of uncombed hair.
The face is red and the eyes blurred, and she moves with her look bent
down on the ground. Her right hand is in her pocket, or in the bosom of
her half-unbuttoned dress; in the other hand she holds one of the high,
narrow tin cans in which milk is carried in Paris, but which now, in
the hands of this woman, contains the dreadful petroleum liquid. As she
passes a _poste_ of regulars, she smiles and nods; when they speak to
her she answers, “My good Monsieur!” If the street is deserted she
stops, consults a bit of dirty paper that she holds in her hand, pauses
a moment before the grated opening to a cellar, then continues her way,
steadily, without haste. An hour afterwards, a house is on fire in the
street she has passed. Who is this woman? Paris calls her a
_Pétroleuse_.[108] One of these _pétroleuses_, who was caught in the
act in the Rue Truffault, discharged the six barrels of a revolver and
killed two men before being passed over to execution. Another was seen
falling in a doorway of a house in the Rue de Boulogne, pierced with
balls—but this one was a young girl; a bottle filled with petroleum
fell from her hand as she dropped. Sometimes one of these wretched
women, might be seen leading by the hand a little boy or girl; and the
child probably carrying a bottle of the incendiary liquid in his pocket
with his top and marbles.

[Illustration: Palace of the Luxembourg (garden Front). Used as a
Federal Ambulance Hospital.[109]]

[Illustration: Les Pétroleurs Les Pétroleuses]

NOTES:

[108] The incendiaries formed a veritable army, composed of returned
convicts, the very dregs of the prisons, pale, thin lads, who looked
like ghosts, and old women, that looked like horrible witches; their
number amounted to eight thousand! This army had its chiefs, and each
detachment was charged with the firing of a quarter. The order for the
conflagration of public edifices bore the stamp of the Commune, and of
the Central Committee, and the seal of the delegate at the Ministry of
War. For the private houses more expeditive means were used. Small
tickets, of the size of postage stamps, were found pasted upon walls
of houses in different parts of Paris, with the letters B.P.B. (_bon
pour brûler_), literally, good for burning. Some of the tickets were
square, others oval, with a bacchante’s head in the centre. They were
affixed on spots designated by the chiefs. Every _pétroleuse_ was to
receive ten francs for each house she fired. Sept. 5,1871. Amongst the
insurgents tried at Versailles, three pétroleuses were condemned to
death, and one to imprisonment for life, a host of others being
transported or otherwise punished.

[109] On the Wednesday succeeding the explosion of the powder-magazine
in the garden of the Luxembourg, which unroofed a portion of the
palace, and destroyed the windows, and did fearful damage to the
surrounding houses, all the Communeux disappeared from the
neighbourhood. The following night four men returned, bringing a
quantity of petroleum with them. They gave orders that the six hundred
wounded men who were then lying in the Palace should be taken away
immediately. They had commenced their sinister project, and were
pouring the petroleum about in the cellars, when the soldiers of the
Brigade Paturel were informed of it, and arrived in time to prevent
its execution. The criminals were taken and shot on the spot.

XCVIII.

It is seven in the evening, the circulation has become almost
impossible. The streets are lined with patrols, and the regiments of
the Line camp upon the outer boulevards. They dine, smoke, and bivouac,
and drink with the citizens on the doorsteps of their houses. In the
distance is heard the storm of sounds which tells of the despairing
resistance of Belleville, and along the foot of the houses are seen
square white patches, showing the walled-up cellars, every hole and
crevice being plastered up to prevent insertion of the diabolical
liquid—walled up against _pétroleurs_ and pétroleuses, strings of
prisoners, among whom are furious women and poor children, their hands
tied behind their backs, pass along the boulevards towards Neuilly.
Night comes on, not a lamp is lighted, and the streets become deserted
as by degrees the sky becomes darker. At nine o’clock the solitude is
almost absolute. The sound of a musket striking the pavement is heard
from time to time; a sentinel passes here and there, and the lights in
the houses grow more and more rare.

XCIX.

The hours and the days pass and resemble each other horribly. To write
the history of the calamities is not yet possible. Each one sees but a
corner of the picture, and the narratives that are collected are vague
and contradictory; it appears certain now that the insurrection is
approaching the end. It is said that the fort of Montrouge is taken;
but it still hurls its shells upon Paris. Several have just fallen in
the quarter of the Banque. There is fighting still at the Halles, at
the Luxembourg, and at the Porte Saint-Martin. Neither the cannonading
nor the fusillade has ceased, and our ears have become accustomed to
the continued roar. But, in spite of the barbarous heroism of the
Federals, the force of their resistance is being exhausted. What has
become of the chiefs?

We continue to note down the incidents as they reach us.

It is said that Assy has been taken, close to the New Opera House. He
was going the nightly rounds, almost alone—“Who’s there!” cried a
sentinel. Assy, thinking the man was a Federal, replied, “You should
have challenged me sooner.” In an instant he was surrounded, disarmed,
and carried off. However, it is a very unlikely tale; it is most
improbable that Assy should not know that the New Opera was in the
hands of the Versaillais.

They say that Delescluze has fled, that Dombrowski has died[110] in an
ambulance, and that Millière is a prisoner at Saint-Denis. But these
are merely rumours, and I am utterly ignorant as to their worth. The
only thing certain is that the search is being carried on with vigour.
Close by the smoking ruins of what was once the Hôtel de Ville they
caught Citizen Ferraigu, inspector of the barricades; he confessed to
having received from the Committee of Public Safety particular orders
to burn down the shop of the Bon-Diable. Had one of these committeemen
been an assistant there, and did he owe his former master a grudge?
Ferraigu had a bottle of petroleum in his pocket; he was shot. I am
told that at the Théâtre du Châtelet a court-martial has been
established on the stage. The Federals are brought up twenty at a time,
judged, and condemned, they are then marched out on to the Place, with
their hands tied behind their backs. A mitrailleuse, standing a hundred
yards off, mows them down like grass. It is an expeditious contrivance.
In a yard, in the Rue Saint-Denis, is a stable filled with corpses; I
have myself seen them there. The Porte Saint-Martin Theatre is quite
destroyed, a guard is stationed near. This morning three _pétroleuses_
were shot there, the bodies are still lying on the boulevards. I have
just seen two insurgents walking between four soldiers; one an old man,
the other almost a lad. I heard the elder one say to the younger, “All
our misery comes of our having arms. In ’48 we had none, so we took
those of the soldiers, and then they were without. Now there is more
killing and less business done.” A few minutes after the little
procession passed up the Rue d’Hauteville, and I heard the reports of
two rifles. Oh! what horrible days! I feel a prey to the deepest
dejection—if it were but over! The town looks wretched; even where the
fighting is not going on, the houses are closed and the streets
deserted, except here and there: a lonely passenger hurrying along, or
a wretched prisoner marching between four soldiers. It is all very
dreadful! In the streets where the battle is still raging the shutters
are not closed; as soon as the soldiers get into a new quarter of the
town they cry out, “Shut the windows, open the shutters.” The reason
for this is, that the open barred outer shutters, or _persiennes_, form
a capital screen through which aim maybe taken with a gun. As for me,
in the midst of this horror and sadness, I feel like a madman in the
night. The rumour that the hostages have been shot at Mazas gains
ground.[111] I am told that the Archbishop, the Abbé Degueiry, and
Chaudey have all been assassinated. It was Bigault who ordered these
executions. He has since been taken, and fell, crying “Down with
murderers!” This reminds one of Dumollard, the assassin, calling the
jurymen “Canaille!” Millière is said to have been shot in the Place du
Panthéon. When they told him to kneel down he drew himself up to his
full height, his eyes flashing defiance. Strange caprice of nature, to
make these scoundrels brave.

[Illustration: Theatre Porte St Martin. Sensation Drama out
sensationed]

[Illustration: Cell of the Archbisop in The Prison Of La Roquette.]

[Illustration: Court-yard of Prison Of La Roquette, Where the Hostages]
were shot.

In the meantime, the Commune is in its death throes. Like the dragon of
fairy lore, it dies, vomiting flames. La Villette is on fire, houses
are burning at Belleville and on the Buttes-Chaumont. The resistance is
concentrated on one side at Père la Chaise, and on the other at the
Mont-Parnasse cemetery. The insurrection was mistress of the whole of
Paris, and then the army came stretching its long arms from the Arc de
Triomphe to Belleville, from the Champ-de-Mars to the Panthéon. Trying
hard to burst these bonds, tightly surrounded, now resisting, now
flying, the _émeute_ has at last retreated. It is over there now, in
two cemeteries; it watches from behind tombstones; it rests the barrels
of its rifles on marble crosses, and erects a battery on a sepulchre.
The shells of the Versaillais fall in the sacred enclosure, plough up
the earth, and unbury the dead. Something round rolled along a pathway,
the combatants thought it was a shell; it was a skull! What must these
men feel who are killing and being killed in the cemetery! To die among
the dead seems horrible. But they never give it a thought; the bloody
thirst for destruction which possesses them allows them only to think
of one thing, of killing! Some of them are gay, they are brave, these
men. That makes it only the more dreadful; these wretches are heroic!
Behind the barricades there have been instances of the most splendid
valour. A man at the Porte Saint-Martin, holding a red flag in his
hand, was standing, heedless of danger, on a pile of stones. The balls
showered around him, while he leant carelessly against an empty barrel
which stood behind.—“Lazy fellow,” cried a comrade—“No,” said he, “I am
only leaning that I may not fall when I die.” Such are these men; they
are robbers, incendiaries, assassins, but they are fearless of death.
They have only that one good quality. They smile and they die. The
vivandières allow themselves to be kissed behind the tombstones; the
wounded men drink with their comrades, and throw wine on their wounds,
saying, “Let us drink to the last.” And yet, in an hour perhaps, the
soldiers will fight their way into the cemeteries, which their balls
reach already, they too mad with rage; then the horrible bayonet
fighting will commence, man against man among the tombs, flying over
the mounds, desecrating the monuments, everything that imagination can
conjure up of most profane and terrible—a battle in a cemetery!

[Illustration: My Neighbour ‘en face’; business carries on as usual—My
neighbour next door: who thinks himself fortunate]

NOTES:

[110] The most reliable account of his death is given by a medical
student who attended him in his last moments. “Dombrowski was passing
with several members of the Commune in the Rue Myrrha, near the Rue
des Poissonniers, when he was struck by a bullet, which traversed the
lower part of his body. He was carried to a neighbouring chemist’s,
where I bandaged the wound. Before his transportation to the
Lariboisière Hospital, he ordered the fire to cease, but the troops
defending the barricade disobeyed the injunction. His sword was handed
by me to a captain of the 45th of the Line. His last words were nearly
identical with those which he uttered as he fell: ‘I am no traitor!’”
His worst enemies have said of him that he was a good soldier in a bad
cause.

[111] At the prison of Sainte-Pélagie, on Tuesday, the 23rd of May,
the unfortunate gendarmes, who had been made prisoners on the 18th,
were shot, together with M. Chaudey, a writer, on the _Siècle_,
arrested at the office of the journal, and conducted, first to Mazas
and afterwards to Sainte-Pélagie. (Appendix 11).
According to the _Siècle_, the “Procureur” of the Commune, Raoul
Rigault, presented himself, at the office at about eleven at night,
and having sent for M. Chaudey, said to him, without any preamble:
“I am here to tell you that you have not an hour to live.”
“You mean to say that I am to be assassinated,” replied Chaudey.
“You are to be shot, and that directly,” was the other’s rejoinder.
But, on reaching the prison, the National Guards who had been
summoned refused to do the odious work, and the Procureur went
himself to find others more docile. Chaudey was led before them,
Raoul Rigault drew his sword to give the signal, the muskets were
levelled and fired, and Chaudey fell, but wounded only. A sergeant
gave him the death blow by discharging his pistol at his head. The
next day, a hundred and fifty hostages of the Commune, confined at
the Prefecture of Police, amongst whom were Prince Galitzin and
Andreoli, a journalist, were about to be shot by an order of Ferré,
when the incendiary fires broke out and prevented the execution of
the order. At eleven o’clock, Raoul Rigault commanded the prisoners
to be released, and enjoined them to fight for the Commune; upon
their refusal, a shower of balls was discharged at them. The
prisoners rushed for refuge into the Rue du Harlay, which was in
flames, and were afterwards rescued by a detachment of the line.
That same day was fatal to Raoul Rigault. He was perceived by a
party of infantry at the moment when he was ringing at the door of
a house in the Rue Gay Lussac. His colonel’s uniform instantly made
him a mark for the soldiers; he had time to enter the house,
however, but was soon discovered, gave his name, and allowed
himself to be taken off towards the Luxembourg, but before reaching
it, he began to shout, “Vive la Commune!” “Down with the
assassins!” and made an effort to escape. The soldiers thrust him
against a wall and shot him down.
The next day, the 24th, marked the fate of the hostages, who, in
expectation of an attack of the Versaillais, had been transferred
from Mazas to La Roquette. “Monseigneur Darboy,” writes an
eye-witness (Monsieur Dubutte, miraculously saved by an error of
name), “occupied cell No. 21 of the 4th division, and I was at a
short distance from him, in No. 26. The cell in which the venerable
prelate was confined had been the office of one of the gaolers; it
was somewhat larger than the rest, and Monseigneur’s companions in
captivity had succeeded in obtaining for him a chair and a table.
On Wednesday, the 24th, at half-past seven in the evening, the
director of the prison—a certain Lefrançais, who had been a
prisoner in the hulks for the space of six years—went up, at the
head of fifty Federals, into the gallery, near which the most
important prisoners were incarcerated. Here they ranged themselves
along the walls, and a few moments later one of the head-gaolers
opened the door of the archbishop’s cell, and called him out. The
prelate answered, “I am here!” Then the gaoler passed on to M. le
President Bonjean’s cell (Appendix 12), then to that of Abbé
Allard, member of the International Society in Aid of the Wounded;
of Père du Coudray, Superior of the School of Ste-Geneviève; and
Père Clère, of the Brotherhood of Jesus; the last called being the
Abbé Deguerry, curé of the Madeleine. As the names were called,
each prisoner was led out into the gallery and down the staircase
to the courtyard; each side, as far as I could judge, was lined
with Federal guards, who insulted the prisoners in language that I
cannot repeat. Amid the hues and cries of these wretches my
unfortunate companions were conducted across the courtyard to the
infirmary, before which a file of soldiers were drawn up for the
execution. Monseigneur Darboy advanced and addressed his
murderers—addressed them words of pardon: then two of the men
approached the prelate, and falling on their knees implored his
pardon. The rest of the Federals threw themselves upon them, and
thrust them aside with oaths, then, turning to the prisoners, they
heaped fresh insults upon them. The chief officer of the
detachment, however, imposed silence on the men, and uttering an
oath, said, ‘You are here to shoot these men, not to insult them.’
The Federals were silenced, and upon the command of their
lieutenant, they loaded their muskets.
“Père Allard was placed against the wall, and was the first who was
struck; then Monseigneur Darboy fell, and the six prisoners were
thus shot in turn, showing, at this supreme moment, a saintly
dignity and a noble courage.”

Where are these men going with hurried steps, and with lanterns in
their hands? Their uniform is that of the National Guard, and
consequently of Federals, but the tricolour band which they wear on the
arm would seem to indicate that they belong to the Party of Order. They
are making their way by one of the entries of the sewers, and preceded
by an officer are disappearing beneath the sombre vaults. Calling to
mind the sinister expression of a Communal artillery commander—“The
reactionary quarters will all be blown up; not one shall be spared,” it
is impossible to avoid feeling a shudder of terror. What if the
incendiaries all wearing the badge of the Party of Order, be about to
set fire to mines prepared beforehand, or to barrels of petroleum ready
to be staved in! The wild demons of the Commune are capable of
everything; an invention of incendiary firemen is quoted as an example
of the diabolical genius which presided over the work of destruction;
individuals wearing the fireman’s uniform were seen to throw
combustible liquids by means of pumps and pails on the burning houses,
instead of aiding to extinguish the flames.

