r;r«^rf
HISTORY
OF
THE COMMUNE OF 1871.
HISTORY
OF
THE COMMUNE OF 1871.
TRANSLATED PROM THE FRENCH OF
LI S S AGAR AY,
BY
ELEANOR MARX AVELING.
NEW YORK:
Published by the INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHING CO., 23 Duane St.
1898.
INTRODUCTION.
The Mowing translation of Lissagaray's "Histoire de la
Commune" was made many years ago, at the express wish
of the author, who, besides making many emendations in
his work, wrote nearly a hundred pages especially for this
English version. The translation, in fact, was made from
the "Histoire de la Commune" as prepared for a second
edition—an edition which the French Government would not
allow to be published. This explanation is necessary in view
of the differences between the translation and the first edition
of Lissagaray's book.
Written in 1876, there are necessarily passages in this
history out of date to-day; as, for example, the references
to the prisoners in Hew Caledonia, the exiles, and the
amnesty. But for two reasons I prefer leaving this trans¬
lation as it was originally. To have it "written up to date"
would only be making patchwork of it. Secondly, I am
loth to alter the work in any way. It had been entirely
revised and corrected by my father. I want it to remain
as he knew it.
Lissagaray's "Histoire de la Commune" is the only authentic
and reliable history as yet written of the most memorable
movement of modern times. It is true Lissagaray was
a soldier of the Commune, but he has had the courage
and honesty to speak the truth. He has not attempted
to hide the errors of his party, or to gloss over the fatal
vi
INTRODUCTION.
weaknesses of the Revolution; and if he has erred, it has
been on the side of moderation, in his anxiety not to make
a single statement that could not be corroborated by over¬
whelming proofs of its truth. Wherever it was possible,
the statements of the Versaillese in their Parliamentary
Inquiries, in their press, and in their books are used in
preference to the statements of friends and partisans; and
whenever the evidence of Communards is given, it is in¬
variably sifted with scrupulous care. And it is this impar¬
tiality, this careful avoidance of any assertion that could be
considered doubtful, which should recommend this work to
English readers.
In England especially most persons are still quite ignorant
of the events which led up to, and forced the people of Paris
into making that revolution which was to save France from
the shame and disgrace of a fourth Empire. To most English
people the Commune still spells "rapine, fear, and lust,"
and when they speak of its "atrocities," they have some
vague idea of hostages ruthlessly massacred by brutal revo¬
lutionists, of houses burnt down by furious petroleuses. Is
it not time that English people at last learnt the truth?
Is it not time they were reminded that for the sixty-five
hostages shot, not by the Commune, but by a few people
made mad by the massacre of prisoners by the Versaillese,
the troops of law and order shot down thirty thousand men,
women, and children, for the most part long after all fighting
had ceased? If any Englishman, after reading Lissagaray's
"History of the Commune," still has any doubt as to what
the "atrocities" of the Commune really were, he should turn
to the Parisian correspondence for May and June, 1871,- of
the Times, Daily News, and Standard,.1 There he can learn
1 I need but refer readers to the Times' account of the murders at
Moulin Saquet and Clamart, long before the entry of the Versaillese
into Paris, and to the accounts in the English press of the wholesale
INTRODUCTION.
vii
what kind of "order reigned in Paris" after the glorious
victory of Versailles.
Nor is it enough that we should be clear as to the "atro¬
cities" of the Commune. It is time people understood the
true meaning of this Revolution; and this can be summed
up in a few words. It meant the government of the people
by the people. It was the first attempt of the proletariat
to govern itself. The workers of Paris expressed this when
in their first manifesto they declared they "understood it
massacres after their entry. Here are a few extracts taken at ran¬
dom :—
"The shambles have been established at the end of the Boulevard
Malesherbes, and it is a lugubrious spectacle to see men and women, of
all ages and conditions of life, defile past at intervals in that fatal direc¬
tion. A party of three hundred moved across the boulevard only a few
moments ago. ... At Satory, on Wednesday, a thousand of the captured
insurgents revolted and got rid of their handcuffs. . . . The soldiers fired
into the crowd, and three hundred insurgents were shot. ... In one of
the convoys of prisoners ... a woman was being driven on by a gen¬
darme, who goaded her with the point of his sabre till the blood ran. . . .
M. Gallifet halted the column, selected eighty-two [prisoners], and had
them shot there and then. ... As many as one thousand Communists
were shot after their capture (June 1st). . . . Human life has become so
cheap, that a man is shot more readily than a dog. Summary executions
are still [long after the fighting had ceased] going on wholesale.—Times,
May-June 1871.
"Several hundred insurgents who took refuge in the Madeleine were,
it is said, bayoneted in the church. . . . Eleven waggon-loads of dead
bodies of insurgents have been buried in the common ditch of Issy,...
No quarter was given to any man, woman, or child. . . . Batches of as
many as fifty and one hundred at a time are shot. "—Daily News, May-
June 1871.
"The wholesale executions continue indiscriminately. Prisoners are
taken down in batches to certain . . . places where firing-parties are
stationed, and deep trenches dug beforehand. ... At one of these, the
Caserne Napoléon, since last night five hundred persons have been shot.
. . . There are invariably women and boys among them. . . . Prisoners
are soon disposed of by a volley and tumbled into a trench, when, if
not killed by the shots, death from sufEocation must soon put an end to
their pain. Two court-martials alone are shooting at the rate of five
hundred a day. Two thousand dead bodies are collected round the Pan¬
theon."—Standard, June 1871.
yiii
INTRODUCTION.
was their imperious duty and their absolute right to render
themselves masters of their own destinies by seizing upon
governmental power." The establishment of the Commune
meant not the replacing of one form of class-rule by another,
but the abolishing of all class-rule. It meant the substitution
of true co-operative, i. e., communistic, for capitalistic pro¬
duction, and the participation in this Revolution of workers
of all countries meant the internationalising, not only the
nationalising, of the land and of private property.
And the same men who now cry out against the use of
force used force—and what force!—to vanquish the people of
Paris. Those who denounce Socialists as mere firebrands and
dynamitards used fire and sword to crush the people into
submission.
And what has been the result of these massacres, of this
slaying of thousands of men, women, and children? Is
Socialism dead? Was it drowned in the blood of the people
of Paris? Socialism to-day is a greater power than it has
ever been. The bourgeois Republic of Prance may join hands
with the Autocrat of Russia to blot it out; Bismarck may
pass repressive laws, and democratic America may follow in
his wake—and still it moves! And because Socialism is to-day
a power, because in England even it is, "in the air," the
time has come for doing justice to the Commune of Paris.
The time has come when even the opponents of Socialism
will read, at least with patience if not with sympathy, an
honest and truthful account of the greatest Socialist move¬
ment—thus far—of the century.
ELEANOR MARX AYELING.
June (Whit-Week) 1886.
PREFACE
The history of the Third Estate was to have been the
prologue to this history. But time presses; the victims are
gliding into their graves; the perfidies of the Radicals
threaten to surpass the worn-out calumnies of the Monarchists.
I limit myself for the present to the strictly necessary intro¬
duction.
Who made the Revolution of the 18th March? What part
was taken by the Central Committee? What was the Com¬
mune? How comes it that 100,000 Frenchmen are lost to
their country? Who is responsible? Legions of witnesses
will answer.