[Illustration: Paris Underground]

[Illustration: The Enemies of Progress.
Corps de garde de l’armée de Versailles]

Fortunately, the fear is unfounded, the object of these men, on the
contrary, is to cut the wires which connect all parts with inflammable
materials, torpedoes, and other atrocious machines. They have already
passed several nights in destroying this underground telegraphic
system. The duty is not without danger; for not only are they exposed
to the terrible consequences of a sudden explosion, but also to the
risk of being taken and shot without trial, as traitors to the Commune.
That is, should they chance to fall in with hostile bands, or appear in
unfriendly quarters. It appears that these determined and devoted
citizens have already lost two of their companions in the execution of
this perilous duty. The intention of the Commune was to charge the
whole of the main sewers and subways with combustibles; but luckily
they had not time to mature their schemes, the advance of the
Versailles troops being too quick for them. The Catacombs were included
in the arrangement; for did not the able Assy direct his agent Fossé to
keep them open, as a means of escape? Alas! these subterranean passages
that underlie so large a portion of ancient Paris, what stories could
they not tell of starved fugitives and maimed culprits dragging their
weary limbs into the darkness of these gloomy caverns, only that they
might die there in peace! Men and women, whose forms will in a few
short weeks be unrecognisable, whose whitened bones will be crushed and
kicked aside by the future explorer, who may perchance penetrate the
labyrinths, and whose dust will finally be mixed up and
undistinguishable from that of the bones and skulls taken from ancient
cemeteries and graveyards with which this terrible Golgotha is
decorated in Mosaic.

CI.

The fire is out, let us contemplate the ruins.[112] The Commune is
vanquished. Look at Paris, sad, motionless, laid waste. This is what we
have come to! Consternation is in every breast, solitude is in every
street. We feel no longer either anger or pity; we are resigned, broken
by emotion; we see processions of prisoners pass on their way to
Versailles, and we scarcely look at them; no one thinks of saying
either, “Wretches!” or “Poor fellows!” The soldiers themselves are very
silent. Although they, are the victors they are sad; they do not drink,
they do not sing. Paris might be a town that had been assaulted and
taken by dumb enemies; the irritation has worn itself off, and the
tears have not yet come. The tricolour flags which float from all the
windows surprise us; there does not seem any reason for rejoicing. Yet,
of late especially, the triumph of the Versaillais has been ardently
wished for by the greater portion of the population; but all are so
tired that they have not the energy to rejoice. Let us look back for a
moment. First the siege, with famine, separation and poverty; then the
insurrection of Montmartre, surprises, hesitations, cannonading night
and day, ceaseless musketry, mothers in tears, sons pursued, every
calamity has fallen on this miserable city. It has been like Rome under
Tiberius, then like Rome after the barbarians had overrun it. The
cannon balls have fallen upon Sybaris. So much emotion, so many horrors
have worn out the city; and then all this blood, this dreadful blood.
Corpses in the streets, corpses within the houses, corpses everywhere!
Of course they were terribly guilty, these men that were taken, that
were killed; they were horrible criminals, those women who poured
brandy into the glasses and petroleum on the houses! But, in the first
moment of victory, were there no mistakes? Were those that were shot
all guilty? Then the sight of these executions, however merited, was
cruelly painful. The innocent shuddered at the doom of justice. True,
Paris is quiet now, but it is the quiet of the battle-field on the
morrow of a victory; quiet as night, and as the tomb! An unsupportable
uneasiness oppresses us; shall we ever be able to shake off this
apathy, to pierce through this gloom? Paris, rent and bleeding, turns
with sadness from the past, and dares not yet raise her eyes to the
future!

[Illustration: The New Masters PROCLAMATION OVER PROCLAMATION PUBLIC
PROMENADES. CAMPS IN THE GARDENS OF THE LUXEMBOURG AND THE
TUILERIES—THE SOLDIERS LOCKED IN, AND THE PUBLIC LOCKED OUT. The damage
done to the pier was by a Prussian shell in Jan. 1871.]

[Illustration: Palace of the Luxembourg (streat Front). Now The Seat of
the Prefecture of Paris]

POOR PARIS!

[Illustration:]

On August 15th, the _Times_ reporter gave the number awaiting trial
at Versailles at 30,000. On the 7th September they had reached
39,000, daily arrests adding to the number; out of these,
35,000 only had their charges made out, of which
13,900 had been examined, 2,800 writs of
release having been issued, though only a
few hundreds have been set at liberty.
There are only 94 reporting officers:
20 attached to the Council of War,
6 to the Orangerie, 4 to Satory,
3 to the Prison des Femmes,
and 16 to the Western Ports:
17 more are to be
added shortly.

[Illustration: Marchal Macmahon, Duc de Magenta.
Commander-in-Chief of the Army of Versailles.]

[Illustration: Light & Air Once More
the Fosse commune
THE END]

NOTES:

[112] See Appendix 14, 15, 16, and 17.

[Illustration:]

APPENDIX.

CHRONOLOGY OF THE PARISIAN INSURRECTION,
FROM THE 18th OF MARCH TO THE 29th MAY, 1871.

The dash (—) in each day after the commencement of military operations
divides the civil from the military.

_Saturday, 18th March_: Early in the morning troops take possession of
the Buttes Montmartre and Belleville. The soldiers charged with the
recovery of the pieces of artillery fraternise with the people and the
National Guard. Arrest of Generals Lecomte and Clement Thomas: they are
shot at Montmartre without trial. National Guards take possession of
the Hôtel de Ville, the Prefecture of Police is invaded by Raoul
Rigault, Duval, and others.

_Sunday, 19th March_: The Central Committee of the National Guard take
possession of the offices of the _Journal Officiel_. Arrest of General
Chanzy. Gustave Flourens, imprisoned at Mazas, is set at liberty by the
new masters of Paris. M. Thiers addresses a circular to the country
enjoining obedience to the only authority, that of the Assembly.

_Tuesday, 21st March_: Manifestation of the “Friends of Order.”
Procession for public demonstration. Sitting of the Assembly at
Versailles. M. Jules Favre advises prompt measures. Appeal to the
people and army.

_Wednesday, 22nd March_: Friends of Order shot in the Rue de la Paix.
Lullier arrested by order of the Central Committee.

_Thursday, 23rd March_: Vice-Admiral Saisset is appointed by the
Assembly Commander-in-Chief of the National Guard.

_Friday, 24th March_: The delegates Brunel, Eudes, Duval, are promoted
to the rank of generals by the Central Committee. Vice-Admiral
Saisset’s proclamation.

_Saturday, 29th March_: Occupation of the Mairie of the 1st
Arrondissement by the Federals. First placard of the Committee of
Conciliation. Rumour of the arrest of Lullier reproached for
moderation. Vice-Admiral Saisset retires to Versailles. _Sunday, 26th
March_: Municipal elections to constitute the Commune of Paris.

_Tuesday, 28th March_: 4 p. m., names of the elect proclaimed at the
Hôtel de Ville. Arrival of General Chanzy at Versailles.

_Wednesday, 29th March_: Conscription abolished—all citizens to be
National Guards. Pawnbroking decree. Organisation of commissions:
executive, financial, military, etc. Ministers to be called delegates.

_Saturday, 1st April_: The Executive Committee issues a decree to
suppress the rank and functions of General-in-Chief. General Eudes
appointed Delegate of War; Bergeret to the staff of the National Guard,
in place of Brunel; Duval to the military command of the ex-Prefecture
of Police, where Raoul Rigault was civil delegate.

_Sunday, 2nd April_: Military operations commence 9 a.m. Action at
Courbevoie. Flourens marches his troops to Versailles, _viâ_ Rueil.

_Monday, 3rd April_: The corps d’armée of General Bergeret at the Rond
Point near Neuilly, is stopped by the artillery of Mont Valérien.
Exchange of shot between Fort Issy and Fort Vanves, occupied by
insurgents, and Meudon.—The separation of Church and State decreed.

_Tuesday, 4th April_: General Duval made prisoner in the engagement at
Châtillon and shot. Death of Flourens at Rueil.—Delescluze, Cournet,
and Vermorel succeed Generals Bergeret, Eudes, and Duval on the
Executive Commission. Cluseret Delegate of War, and Bergeret commandant
of Paris forces.

_Wednesday, 6th April_: General Cluseret commences active operations.
Military service compulsory for all citizens under forty. Abbé
Deguerry, and Archbishop of Paris arrested.

_Thursday, 6th April_: Extension of action to Neuilly and Courbevoie.
Versailles army decreed by executive authority. Obsequies of Flourens
at Versailles.—Decree concerning the complicity with Versailles, and
arrest of hostages. The rank of general suppressed by the Commune.
Dombrowski succeeds Bergeret as Commandant of Paris.

_Friday, 7th April_: Decree for disarming the Réfractaires. The
guillotine is burnt on the Place Voltaire.

_Saturday, 8th April_: Federals abandon Neuilly.—Commission of
barricades created and presided over by Gaillard Senior. Military
occupation of the railway termini by the insurgents.

_Sunday, 9th April_: Insurgents attempt to retake Châtillon, but are
repulsed. Forts Vanves and Montrouge disabled. Mont Valérien shells the
Avenue des Ternes.—Assy and Bergeret arrested by order of the Commune.

_Tuesday, 11th April_: Marshal MacMahon, Commander-in-Chief,
distributes his forces. Commences the investment of fort Issy.

_Wednesday, 12th April_: Versailles batteries established on Châtillon.
The Orleans railway and telegraph out. Communications of the insurgents
with the south intercepted.—Decree ordering the fall of the Column
Vendôme. Decree concerning the complementary elections.

_Thursday, 13th April:_ Courbet presides at a meeting of artists at the
École de Médecine. Publication of the reports of the sittings of the
Commune.

_Friday, 14th April_: The redoubt of Gennevilliers taken. The troops of
Versailles make advances to the Château de Bécon, a post of
importance.—Lullier takes the command of the flotilla on the Seine.

_Sunday, 16th April_: Complementary elections. Organisation of a
court-martial under the presidence of Rossel, chief officer of the
staff.

_Monday, 11th April_: Capture and fortification of the Château de
Bécon.

_Tuesday, 18th April_: Station and houses at Asnières taken by the army
of Versailles.

_Thursday, 20th April_: The village of Bagneux is occupied by the
Versaillais.—Reorganisation of commissions. Eudes appointed
inspector-general of the southern forts. Transfers his quarters from
Montrouge to the Palace of the Legion of Honour.

_Saturday, 22nd April_: Deputation from the Freemasons to Versailles.

_Monday, 24th April_: Raoul Rigault takes the office of public
prosecutor, resigning the Prefecture of Police to Cournet.

_Tuesday, 25th April_: The Versailles batteries at Breteuil,
Brimborion, Meudon, and Moulin de Pierre trouble the Federal Fort Issy,
and battery between Bagneux and Châtillon shells Fort Vanves. Truce at
Neuilly from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The inhabitants of Neuilly enter Paris by
the Porte des Ternes.

_Wednesday, 26th April_: Capture of Les Moulineaux, outpost of the
insurgents, by the troops, who strongly fortify themselves on the 27th
and 28th.

_Saturday, 29th April_: Cemetery and park of Issy taken by the
Versaillais in the night.—Freemasons make a new attempt at
conciliation. The Commune levies a sum of two millions of francs from
the railway companies.

_Sunday, 30th April_: A flag of truce sent to Fort Issy by the
Versaillais, calling upon the Federals to surrender. General Eudes puts
fresh troops in the fort, and takes the command himself.—Cluseret
imprisoned at Mazas by order of the Commune. Rossel appointed
provisional Delegate of War.

_Monday, 1st May_: The Versaillais take the station of Clamart and the
Château of Issy.—Creation of the Committee of Public Safety. Members:
Antoine Arnauld, Léo Meillet, Ranvier, Félix Pyat, Charles Gérardin.

_Wednesday, 3rd May_: The troops of General Lacretelle carry the
redoubt of Moulin Saquet.

_Friday, 5th May_: Colonel Rossel appointed to the direction of
military affairs. He defines the military quarters: General Dombrowski,
Place Vendôme; General La Cécilia, at the Ecole Militaire; General
Wroblewski, at the Elysée; General Bergeret, at the Corps Législatif;
General Eudes at the Palace of the Legion of Honour. The Central
Committee of the National Guard charged with Administration of War
under the supervision of the military commission. The Chapelle
Expiatoire condemned to destruction—the materials to be sold by
auction.

_Saturday, 6th May_: Concert at the Tuileries in aid of the ambulances.
Suppression of newspapers.

_Monday, 8th May_: Battery of Montretout (70 marine guns) opens fire.

_Tuesday, 9th May_: Morning, insurgents evacuate the Fort Issy.—The
Committee of Public Safety renewed. Members: Ranvier, Antoine Arnauld,
Gambon, Eudes, Delescluze. Rossel resigns; his letter to the Commune.

_Wednesday, 10th May_: Cannon from the Fort Issy taken to
Versailles.—Decree for the demolition of M. Thiers’ house. Delescluze
appointed Delegate of War.

_Friday, 12th May_: Troops take possession of the Couvent des Oiseaux
at Issy, and the Lyceum at Vanves.

_Saturday, 13th May_: Triumphal entry of the troops into Versailles
with flags and cannon taken from the Convent. The evacuation of the
village of Issy completed. Fort Vanves taken by the troops.

_Sunday, 14th May_: Vigorous cannonade from the batteries of
Courbevoie, Bécon, Asnières on Levallois and Clichy: both villages
evacuated. Commencement of the demolition of house of M. Thiers.

_Monday, 15th May_: Report of the rearmament of Montmartre.

_Tuesday, 16th May_: The Column Vendôme falls.

_Wednesday, 11th May_: Powder magazine and cartridge factory near the
Champ de Mars blown up.

_Sunday, 21st May_: 2 p.m. the troops enter Paris.—Rochefort arrives at
Versailles. Raoul Rigault and Régère charged with the hostage decree.

_Monday, 22nd May_: Noon, explosion of the powder magazine of the
Manège d’Etat-Major (staff riding-school). The hostages transferred
from Mazas to La Roquette. Assy arrested in Paris by the Versaillais.
The Assembly votes the re-erection of the Column Vendôme.

_Tuesday, 23rd May_: Montmartre taken. Death of Dombrowski. Morning,
Assy arrives at Versailles. Execution of gendarmes and Gustave Chaudey
at the prison of Sainte-Pélagie. Night, the Tuileries are set on fire.
Delescluze and the Committee of Public Safety hold permanent sittings
at the Hôtel de Ville.

_Wednesday, 24th May_: One p.m., the powder magazine at the Palais du
Luxembourg blown up. The Committee of Public Safety organise
detachments of fusee-bearers. Raoul Rigault shot in the afternoon by
the soldiers. In the evening, execution in the Prison of La Roquette of
the Archbishop, Abbé Deguerry, etc.

_Thursday, 26th May_: The forts Montrouge, Hautes-Bruyères, Bicêtre
evacuated by the insurgents. The death of Delescluze is reported to
have taken place this day. Executions in the Avenue d’Italie of the
Pères Dominicains of Arcueil.

_Friday, 26th May_: Sixteen priests shot in the Cemetery of Père
Lachaise by the insurgents.

_Saturday, 27th May_: The Buttes Chaumont, the heights of Belleville,
and the Cemetery of Père Lachaise carried by the troops. Taking of the
prison La Roquette by the Marines. Deliverance of 169 hostages.

_Sunday, 28th May_: The investment of Belleville complete.

_Monday, 29th May_: Six. p.m., the federal garrison of the fortress of
Vincennes surrendered at discretion.

I. (Page 2.)

HENRI ROCHEFORT.

Henri Rochefort, personal enemy of the Empire, republican humourist of
the _Marseillaise_, and the lukewarm socialist of the _Mot d’Ordre_,
who could answer to the judge who demanded his name, “I am Henri
Rochefort, Comte de Lucey,” has been reproached by some with his titles
of nobility, and with the childish pleasure that he takes in affecting
the plebeian. It is said of him that he aspires but to descend, but who
would condemn him for spurning the petrifactions of the Faubourg
Saint-Germain? A man must march with the times.

Rochefort has distinguished himself among the young men by the
marvellous tact that he has shown in discovering the way to popular
favour. If I were allowed to compare a marquis to one of the canine
species, I should say that he has a keen scent for popularity; but one
must respect rank in a period like ours, when we may go to sleep to the
shouts of the _canaille_, and awake to the melodious sounds of “_Vive
Henri V!_” “Long live the King!”