No doubt it is an exile who speaks, but an exile who has
been neither member, nor officer, nor functionary of the
Commune; who for five years has sifted the evidence; who has
not ventured upon a single assertion without accumulated
proofs; who sees the victor on the look-out for the slightest
inaccuracy to deny all the rest; who knows no better plea
for the vanquished than the simple and sincere recital of
their history.
This history, besides, is due to their children, to all the
workingmen of the earth. The child has the right to know
the reason of the paternal defeats, the Socialist party the
campaign of its flag in all countries. He who tells the people
revolutionary legends, he who amuses them with sensational
stories, is as criminal as the geographer who would draw up
false charts for navigators.
London, November 1877.
CONTENTS.
PROLOGUE.
PAGE
HOW THE PRUSSIANS GOT PARIS AND THE RURALS FRANCE . . 1
CHAPTER I.
FIRST ATTACKS OF THE COALITION AGAINST PARIS—THE BAT¬
TALIONS OF THE NATIONAL GUARD FEDERALISE AND SEIZE
THEIR CANNON—THE PRUSSIANS ENTER PARIS ... 58
CHAPTER II.
THE COALITION OPENS FIRE ON PARIS—THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE
CONSTITUTES ITSELF—M. THIERS ORDERS THE ASSAULT . . 69
CHAPTER III.
THE EIGHTEENTH OF MARCH 78
CHAPTER IY.
THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE CONVOKES THE ELECTORS—THE MAYORS
OF PARIS AND DEPUTIES OF THE SEINE TURN AGAINST IT . 88
CHAPTER Y.
THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE AFFIRMS ITSELF, REORGANISES THE PUB¬
LIC SERVICES, AND HOLDS PARIS 101
CHAPTER VI.
THE MAYORS, THE DEPUTIES, THE JOURNALISTS, THE ASSEMBLY
COMBINE AGAINST PARIS—THE REACTION MARCHES ON THE
' PLACE VENDÔME, AND IS PUNISHED 108
xii
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER VII.
PAGE
THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE TRIUMPHS OVER ALL OBSTACLES AND
CONSTRAINS THE MAYORS TO CAPITULATE .... 116
CHAPTER VIII.
PROCLAMATION OP THE COMMUNE 126
CHAPTER IX.
THE COMMUNE AT LYONS, ST. ETIENNE, AND CREUZOT . . .131
CHAPTER X.
THE COMMUNE AT MARSEILLES, TOULOUSE, AND NARBONNE . . 142
CHAPTER XI.
THE COUNCIL OF THE COMMUNE WAVERS FROM ITS FIRST SITTINGS
—THE MAYORS AND ADJUNCTS ELECTED DESERT EN MASSE . 153
CHAPTER XII.
SORTIE OF THE THIRD APRIL—THE PARISIANS ARE REPULSED
EVERYWHERE—FLOURENS AND DUVAL ARE KILLED—THE VER-
SAILLESE MASSACRE SOME PRISONERS 162
CHAPTER XIII.
THE COMMUNE IS VANQUISHED AT MARSEILLES AND NARBONNE . 171
CHAPTER XIY.
THE GREAT RESOURCES OF THE COMMUNE—THE GREAT WEAKNESS
OF THE COUNCIL—NOMINATION OF CLUSERET—DECREE CONCERN¬
ING THE HOSTAGES—THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE—THE BANK . 182
CHAPTER XV.
THE FIRST COMBATS OF NEUILLY AND ANSNTERES—ORGANISATION
AND DEFEAT OF THE CONCILIATORS 190
CONTENTS.
xiiî
PAGE
CHAPTER XVI.
THE MANIFESTO OF THE COUNCIL—THE COMPLIMENTARY ELEC¬
TIONS OF THE 16th. APRIL SHOW A MINORITY WITHIN THE
COUNCIL—FIRST DISPUTES—THE GERMS OF DEFEAT . . . 199
CHAPTER XVII.
OUR PARISIENNES—SUSPENSION OF ARMS FOR THE EVACUATION OF
NEUILLY—THE ARMY OF VERSAILLES AND THAT OF PARIS . 207
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE PUBLIC SERVICES — FINANCE — WAR — POLICE — EXTERIOR —
JUSTICE—EDUCATION—LABOUR AND EXCHANGE . . . 217
CHAPTER XIX.
THE FREEMASONS JOIN THE COMMUNE—THE FIRST EVACUATION
OF THE FORT OF ISSY—CREATION OF THE COMMITTEE OF
PUBLIC SAFETY 236
CHAPTER XX.
ROSSEL REPLACES CLUSERET—THE RIVALRIES—THE DEFENCE OF
THE FORT OF ISSY 246
CHAPTER XXI.
PARIS IS BOMBARDED—THE FORT OF ISSY SUCCUMBS—THE COUN¬
CIL ELECTS A NEW COMMITTEE OF PUBLIC SAFETY ROSSEL
FLIES 254
CHAPTER XXII.
THE CONSPIRACIES AGAINST THE COMMUNE 265
CHAPTER XXIII.
M. THIERS' POLICY WITH REGARD TO THE PROVINCES—THE EX¬
TREME LEFT BETRAYS PARIS 271
xiv
CONTENTS.
PAGE
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE IMPOTENCE OF THE SECOND COMMITTEE OF PUBLIC SAFETY—
EVACUATION OF THE FORT OF VANVES AND OF THE VILLAGE
OF ISSY—THE MANIFESTO OF THE MINORITY—THE EXPLO¬
SION IN THE AVENUE RAPP—FALL OF THE VENDÔME COLUMN 283
CHAPTER XXV.
PARIS ON THE EVE OF DEATH 293
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE VERSAILLESE ENTER PARIS ON SUNDAY, 21ST MAY, AT THREE
O'CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON—THE COUNCIL OF THE COM¬
MUNE DISSOLVES 304
CHAPTER XXVII.
MONDAY 22ND—THE VERSAILLESE INVADE THE QUARTERS OF THE
EAST—PARIS RISES 313
CHAPTER XXVIII.
TUESDAY 23RD—MONTMARTRE IS TAKEN—THE WHOLESALE MAS¬
SACRES—WE LOSE GROUND—PARIS ON FIRE—THE LAST
NIGHT OF THE HÔTEL-DE-VILLE 326
CHAPTER XXIX.
WEDNESDAY 24TH—THE MEMBERS OF THE COUNCIL EVACUATE
THE HÔTEL-DE-VILLE—THE PANTHÉON IS TAKEN—THE VER¬
SAILLESE SHOOT THE FEDERALS BY HUNDREDS—THE FE¬
DERALS SHOOT SIX HOSTAGES—THE NIGHT OF THE CANNON . 339
CHAPTER XXX.
THURSDAY 25TH—THE WHOLE LEFT BANK FALLS INTO THE HANDS
OF THE TROOPS—DELESCLUZE DIES—THE BRASSARDIERS STI¬
MULATE THE MASSACRE—THE MEMBERS OF THE COUNCIL
EVACUATE THE MAIRIE OF THE ELEVENTH ARRONDISSEMENT . 353
CONTENTS.
xv
PAGE
CHAPTER XXXI.
THE RESISTANCE CENTRES IN BELLEVILLE—FRIDAY, FORTY-EIGHT
HOSTAGES ARE SHOT IN THE RUE HAXO—SATURDAY 27TH,
THE 'WHOLE TWENTIETH ARRONDISSEMENT IS INVADED—THE
PÈRE LACHAISE IS TAKEN—SUNDAY 28TH, THE BATTLE ENDS
AT ELEVEN O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING MONDAY 29TH, THE
FORT OF VINCENNES IB SURRENDERED 365
CHAPTER XXXII.
THE VERSAILLESE FURY—THE SLAUGHTER-HOUSES—THE PRE-
YOTAL COURTS—THE DEATH OF VARLIN—THE BURIALS . . 382
CHAPTER XXXIII.
THE CONVOYS OF PRISONERS—THE ORANGERIE—THE ARRESTS—
SATORY — THE DENUNCIATORS—THE PRESS — THE LEFT IN¬
SULTS THE VANQUISHED — DEMONSTRATIONS IN FOREIGN
COUNTRIES 395
CHAPTER XXXIY.
THE PONTOONS—THE FORTS—THE PRISONS—THE FIRST TRIALS . 408
CHAPTER XXXY.
THE COURTS-MARTIAL—THE EXECUTIONS—BALANCE-SHEET OF THE
CONDEMNATIONS 424
CHAPTER XXXYI.
NEW CALEDONIA—EXILE—BALANCE-SHEET OF BOURGEOIS VENGEANCE
—THE LIBERAL CHAMBER AND THE AMNESTY .... 445
APPENDIX
467
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
PROLOGUE.
"Osons, ce mot renferme toute la politique de cette heure."—
Rapport de St. Just à la Convention.
HOW THE PRUSSIANS GOT PARIS AND THE RURALS FRANCE.
August ç, 1870.—In six days the Empire has lost three
battles. Douai, Prossart, MacMahon have allowed themselves
to be isolated, surprised, crushed. Alsace is lost, the Moselle
laid hare. The dumbfoundered Ministry has convoked the
Chamber. Ollivier, in dread of a demonstration, denounces
if beforehand as "Prussian." But since eleven in the morn¬
ing an immense agitated crowd occupies the Place de la Con¬
corde, the quays, and surrounds the Corps Législatif.
Paris is waiting for the mot d'ordre of the deputies of the
Left. Since the announcement of the defeats they have
become the only moral authority. Bourgeoisie, workingmen,
all rally round them. The workshops have turned their
army into the streets,, and at the head of the different groups
one sees men of tried energy.
The Empire totters—it has now only to fall. The troops
drawn up before the Corps Législatif are greatly excited,
ready to turn tail in spite of the decorated and grumbling
Marshal Baraguay d'Hilliers. The people cry, "To the
frontier." Officers answer aloud, "Our place is not here."
In the Salle des Pas Perdus well-known Republicans, the
men of the clubs, who have forced their way in, roughly apos-
A
2
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
trophise the Imperialist deputies, speak loudly of proclaiming
the Republic. The pale-faced Mamelukes steal behind the
groups. M. Thiers arrives and exclaims, "Well, then, make
your republic!" When the President, Schneider, passes to the
chair, he is received with cries of "Abdication!"
The deputies of the Left are surrounded by delegates from
without. "What are you waiting for? We are ready. Only
show yourselves under the colonnades at the gates." The
honourables seem confounded, stupefied. "Are you numer¬
ous enough? Were it not better to put it off till to-morrow?"
There are indeed only 100,000 men ready. Some one arrives
and tells Gambetta, "There are several thousands of us at
the Place Bourbon." Another, the writer of this history, says,
"Make sure of the situation to-day, when it may still be saved.
To-morrow, having become desperate, it will be forced upon
you." But these brains seem paralysed; no word escapes these
gaping mouths.
The sitting opens. Jules Favre proposes to this base
Chamber, the abettor of our disasters, the humus of the
Empire, to seize upon the government. The Mamelukes rise
up in dudgeon, and Jules Simon, hair on end, returns to us
in the Salle des Pas Perdus. "They threaten to shoot us,"
he shrieks; "I descended into the midst of the hall and said,
'Well, shoot us.' " We exclaim, "Put an end to this." "Yes,"
says he, "we must make an end of it,"—and he returns to
the Chamber.
And thus ended their "damnable faces." The Mamelukes,
who know their Left, recover their self-assurance, throw
Ollivier overboard and form a coup-d'état Ministry. Schneider
precipitately breaks up the sitting in order to get rid of the
crowd. The people, feebly repulsed by the soldiers, repair in
masses to the bridges, follow those who leave the Chamber,
expecting every moment to hear the Republic proclaimed.
M. Jules Simon, out of reach of the bayonets, makes a heroic
discourse, and convokes the people to meet the next day at
the Place de la Concorde. The next day the police occupy all
the approaches.
PROLOGUE.
3
Thus the Left abandoned to Napoleon III. our two last
armies. One effort would have sufficed to overthrow this
pasteboard Empire.1 The people instinctively offered their
help to render the nation unto herself. The Left repulsed
them, refused to save the country by a riot, and, confining
their efforts to a ridiculous motion, left to the Mamelukes
the care of saving France. The Turks in 1876 showed more
intelligence and elasticity.
During three weeks it was the story of the Bas-Empire
all over again,—the fettered nation sinking into the abyss
in the face of its motionless governing classes. All Europe
.cried, "Beware!" They alone heard not. The masses,
.deceived by a braggart and corrupt press, might ignore the
.danger, lull themselves with vain hopes; but the deputies
have, must have, their hands full of crushing truths. They
conceal them. The Left exhausts itself in exclamations.
•On the 12th M. Gambetta cries, "We must wage Republican
war"—and sits down again. On the 13th Jules Favre de¬
mands the creation of a Committee of Defence. It is refused.
He utters no syllable. On the 20th the Ministry announces
■that Bazaine has forced three army corps into the quarries of
.Jaumont; the next day the whole European press related,
nn the contrary, that Bazaine, three times beaten, had been
thrown back upon Metz by 200,000 Germans. And no deputy
rises to interpellate the liars! Since the 26th they have
known MacMahon's insane march upon Metz, exposing the
last army of France, a mob of 80,000 conscripts, and van¬
quished, to 200,000 victorious Germans. M. Thiers, again
restored to favour since the disasters, demonstrates in the
.committees and in the lobbies that this march is the way
to utter ruin. The extreme Left says and bruits about that
.all is lost and of all these responsible persons seeing the state
ship tempest-tossed, not one raises his hand to seize the helm.
1 The prefect of police, Pietri, attests it: "It is certain, that on that
.day the revolution might have succeeded, for the crowd which surrounded
the Corps Législatif on the 9th August was composed of elements simi¬
lar to those which triumphed on the 4th September."—Enquête sur
Je 4 Septembre, vol. i. p. 258.
.4
HISTORY OP THE COMMUNE.
Since 1813 Prance had seen no such collapse of the
governing classes. The ineffable dastardliness of the Cent-
jours pales before this superior cowardice; for here Tartuffe
is grafted upon Trimalcion. Thirteen months later, at Ver¬
sailles, I hear, amidst enthusiastic applause, the Empire
apostrophised, "Varus, give us back our legions." Who speaks,
who applauds thus? The same great bourgeoisie, which, for
eighteen years mute and bowed to the dust, offered their
legions to Varus. The bourgeoisie accepted the Second Em¬
pire from fear of Socialism, even as their fathers had sub¬
mitted to the first to make an end of the Revolution.