Born in January, 1830, Henri Rochefort was the son of a marquis,
although his father, lately dead, was a _vaudevilliste_ and his mother
a _pâtissère_. From such a fusion might have emanated odd tastes, such
as preferring truffles to potatoes, but putting the knife into
requisition whilst eating green peas. But in his case Mother Nature had
intermingled elements so cleverly that Rochefort could be republican
and royalist, catholic and atheist, without being accused for all that
of being a political weathercock.

As a writer of drollery and scandal in the _Charivari_, would it have
been well if he had used his title as a badge? Later, when contributing
to the _Nain Jaune_, the _Soleil_, the _Evénement_, and the _Figaro_,
when everyone would have been enchanted to call him _mon cher Comte_,
he never displayed his rank, except when on the ground, face to face
with the sword or pistol of Prince Achille Murat or Paul de Cassagnac.

A frequenter of _cafés_, living fast, bitter with journalists,
hail-fellow with comedians, he lavished his wit for the benefit of
minor theatres, and expended the exuberance of his patrician blood in
comic odes. Dispensing thus some of his strength in such pieces as the
_Vieillesse de Brididi_, the _Foire aux Grotesques_, and _Un Monsieur
Bien-Mis_, in 1868 he founded the _Lanterne_, and thenceforth became
the most ardent champion of the revolutionary party; and in the
brilliant articles we all know, he cast its light on the follies of
others under the pretext that they were his own. This satirical
production reached the eleventh number, when its author, overstepping
all bounds, took Napoleon by the horns and the gendarmes by the nose,
and committed other extravagances, until the Government fined him to
the amount of ten thousand francs penalties, and ordered him a short
repose in the prison of Sainte-Pélagie. The notoriety attaching to his
name dates from that period, and the events which accompanied the
violent death of Victor Noir tended to augment his popularity and to
convert him into the leader of a party, or the bearer of a flag, around
which rallied all the elements of the struggle against established
authority. He escaped to Belgium, and studied socialism, which he
expounded later to an admiring audience of seventeen to eighteen
thousand electors at Belleville. Elected deputy by the 20th
Arrondissement, M. de Rochefort became, in 1869, a favourite
representative of that class of the Parisian population whose bad
instincts he had flattered and whose tendencies to revolt against
authority he had encouraged, and in virtue of these claims he was
chosen to form part of the Government of the National Defence. As
President of the Commission of Barricades, after the 4th of September,
during the siege of Paris, in the midst of the difficulties of all
sorts caused to the Government of the National Defence by the
investment of the capital, M. De Rochefort, making more and more common
cause with the revolutionary party, separated himself from his
colleagues in the Government who refused to permit the establishment of
a second Government, the Commune, within a besieged city. By this act
he openly declared himself a partisan of the Commune, and immediately
after the acceptance of the preliminaries of peace he resigned his
position as a deputy, alleging that his commission was at an end, and
retired to Arcachon.

His wildly sanguinary articles in the _Marseillaise_, and the compacts
sealed with blood, with Flourens and his associates, now had so
exhausted our poor Rochefort that at the moment of flourishing his
handkerchief as the standard of the _canaille_, he dropped pale and
fainting to the ground, attacked by a severe illness. He was hardly
convalescent when the events of the 18th of March occurred. But early
in April, he exerted himself to assume the direction of the _Mot
d’Ordre_, which, after having been suppressed by order of General
Vinoy, the military commandant of Paris, had reappeared immediately
upon the establishment of the Commune. He arrived on the scene of
contest about the 8th or 10th of April. The daily report of military
operations states the movements of the enemy, and points out what
should be done to meet and resist him most advantageously (12th, 13th,
and 14th of April; 10th; 16th, and 20th of May). Imaginary successes,
the inaccuracy of which must in most instances have been known to the
chief editor of the _Mot d’Ordre_, encouraged the hopes of the
insurgents, while the announcement of unsuccessful combats was delayed
with evident intention; the most ridiculous stories, the falsity of
which was evident to the plainest common sense, and which could not
escape the intelligence of M. Rochefort, were published in his journal,
and kept up the popular excitement (12th, 15th, 19th, 26th, 27th, and
28th of April; 6th and 7th of May). It was in this manner that the
pretended Pontifical Zouaves were brought upon the scene, with
emblazoned banners, which were seized by the soldiers of the Commune
(18th and 19th of April, 8th and 10th of May); that the Government of
Versailles was furnished with war material given by, or purchased from
the Prussians (27th and 28th of April, 6th and 17th of May); that it
was again accused of making use of explosive bullets (18th and 19th of
May), and of petroleum bombs (20th of April, and 2nd, 5th, 17th, and
19th of May); and that the best-known and most respected generals had
been guilty of the grossest acts of cruelty and barbarity. Incitement
to civil war (2nd and 26th of April and 14th and 24th of May) followed,
as did also the oft-repeated accusation against the Government of
wishing to reduce Paris by famine; indescribable calumnies directed
against the Chief of the Executive Power (2nd, 16th, 20th, and 30th of
April, and 8th of May), against the minister, the Chambers (16th of
April and 14th of May), and the generals (12th, 16th, and 26th of
April). The director of the _Mot d’Ordre_ then finding that men’s minds
were prepared for all kinds of excesses, started the idea of the
demolition of M. Thiers’s house by way of reprisal (6th of April); he
mentioned the artistic wealth which it contained. He also referred to
the dwellings of other ministers. He returned persistently to this
idea, and on the 17th of May he invited the people, in the name of
justice, to burn off-hand that other humiliating monument which is
styled the History of the Consulate and of the Empire—in short, he
insists on the execution of these acts of Vandalism. He did not call
for the destruction of the Column Vendôme, but approved of the decree.
He demands the destruction of the Expiatory Chapel of Louis XVI. (20th
of April), and suggests the seizure of the crown jewels, which were in
the possession of the bank (14th of April). In short, M. Rochefort,
having entered upon a road which must naturally lead to extremes,
finally arrives at a proposition for assassination. In the same way as
he pointed out to the demolishers the house of M. Thiers, and to the
bandits released by the Commune the treasures of the Church, so he
points out to the assassins the unfortunate hostages.

A few days before the end of the reign of the Commune he judged it
prudent, “seeing the gravity of events,” to suspend the publication of
his journal and to quit Paris.

He was arrested at Meaux. It was the “_Meaux de la fin_,”[113] said a
friend and fellow-writer.

He arrived at Versailles on the twenty-first of May, at two o’clock,
the same day on which the troops entered Paris. On Sept. 20 Rochefort
was tried with the Communists before the military tribunal of
Versailles. Physically he seemed to have suffered much during his three
months of incarceration. He is reported to have made anything but a
brilliant defence, and to have restricted himself to pleading past
actions and good services. He said that he suppressed _The
Marseillaise_ at a loss of 20,000 francs per month, when he had no
other private means of support, because he thought the effect of its
articles would weaken the plan of Trochu for the defence of Paris, and
that when he (M. Rochefort) held the _forces populaires_, and had an
_occasion unique_, he chose to play a subordinate part. He stated
himself a journalist _under_ the reign of the Commune, and not an
active power _in_ the Commune from which in the end he had to fly.
Rochefort owned that his articles in the _Mot d’Ordre_ had been more or
less violent, but he pleaded the cause his “_façon plus ou moins
nerveuse à écrire_” and that from illness he did not sometimes see his
own journal. When pandering to a vulgar audience, Rochefort seemed to
have lost his rich vein of satire, and to have lost himself in vile
abuse. On the 21st he was sentenced to transportation for life within
the enceinte of a French fortress.

NOTES:

[113] “_Le mot de la fin_,” the final word—the finale.

II. (Page 27.)

THE EIGHTEENTH OF MARCH.

It was on the day of the 18th of March, exactly six months after the
appearance of Prussians beneath the walls of Paris, that the Government
had chosen for the repression of the rebellion. At four o’clock in the
morning, the troops of the army of Paris received orders to occupy the
positions that had been assigned to them. All were to take part in the
action, but it is just to add here that the most arduous and fatiguing
part fell to the share of the Lustielle division, composed of the
Paturel brigade (17th battalion of Chasseurs), and of the Lecomte
brigade (18th battalion of Chasseurs). Three regiments of infantry were
entrusted with the guard of the Hôtel de Ville; another, the 89th,
mounted guard at the Tuileries. The Place de la Bastille was occupied
by a battalion of the 64th, and two companies of the 24th. Three other
battalions remained confined to barracks on the Boulevard du Prince
Eugene. The Rue de Flandre, the Rue de Puebla, and the Rue de Crimée
were filled with strong detachments of Infantry; a battalion of the
Republican Guard and the 35th Regiment of Infantry were drawn up in the
neighbourhood of the Buttes Chaumont. The whole quarter around the
Place Clichy was occupied by the Republican Guard, foot Chasseurs,
mounted gendarmes, Chasseurs d’Afrique, and a half battery of
artillery. Other troops, starting from this base-line of operation,
were led up the heights of Montmartre, together with companies of
Gardiens de la Paix (the former Sergents-de-Ville converted into
soldiers). At six o’clock in the morning the first orders were
executed; the Gardiens de la Paix surrounded a hundred and fifty or two
hundred insurgents appointed to guard the park of artillery, and the
troops made themselves masters of all the most important points. The
success was complete. Nothing remained to be done but to carry off the
guns. Unhappily, the horses which had been ordered for this purpose did
not arrive at the right moment. The cause of this fatal delay remains
still unknown, but it is certain that they were still on the Place de
la Concorde at the time when they ought to have been harnessed to the
guns at Montmartre. Before they arrived, agitation had broken out and
spread all over the quarter. The turbulent population, complaining in
indignant tones of circulation being stopped, insulted the sentinels
placed at the entrances of the streets, and threatened the artillerymen
who were watching them. At the same time, the Central Committee caused
the rappel to be beaten, and towards seven o’clock in the morning ten
or twelve thousand National Guards from the arrondissements of
Batignolles, Montmartre, La Villette, and Belleville poured into the
streets. Crowds of lookers-on surrounded the soldiers who were mounting
guard by the recaptured pieces, the women and children asking them
pleadingly if they would have the heart to fire upon their brothers.

Meanwhile, about a dozen tumbrils, with their horses, had arrived on
the heights of the Buttes, the guns were dragged off, and were quietly
proceeding down hill, when, at the corner of the Rue Lepic and the Rue
des Abbesses, they were stopped by a concourse of several hundred
people of the quarter, principally women and children. The foot
soldiers, who were escorting the guns, forgetting their duty, allowed
themselves to be dispersed by the crowd, and giving way to perfidious
persuasion, ended by throwing up the butt ends of their guns. These
soldiers belonged to the 88th Battalion of the Lecomte brigade. The
immediate effect of their disaffection was to abandon the artillerymen
to the power of the crowd that was increasing every moment, rendering
it utterly impossible for them either to retreat or to advance. And the
result was, that at nine o’clock in the morning the pieces fell once
more into the hands of the National Guards.

Judging that the enterprise had no chance of succeeding by a return to
the offensive, Général Vinoy ordered a retreat, and retired to the
quarter of Les Ternes. This movement had been, moreover, determined by
the bad news arriving from other parts of Paris. The operations at
Belleville had succeeded no better than those at Montmartre. A
detachment of the 35th had, it is true, attacked and taken the Buttes
Chaumont, defended only by about twenty National Guards; but as soon as
the news of the capture had spread in the quarter, the drums beat to
arms, and in a short time the troops were found fraternising with the
National Guards of Belleville, who got possession again of the Buttes
Chaumont, and not only retook their own guns, but also those which the
artillery had brought up to support the manoeuvre of the infantry of
the line. At the same time, the 120th shamefully allowed themselves to
be disarmed by the people, and the insurgents became masters of the
barracks of the Prince Eugène.

At about four o’clock in the afternoon, two columns of National Guards,
each composed of three battalions, made their way towards the Hôtel de
Ville, where they were joined by a dozen other battalions from the left
bank of the river; at the same hour, the insurgent guards of Belleville
took and occupied the Imprimerie Nationale, the Napoleon Barracks, the
staff-quarters of the Place Vendôme, and the railway stations; the
arrest of Général Chanzy completed the work of the day, which had been
put to profitable account by the insurgents.—“_Guerre de Comunneux de
Paris._”

III. (Page 77.)

THE PRUSSIANS AND THE COMMUNE.

The enemies of yesterday, the Prussians, did not disdain to enter into
communication with the Central Committee on the 22nd of March. This was
an additional reason for the new masters of Paris to regard their
position as established, and the _Official Journal_ took care to make
known to the public the following despatch received from Prussian
head-quarters:—

“To the actual Commandant of Paris, the Commander-in-Chief of the third
corps d’armée.
“Head-quarters, Compiègne,
“21st March, 1871.

“The undersigned Commander-in-Chief takes the liberty of informing you
that the German troops that occupy the forts on the north and east of
Paris, as well as the neighbourhood of the right bank of the Seine,
have received orders to maintain a pacific and friendly attitude, so
long as the events of which the interior of Paris is the theatre, do
not assume towards the German forces a hostile character, or such as to
endanger them, but keep within the terms settled by the treaty of
peace.
“But should these events assume a hostile character, the city of
Paris will be treated as an enemy.

“For the Commandant of the third corps of the Imperial armies,
“(Signed) Chief of the Staff, VON SCHLOSHEIM,
“Major-General.”

Paschal Grousset, the delegate of the Central Committee for Foreign
Affairs, who had succeeded Monsieur Jules Favre, but who instead of
minister was called delegate, which was much more democratic, replied
as follows:—

“Paris, 22nd March, 1871.
“To the Commandant-in-Chief of the Imperial Prussian Armies.

“The undersigned, delegate of the Central Committee for Foreign
Affairs, in reply to your despatch dated from Compiègne the 21st
instant, informs you that the revolution, accomplished in Paris by the
Central Committee, having an essentially municipal character, has no
aggressive views whatever against the German armies.
“We have no authority to discuss the preliminaries of peace voted
by the Assembly at Bordeaux.

“The member of the Central Committee, Delegate for Foreign Affairs.
“(Signed) PASCHAL GROUSSET.”

It was very logical of you, Monsieur Grousset, to avow that you had no
authority to discuss the preliminaries of peace voted by the Assembly.
What right had you then to substitute yourselves for it? He did not,
however, thus remain midway in his diplomatic career, for after the
election of the Commune he thought it his duty to address the following
letter to the German authorities:—

“COMMUNE OF PARIS.
“To the Commander-in-chief of the 3rd Corps.

“GENERAL,

“The delegate of the Commune of Paris for Foreign Affairs has the
honour to address to you the following observations:—
“The city of Paris, like the rest of France, is interested in the
observance of the conditions of peace concluded with Prussia; she
has therefore a right to know how the treaty will be executed. I
beg you, in consequence, to have the goodness to inform me if the
Government of Versailles has made the first payment of five hundred
millions, and if in consequence of such payment, the chiefs of the
German army have fixed the date for the evacuation of the part of
the territory of the department of the Seine, and also of the forts
which form an integral portion of the territory of the Commune of
Paris.
“I shall be much obliged, General, if you will be good enough to
enlighten me in this respect.

“The Delegate for Foreign Affairs,
“(Signed) PASCHAL GROUSSET.”

The German general did not think fit, as far as we know, to send any
answer to the above.

IV. (Page 88.)

GAMBON.

There are certain legendary names which when spoken or remembered evoke
a second image and raise a double personality, Castor implies Pollux;
Ninos, Euryalus; Damon, Pythias. An inferior species of union connects
Saint Anthony with his pig, Roland with his mare, and the infinitely
more modern Gambon with his historic cow. He was “the village Hampden”
of the Empire. By withstanding the tyranny of Caesar’s tax-gatherer and
refusing to pay the imperial rates, he obtained a popularity upon which
he existed until the Commune gave him power. His history is brief.
About a year before the fall of the Second Empire, he declared that he
would pay no more taxes imposed by the Government. Thereupon, all his
realizable property, consisting of one cow, was seized by the
authorities and sold for the benefit of the State. This procured him
the commiseration of the entire party of _irréconciliables_. A
subscription was opened in the columns of the _Marseillaise_ to replace
the sequestrated animal, and “La vache à Gambon”—“Gambon’s cow”—became
a derisive party cry. Gambon had been a deputy in 1848, and when the
Commune came into power took a constant though not remarkable part in
its deliberations. He was appointed member of the Delegation of Justice
on the twentieth of April.