Napoleon I. rendered the bourgeoisie two services not
overpaid by his apotheosis. He gave them an iron centralisa¬
tion and sent to their graves 15,000 wretches still kindled
by the flame of the Revolution, who at any moment might
have claimed the public lands granted to them. But he left
the same bourgeoisie saddled for all masters. When they
possessed themselves of the parliamentary government, to
which Mirabeau wished to raise them at one bound, they
were incapable of governing. Their mutiny of 1830, turned
into a revolution by the people, made the belly master. The
great bourgeois of 1830, like him of 1790, had but one
thought—to gorge himself with privileges, to arm the bul¬
warks in defence of his domains, to perpetuate the prole¬
tariat. The fortune of his country is nothing to him, so
that he fatten. To lead, to compromise France, the parlia¬
mentary king has as free license as Bonaparte. When by
a new outburst of the people the bourgeoisie are compelled
to seize the helm after three years, spite of massacre and
proscription, it slips out of their palsied hands into those of
the first comer.
From 1851 to 1869 they relapse into the same state as
after the 18th Brumaire. Their privileges safe, they allow
Napoleon III. to plunder France, make her the vassal of
Rome, dishonour her in Mexico, ruin her finances, vulgarise
debauchery. All-powerful by their retainers and their
wealth, they do not risk a man, a dollar, for the sake of pro¬
testing. In 1869 the pressure from without raises them to
PROLOGUE.
5
the verge of power; a little strength of will and the govern¬
ment is theirs. They have but the velleity of the eunuch.
At the first sign of the impotent master they kiss the rod that
smote them on the 2nd December, making room for the ple¬
biscite which rebaptizes the Empire.
Bismarck prepared the war, Napoleon III. wanted it, the
great bourgeoisie looked on. They might have stopped it by
an earnest gesture. M. Thiers contented himself with a
grimace. He saw in this war our certain ruin; he knew our
terrible inferiority in everything; he could have united the
Left, the tiers-parti, the journalists, have made palpable to
them the folly of the attack, and, supported by this strength
of opinion, have said to the Tuileries, to Paris if needs be,
"War is impossible; we shall combat it as treason." He,
anxious only to clear himself, simply demanded the des¬
patches instead of speaking the true word, "You have no
chance of success."1 And these great bourgeois, who would
not have risked the least part of their fortunes without the
most serious guarantees, staked 100,000 lives and the milliards
of France on the word of a Lebœuf and the equivocations of
a Grammont.2
And what then is the small middle-class doing meanwhile?
This lean class, which penetrates everything—industry, com¬
merce, the administration—mighty by encompassing the
people, so vigorous, so ready iu the first days of our Hegira,
will it not, as in 1792, rise for the common weal? Alas! it
has been spoilt under the hot corruption of the Empire.
For many years it has lived at random, isolating itself from the
1 Let it be understood that I proceed, the words of our adversaries in
hand—parliamentary inquiries,memoirs, reports, histories; that I do not
attribute to them an act or a word which has not been avowed by them,
their documents, or their friends. "When I say M. Thiers saw, M.
Thiers knew, it is that M. Thiers has said, I saw, page 6, J knew,
page 11, vol. i. of the Enquête sur les Actes du Gouvernement de la
Defense Nationale. It will be the same with all the acts and words of
all the official or adverse personages that I quote.
a See the evidence of the Marquis de Talhouet, reporter of the Com¬
mission charged to verify the famous despatch which precipitated the
vote for war. Enquête sur le £ Septembre, vol. i. p. 121-124.
6
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
proletariat, whence it issued but yesterday, and whither the
great barons of Capital will hurl it back again to-morrow.
No more of that fraternity with the people, of that zeal for
reform, which manifested themselves from 1830 to 1848.
Mith its bold initiative, its revolutionary instinct, it loses
also the consciousness of its force. Instead of representing
itself, as it might so well do, it goes about in quest of rep¬
resentatives among the Liberals.
The friend of the people who will write the history of
Liberalism in France will save us many a convulsion. Sincere
Liberalism would be folly in a country where the governing
classes, refusing to concede anything, constrain every honest
man to become a revolutionist. But it was never anything
else than the Jesuitism of liberty, a trick of the bourgeoisie
to isolate the workmen. From Bailly to Jules Favre, the
moderantists have masked the manœuvres of despotism,
buried our revolutions, conducted the great massacres of pro¬
letarians. The old clear-sighted Parisian sections hated them
more than the down right reactionists. Twice Imperial
despotism rehabilitated them, and the small middle-class, soon
forgetting their true part, accepted as defenders those who
pretended to be vanquished like themselves. The men- who
had made abortive the movement of 1848 and paved the way
for the 2nd December thus became during the darkness which
followed it the acclaimed vindicators of ravished liberty. At
the first dawn they appeared what they had ever been the
enemies of the working-class. Under the Empire the Left
never condescended to concern itself with the interests of the
workmen. These Liberals never found for them a word, a
protestation, even such as the Chambers of 1830-1848 some¬
times witnessed. The young lawyers whom they had affiliated
to themselves soon revealed their designs, rallying to the
Liberal Empire, some openly, like Ollivier and Darimon,
others with prudence, like Picard. For the timid or ambitious
they founded the "open Left," a bench of candidates for pub¬
lic office; and in 1870 a number of Liberals indeed solicited
official functions. For the "intransigeants" there was the
"closed Left," where the irreconcilable dragons Gambetta,
PROLOGUE.
7
Cremieux, Arago, Pelletan guarded the pure principles. The
chiefs towered in the centre. These two groups of augurs thus
held every fraction of bourgeois opposition—the timorous and
the intrepid. After the plebiscite they became the holy synod,
the uncontested chiefs of the small middle-class, more and
more incapable of governing itself, and alarmed at the Socialist
movement, behind which they showed it the hand of the
Emperor. It gave them full powers, shut its eyes, and allowed
itself to drift gradually towards the parliamentary Empire, big
with portfolios for its patrons. The thunderbolt of the de¬
feats galvanised it into life, but only for a moment. At the
bidding of the deputies to keep quiet, the small middle-class,
the mother of the 10th August, docilely bent its head and let
the foreigner plunge his sword into the very bosom of Prance.
Poor France! Who will save thee? The humble, the poor,
those who for six years contended for thee with the Empire.
While the upper classes sell the nation for a few hours of
rest, and the Liberals seek to feather their nests under the
Empire, a handful of men, without arms, unprotected, rise up
against the still all-powerful despot. On the one hand, young
men who form the bourgeoisie have gone over to the people,
faithful children of 1789, resolved to continue the work of
the Revolution; on the other hand, working-men unite for the
study and the conquest of the rights of labor. In vain the
Empire attempts to split their forces, to seduce the working-
men. These see the snare, hiss the professors of Csesarian
socialism, and from 1863, without journals, without a tribune,
affirm themselves as a class, to the great scandal of the Liberal
sycophants, maintaining that 1789 has equalized all classes.
In 1867 they descend into the streets, make a manifestation at
the tomb of Manin, and, despite the bludgeons of the sbirri,
protest against Mentana. At this appearance of a revolution¬
ary socialist party the Left gnashes its teeth. When some
working-men, ignorant of their own history, ask Jules Favre
if the Liberal bourgeoisie will support them on the day of their
rising for the Republic, the leader of the Left impudently
answers, "Gentlemen workmen, you have made the Empire; it
8
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE,
is your business to unmake it." And Picard says, "Socialism
does not exist, or at any rate we will not treat with it."
Thus set right for the future, the working-men continue
the struggle single-handed. Since the re-opening of the public
meetings they fill the halls, and, in spite of persecution and
imprisonment, harass, undermine the Empire, taking advan¬
tage of every accident to inflict a blow. On the 26th Oc¬
tober 1869 they threaten to march on the Corps Législatif;
in November they insult the Tuileries by the election of
Rochefort; in December they goad the Government by the
Marseillaise; in January, 1870, they go 200,000 strong to the
funeral of Victor Noir, and, well directed, would have swept
away the throne.
The Left, terrified at this multitude, which threatens to
overwhelm them, brands their leaders as desperadoes or as
police agents. They, however, keep to the fore, unmasking
the Left, defying them to discussion, keeping up at the same
time a running fire on the Empire. They form the vanguard
against the plebiscite. At the war rumors they are the first to
make a stand. The old dregs of Chauvinism, stirred by the
Bonapartists, discharge their muddy waters. The Liberals
remain impassible or applaud; the workingmen stop the way.
On the loth July, at the very same hour when Ollivier from
the tribune invokes war with a light heart, the revolutionary
socialists crowd the boulevards crying, "Vive la paix!" and
singing the pacific refrain—
"Les peuples sont pour nous des frères
Et les tyrans des ennemis. "
From the Château d'Eau to the Boulevard St. Denis they
are applauded, but are hissed in the Boulevards Bonne Nou¬
velle and Montmartre, and come to blows with certain bands
shouting for war.
The next day they meet again at the Bastille, and parade
the streets, Ranvier, a painter on porcelain, well known in
PROLOGUE.
9
Belleville, marching at their head with a banner. In the Fau-
bonrg Montmartre the sergents-de-ville charge them with
drawn swords.
Unable to influence the bourgeoisie, they turn to the work¬
ing-men of Germany, as they had done in 1869:—"Brothers,
we protest against the war, we who wish for peace, labour, and
liberty. Brothers, do not listen to the hirelings who seek
to deceive yon as to the real wishes of France." Their noble
appeal received its reward. In 1869 the students of Berlin
had answered the pacific address of the French students
with insults. The working-men of Berlin in 1870 spoke
thus to the working-men of France: "We too wish for peace,
labour, and liberty. We know that on both sides of the
Rhine there are brothers with whom we are ready to die for
the Universal Republic." Great prophetic words! Let them
be inscribed on the first page of the Golden Book just opened
by the workmen.
Thus towards the end of the Empire there was no life, no
activity, save in the ranks of the proletariat and the young
men of the middle-class who had joined them. They alone
showed some political courage, and in the midst of the general
paralysis of the month of July 1870, they alone found the
energy to attempt at least the salvation of France.
They lacked authority; they failed to carry with them the
small middle-class, for which they also combat, because of
their utter want of political experience. How could they have
acquired it during eighty years, when the ruling class not
only withheld light from them, but even the right to enlighten
themselves? By an infernal Machiavelism they forced them
to grope their way in the dark, so that they might hand them
over the more easily to dreamers and sectarians. Under the
Empire, when the public meetings and journals reappeared,
the political education of the workmen had still to be effected.
Many, abused by morbid minds, in the belief that their affran¬
chisement depended on a coup-de-main, gave themselves up
to whoever spoke of overthrowing the Empire. Others, con¬
vinced that even the most thorough-going bourgeois were hos-
10 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
tile to Socialism, and only courted the people in furtherance of
their ambitious plans, wanted the workmen to constitute
themselves into groups independent of all tutelage. These
different currents crossed each other. The chaotic state of
the party of action was laid bare in its journal, the Marseil¬
laise, a hot mish-mash of doctrinaires and desperate writers
united by hatred of the Empire, but without definite views,
and above all, without discipline. Much time was wanted
to cool down the first effervescence and get rid of the ro¬
mantic rubbish which twenty years of oppression and want
of study had made fashionable. However, the influence of
the Socialists began to prevail, and no doubt with time they
would have classified their ideas, drawn up their programme,
eliminated the mere spouters, entered upon serious action.
Already, in 1869, working-men's societies, founded for mu¬
tual credit, resistance and study, had united in a Federation,
whose headquarters were the Place de la Corderie du Temple.
The International, setting forth the most adequate idea of
the revolutionary movement of our century, under the guid¬
ance of Yarlin, a bookbinder of rare intelligence, of Duval,
Theisz, Frankel, and a few devoted men, was beginning to
gain power in France. It also met at the Corderie, and urged
on the more slow and reserved workmen's societies. The
public meetings of 1870 no longer resembled the earlier ones;
the people wantel useful discussions. Men like Millière, Le-
français, Vermorel, Longuet, etc., seriously competed with
the mere declaimers. But many years would have been re¬
quired for the development of the party of labour, hampered
by young bourgeois adventurers in search of a reputation,
encumbered with conspiracy-mongers and romantic vision¬
aries, still ignorant of the administrative and political me¬
chanism of the bourgeois régime which they attacked.
Just before the war some discipline was attempted. Some
tried to move the deputies of the Left, and met them at
Crémieux'. They found them stupefied, more afraid of a
coup-d'état than of the Prussian victories. Crémieux, pressed
to act, answered naively, "Let us wait for a new disaster, as,
for instance, the fall of Strasburg."
PROLOGUE.
11
It was indeed necessary to wait, for without these shadows
nothing could be done. The small Parisian middle-class
believed in the extreme Left, as it had believed in our armies.
Those who wished to do without them failed. On the 14th
the friends of Blanqui attempted to raise the outlying districts,
attacked the quarters of the firemen of La Villette, and put
the sergents-de-ville to flight. Masters of the field, they tra¬
versed the boulevard up to Belleville, crying, "Vive la Ré¬
publique! Death to the Prussians!" No one joined them.
The crowd looked on from afar, astonished, motionless, ren¬
dered suspicious by the police agents, who thus drew them
off from the real enemy—the Empire. The Left pretended
to believe in the Prussian agent, to reassure the bourgeoisie,
and Gambetta demanded the immediate trial of the prisoners
of La Villette. The Minister Palikao had to remind him
that certain forms must be observed, even by military justice.
The court-martial condemned ten to death, although almost
all the accused had had nothing to do with the affray.
Some true-hearted men, wishing to prevent these executions,
went to Michelet, who wrote a touching letter on their behalf.
The Empire had no time to carry out the sentences.
Since the 25th MacMahon was leading his army into the
snares laid by Moltke. On the 29th, surprised and beaten
at Beaumont l'Argonne, he knew himself overreached, and
yet pushed forward. Palikao had written to him on the 27th:
"If you abandon Bazaine we shall have the Revolution in
Paris." And to ward off the Revolution he exposed France.