V. (Page 120.).

LULLIER.

Charles Ernest Lullier was born in 1838, admitted into the Naval School
in 1854, and appointed cadet of the second class in 1856. He was
expelled the Naval School for want of obedience and for his irascible
character. When on board the Austerlitz he was noted for his
quarrelsome disposition and his violent behaviour to his superiors as
well as his equals, which led to his removal from the ship and to his
detention for a month on board the Admiral’s ship at Brest. He was
first brought into notoriety by his quarrel with Paul de Cassagnac, the
editor of the _Pays_, whom he challenged, and who refused his cartel.
Lullier is celebrated for several acts of the most violent audacity. He
struck one of the Government counsel in the Palais de Justice, and
openly threatened the Minister of Marine. He was condemned several
times for political offences and breaches of discipline. On the fourth
of September he left Sainte-Pélagie at the same time as Rochefort. He
attacked the new government in every possible way; and when the events
of the 18th March occurred, M. Lullier—the man of action, the man
recommended by Flourens—seized the opportunity to justify the hopes
formed of him by his political associates, who had not lost sight of
him, and who elected him military chief of the insurrection. As General
of the National Guard, he has given us the history of his deeds during
the 18th, 19th, 20th, 21st, and 22nd March. He has since complacently
described the energy with which he executed his command, has explained
the means he used, and the points occupied by the insurgents; and has
described in the same style the occupation of the Paris forts by the
National Guard.

When, on the 18th of March, the Central Committee offered him the
command in chief of the National Guard, he would only accept it on the
following conditions:—

1. The raising of the state of siege.

2. The election by the National Guard of all its officers, including
the general.

3. Municipal franchises for Paris—that is to say, the right of the
citizens to meet—to appoint magistrates for the city, and to tax
themselves by their representatives.

On being appointed he made it a condition that the initiative should
rest with him, and then he began to execute his duties with a zeal
which never relaxed till his arrest on the 22nd March. By his orders,
barricades were erected in the Rue de Rivoli, where he massed the
insurgent forces. He ordered the occupation of the Hôtel de Ville and
the Napoleon Barracks by Brunel, the commander of the insurgents. At
midnight he took possession of the Prefecture of Police, at one o’clock
of the Tuileries, at two o’clock of the Place du Palais Royal, and at
four o’clock he was informed that the Ministry were to meet at the
Foreign Office.—“I would have surrounded them,” he said, “but Jules
Favre’s presence withheld me. I contented myself therefore with
occupying the Place Vendôme, the Hôtel de Ville, and ordering
strategical points on the right bank of the river and four on the
left.”

He was subsequently accused of having sold Mont Valérien to the
Versailles authorities, arrested, and thrown into the Conciergerie. He
reappeared, however, on the 14th April as commander of the flotilla of
the Commune. Furious with the Central Committee and the Commune he
opposed them and was arrested, but contrived to escape from Mazas. From
that moment the general of the Commune put himself in communication
with Versailles through the mediation of M. Camus and Baron Dathiel de
la Tuque, who agreed with him to organise a counter revolution. Lullier
was now busily employed in endeavouring to make people forget the part
he had taken in the insurrection of the 18th March. He had made it a
condition that neither he nor his accomplices, Gomez d’Absin and
Bisson, should be prosecuted. The expenses were calculated at 30,000
francs; of which M. Camus gave 2000 francs to Lullier, but the scheme
did not succeed. Lullier undertook to have all the members of the
Commune arrested, and to send the hostages to Versailles. Lullier is a
man of courage, foolhardy even, who never hesitated to fight, and if at
the end of the Commune he tried to serve the legitimate government, it
was from a spirit of revenge against the men who had refused his
dictation, and in his own interest.

VI. (Page 220.)

PROTOT.

Citizen Protot, appointed Delegate of Justice by a decree of the
twentieth of April, 1871, was born in 1839.

As an advocate, he defended Mégy, the famous Communist general of the
fort of Issy, when he was accused of the assassination of a police
agent on the eleventh of April, 1870. This trial, and the ability he
displayed, drew public attention for a moment upon him. Compromised as
a member of secret societies, he managed to escape the police, but was
condemned in his absence to fines and imprisonment. Having been himself
a victim of the law, his attention was first given to the drawing up of
a decree, thus worded:—

“The notaries and public officers in general shall draw up legal
documents which fall within their duty without charge.”

In the discussion on the subject of the confiscation of the property of
M. Thiers, he proposed that all the plate and other objects in his
possession bearing the image of the Orleans family should be sent to
the mint.

VII. (Page 229.)

“And now he thinks: ‘The Empire is tottering,
There’s little chance of victory.’
Then, creeping furtively backwards, he tries to slink away.
Remain, renegade, in the building!

“‘The ceiling falls,’ you say! ‘if they see me
They will seize and stop me as I go,’
Daring neither to rest nor fly, you miserably watch the roof
And then the door,

“And shiveringly you put your hand upon the bolt.
Back into the dismal ranks!
Back! Justice, whom they have thrust into a pit,
Is there in the darkness.

“Back! She is there, her sides bleeding from their knives,
Prostrate; and on her grave
They have placed a slab. The skirt of your cloak
Is caught beneath the stone.

“Thou shalt not go! What! Quit their house!
And fly from their fate!
What! Would you betray even treachery itself,
And make even it indignant?

“What! Did you not hold the ladder to these tricksters
In open daylight?
Say, was the sack for these robbers’ booty
Not made by you beforehand?

“Falsehood, Hate, with its cold and venomous fang,
Crouch in this den.
And thou wouldst leave it! Thou! more cunning than Falsehood,
More viperous than Hate.”

VIII. (Page 231.)

JOURDE.

Jourde certainly occupied one of the most difficult offices of the
Commune, for he had to find the means to maintain the situation, but as
the Ministry of Finances is burnt, no documents can be found to show
the employment he made of the funds which passed through his hands. On
the 30th of May, when he was arrested, disguised as an artizan, with
his friend Dubois, he had about him a sum of 8070 francs in bank notes,
and Dubois 3100 francs; making a total sum of 11,170 francs between the
two. A part of Jourde’s cash was hidden in the lining of his waistcoat;
he declared that it was the only sum taken by him out of the moneys
belonging to the state, thus clearly proving that he had been guilty of
embezzlement.

The amounts declared to have been received by Jourde form a total of
43,891,000 francs, but as the expenses amount to 47,000,000 francs, it
is clear there is a deficiency of 3,309,000. Notwithstanding this fact,
all the payments were made up to the 29th of May. It is, then, certain
that other moneys were received by Jourde, and as he says that cash has
been refused from some unknown persons who offered to lend 50,000,000
francs on the guarantee of the picture gallery of the Louvre, the
suggestion comes naturally to the mind that the 3,309,000 francs may
have been produced by the sale of valuables in the Tuileries. Jourde
was sentenced by the tribunal of Versailles to transportation beyond
the seas.

IX. (Page 316.)

These are the last proclamations from the Hôtel de Ville. They refer
immediately to the burning of the capital.

In the evening of the thirty-first of May, when Delescluze denied with
vehemence that the regular army had made its entry, he wrote to
Dombrowski:—

“CITIZEN—I learn that the orders given for the construction of
barricades are contradictory.
“See that this be not repeated.
“Blow up or burn the houses which interfere with your plans for the
defence. The barricades ought to be unattackable from the houses.
“The defenders of the Commune must be removed above want: give to
the necessitous that which is contained in the houses about to be
destroyed.
“Moreover, make all necessary requisitions,

“DELESCLUZE, A. BILLICRAY.”
“Paris, 2nd Prairial, an 79.”

On the 22nd appeared the following proclamation:—

“CITIZENS,—The gate of Saint-Cloud, attacked from four directions
at once, was forcibly taken by the Versaillais, who have become
masters of a considerable portion of Paris.
“This reverse, far from discouraging us, should prove a stimulus to
our exertions. A people who have dethroned kings, destroyed
Bastilles, and established a Republic, can not lose in a day the
fruits of the emancipation of the 18th of March.
“Parisians, the struggle we have commenced cannot be abandoned, for
it is a struggle between the past and the future, between liberty
and despotism, equality and monopoly, fraternity and servitude, the
unity of nations and the egotism of oppressors.

“AUX ARMES!

“Yes,—to arms! Let Paris bristle with barricades, and from behind
these improvised ramparts let her shout to her enemies the cry of
war, its cry of fierce pride of defiance, and of victory; for Paris
with her barricades is invincible.
“Let the pavement of the streets be torn up; firstly, because the
projectiles coming from the enemy are less dangerous falling on
soft ground; secondly, because these paving-stones, serving as a
new means of defence, can be carried to the higher floors where
there are balconies.
“Let revolutionary Paris, the Paris of great deeds, do her duty;
the Commune and the Committee for Public Safety will do theirs.

“Hôtel de Ville, 2nd Prairial, an 79,
“The Committee for Public Safety,
“ANTOINE ARNAULT, E. EUDES, F. GAMBON, G. RANVIER.”

These are the commentaries made by Citizen Delescluze:—

“Citoyen Jacquet is authorised to find men and materials for the
construction of barricades in the Rue du Château d’Eau and in the
Rue d’Albany.
“The citoyens and citoyennes who refuse their aid will be shot on
the spot.
“The citoyens, chiefs of barricades, are entrusted with the care of
assuring tranquillity each in his own quarter.
“They are to inspect all houses bearing a suspicious appearance
&c., &c.
“The houses suspected are to be set light to at the first signal
given.

“DELESCLUZE.”

X. (Page 335.)

FERRÉ.

At half-past nine on the morning of the 18th of March Ferré was at No.
6, Rue des Rosiers, opposing the departure of the prisoners of the
Republican Guard, by obtaining from the Commander Bardelle the
revocation of the order for their dismissal, which was known to have
been issued. He went to the council of the Château Rouge, whither
General Lecomte was about to be taken, and made himself conspicuous by
the persistency with which he called for the death of that general. On
the morning of Monday, the 24th May, a witness residing at the
Prefecture of Police saw Ferré and five others going up the stairs of
the Prefecture of Police. Ferré said to him, “Be off as quick as you
can. We are going to set fire to the place. In a quarter of an hour it
will be in flames.” Half an hear afterwards the witness saw the flames
burst forth from two windows of the office of the Procureur-Général.
When Raoul Rigault was installed during the insurrection, a woman saw
some persons washing the walls of the Prefecture of Police with
petroleum. Seeing them going out by the court of the St. Chapelle, she
noticed among them one smaller than the rest, wearing a grey paletot
with a black velvet collar, and black striped trousers. On the same day
a police agent went to La Roquette to order the shooting of Mgr. Darboy
and the other prisoners—the President Bonjean, the Abbé Allard, the
Père Ducoudray, and the Abbé Deguerry. On Saturday, the 27th, Ferré
installed himself in the clerk’s office of the prison, and ordered the
release of certain of the criminals and gave them arms and ammunition.
Upon this they proceeded to massacre a great number of the prisoners,
among whom were 66 gendarmes. Several witnesses saw Ferré that day at
the prison.

XI. (Page 342.)

At the trial of Ferré, August 10, Dr. Puymoyen, physician to the prison
for juvenile offenders, opposite La Roquette, gave the following
graphic evidence:—

“Immediately after the insurgents, driven back by the troops, had
occupied La Roquette, they installed a court-martial at the children’s
prison opposite, where I live. It was from thence I saw the poor
wretches whom they feigned to release, ushered in to the square, where
they encountered an ignoble mob, that ill-treated them in the most
brutal manner. I was told that Ferré presided over this court-martial.
Its proceedings were singular. I saw an unfortunate gendarme taken to
the prison; he had been arrested near the Grenier d’Abondance, on a
denunciation. He wore a blouse, blue trousers, and an apron, and was
charged with having stolen them. The mob wanted to enter the prison
along with him, but the keepers, who behaved very well, prevented the
invasion of the courtyard. The escort was commanded by a young woman
carrying a Chassepot, and wearing a chignon. I entered the registrar’s
office with this unfortunate gendarme. One Briand, who was charged to
question the prisoners summarily, asked him where his clothes came
from. The man was very cool and courageous, and his perfect
self-possession disconcerted this _juge d’instruction._ He was asked if
he were married, and had a family. He replied, ‘Yes, I have a wife and
eight children.’ He was then shown into the back office, where the
‘judges’ were. These judges were mere boys, who seemed quite proud of
the part they were playing, and gave themselves no end of airs, I asked
the governor of the gaol soon afterwards what had been done with the
gendarme. He told me that they were going to shoot him. I replied,
‘Surely it can’t be true. I must see the president—we can’t allow a
married man with eight children to be murdered in this way.’ I tried to
get into the room where the court-martial was sitting, but was
prevented. One of the National Guards on duty at the door told me
‘Don’t go in there, or you’re done for (_N’y entrez pas, ou vous êtes
f—_).’ I made immediately further inquiries about M. Grudnemel, and was
told he was in ‘a provisional cell.’ I trembled for him, for I knew
that meant he would be given up to the mob, which would tear him to
pieces. When they said, ‘This man is to be taken to a cell,’ that meant
that he was to be shot. When they said, ‘Put him in a provisional
cell,’ it meant that he should be delivered over to the mob for
butchery, I continued to plead the gendarme’s cause with the National
Guard, dwelling on the fact of his having eight children. Thereon, the
Woman above referred to, who appeared to be in command of the
detachment, exclaimed, ‘Why does this fellow go in for the gendarme?’
One of her acolytes replied, ‘Smash his jaw.’ This woman seemed to
understand her business. She minutely inspected the men’s pouches to
ascertain that they had plenty of ammunition. She would not hear of the
gendarme being reprieved, and she had her way. I understood that I had
better follow the governor’s advice and keep quiet. A mere boy was
placed as sentry at the door of the court-martial. He told me, ‘You
know I sha’n’t let you in.’ When I saw the poor gendarme leave the room
he looked at me imploringly; he had probably detected in my eyes a look
of sympathy. And when he was told that he might go out—hearing the
yells of the mob—he turned towards me and said, ‘But I shall be stoned
to death;’ and, in fact, it was perfectly fearful to hear the shouts of
the crowd outside. I could not withstand the impulse, and I took my
place by his side, and tried to address the crowd. ‘Think on what you
are going to do—surely you won’t murder the father of eight children.’
The words were hardly out of my mouth when a kind of signal was given.
I was shoved back against the wall, and one National Guard, clapping
his hand on his musket, ejaculated, ‘You know, you old rascal, there is
something for you here,’ and he drove his bayonet through my whiskers.
The unfortunate gendarme was taken across the place, close to the shop
where they sell funeral wreaths, but there was no firing party in
attendance. He then took to his heels, but was pursued, captured, and
put to death. I began to feel rather bewildered, and some one urged me
to return to the prison, which I did. A young linesman was then brought
in. He was quite a young fellow, barely twenty; his hands were tied
behind his back. They decided to kill him within the prison. They set
upon him, beat him, tore his clothes, so that he had hardly a shred of
covering left; they made him kneel, then made him stand up, blindfolded
him then uncovered his eyes; finally they put an end to his long agony
by shooting him, and flung the body into a costermonger’s cart close to
the gate. Several priests had got out of the prison of La Roquette. The
Abbé Surat, on passing over a barricade, was so imprudent as to state
who he was, and showed some articles of value he had about him. He had
got as far as about the middle of the Boulevard du Prince Eugène, when
he was arrested and taken back to the prison, where they prepared to
shoot him. But the young woman whom I have before mentioned, with a
revolver in one hand and a dagger in the other, rushed at him
exclaiming, ‘I must have the honour of giving him the first blow.’ The
abbé instinctively put his hands out to protect himself, crying,
‘_Grâce! grâce!_’ Whereon this fury shouted, ‘_Grâce! grâce! en voilà
un maigre_,’ and she discharged her revolver at him. His body was not
searched, but his shoes were removed. Afterwards his pastoral cross and
300 francs were found about him. The boys detained in the prison were
set at liberty. The smaller ones were made to carry pails of petroleum,
the others had muskets given them, and were sent to fight. Six of them
were killed; the remainder came back that night, and on the following
day. About a hundred boys were taken to Belleville by a member of the
Commune, quite a young man; they were wanted to make sand-bags, to be
filled with earth to form barricades.”