On the 30th he threw his troops into the pit of Sedan; on
the 1st September the army was surrounded by 200,000
enemies, and 700 cannons crowned the heights. The next
day' Napoleon III. delivered up his sword to the King of
Prussia. The telegraph announced it; all Europe knew it
that same night. The deputies, however, were silent; they
remained so on the 3rd. On the 4th only, at midnight, after
Paris had passed through a day of feverish excitement, they
made up their minds to speak. Jules Favre demanded the
abolition of the Empire and a Commission charged with the
defence, but took care not to touch the Chamber. During
13
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
the day some men of tried energy had attempted to raise the
boulevards, and in the evening an anxious crowd pressed
against the railings of the Corps Législatif, crying: "Vive
la République." Gambetta met them and said, "You are
wrong; we must remain united; make no revolution." Jules
Favre, surrounded on his leaving the Chamber, strove to calm
the people.
If Paris had been guided by the Left, France would have
capitulated that very hour more shamefully than Napoleon III.
But on the morning of the 4th of September the people
assemble, and amongst them National Guards armed with
their muskets. The astonished gendarmes give way to them.
Little by little the Corps Législatif is invaded. At ten o'clock
notwithstanding the desperate efforts of the Left, the crowd
fills the galleries. It is time. The Chamber, on the point of
forming a Ministry, try to seize the government. The Left
support this combination with all its might, waxing indignant
at the mere mention of a Republic. When that cry bursts
forth from the galleries, Gambetta makes unheard-off efforts
and conjures the people to await the result of the deliberations
of the Chamber,—a result known beforehand. It is the project
of M. Thiers: a Government Commission named by the As¬
sembly; peace demanded and accepted at any price; after that
disgrace, the parliamentary monarchy. Happily a new crowd
of invaders bursts its way through the doors, while the oc¬
cupants of the galleries glide into the hall. The people expel
the deputies. Gambetta, forced to the tribune, is obliged to
announce the abolition of the Empire. The crowd, wanting
more than this, asks for the Republic, and carries off the
deputies to proclaim it at the Hôtel-de-Ville.
This was already in the hands of the people. In the Salle
du Trône were some of those who for a month had attempted
to rouse public opinion. First on the ground, they might, with
a little discipline, have influenced the constitution of the gov¬
ernment. The Left surprised them haranguing, and, incited
by an acclaiming multitude, Jules Favre took the chair, which
Millière gave up to him, saying, "At the present moment
PROLOGUE.
13
there is but one matter at stake—the expulsion of the Prus¬
sians."1 Jules Favre, Jules Simon, Jules Ferry, Gambetta,
Crémieux, Emmanuel Arago, Glais-Bizoin, Pelletan, Garnier-
Pages, Picard, uniting, proclaimed themselves the Govern¬
ment, and read their own names to the crowd, which answered
by adding those of men like Delescluze, Ledru-Rollin, Blan-
qui. They, however, declared they would accept no colleagues
but the deputies of Paris. The crowd applauded. This
phrenzy of just-emancipated serfs made the Left masters.
They were clever enough to admit Rochefort.
They next applied to General Trochu, named governor of
Paris by Napoleon. This general had become the idol of the
Liberals because he had sulked a little with the Empire.2
His whole military glory consisted in a few pamphlets. The
Left had seen much of him during the last crisis. Having
attained to power, it begged him to direct the defence. He
asked, firstly, a place for God in the new régime; secondly,
for himself the presidency of the council. He obtained
everything. The future will show what secret bond so
quickly united the men of the Left to the loyal Breton who
had promised "to die on the steps of the Tuileries in defence
of the dynasty."3
Twelve individuals thus took possession of France. They
invoked no other title than their mandate as representatives
of Paris, and declared themselves legitimate by popular ac¬
clamation.
In the evening the International and syndicates of the
workmen sent delegates to the Hôtel-de-Ville. They had
on the same day sent a new address to the German working-
i Compte-rendu du 31 Octobre, by Millière.
s Which, did not, however, prevent his accepting a secret mission
during the Crimean war. He was commissioned by Napoleon III. to
propose to the English to betray Turkey by limiting the war to the
defence of Constantinople.
* Enquête sur le J Septembre, Jules Brame, vol. i. p. 201.
14 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
men. Their fraternal duty fulfilled, the French workmen
gave themselves up to the defence. Let the Government or¬
ganize it and they would stay by it. The most suspicious
were taken in. On the 7th, in the first number of his paper
La Patrie en Danger, Blanqui and his friends offered the
Government their most energetic, their absolute co-opera¬
tion.
All Paris abandoned itself to the men of the Hôtel-de-
Ville, forgetting their late defections, investing them with
the grandeur of the danger. To seize, to monopolize the
government at such a moment, seemed a stroke of audacity
of which genius alone is capable. Paris, deprived for eighty
years of her municipal liberties, accepted as mayor the lachry¬
mose Etienne Arago. In the twenty arrondissements he
named the mayors he liked, and they again named the adjuncts
agreeable to themselves. But Arago announced early elec¬
tions and spoke of reviving the great days of 1792. At
this moment Jules Favre, proud as Danton, cried to Prussia,
to Europe, "We will cede neither an inch of our territories
nor a stone of our fortresses," and Paris rapturously applauded
this dictatorship announcing itself with words so heroic. On
the 14th, when Trochu held the review of the National Guard,
250,000 men stationed in the boulevards, the Place de la
Concorde, and the Champs-Elysées cheered enthusiastically,
and renewed a vow like that of their fathers on the morning
of Yalmy.
Yes, Paris gave herself up without reserve—incurable con¬
fidence—to that same Left to which she had been forced to
do violence in order to make her revolution. Her outburst
of will lasted but for an hour. The Empire once overthrown,
she re-abdicated. In vain did far-seeing patriots try to keep
her on the alert; in vain did Blanqui write, "Paris is no
more impregnable than we were invincible. Paris, mystified
by a braggart press, ignores the greatness of the peril; Paris
abuses confidence." Paris abandoned herself to her new
masters, obstinately shutting her eyes. And yet each day
brought with it new ill omens. The shadow of the siege
PROLOGUE.
15
approached, and the Government of Defence, far from re¬
moving the superfluous mouths, crowded the 200,000 in¬
habitants of the suburbs into the town. The exterior works did
not advance. Instead of throwing all Paris into the work, and
taking these descendants of the levellers of the Champ-de-
Mars out of the enceinte in troops of 100,000, drums beating,
banners flying, Trochu abandoned the earthworks to the
ordinary contractors. The heights of Chatillon, the key to
our forts of the south, had hardly been surveyed, when on
the 19th the enemy presented himself, sweeping from the
plateau an affrighted troop of zouaves and soldiers who did
not wish to fight. The following day, that Paris which the
press had declared could not be invested, was surrounded and
cut off from France.
This gross ignorance very soon alarmed the Revolutionists.
They had promised their support, but not blind faith. Since
the 4th September, wishing to centralise the forces of the
party of action for the defence and the maintenance of the
Republic, they had invited the public meetings in each
arrondissement to name a Committee of Vigilance charged
to control the mayors and to delegate four members to a Cen¬
tral Committee of the twenty arrondissements. This tumultu¬
ous mode of election had resulted in a committee composed
of working-men, employés, authors, known in the revolution¬
ary movements of the last years. This committee had estab¬
lished itself in the hall of the Rue de la Corderie, lent by
the International and the Federation of the syndicates.
These had almost suspended their work, the service of the
National Guard absorbing all their activity. Some of their
members again met in the Committee of Vigilance and in
the Central Committee, which caused the latter to be errone¬
ously attributed to the International. On the 4th it demanded
by a manifesto the election of the municipalities, the police
to be placed in their hands, the election and control of all
the magistrates, absolute freedom of the press, public meet¬
ing and association, the expropriation of all articles of primary
necessity, their distribution by allowance, the arming of all
citizens, the sending of commissioners to rouse the provinces.
16 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
But Paris was then infected with a fit of confidence. The
bourgeois journals denounced the committee as Prussian. The
names of some of the signers were, however, well known m
the meetings and to the press: Ranvier, Millière, Longuet,
Yallès, Lafrançais, Mallon, etc. Their placards were torn
down.
On the 20th, after Jules Favre's application to Bismarck,
the Committee held a large meeting in the Alcazar and sent
a deputation to the Hôtel-de-Ville to demand war à outrance
and the early election of the Commune of Paris. Jules Ferry
gave his word of honour that the government would not treat
at any price, and announced the municipal elections for the
end of the month. Two days after a decree postponed them
indefinitely.
Thus this Government, which in seventeen days had pre¬
pared nothing, which had allowed itself to be blocked up
without even a struggle, refused the advice of Paris, and more
than ever arrogated to itself the right of directing the de¬
fence. Did it then possess the secret of victory? Trochu had
just said, "The resistance is a heroic madness;" Picard, "We
shall defend ourselves for honour's sake, but all hope is chime¬
rical;" the elegant Crémieux, "The Prussians will enter Paris
like a knife goes into butter;"1 the chief of Trochu's staff,
"We cannot defend ourselves; we have decided not to defend
ourselves;"2 and, instead of honestly warning Paris, saying,
"Capitulate at once or conduct the combat yourselves," these
men, who declared defence impossible, claimed its undivided
direction.
What then is their aim? To negotiate. Since the first
defeats they have no other. The reverses which exalted our
fathers only made the Left more cowardly than the Impe¬
rialist deputies. On the 7th of August Jules Favre, Jules
Simon, and Pelletan had said to Schneider, "We cannot hold
out; we must come to terms as soon as possible."3 All the
following days the left had only one plan of policy—to urge
1 Enquête sw le 4 Septembre, vol. ii. p. 194. 1 Ibid.p. 313.
8 Ibid., Jules Favre vol. i. p. 330.
PROLOGUE.
17
thé Chamber to possess itself of the government in order
to negotiate, hoping to get into office afterwards. Hardly
established, these defenders sent M. Thiers all over Europe
to beg for peace, and Jules Eavre to run after Bismarck to ask
his conditions,1—a step that revealed to the Prussian with
what tremblers he had to deal.
.When all Paris cried to them, "Defend us; drive hack the
enemy," they applauded, accepted, hut said to themselves,
"You shall capitulate." There is no more crying treason in
history. The asinine confidence of the immense majority
no more diminishes the crime than the foolishness of the
dupe excuses the cheater. Did the men of the 4th September,
yes or no, betray the mandate they received? "Yes," will he
the verdict of the future.
A tacit mandate, it is true, hut so clear, so formal, that
all Paris started at the news of the proceedings at Ferrières.
If the Defenders had gone a step farther, they would have
been swept away. They were obliged to adjourn, to give way
to what they termed the "madness of the siege," to simulate a
defence. In point of fact, they did not abandon their idea
for an hour, esteeming themselves the only men in Paris who
had not lost their heads.
"There shall be fighting since those Parisians will have it
so, but only with the view to soften Bismarck." On his re¬
turn from the review, this scene of hopeful enthusiasm mani¬
fested by 250,000 armed men is said to have affected Trochu,
who announced that it would perhaps be possible to hold the
ramparts.2 Such was the maximum of his enthusiasm: to
hold out—not to open the gates. As to drilling or organising
these 250,000 men, uniting them with the 240,000 mobiles,
soldiers and marines gathered together in Paris, and with
all these forces forming a powerful scourge to drive the
enemy back to the Rhine, of this he never dreamt. His col¬
leagues thought of it as little, and only discussed with him
1 In his official report, Jules Favrej4o clear the Government, did not
neglect to assume the responsibility of Jliis mission, which he said he
had undertaken without the knowledge of his colleagues.
2 Enquête sur le 4 Septembre, Garnier-Pages, vol. i. p. 445.
18
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
the more or less cavilling they might venture upon with the
Prussian invader.
He was all for mild proceedings. His devoutness forbade
him to shed useless blood. Since, according to all military
manuals, the great town was to fall, he would make that fall
as little sanguinary as possible. Besides, the return of M.
Thiers, who might at any moment bring back the treaty,
was waited for. Leaving the enemy to establish himself
tranquilly round Paris, Trochu organised a few skirmishes
for the lookers-on. One single serious engagement took place
on the 30th at Chevilly, when, after a success, we retreated,
abandoning a battery for want of reinforcements and teams.
Public opinion still hoaxed by the same men that had cried,
"A Berlin," believed in a success. The Revolutionists only
were not taken in. The capitulation of Toul and of Stras¬
bourg was to them a solemn warning. Flourens, chief of the
G3d battalion, but who was the real commander of Belleville,
could no longer restrain himself. With the head and heart
of a child, an ardent imagination, guided only by his own
impulse, Flourens conducted his battalions to the Hôtel-de-
Yille, demanded the levée en masse, sorties, municipal elec¬
tions, and the putting the town on short rations. Trochu,
who, to amuse him, had given him the title of major of the
rampart, made an elaborate discourse; the twelve apostles
argued with him, and wound up by showing him out. As
delegates came from all sides to demand that Paris should
have a voice in her own defence, should name a council, her
Commune, the Government declared on the 7th that their
dignity forbade them to concede these behests. This insolence
caused the movement of the 8th October. The committee of
the twenty arrondissements protested in an energetic placard.
Seven or eight hundred persons cried "Vive la Commune"
under the windows of the Hôtel-de-Ville. But the multitude
had not yet lost faith. A great number of battalions hastened
to the rescue; the Government passed them in review. Jules
Favre opened the flood-gates of his rhetoric and declared the
election impossible because—unanswerable reason!—every¬
body ought to be at the ramparts.
PROLOGUE.
19
The majority greedily swallowed the bait. On the 16th
Trochu having written to his crony Etienne Arago, "I shall
pursue the plan I have traced for myself to the end," the
loungers announced a victory, and took up the burden of their
August song on Bazaine, "Let him alone; he has his plan."
The agitators looked like Prussians, for Trochu, as a good
Jesuit, had not failed to speak of "a small number of men
whose culpable views serve the projects of the enemy." Then
Paris allowed herself during the whole month of October to
be rocked asleep to the sound of expeditions commencing with
success and always terminated by retreats. On the 13th we
took Bagneux, and a spirited attack would have repossessed
us of Chatillon: Trochu had no reserves. On the 21st a march
on the Malmaison revealed the weakness of the investment
and spread panic even to Versailles. Instead of pressing for¬
ward, General Duerot engaged only six thousand men, and
the enemy repulsed him, taking two cannons. The Govern¬
ment transformed these repulses into successful reconnoitres,
and coined money out of the despatches of Gambetta, who,
sent to the provinces on the 8th, announced imaginary
armies, and intoxicated Paris with the account of the brilliant
defence of Châteaudun.