XII. (Page 345.)

Regarding the death of President Bonjean, the Abbé de Marsay said—“That
gentleman carried his scruples so far that he would not avail himself
of forty-eight hours’ leave on _parole_, fearing he could not get back
in time; thus did not see his family.”

The Abbé Perni, a venerable man with a white beard, who had been a
missionary said:

“On Wednesday, the 24th of May, we were ordered back to our cells at La
Roquette at an earlier hour than usual, and at about four o’clock in
the afternoon a battalion of federates noisily occupied the passage
into which our cells opened. They spoke at the topmost pitch of their
voices. One of them said, ‘We must get rid of these Versailles
banditti.’ Another replied, ‘Yes; let us bowl them over, put them to
bed.’ I understood what this meant, and prepared for death. Soon after
the door next mine was opened, and I heard a man asking if M. Darboy
was there. The prisoner replied in the negative. The man passed before
my door without stopping, and I soon heard the mild voice of the
archbishop answering to his name. The hostages were then dragged put of
the lobby; ten minutes later I saw the mournful _cortège_ pass in front
of my windows; the federates were walking along in a confused way,
making a noise to cover the voice of their victims, but I could hear
Father Allard exhorting his companions to prepare for death. A little
after I heard the report of the muskets, and understood that all was
over. On Thursday (the 25th) the day passed off quietly, but on Friday
shells began to fall on the prison, and at about half-past four in the
afternoon a corporal, named Romain. came up, and with a joyful face
told us we would soon be free. He said answer to your names; I must
have 15. He had a list in his hand, and I must confess a feeling of
terror came over us all. Ten hostages answered to their names. One of
them, a father of the order of Picpus, asked if he could take his hat.
Romain replied, ‘Oh, it’s no use; you are only going to the
registrar’s.’ None of these unfortunate men ever returned. On Saturday
(the 27th) we learnt that several of the prisoners had been armed with
hammers, files, &c. They threw us some of these in at the windows. We
were then informed that several members of the Commune had arrived at
La Roquette. I cannot say whether Ferré was among them. We were taken
back to our cellars, where we expected to be put to death every minute.
At about four o’clock the cells of the common prisoners were opened,
and they escaped, shouting ‘Vive la Commune!’ Our keeper himself had
disappeared, and a turnkey presently opened our cells, and recommended
us to run away. We were afraid this was a trap, but as it might afford
a chance we determined to avail ourselves of it. Those amongst us who
had plain clothes hurried them on, and I must say the gaolers behaved
admirably in this emergency; they lent clothes to such of us as had
none, and we were thus all enabled to escape. As for myself, after
wandering for about an hour in the streets about the prison, and being
unable to find shelter anywhere, and afraid of being murdered in the
streets, I determined to return to La Roquette. As I reached it I met
the archbishop’s secretary, two priests, and two gendarmes, who, like
myself, had been driven to return to the prison. One of the keepers
told us that the safest for us was the sick ward. We dressed up in the
hospital uniform and hid in bed. At eight in the evening the federates,
who were not aware that we had escaped, came back and called on the
gaolers to produce us. They were told we had gone; fortunately they
believed it. On Sunday the troops came in, and I left La Roquette for
good this time. In reply to a further question the witness said that as
the hostages marched past his windows, on their way to execution, he
saw President Bonjean raising his hands, and heard him say, ‘_Mon Dieu,
mon Dieu!_’

XIII. (Page 82.)

URBAIN.

Urbain, formerly head master of an academy, was elected to the Commune,
and became, in virtue of his former office of teacher, a member of the
Committee of Instruction, retaining at the same time his office of
mayor. He finally installed himself in his mayoralty about the middle
of April, with his sister and young son, and gave protection there to
his mistress, Leroy, who had great influence over him, and who used to
frequent the committees and clubs. At the mayoralty of the 7th
Arrondissement this woman, in the absence of the mayor, took the
direction and management of affairs. During the administration of
Urbain searches were made in private and in religious houses, this
woman, Leroy, sometimes taking part in the proceedings; on these
occasions seizures were made of letters and articles of value, which
were sent to the mayoralty and from thence to the police-office. Urbain
and the woman Leroy are accused of having appropriated to themselves
money and jewellery. At the mayoralty of the 7th Arrondissement there
were deposits for public instruction to the amount of 8000 francs,
which had dwindled down to 2900 francs. Urbain confesses having
employed this money in helping persons compromised like himself. It is
certain that during the residence of the woman Leroy at the mayoralty
the expenses exceeded the sum allowed to Urbain. According to the
evidence of a domestic everybody tad recourse to this unfortunate
deposit, and it is stated in the instructions that the accused had left
by will to his son a sum of 4000 francs in bank notes and gold,
deposited in the hands of his aunt, Madame Danelair, while there is
clear proof that before the days of the Commune he did not possess a
sou. Madame Leroy herself, who came to the mayoralty without a penny,
was found in possession of 1000 francs, which she said were the results
of her savings. It appears from the statement of M. Laudon, inspector
of police, that the search made at his house resulted in the
subtraction of a sum of 6000 francs, and that he has seen a ring which
belonged to his wife on the finger of the woman Leroy. Though not
taking a conspicuous share in the military operations, Urbain played an
important part. His duty was to visit the military stations and to take
possession of the Fort d’Issy, which had been abandoned. He admits that
he thus visited the barracks and the ramparts. He ordered the
construction of barricades, and says that, on the occasion of the
repulse of the 22nd May, he resisted the entreaties of the woman Leroy,
who wished him to give up the struggle and to betake himself to the
Hôtel de Ville, with the view of remaining at his post. As a
politician, Urbain, in the discussions of the Commune, was very zealous
and spoke frequently. By his vote he gave his sanction to all the
violent decrees relating to the hostages, the demolition of the Column,
the destruction of M. Thiers’ house, and the Committee of Public
Safety, of which he was one of the most ardent supporters. To him is to
be attributed in particular the demand for the carrying into execution
the decree relating to the hostages. On this point here is Urbain’s
proposal, copied from the _Official Journal_ of the 18th May:—“I demand
that either the Commune or the Committee of Public Safety should decree
that the ten hostages in our custody should be shot within twenty-four
hours, in retaliation for the murders of our cantinière and of the
bearer of our flag of truce, who were shot in defiance of the law of
nations. I demand that five of the hostages should be executed solemnly
in the centre of Paris, in presence of deputations from all the
battalions, and that the rest should be shot at the advanced posts in
presence of the soldiers who witnessed the murders. I trust my proposal
will be agreed to.” By this proposal Urbain has linked his name to the
horrible crime committed on the hostages. Latterly he was a member of
the military committee, and his ability served well the cause of the
insurgents. He was condemned by the court-martial of Versailles to hard
labour for life, September 2, 1871.

XIV.

THE DEVASTATIONS OF PARIS.

The following is the way in which the fires were prepared:—In some
instances a number of men, acting as _avant-courriers_, went first,
telling the inhabitants that the Quarter was about to be delivered to
the flames, and urging them to fly for their lives; in other oases, the
unfortunate people were told that the whole city would be burnt, and
that they might as well meet death where they were as run to seek it
elsewhere. In some places—in the Rue de Vaugirard, for instance—it is
asserted that sentinels were placed in the streets and ordered to fire
upon everyone who attempted to escape. One incendiary, who was arrested
in the Rue de Poitiers, declared that he received ten francs for each
house which he set on fire. Another system consisted in throwing
through the cellar doors or traps tin cans or bottles filled with
petroleum, phosphorus, nitro-glycerine, or other combustibles, with a
long sulphur match attached to the neck of the vessel, the match being
lighted at the moment of throwing the explosives into the cellar.
Finally, the batteries at Belleville and the cemetery of Père la Chaise
sent destruction into many quarters by means of petroleum shells.

Eudes, a general of the Commune, sent the following order to one of his
officers:—

“Fire on the Bourse, the Bank, the Post Office, the Place des
Victoires, the Place Vendôme, the Garden of the Tuileries, the Babylone
Barracks; leave the Hôtel de Ville to Commandant Pindy and the Delegate
of War, and the Committee of Public Safety and of the Commune will
assemble at the _mairie_ of the eleventh Arrondissement, where you are
established; there we will organize the defence of the popular quarters
of the city. We will send you cannon and ammunitions from the Parc
Basfroi. We will hold out to the last, happen what may.

“(Signed) E. EUDES.”

The insurgents had collected a considerable quantity of powder in the
Pantheon, and when the Versailles troops obtained possession of the
building the officer in command at once searched for the slow match,
and cut it off when it had not more than a yard to burn!

Instructions were given to the firemen not to extinguish the fires, but
to retire to the Champ de Mars with the pumps and other apparatus.
Whenever a man attempted to do anything to arrest the conflagration he
was fired at. The firemen, who had arrived from all parts, even from
Belgium, and honest citizens who joined them, worked to extinguish the
fires amid showers of bullets. At the Treasury the labours of these men
were four times interrupted by the violent cannonading of the
insurgents.

The fire broke out at the TUILERIES on Tuesday evening. When the
battalions at the Arc de Triomphe and at the Corps Législatif had
silenced the guns ranged before the Palace, the insurgents set fire to
it, and threw out men _en tirailleur_ to prevent anyone from
approaching to subdue the flames.

At the same moment an attempt was made to set fire to the MINISTRY OF
MARINE, in obedience to an order given to Commandant Brunel, which was
thus worded:—“In a quarter of an hour the Tuileries will be in flames;
as soon as our wounded are removed, you will cause the explosion of the
Ministry.” It was Admiral Pothuau, the minister himself, who, at the
head of a handful of sailors, set the incendiaries to flight, Brunel
along with them. They also arrived in time to prevent any damage being
done to the BIBLIOTHÈQUE NATIONALE.

The struggle was terrific during the night; the insurgents, who had
sought refuge in the Ministry of Finance, after the taking of the
barricade in the Rue Saint-Florentin, increased the fury of the flames
by firing from the windows, and discharging jets of petroleum at the
soldiers.

On Wednesday morning the battle had become fearful. Towards ten o’clock
columns of smoke rose above Paris, forming a thick cloud, which the
sun’s rays could not penetrate. Then, simultaneously, all the fires
burst forth: at the CONSEIL D’ETAT, at the LEGION OF HONOUR, at the
CAISSE DES DÉPÔTS ET CONSIGNATIONS. at the HÔTEL DE VILLE, at the
PALAIS ROYAL, at the MINISTRY OF FINANCE, at the PREFECTURE DE POLICE,
at the PALAIS DE JUSTICE, at the THÉÂTRE LYRIQUE, in the Rue du Bac,
the Rue de Lille, the Rue de la Croix-Rouge, Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs,
in a great number of houses in the Faubourgs Saint-Germain and
Saint-Honoré, in the Rue Royale, and in the Rue Boissy d’Anglas. Not
many hours later, flames were seen to arise from the Avenue Victoria,
Boulevard Sébastopol, Rue Saint-Martin, at the Château d’Eau, in the
Rue Saint-Antoine, and the Rue de Rivoli.

During the night of Friday, the docks of LA VILLETTE, and the
warehouses of the DOUANE, the GRENIER D’ABONDANCE and the GOBELINS were
all burning! So great was the glare that small print could be read as
far off as Versailles, even on that side of the town towards Meudon and
Ville d’Avray.

THE DOME OF THE INVALIDES.—This was placed in imminent danger. Mines
were laid on all sides, but their positions were discovered, and the
electric wires out which were to have communicated the spark.

THE PLACE DE LA CONCORDE.—When the noise of the fusillade and
cannonading ceased, the Place de la Concorde was a scene of absolute
desolation. On all sides lay broken pieces of candelabra, balustrades,
paving-stones, asphalte, and heaps of earth. The water-nymphs and
Tritons of the fountains were much mutilated, and the statue of the
town of Lille—one of the eight gigantic, seated figures of the
principal towns of France, which form a prominent ornament to the
Place, the work of Pradier, and a likeness of one of the Orleans
princesses-lay shivered on the ground.

THE ARC DE L’ETOILE.—The triumphal arch bears many scars, but none of
them of much importance. On the façade looking towards Courbevoie, the
great bas-relief by Etex, representing “War,” was struck by three
shells; the group of “Peace” received only the fragment of one. Here
and there, in the bas-relief representing the “Passage of the Bridge of
Areole,” and the “Taking of Alexandra,” some traces of balls are
visible. On the whole, no irremediable hum is done here. Rude’s
masterpiece, “The Marseillaise,” is untouched.

THE PALACE OF INDUSTRY.—Rumour says Courbet had, among other projects,
formed an idea of demolishing the Palace of Industry. The painted
windows of the great nave have received no serious injury. The
bas-relief of the main façade, picturing Industry and the Arts offering
their products to the universal exhibitions, has several of its figures
mutilated. The same has happened to the colossal group by
Diebolt—France offering laurel crowns to Art and Industry.

THE TUILERIES.—Felix Pyat, in the _Vengeur_, proposed converting the
Palace of the Tuileries into a school for the children of soldiers. He
says:—“They have taken possession by the work and activity that reign
there; a whole floor is filled with tools and activity, and converted
into workshops for the construction of messenger balloons. King Labour
is enthroned there. I recognised there among the workmen an exile of
the revolutionary Commune of London. The workmen and the proscribed at
the Tuileries! From the prison of London to the palace of the
Tuileries. It is well!” But in the heart of the Commune the soul of the
_Vengeur_ underwent a change, and insisted on the complete destruction
of the “infamous pile.”

The portion of the building overlooking the river was alone preserved.
The roofing is destroyed, but the façade is but little injured, the
only work of art damaged here being a pediment by M. Carrier-Belleuse,
representing “Agriculture.” Fortunately the Government of the Fourth of
September had sent all the most precious things to the Garde-Meuble
(Stores); but how can the magnificent Gobelins tapestry, the fine
ceilings, the works of Charles Lebrun, of Pierre Mignard, of Coypel, of
Francisque Meillet, of Coysevox, of Girardon, and of many others, and
the exquisite Salon des Roses be replaced?

The Tuileries burnt for three days, and ten days afterwards the ruins
blazed forth anew near the Pavillon de Flore. Not only did the
devouring fire threaten to destroy inestimable treasures, but on Monday
a number of men carrying slow matches, and led by a man named
Napias-Piquet, made all their preparations to set fire to several
points of the museum of the Louvre, and two of the guardians were shot.
This Napias-Piquet threatened to make of the whole quarter of the
Louvre one great conflagration. He was taken and shot, and in his
pocket was found a note of his breakfast of the preceding day,
amounting to 57 francs 80 centimes.

THE LOUVRE.—The preservation of the museum was due to the strong
masonry, and the thick walls of the new portion of the building, on
which the raging flames could make no impression. But it ran other
risks: when the troops entered the building, they planted the tricolour
on the clock pavilion, which served as an object for the insurgents’
aim. It was immediately removed, however, when this was perceived. It
was generally believed that the galleries of the Louvre contained all
their art treasures. This was not the case; prior to the first siege
the most precious of the contents had been carefully packed and
conveyed to the arsenal of Brest, where they safely reposed, but many
very admirable works remained.

MINISTRY OF FINANCE (Treasury).—On the 22nd of May, the official
journal of the Commune published a note declaring that the certificates
of stock and the stock books (_grand livre_) would be burnt within
forty-eight hours. The Commune was annoyed at the publicity given to
this note, and a violent debate took place in its council in
consequence. On this occasion Paschal Grousset uttered the following:—

“I blame those who inserted the note in question, but I demand that
measures may be taken for the destruction of all such documents
belonging to those at Versailles, the day that they shall enter Paris.”

[Illustration: Court of the Louvre, from Place Du Carrousel]

The Library is completely destroyed. More than 90,000 volumes are
burnt. Rare editions, Elzevirs, precious MSS., coins, and unique
collections, priceless treasures, are irrevocably lost.

The building forms one of the most striking ruins in Paris. Citizen
Lucas, appointed by Ferré to set the Ministry on fire, did his task
well. The conflagration, which lasted several days, began in the night
of the 23rd of May. Not only was every part soaked with petroleum, but
shells had also been placed about the building, and burst successively
as the fire extended. Scarcely anything remains of the huge pile but
the offices of the Administration of Forest Lands, which are almost
intact. A considerable number of valuable documents were saved, but the
quantity was very small in comparison with the immense collection
accumulated since the beginning of the century. Four times was the work
of salvage interrupted by the insurgents. Not a single book in the
library has escaped; and this library contained almost the whole of the
enormous correspondence of Colbert, the minister, forming no less than
two thousand volumes.

[Illustration: Palais Royal.]

The PALAIS ROYAL.—The palace itself alone is destroyed; the galleries
of the THÉÂTRE FRANÇAIS are preserved. The _Constitutionnel_ published
the following account of the conflagration;—

“It was at three o’clock that this fearful fire burst forth. A
shopkeeper of the PALAIS ROYAL, M. Emile Le Saché, came forward in all
haste to offer his services. A Communist captain, or lieutenant,
threatened to fire on him if he did not retire on the instant; he added
that the whole quarter was going to be blown up and burned. In the
teeth of this threat, however, two fire-engines were brought to the
Place, and were worked by the people of the neighbourhood. It was four
o’clock. No water in the Cour des Fontaines. But some was procured by a
line of people being placed along the passage leading from the Cour
d’Honneur, who passed full buckets of water from hand to hand.
“A ladder was placed against the wall for the purpose of reaching
the terrace of the Rue de Valois. The insurgents proved so true to
their word that the people were forced to renounce the attempt at
saving the entire pavilion. Fire and smoke burst forth from three
windows just above the terrace. In the midst of the balls showered
from the barricade at the corner of the Rue de Rivoli, they
succeeded in extinguishing the fire on that side. At five o’clock
M. O. Sauve, captain in the commercial service, with a handful of
brave workmen, got a fire engine into the Cour d’Honneur, and thus
saved a great quantity of pictures, precious marbles, furniture,
hangings, etc. Here another line of people was formed for the
carrying of buckets, but unfortunately water ran short: the pipes
had been cut, the wretches had planned that the destruction should
be complete. At seven o’clock M. Bessignet, jun., hastened there
with four Paris firemen, but already the Pavilion, where the flames
were first apparent, was entirely consumed.
“On the arrival of the firemen they used every effort to prevent
the fire communicating itself to the apartments of the Princess
Clothilde; it had already reached the façade on the side of the
Place. Here, too, all the fittings and ornaments of the chapel were
saved.
At last, at seven o’clock, the soldiers of the line arrive. ‘Long
live the line!’ is shouted on all sides. ‘Long live France!’
Signals are made with the ambulance flags. Help is come at last!
“Those present now regard their position with more coolness, and
use every effort to combat the fire, pumping from the roofs and
upper storeys of the neighbouring houses. The fire continues,
however, increasing and spreading on the theatre side. Here is the
greatest danger. If the theatre catch light, all the quarter will
most probably be destroyed. They then determine to avail themselves
of the water appliances of the theatre to stay the progress of the
flames. This is. rendered more difficult and dangerous by the
continuous firing from the Communists installed in the upper story
of the Hôtel du Louvre. M. Le Sache mounts on the roofs, with the
principal engineer, to conduct this movement. They are compelled to
hide out of the way of the shower of balls coming from the
Communists.
“At ten o’clock the companies from the quarter of the Banque, the
12th battalion of National Guards, arrive. The Federals are put to
flight. Thereupon thirty _sapeurs-pompiers_ of Paris came at full
speed and succeed in mastering the remaining fire. An hour sooner
and all could have been saved.”

[Illustration: Hôtel de Ville.]

THE HOTEL DE VILLE.—The Hôtel de Ville was set on fire by order of the
Committee of Public Safety at the moment when the entry of the troops
caused them to fly to the Ecole des Chartes, which was thus saved, and
whence they fled to the Mairie of Belleville. Five battalions of
National Guards—the 57th, 156th, 178th, 184th, and the 187th—remained
to prevent any attempt being made to extinguish the fire. Petroleum had
been poured about the _Salle du Trône_, and the _Salle du Zodiaque_,
which were decorated by Jean Goujon and Cogniet; in the _Galerie de
Pierre_, in which were paintings by Lecomte, Baudin, Desgoffes,
Hédouin, and Bellel; in the _Salon des Arcades_, in the _Salon
Napoléon_, in the _Galerie des Fêtes_, and in the _Salon de la Paix_,
which contained works of Schopin, Picot, Vanchelet, Jadin, Girard,
Ingres, Delacroix, Landelle, Riesener, Lehmann, Gosse, Benouville and
Cabanel. It is not only as a fine specimen of architecture that the
Hôtel de Ville is to be regretted, but as the cradle of the municipal
and revolutionary history of Paris, as well as for the vast collection
of archives of the city, duplicates of which were at the same moment a
prey to the flames at the Palais de Justice.

[Illustration: Foreign Office.]

THE PREFECTURE OF POLICE was set fire to by the Communal delegate Ferré
and a band of drunken National Guards.

THE PALAIS DE JUSTICE, thanks to the prompt arrival of the soldiers,
has been partially spared. The damage done, however, is very great. In
the SALLE DES PAS-PERDUS several of the grand arches that support the
roof have fallen in, and many of the columns are lying in ruins on the
pavement. The Cour de Cassation and the Cour d’Assises are entirely
destroyed. The conflagration was stopped, when it reached the Cour
d’Appel and the Tribunal de Première Instance.

PALACE OF THE QUAI D’ORSAY.—This vast building, in which the Conseil
d’État and the Cour des Comptes held their sittings, has suffered
seriously, though the walls are not destroyed; but what is irreparable
is the loss of the many precious documents belonging to the financial
and legislative history of France. The most famous artists of our time
have contributed to the decoration of the interior. Jeanron painted the
twelve allegorical subjects for the vaulted ceiling of the _Salle des
Pas-Perdus_; Isabey, the Port of Marseilles in the Committee-room. The
Death of President de Renty, in the _Salle du Contentieux_, was by Paul
Delaroche; the fine portrait of Napoleon I., as legislator, in the
great Council Chamber, by Flandrin; and in another apartment the
portrait of Justinien by Delacroix. These, and many other treasures,
are lost; for the work of destruction was complete.

MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS.—The façade has been seriously injured. It
was fired upon from the terrace of the Tuileries, and from a gunboat
lying under cover of the Pont-Royal. The Doric and Ionic columns are
partly broken, as well as the fifteen medallions in white marble, which
bore the arms of the principal powers. The apartments in front have
been greatly damaged, and especially the _salon_ of the ambassadors,
where the Congress of Paris was held in 1856.

THE PALACE OF THE LEGION OF HONOUR.—This is a specimen of French
architecture, unique of its kind. Happily, drawings and plans have been
preserved, and the members of the Legion of Honour have offered a
subscription for its re-instatement.

THE GOBELINS.—The public gallery, the school of tapestry, and the
painters’ studios have been destroyed. The incendiaries would have
burned all, works, frames and materials, if the people of the quarter,
with the Gobelins weavers, had not defended them at the peril of their
lives. An irreparable loss is that of a valuable collection of tapestry
dating from the time of Louis XIV.

The military hospital of the VAL DE GRÂCE, the ASYLUM FOR THE DEAF AND
DUMB, the MINT, the façade of the annex of the ÉCOLE-DES-BEAUX-ARTS,
have been riddled with balls. At the LUXEMBOURG the magnificent
camellia-house and conservatories exist no longer, and the graceful
Medici fountain has been injured.

THE BANK had most fortunately been placed in charge of the delegate
Beslay, who, during the whole time he was there, made every effort to
prevent the pillage of the valuables. He was ably seconded by all the
officials and _employés_, who had before been armed and incorporated
into a battalion.

[Illustration: Palace of the Legion D’honneur.]

POST OFFICE.—The Communal delegate, Theiz, prevented the incendiaries
from setting fire to this important establishment.

THE TRIUMPHAL ARCH OF THE PORTE-ST-DENIS.—The bas-relief containing an
emblematical figure of the Rhine resting on a rudder has been
mutilated, a shell having carried the arm and its support entirely
away. The other bas-relief of Holland vanquished and in tears, has been
struck by balls, as have also the figures of Fame in the tympans of the
arcades.

THE TRIUMPHAL ARCH OF THE PORTE-ST-MARTIN.—The sculptures, which
represent the taking of Limbourg and the defeat of the Germans, have
suffered considerably. They are the works of Le Hongre and the elder
Legros.

A tragic incident marked the burning of the THEATRE OF THE PORTE ST.
MARTIN (see sketch). After laving massacred the proprietor and people
of the _restaurant_ Ronceray, the Federals set fire to the house and
the theatre which is adjoining. At eight o’clock in the evening, on
beholding the first flames arise, the inhabitants of the quarter united
in endeavouring to extinguish the fire, notwithstanding that the
projectiles fell thickly in the Boulevard Saint-Martin and in the Rue
de Bondy. The Federals from behind their barricades at the corner of
the Rue Bouchardon, fired upon everyone who attempted to enter the
theatre.

The ARCHIVES (Record Office), the IMPRIMERIE NATIONALE, and the
BIBLIOTHÈQUE MAZARINE were all preserved through the strenuous
endeavours of MM. Alfred Maury, Haureau, and Charles Asselineau, who
had all managed to keep their places in spite of the Commune.

At the DOCKS OF LA VILLETTE, and at the warehouses of the DOUANE, the
destruction of property has been enormous. Many millions’ worth of
goods were consumed there.

In the great buildings belonging to the MAGASINS RÉUNIS (Cooperative
Stores) an ambulance had been established, and this was in the utmost
danger during two days. It was only owing to the wonderful energy of M.
Jahyer that the fire was mastered while the poor wounded men were
transported to a place of safety.

THE CHURCHES.

NOTRE-DAME.—In the interior of Notre-Dame the insurgents set fire to
three huge piles of chairs and wood-work. Fortunately the fact was
discovered before much mischief had happened.

THE SAINTE-CHAPELLE.—This incomparable gem of Gothic art, by some
marvellous good fortune was neither touched by fire nor shells. It will
still be an object for the pilgrimages of the erudite and the curious.

THE MADELEINE.—The balls have somewhat damaged the double colonnade of
the peristyle, but the sculptured pediment by Lemaire is all but
untouched.

THE TRINITÉ.—The façade has been seriously injured. The Federals, from
their barricades at the entrance of the Chaussée-d’Antin, bombarded it
for several hours. The painted windows by Ondinot had been removed
before the siege—like those of the ancient Cathedral of St. Denis, and
the Chapel of St. Ferdinand, by Ingres, they repose in safety.

Of all the churches of Paris ST. EUSTACHE has suffered the most. At one
time the fire had reached the roof, but it was fortunately discovered
in time.

The paintings at NOTRE-DAME-DE-LORETTE, at SAINT-GERMAIN-L’AUXERROIS,
and at SAINT-GERMAIN-DES-PRÉS have been spared.

It is curious that the churches suffered so little, whilst several
theatres were burned, including the Porte St. Martin, Théâtre du
Châtelet, Lyrique, Délassements Comiques, etc.

The windows of the church of SAINT-JACQUES-DU-HAUT-PAS are destroyed.

It has been estimated that the value of the houses and other property
destroyed in Paris amounts to twenty millions sterling. In addition to
this, it is said that twelve millions’ worth of works of art,
furniture, &c., have disappeared, and that more than two and a half
millions’ worth of merchandise was burnt, making a total of nearly
thirty-five millions. It has been said that the value of the
window-glass alone destroyed during the reign of the Commune approaches
a million sterling. The demand for glass was at one time so great that
the supply was quite insufficient, and at the present moment the price
is 20 per cent. higher than usual.

XV.

The following order of the day of General de Ladmirault, commanding the
first army corps of Versailles, sums up the principal episodes of this
eight days battle:—

“Officers and soldiers of the First Corps d’Armée,—
The defences of the lines of Neuilly, Courbevoie, Bécon and
Asnières served you by way of apprenticeship. Your energy and
courage were formed amid the greatest works and perils. Every one
in his grade has given an example of the most complete abnegation
and devotion. Artillery, engineers, troops of the line, cavalry,
volunteers of the Seine-et-Oise, you rivalled each other in zeal
and ardour. Thus prepared, on the 22nd of the month you attacked
the insurgents, whose guilty designs and criminal undertakings you
knew and despised. You devoted yourselves nobly to save from
destruction the monuments of our old national glory, as well as the
property of the citizens menaced by savage rage.
On the 23rd of the month, the formidable position of the Buttes
Montmartre could no longer resist your efforts, in spite of all the
forces with which they were covered.
This task was confided to the first and second division and the
volunteers of the Seine and Seine-et-Oise, and the heads of the
various columns arrived simultaneously at the summit of the
position.
On the 24th, the third division, which alone had been charged with
the task of driving the insurgents out of Neuilly,
Levallois-Perret, and Saint-Ouen, joined the other divisions, and
took possession of the terminus of the Eastern Railway, while the
first division seized that of the Northern line by force of arms.
On the 26th, the third division occupied the _rotonde_—circular
place—of La Villette.
On the 27th, the first and second division, with the volunteers of
the Seine-et-Oise, by means of a combined movement, took the Buttes
Chaumont and the heights of Belleville by assault, the artillery
having by its able firing prepared the way for the occupation.
Finally, on the 28th, the defences of Belleville yielded, and the
first corps achieved brilliantly the task which had been confided
to them.
During the days of the struggle and fighting you rendered the
greatest service to civilization, and have acquired a claim to the
gratitude of the country. Accept then all the praise which is due
to you.

Paris, 29th May, 1871.
The General commanding the First Corps d’Armee,
(Signed) “LADMIRAULT.””

During the day of the 28th of Kay Marshal MacMahon caused the following
proclamation to be posted in the streets of Paris:—

“Inhabitants of Paris,—
The army of France is come to save you. Paris is relieved. The last
positions of the insurgents were taken by our soldiers at four
o’clock. Today the struggle is at an end; order, labour, and
security are springing up again.

Paris, Quartier General, the 28th May, 1871.
(Signed) “MACMAHON, Due de Magenta, Marshal of France,
Commander-in-Chief.”

On the 28th of May the war of the Communists was at an end, but the
fort of Vincennes was still occupied by three hundred National Guards,
with eighteen of their superior officers and fifteen of the high
functionaries of the Commune; They made an appeal to the commander of
the Prussian forces in front of the fort, in the hope of obtaining
passports for Switzerland. General Vinoy, hearing of this, took at once
the most energetic measures, and at six o’clock on the 29th of May the
last defenders of Vincennes surrendered at discretion.

XVI.

The amount of the extraordinary expenses of the Versailles was, at the
rate of three millions of francs a day, 216 millions from the 18th
March to the 28th May. The list of artillery implements removed from
the arsenals of Douai, Lyon, Besançon, Toulon, and Cherbourg, and
forwarded to Versailles from the 18th March to the 21st May, comprise—

80 cannons of 0.16m (6 in. 299/1000 diameter) from the War Arsenal
60 ” ” ” from the Marine Arsenal
10 ” of 0.22m (8 in. 661/1000 diameter) Marine.
110 Rifled long 24-pounders.
30 Rifled short 24-pounders.
80 Rifled siege 12-pounders.
3 Mortars of 0.32m (12 in. 598/1000 diameter).
15 Mortars of 0.27m (10 in. 629/1000 diameter).
15 Mortars of 0.22m (8 in. 661/1000 diameter).
40 Mortars of 0.15m (5 in. 905/1000 diameter).
——
Total 393 artillery siege pieces.

Ammunition received at Versailles—

Shells of 0.16m (marine). . . . 73,000
” 0.22m ” . . . . . 10,000
” 0.24m (rifled). . . . 140,000
” for 12-pounder (rifled) 80,000
Bombs of 0.32m . . . . . . . . 1,000
” 0.27m . . . . . . . . 7,000
” 0.22m . . . . . . . . 7,000
” 0.15m . . . . . . . . 30,000
———
Total 348,000

The stock of gunpowder amounted to 400 tons.

Up to the 21st of May, the artillery received 20 tons a day, and on
that day 50 tons were forwarded to the besieging army.

Up to the 21st of May, the field ordnance consisted of—

36 batteries of 4-pounders.
18 ” 12-pounders.
4 ” 7-pounders (breech-loaders).
12 ” of mitrailleuses.
—

Total 70 batteries, 63 of which were provided with horses (7 being in
store).

The ammunition service consisted of—

80 tumbrels (calibre 12), each containing 54 charges.
30 ” (calibre 7), ” 90 ”
120 ” (calibre 4) ” 120 ”
55 ” of mitrailleuses ” 243 ”
5000 cases of ammunition (for calibre 12), containing 49,000 charges.
600 ” (for calibre 4), ” 12,000 ”
2000 ” (for calibre 7), ” 20,000 ”
1000 ” for mitrailleuses ” 30,000 ”
16 millions of Chassepot cartridges, and
2 millions of Remington cartridges.

On the evening of the 23rd of May the army of Versailles expended—

26,000 discharges (calibre 0.16m), marine guns.
2000 ” ” 0.22m), ”
60,000 ” ” 0.24m), rifled guns.
30,000 ” ” 0.12m), rifled siege guns.
12,000 ” (calibre of 7), used as a siege gun.
150 bombs of 0.32m
360 ” 0.27m
2500 ” 0.22m
5500 ” 0.16m
———-
Total 138,800 discharges of siege guns and mortars.—“Guerre
des Communeux,” p. 321.

The great feature of the second siege of Paris was the prudence
exercised in manoeuvring the men so as to protect them from needless
exposure, practical experience in German encounters having taught the
line a severe lesson. From the report of Marshal MacMahon we learn that
the lost amounted to 83 officers killed, and 430 wounded; 794 soldiers
killed, and 6,024 wounded, and 183 missing in all.

XVII.

LIST OF PUBLIC BUILDINGS, MONUMENTS, CHURCHES, AND HOUSES,

DAMAGED OR DESTROYED BY THE COMMUNISTS OF PARIS,

MAY 24-29, 1871.

Fire commenced in the houses marked thus (*).

Palais des Tuileries (Emperor’s Paris residence). _Burnt_.
Musée du Louvre. _Library totally destroyed_.
Palais Royal (Prince Napoleon’s Paris residence). _Burnt_.
Palais de la Légion d’Honneur (records all gone). _Burnt_.
Conseil d’Etat. _Burnt_.
Corps Législatif. _Damaged_.
Cour des Comptes (Exchequer). _Burnt_.
Ministère d’Etat (Minister of State). _Fired, but saved_.
Ministère des Finances (Treasury). _Burnt_.
Hôtel de Ville. (Town Hall of Paris). _Burnt_.
Palais de Justice (Law courts). _Burnt_.
Préfecture de Police. _Burnt_.
The Conciergerie (House of Detention). _Partly burnt_.
Mairie of the 1st Arrondissement. _Dam_.
Mairie of the 4th Arrondissement. _Partially burnt_.
Mairie of the 11th Arrondissement. _Partially_.
Mairie of the 12th Arrondissement. _Burnt_.
Mairie of the 13th Arrondissement. _Damaged_.
Imprimerie Nationale. (National Printing office). _Damaged_.
Polytechnic School. _Damaged_.
Manufacture des Gobelins (National tapestry manufactory). _Partially
burnt_.
Grenier d’Abondance (Enormous corn and other stores). _Burnt_.
Colonne Vendôme. _Overthrown on the 16th of May_.
Colonne de Juillet, on the Place de la Bastille. _Greatly damaged_.
Porte Saint-Denis. _Damaged_.
Porte Saint-Martin. _Damaged_.
Cathedral of Notre Dame. _Very slightly damaged_.
Panthéon. _Very slightly damaged_.
Church of Belleville. _Damaged_.
Church of Bercy. _Burnt_.
Church of La Madeleine. _Slightly dam_.
Church of St. Augustin. _Damaged_.
Church of Saint Eustache (used as a club). _Fired and much damaged_.
Church of Saint Gervais (used as a club). _Damaged_.
Church of St. Laurent. _Damaged_.
Church of Saint Leu. _Damaged_.
Church of Reuilly. _Fired but not burnt_.
Church of the Trinité. _Damaged_.
Church of La Villette. _Damaged_.
Sainte-Chapelle. _Slightly, if at all, dam_.
Théâtre du Châtelet. _Fired, but saved_.
Théâtre Lyrique. _Burnt_.
Ba-ta-clan Music Hall. _Fired, but not burnt_.
Théâtre des Délassements-Comiques. _Burnt_.
Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin. _Totally destroyed_.
Théâtre Cluny. _Only damaged_.
Théâtre Odéon. _Damaged_.
Abattoir de Grenelle. _Damaged_.
Assistance Publique (offices of public charity). _Burnt_.
Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations (Bank of Deposit). _Burnt_.
Caisse de Poissy (Bank of Deposit). _Burnt_.
Service des Ponts et Chaussées of the 13th Arrondissement (Civil
engineer’s office). _Partially_.
Arsenal. _Partly burnt_.
Caserne du Château-d’Eau (barracks). _Damaged_.
Caserne Mouffetard. _Damaged_.
Caserne Napoléon. _Damaged_.
Caserne Quai d’Orsay. _Burnt_.
Caserne de Reuilly. _Burnt_.
Docks, Bonded Warehouses and Storehouses at La Villette. _Burnt_.
Les Halles Centrales (Great general market). _Damaged_.
Marché du Temple (General market). _Damaged_.
Marché Voltaire (General market). _Dam_.
Bridge over the Canal de l’Ourcq. _Dam_.
Passerelle de la Villette (Foot-bridge). _Burnt_.
Pont d’Austerlitz, with restaurant Trousseau and sluice-keeper’s
house. _All burnt_.
Rotonde de la Villette. _Damaged_.
Hospice de l’Enfant Jesus. _Damaged_.
Hospital Lariboisière. _Damaged_.
Hospital Salpétrière: (House of refuge and lunatic-asylum for women).
_Burnt_.
Prison of la Roquette. _Damaged_.
Gare de Lyon (Lyons railway terminus). _Fired and damaged_.
Gare d’Orléans (Orleans railway terminus.) _Damaged_.
Gare Montparnasse (Western railway terminus). _Damaged_.
Gare de Strasbourg (Eastern railway terminus). _Damaged_.
Gare de Vincennes (Vincennes railway terminus). _Damaged_.
House of M. Thiers (Place St. Georges). _Pulled down (previously)_.
Cimetière du Père-Lachaise (cemetery). _Damaged_.
Barrière Charenton. _Damaged_.
Luxembourg: Powder Magazine in rear of Palace _blown up_, some
subsidiary buildings _burnt_, and whole quarter _damaged_.

Avenue des Amandiers: Nos. 1, 2, 4, _Burnt_.
No. 69. _Damaged_.
Avenue de Choisy: Nos. 202, 221. _Dam._
Avenue de Clichy: Nos. 2, 4, 22. _Dam._
Avenue d’Italie: Nos. 1, 2, 3, 5, 78, 88. _Damaged._
Avenue d’Orléans: Nos. 79, 81, 83. _Dam._
Avenue Victoria: Nos. 2, 3, 4, 5. _Burnt._
No. 6. _Damaged._
Avenue de Vincennes: Nos. 2, 4, 10. _Damaged._
Boulevard Beaumarchais: No. 1. _Burnt._
Nos. 2, 13, 15, 26, 28, 30, 109. _Dam._
Boulevard de Bercy: No. 4, 8. _Dam._
Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle: Nos. 11, 15. _Damaged._
Boulevard Bourdon: Nos. 7, 17. _Dam._
Boulevard des Capucines: No. 11;
Maison Giroux, Nos. 43, 58, 60. _Damaged._
Boulevard de la Chapelle: Nos. 10, 12,
14, 18, 20, coach houses and stables,
22, 30, 34, 40, 62, 86, 90, 94,
100, 122, 141, 143, 145, 147, “Aux
Buttes Chaumont,” 157, 163, 165,
169, 208, “Au Cadran Bleu,” 216,
218. _Damaged._
Boulevard de Charonne: Nos. 50, 52, 74. _Damaged._
Boulevard de Clichy: No. 77; Convent and
Church; Nos. 79, 81, 84, 86. _Dam._
Boulevard Contrescarpe: Nos. 2, 4. _Burnt._
Nos. 42, 46. _Damaged._
Boulevard de la Gare: No. 131. _Dam._
Boulevard Hausmann: Nos. 23, 72. _Damaged._
Boulevard d’Italie: Nos. 7, 69. _Dam._
Boulevard de la Madeleine: No. 1. _Dam._
Boulevard Magenta: Nos. 1, 3, 5, 6, 15,
48, 70, 78, 98, 114, “Au Méridien,”
118, 143, 151, 153, 156. _Damaged._
Boulevard Malesherbes: Nos. 9, 33. _Damaged._
Boulevard Mazas: Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. _Burnt._
Nos. 22, 26, 28 bis, 30, 60. _Dam._
Boulevard Montmartre: No, 1. _Dam._
Boulevard du Montparnasse: Nos. 9 bis,
41, 70, 100, 120, 150. _Damaged._
Nos. 25, three shops, 110, 112. _Burnt._
Boulevard Ornano: No. 56. _Burnt._
Nos. 1, 4, 7, 9, 22, 27, 32. _Dam._
Boulevard Poissonnière: No. 15. _Dam._
Boulevard du Port-Royal: Nos. 16, 18, 20. _Damaged._
Boulevard du Prince Eugène: Magazins-Réunis
(co-operative store). _Dam._
Boulevard Richard-Lenoir: Nos. 20, 82. _Burnt._
Nos. 1, 5, 7, 9, 31, 36, 50, 69, 76,
87, 93, 107, 109, 116, 118, 136, 140. _Damaged._
Boulevard Saint-Denis: Nos. 6, 13, Café Magny. _Damaged._
Boulevard St. Jacques: Nos*. 69. _Dam._
Boulevard Saint-Marcel: No. 21. _Dam._
Boulevard Saint Martin: Nos. 14, 16, 18, 20. _Damaged._
Boulevard Saint Michel: No. 20; Café du Musée, 25;
Café Miller, 65;
Restaurant Molière, 73; Dreher Beer House, 99;
School of Mines. _Dam._
Boulevard Sébastopol: Nos. 9, 11, 13, 15. _Burnt._
Nos. 42, *65, 83. _Damaged._
Boulevard du Temple: Nos. 52, 54. _Burnt._
Nos. 2, 19, 20, 22, 24, 26, 30, 32, 34,
35, 38, 40, 44, 50. _Damaged._
Boulevard de la Villette: Nos. 85, 87, 117, Usine Falk. _Burnt_.
Nos. 97, 128, 134, 136, 138, 140, 162. _Damaged_.
Boulevard Voltaire: Nos. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 20, 22, 28, 60. _Burnt_.
Nos. 38, 63, 55, 60, 78, 94, 97, 98, 141, 166. _Damaged_.
Carrefour de l’Observatoire; No. 11. _Damaged_.
Chaussée Clignancourt: “Château-Rouge” (a public dancing-room).
_Damaged_.
Chaussée du Maine: No. 164. _Dam_.
Chaussée de Ménilmontant: Nos. 56, 58, 81, 98. _Damaged_.
Croix-Rouge (cross way): Nos. 2, 4. _Burnt_.
Faubourg Montmartre: No. 50,64. _Dam_.
Faubourg Poissonnière: Nos. 39, 168. _Damaged_.
Faubourg Saint-Antoine: No. 2. _Burnt_.
Nos. 1, 8, 4, 6, 6, 7, 22, 141, 164, 156, 158, 162. _Damaged_.
Faubourg Saint-Denis: Nos. 68, 77,114, 208 bis, 214. _Damaged_.
Faubourg Saint-Honoré: Nos. 1, 2, 3. _Burnt_.
Nos. 4, 29, 30, 33, 85. _Damaged_.
Faubourg Saint-Martin: Nos. *55, 66, 67, 69, 71, “Tapis Rouge.”
_Burnt_.
Nos. 147, 184, 221, 234, 267. _Dam_.
Faubourg du Temple: No. 30. _Burnt_.
Nos. 9, 16, 17, 19, 20, 26, 29, 32, 33, 36, 41, 47, 48, 49, 53, 64,
66, 73, 81, 82, 98, 94, 106, 117. _Dam_.
Impasse Constantine: No. 2. _Damaged_.
Impasse Saint-Sauveur: No. 2. _Dam_.
Passage du Sauinon. _Damaged_.
Place de la Bastille: Nos. 8, 10, 12, Poste de l’Ecluse. _Burnt_.
Nos. 4, 5, 6, 14. _Damaged_.
Place Blanche: Nos. 2, 3. _Damaged_.
Place Cambronne: No. 8. _Damaged_.
Place du Château-d’Eau: Nos. 7, 15. _Burnt_.
*9,13, “Pauvres Jacques;” Nos. 17, 19, 21, 23, Café du
Château-d’Eau. _Damaged_.
Place de la Concorde (Fountain). _Dam_.
Place de la Concorde (Statue of Lille). _Destroyed_.
Place de l’Hôtel de Ville: Nos. 1, 3, 7, 9, 11. _Burnt_.
Place de Jessaint: No. 4. _Damaged_.
Place du Louvre: No. 1. _Burnt_.
Place de la Madeleine: No. 31. _Dam_.
Place de l’Odéon: No. 8; Café de Bruxelles. _Damaged_.
Place de l’Opera: No. 3. _Damaged_.
Place Pigalle: No. 1. _Damaged_.
Place de la Sorbonne: No. 8. _Dam_.
Place Valhubert: “Châlet du Jardin.” _Damaged_.
Place des Victoires: No. 2. _Damaged_.
Place de Vintimille: Nos. 1, 27. _Dam_.
Place Voltaire: No. 7. _Burnt_.
No. 9. _Damaged_.
Quai d’Anjou: Nos. 5, 11, 19, 23, 27, 43; “Au Petit Matelot.”
_Damaged_.
Quai de Bercy: No. 12, 13. _Burnt_.
Nos. 3, 5, 10. _Damaged_.
Quai de Béthune: Nos. 12, 20. _Dam_.
Quai Bourbon: No. 3. _Damaged_.
Quai des Célestins: No. 6. _Damaged_.
Quai de Gèvres: No. 2. _Burnt_.
Quai de l’Hôtel-de-Ville: Nos. 28, 68, 72, 78, 82. _Damaged_.
Quai de Jemappes: Nos. 18, 80, 34, 42. _Damaged_.
No. 32. _Burnt_.
Quai de la Loire: Nos. 10, 84, 86, 88. _Burnt_.
No. 60. _Damaged_.
Quai du Louvre: Nos. 2, 4, 6. _Dam_.
Quai de la Mégisserie: No. 22; “Belle Jardinière.” _Damaged_.
Quai d’Orsay (a Club). _Damaged._
Quai de la Rapée: No. 92, 94, 96, 98, 100, _Burnt_.
Quai de Valmy: Nos. 27, 29. _Burnt._
Nos. 31, 39, 48, 71, 73, 79. _Dam._
Quai Voltaire: No. 9, 13, 17. _Dam._
Rue d’Alibert: Nos. 1, 2; _Damaged._
Rue d’Allemagne: Nos. 2, 10. _Dam._
Rue d’Alsace: Nos. 31, 33, 39. _Dam._
Rue des Amandiers: Nos. 3, 4, 20, 65,86, 87. _Damaged._
Rue Amelot: Nos. 2, 21, 25, 104, 106,139. _Damaged._
Rue de l’Ancienne Comédie: No. 2: “À Mazarin” (drapers). _Damaged._
Rue d’Angoulême: Nos. 2, 28, 31, 43, 72bis. _Damaged._
Rue d’Anjou: No. 23. _Damaged._
Rue de l’Arcade: No. 2. _Damaged._
Rue de l’Arsenal: No. 3. _Burnt._
Rue d’Assas: Nos. 80, *78, 86, 90, 96, 98, 106, 112, 118, 124. _Dam._
Rue d’Aubervilliers: No. 138. _Burnt._
Nos. 2, 24, 88, 92, 96. _Damaged._
Rue Audran: No. 1. _Damaged._
Rue d’Aval: No. 11. _Damaged._
No. 17. _Burnt._
Rue du Bac: Nos. 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 11, 13. _Burnt._
Nos. 54, 55, 56, Leborgne House, 58, 62, 64. _Damaged._
Rue Barrault: Nos. 3, 31. _Damaged._
Rue de Belleville: Nos. 1, 2, 66, 70, 89, 91, 133. _Damaged._
Rue de Bercy: No. 257. _Damaged._
Rue Bichat: No. 67. _Damaged_.
Rue Bisson: No. 49. _Damaged_.
Rue Blanche: Nos. 97, 99. _Damaged_.
Rue Boissy-d’Anglas: No. 31. _Burnt_.
Nos. 33, 35, 37. _Damaged_.
Rue de Bondy: Nos. 16, 17, 19, 21. _Burnt_.
Nos. *22, *32; 24, 26, Grand Café Parisien, 28, 30, 40, 44.
_Damaged_.
Rue Bréa: Nos; 1. _Burnt_.
No. 3. _Damaged_.
Rue de Bruxelles: No. 29. _Damaged_
Rue de Buffon: Nos. 1, 3. _Damaged_.
Rue de la Butte-aux-Cailles: Nos. 1, 16. _Damaged_.
Rue de la Butte-Chaumont: No. 1. _Burnt_.
Rue Cail: No. 25. _Damaged_.
Rue Castex: No. 20. _Damaged_.
Rue de la Cerisaie: Nos. 20, 41, 45, 47. _Damaged_.
Rue de la Chapelle: Nos. 6, 16, 19, 35, 37, 75, 77. _Damaged_.
Rue de la Charbonnière: Nos. 32, 42. _Damaged_.
Rue de Charenton: No. 1. _Burnt_.
Nos. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 13, 100, 102, 187, 214, 230.
_Dam._.
Rue de Charonne: Nos. 61,79,155. _Dam._.
Rue du Château: Nos. 169,180. _Dam._
Rue du Château-d’Eau: Nos. 1, 3, 73. _Burnt_.
Nos. 32, 55, 71, 75, 79, 81, _Dam._
Rue de la Chaussée-d’Antin: Nos. 58, 64, 68. _Damaged_.
Rue du Chemin-Vert: Nos. 46,54. _Dam._
Rue Clavel: No. 3. _Damaged_.
Rue de Clignancourt: Nos. 9, 39, 43, 45, 49, 59. _Damaged_.
Rue Conti: No. 2. _Damaged_.
Rue de Cotte: No. 8. _Damaged_.
Rue de la Coutellerie: No. 2. _Burnt_.
Rue de Crimée: Nos. 156, 158. _Burnt_.
Nos. 81, 83, 155, 163. _Damaged_.
Rue du Croissant: (Saint Joseph’s Market). _Damaged_.
Rue Curial: No. 134. _Damaged_.
Rue Damesne: No. 1. _Damaged_.
Rue Delambre: Nos. 2, 4, _Burnt_.
Rue Descartes: No. 6. _Damaged_.
Rue Domat: No. 24. _Damaged_.
Rue Dombasle: No. 61. _Damaged_.
Rue Durantin: No. 7. _Damaged_.
Rue des Ecoles: No. 25. _Damaged_.
Rue d’Elzévir: Nos. 4,7, ll, 12; “Auberge de la Bouteille” (inn).
_Dam._
Rue de l’Espérance: Nos. 7, 11. _Dam._
Rue Fléchier: No. 2. _Damaged._
Rue Folies-Méricourt: Nos. 51, 64, 75. _Damaged._
No. 115. _Burnt._
Rue des Francs-Bourgeois: No. 33, Hotel Carnavalet. _Damaged._
Rue Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire: No. 18. _Dam._
Rue de la Glacière: Nos. 36, 75. _Dam._
Rue Grange-aux-Belles: No. 20. _Dam._
Rue de Grenelle: Nos. 1, 3. _Burnt._
No. 34. _Damaged._
Rue Guy-Patin: No. 3. _Damaged._
Rue des Halles: No. 28. _Damaged._
Rue Jacques-Coeur: No. 31. _Dam._
Rue Joquelet: No. 12. _Damaged._
Rue Julien-Lacroix: No. 2. _Damaged._
Rue de Jussieu: No. 41. _Damaged._
Rue de Lafayette: No. 107, 127. _Dam._
Nos. 196, Aubin (fireworks), 208, 213, 215. _Damaged._
Rue Lacuée: Nos. 2, 4, 6. _Burnt._
Rue de Lappe: No. 2. _Damaged._
Rue Lepelletier: No. 26. _Damaged._
Rue Lesdiguières: No. 2. _Damaged._
Rue Levert: No. 12. _Damaged._
Rue de Lille: Nos. 27, 37, 39, 43, 45,
*47, 48, 49, 50, 51, Museum of M. Gatteaux, bequeathed to nation,
53, 55, 57, 61, 63, 65, 67, 69, 81, 83. _Burnt._
Rue Louis-le-Qrand: Nos. 32, 34. _Dam._
Rue du Louvre: Nos. 6, 8. _Burnt._
Rue de la Lune: No. 1. _Damaged._
Rue de Lyon: No. 16. _Damaged._
Rue des Marais: No. 68. _Damaged._
Rue du Maroc: No. 38. _Damaged._
Rue de Meaux: Nos. 2, 14. _Damaged._
Rue Ménars: No. 8. _Damaged._
Rue Meslay: No. 2. _Burnt._
Rue Montmartre: Nos. 49, 53, 55. _Dam._
Rue Montorgueil: Nos. 1, 29, 31, 33, 65. _Damaged._
Rue Mouffetard: Nos. 132, 134, 136,
138, 139, 150; Church of St. Médard. _Damaged._
Rue du Moulin-des-Près: Nos. 83, 85. _Damaged._
Rue Neuve-des-Petits-Champs: No. 105, Piver’s. _Damaged._
Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs: Nos. 52, 54.
Studio of M. John Leighton. _Burnt._
Nos. 55, 57. _Damaged._
Rue Notre-Dame-de-Nazareth: Nos. 16, 31. _Damaged._
Rue Oberkampf: No. 4; À la Ville
d’Alençon, No. 11, 12, 13, 15, 25,
36, 37, 41, 49, 50, 53, 57, 60, 67. _Damaged._
Rue aux Ours: Nos. 47, 48, 49, 55. _Dam._
Rue des Petites-Ecuries: Nos. 2, 4. _Damaged._
Rue du Petit-Muse: No. 21. _Damaged._
Rue Pierre Lescot: No. 16. _Damaged._
Rue Popincourt: No. 2. _Damaged._
Rue du Pressoir: No. 54. _Damaged._
Rue de Provence: No. *20. No. 23. _Damaged._
Rue de Puebla: Nos. 2, 3, 4, 17, 30, 292. _Damaged._
Rue Racine: No. 2. _Damaged._
Rue Rambuteau: Nos. 32, 58, 60, 102.
“Aux Fabriques de France:” No. 124. _Damaged._
No. 16, “Colosse de Rhodes;” No. 19,
Café du Marais; Nos. 26, 28, 30,
34, 62, 65, 72; Mr. Leforestier’s
house, “À l’Alliance,” Nos. 49, 61,
63, 66, 69, 71. _Damaged._
Rue Ramey: Nos. 41, 43. _Damaged._
Rue Rampon: No. 18. _Damaged._
Rue Réaumur: Nos. 14, 25, 43. _Dam._
Rue de Rennes: No. 2; Café de Rennes, 161. _Damaged._
Rue de Reuilly: No. 68. _Damaged._
Rue du Rhin: No. 6. _Damaged._
Rue Riquet: Nos. 63, 64. _Damaged._
Rue de Rivoli: Nos. 33, 35, 37, 39, 79,
80, 82, 84, 86, 91, 98, 100; “À Pygmalion.” _Burnt._
Nos. 41, 88, 128, 210, 226, 236, 238. _Damaged._
Rue Rollin; No. 18. _Damaged_.
Rue de la Roquette: Nos. 1, 3, 6, 7, 9, 11 13, 18, 19, 20, 22,
24, 26. _Burnt_.
Nos. 4, 8, 15, 17, 34, 87, 38, 78. _Dam_.
Rue Royale: Nos. 15, 18, 17, 19, 21, 23, 25. _Burnt_.
Nos. 24, 27. _Damaged_.
Rue Saint André-des-Arts: Nos. 26, 42. _Damaged_.
Rue Saint-Antoine: Nos. 3, 7, 9, 114, 142, 150, 152, 160, 176,
178, 182,192, 194, 198, 199, 201, 202, 203, 204, 206, 207, 212;
“À la Fiancée,” No. 213; “Phares de la Bastille,” 214, 216, 218,
220, 222, 224, 226, 228, 232, 234, 236; Protestant Church. _Dam_.
Petite rue Saint Antoine: Nos, 3, 7, 9. _Damaged_.
Nos. 11, 18. _Burnt_.
Rue Saint-Denis: No. 223; Église Saint Leu. _Damaged_.
Rue Saint-Fiacre: No. 15. _Damaged_.
Rue Saint-Honoré: No. 422. _Burnt_.
No. 132. _Dam_.
Rue Saint-Jacques: Nos. 26, 146, 164, Café de l’Ecole de Droit,1
36, 195, 198, 216. _Damaged_.
Rue Saint-Lazare: No. 46. _Damaged_.
Rue Sainte-Marguerite: No. 22. _Dam_.
Rue Saint-Martin: Nos. 8, 10; “The Bon-Diable.” Nos. 12, 14. _Burnt_
Nos. *16, 248. _Damaged_.
Rue Saint-Maur: Nos. 151, 184, 225, 227. _Damaged_.
Rue des Saints-Pères: Nos. 46, 48. _Dam_.
Rue Saint-Sabin: Nos. 2, 4, 6. _Burnt_.
Nos. 3, 10, 12, 14. _Damaged_.
Rue Saint Sébastien: Nos. 42, 43, 44. _Damaged_.
Rue Sauval: No. 13. _Damaged_.
Rue de la Santé: No. 63. _Damaged_.
Rue Sedaine: No. 1. _Burnt_.
Nos. 5, 6, 8, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20. _Damaged_.
Rue du Sentier: No. 22. _Damaged_.
Rue du 4 Septembre: No. 13. _Dam_.
Rue de Sèvres: No. 2. _Burnt_.
Nos. 14, 16 (reservoir); Nos. 91, 92, 141. _Damaged_.
Rue de Sully: No. 11. _Damaged_.
Rue de Suresnes: Nos. 1, 9, 15, 17, 19. _Damaged_.
Rue de la Tacherie: Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4. _Burnt_.
Rue Taitbout: Nos. 22, 26. _Damaged_.
Rue Taranne*: No. 10. _Damaged_.
Rue du Temple: Nos. 7, 10, 39, 201. _Damaged_.
No. 207. _Burnt_.
Rue Toquelet: No. 12. _Damaged_.
Rue Traversière: No. 53. _Damaged_.
Rue de Turbigo; Nos. 1, 3; “Au Grand Parisien,” Nos. 5, 8, 11, 19,
21, 47; Church of Saint-Nicholas-des-Champs, Nos. 51, 53, 56, 63,
74. _Damaged_.
Rue De Vaugirard: Nos. 60, 68, 69, 70, Convent des Carmes, 82, School
for Girls, 92, School for Boys. _Dam_.
Rue Vavin: Nos. 2, *18, 20, 22. _Burnt_.
Nos. 16, 34, 36, 39. _Damaged_.
54 (Collection of M. Reiber, Architect). _Destroyed_.
Rue de la Victoire: No. 61. _Damaged_.
Rue du Vieux-Colombier: No. 31. _Dam_.
Rue Vilin: No. 2. _Damaged_.
Rue de la Villette: Nos. 20, 25, 26, 70. _Damaged_.
Rue de la Ville l’Evêque: Nos. 7, 18. _Damaged_.
Rue Volta: No. 38. _Damaged_.
Rue de Wiarmes: No. 1. _Damaged_.

The barricades of Paris numbered about 600—from a slight breast-work to
a veritable fortress.

INDEX TO PLAN.

B. Burnt. P.B. Partly Burnt. D. Damaged. S. Damaged by Shot and Shell.

NORTH OF THE RIVER SEINE.

Div. of Map.
1 Palace of the Tuileries, B 8
2 Museum of the Louvre, P.B 8
3 Palais Royal, B 8
4 The Bourse (Exchange) 8
5 The New Opera House 8
6 The Church of the Madeleine, D 8
7 The Column Vendôme (overthrown) 8
8 The Palace of the Elysée 7
9 The Triumphal Arch, D 7
10 Palais de l’Industrie, B 7
11 Church of St. Augustin, D 8
12 ” of the Trinity, B 8
13 ” Notre Dame de Lorette 8
14 Ministère of Marine 8
15 Bibliothèque Nationale 8
16 Halles Centrales, S 8
17 Church of Saint Eustache, D 8
18 Opéra Comique 8
19 Church of St. Vincent de Paul 8
20 Hospital of Lariboisière, D 3
21 Barracks of Prince Eugène, D 9
22 Hospital of St. Louis 9
23 Prison of La Roquette, D 14
24 Statue of Prince Eugène (removed) 14
25 Hôtel de Ville, B 13
26 Tower of St. Jacques, D 13
27 Prison of Mazas 14
28 Barracks Napoléon, B 14
29 Conservatoire of Arts and Métiers 9
30 Hospital of St. Eugénie 15
31 Cattle Market and Slaughter H 5
32 Magasins of Bercy (sacked) 20
33 Ministère des Finances, B 8
34 Place de la Concorde, D 8
86 Porte St. Denis, D 8
36 Porte St. Martin, D 9
37 Theatre of Porte St. Martin, B 9
38 Church of St. Laurent, D 9
39 Mairie 1st Arrondissement, D 8
40 Théâtre du Chatelet, P.B 13
41 Théâtre Lyrique, B 13
42 Caisse Municipale, B 13
43 Assistance Publique, B 13
44 Mairie IVth Arrondissement, P.B 14
45 Magasins Réunis, D 9
46 Théâtre des Del. Comiques, B 9
47 Mairie XIth Arrondissement, P.B 14
48 Column of July, D 14
49 The Arsenal, B 14
50 Hospital of Salpétrière, B 19
51 Granary of Abundance, B 14
52 Lyons Railway Station, PB 14
53 Mairie of XIIth Arrondissement and Church of Bercy, B 14
SOUTH OF THE RIVER SEINE.

1 Foreign Office, D. 7
2 Military School 12
3 Les Invalides and Tomb of Napoléon I. 12
4 Corps Législatif 7
5 Barracks d’Orsay, P.B. 8
6 Palace of the Institute 13
7 The Mint 13
8 Church of St. Sulpice 13
9 Palace of the Luxembourg, D. 13
10 Odéon Theatre, D. 13
11 Museum of Cluny 13
12 Palais de Justice, B. 13
13 Cathedral of Notre Dame 13
14 Church of the Pantheon, D. 13
15 Church of Val de Grâce 13
16 The Observatory 18
17 Wine Market (sacked) 14
18 Palace of Légion d’Honneur, B. 8
19 Conseil d’État and Exchequer, B. 8
20 Bank of Deposit, B. 8
21 Western Railway Station, B. 13
22 Gobelins Tapestry Manufactory, P.B. 18
23 Orleans Railway Station, P.B. 14

See western side of Plan for the fire and devastation caused by shot
and shell during the engagements between the Federal troops and the
army of Versailles:—Point du Jour, Auteuil, Passy, Porte Maillot,
Avenue de la Grande Armée (Arc de Triomphe, much injured), Neuilly,
Villiers, Lavallois, &c.

[Maps: (press map to enlarge)]

[Illustration: Plan of Paris Illustrative Of Mr. Leighton’s Paris]

[Illustration: Parts Destroyed Or Damaged During the Reign of The
Commune]

[Illustration: Plan of Paris Illustrative Of Mr. Leighton’s Paris]

*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Paris under the Commune
- The Seventy-Three Days of the Second Siege; with Numerous Illustrations, Sketches Taken on the Spot, and Portraits (from the Original Photographs)" ***

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