The mayors encouraged this pleasant confidence. They
sat at the Hôtel-de-Ville with their adjuncts, and this
Assembly of sixty-four members could have seen clearly what
the Defence was if they had had the least courage. But
it was composed of those Liberals and Republicans of whom
the Left is the last expression. They knocked at the door
of the Government now and then, timidly interrogated it,
and received only vague assurances, in which .they did not
believe,1 but made every effort to make Paris believe.
But at the Corderie, in the clubs, in the paper of Blanqui,
1 "Constantly in relations with the anxious population, which urgently
asked what was going on, what the Government thought, what it was
doing, we were obliged to screen it; to say that it was acting for the
best; that it had given itself up entirely to the defence; that the chiefs
of the army were most devoted and working with ardour. . . . We said
this without knowing, without believing it. We knew nothing. "—Enquête
sur le h Septembre, Corbon, vol. i, p. 375.
20
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
in the Réveil of Delescluze, in the Combat of Félix Pyat, the
plan of the men of the Hôtel-de-Ville is exposed. What
mean these partial sorties which are never sustained? Why is
the National Guard hardly armed, unorganized, withheld from
every military action? Why is the casting of cannon not pro¬
ceeded with? Six weeks of idle talk and inactivity cannot
leave the least doubt as to the incapacity or ill-will of the
Government. This same thought occupies all minds. Let the
sceptics make room for those that believe in the Defence;
let Paris regain possession of herself; let the Commune of
1792 be revived to again save the city and France. Every
day this resolution sinks more deeply into virile minds. On
the 27th the Combat, which preached the Commune in high-
flown phraseology whose musical rhythm struck the masses
more than the nervous dialectics of Blanqui, hurls a terrifie
thunderbolt. "Bazaine is about to surrender Metz, to treat
for peace in the name of Napoleon III.; his aide-de-camp
is at Versailles." The Hôtel-de-Ville immediately contra¬
dicted this news, "as infamous as it is false. The glorious
soldier Bazaine has not ceased harassing the besieging army
with brilliant sorties." The Government called down upon
the journalist "the chastisement of public opinion." At this-
appeal the drones of Paris buzzed, burnt the journal, and
would have torn the journalist to pieces if he had not de¬
camped. The next day the Combat declared that they had
the statement from Rochefort, to whom Flourens had com¬
municated it. Other complications followed. On the 20th
a surprise made us masters of Bourget, a village in the north¬
east of Paris, and on the 29th the general staff announced
this success as a triumph. The whole day it left our soldiers
without food, without reinforcements, under the fire of the
Prussians, who, returning on the 30th 15,000 strong, re¬
covered the village from its 1,600 defenders. On the 31st of
October, Paris on awaking received the news of three dis¬
asters: the loss of Bourget, the capitulation of Metz, together
with the whole army of the "glorious Bazaine," and the
arrival of M. Thiers for the purpose of negotiating an
armistice.
PROLOGUE.
21
The men of the 4th September believed they were saved,
that their goal was reached They had placarded the
armistice side by side with the capitulation, "good and bad
news,"1 convinced that Paris, despairing of victory, would
accept peace with open arms. Paris started up as with an
electric shock, at the same time rousing Marseilles, Toulouse,
and Saint-Etienne. There was such spontaneity of indigna¬
tion, that from eleven o'clock, in pouring rain, the masses
came to the Hôtel-de-Yille crying "No armistice," Not¬
withstanding the resistance of the mobiles who defended the
entrance, they invaded the vestibule. Arago and his adjuncts
hastened thither, swore that the Government was exhausting
itself in efforts to save us. The first crowd retired; a second
followed hard upon. At twelve o'clock Trochu appeared at
the foot of the staircase, thinking to extricate himself by a
harangue; cries of "Down with Trochu" answered him. Jules
Simon relieved him, and, confident in his rhetoric, even went
to the square in front of the Hôtel-de-Yille and expatiated
upon the comforts of the armistice. The people cried "No
armistice." fie only succeeded in backing out by asking the
crowd to name six delegates to accompany him to the Hôtel-
de-Yille. Trochu, Jules Favre, Jules Ferry, and Picard re¬
ceived them. Trochu in Ciceronic periods demonstrated the
uselessness of Bourget, and pretended that he had only just
learnt the capitulation of Metz. A voice cried, "You are a
liar." A deputation from the Committee of the twenty arron¬
dissements and of the Committees of Yigilance had entered
the hall a little while before. Others, wishing to pump
Trochu, invited him to continue his speech. He recom¬
menced, when a shot was fired in the square, putting an end
to the monologue and scaring away the orator. Calm being
re-established, Jules Favre supplied the place of the general,
and took up the thread of his discourse.
While these scenes were going on in the Salle du Trône,
the mayors, so long the accomplices of Trochu, were de-
1 Enquête sur le h Septembre, Jules Ferry. He even calls the armistice
a "compensation."
23
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
liberating in the hall of the municipal council. To quell the
riot, they proposed the election of municipalities, the forma¬
tion of battalions of the National Guard, and their joining
them to the army. The scapegoat Etienne Aragot was sent
to offer this salve to the Government. At two o'clock an
immense crowd inundated the Place de l'Hôtel-de-Ville,
crying, "Down with Trochu! Vive la Commune!" and carry¬
ing banners with the inscription "No armistice." They had
several times come into collision with the mobiles. The del¬
egates who entered the Hôtel-de-Ville brought no answer.
About three o'clock, the crowd, growing impatient, rushed
forward, breaking through the mobiles, and forcing Félix
Pyat, conle to the Hôtel-de-Ville as a sight-seer, into the
Salle des Maires. He exclaimed, struggled, protested that
this was against all rules. The mayors supported him as;
well as they could, and announced that they had demanded
the election of the municipalities, and that the decree in that
sense was about to be signed. The multitude, still pushing
forward, goes up to the Salle du Trône, cutting short the
oration of Jules Favre, who had rejoined his colleagues in the
Government-room.
While the people were thundering at the door, the De¬
fenders voted the proposition of the mayors—but in principle
—not fixing the date for the elections,1 —another jesuitical
trick. Towards four o'clock the mass penetrated into the
room. Rochefort in vain promised the municipal elections.
They asked for the Commune! One of the delegates of the
Committee of the twenty arrondissements, getting upon the
table, proclaimed the abolition of the Government. A Com¬
mission was charged to proceed with the elections within
forty-eight hours. The names of Dorian, the only Minister
who had taken the defence to heart, of Louis Blanc, Ledru-
Rollin, Victor Hugo, Raspail, Delescluze, Félix Pyat, Blan-
qui and Millière were received with acclamation.
Had this Commission seized on authority, cleared the
Hôtel-de-Ville, posted up a proclamation convoking the
1 Enquête sur le b Septembre, vol, i. p. 432.
PROLOGUE.
23
electors with the briefest delay, the day's work would have
been beneficially concluded. But Dorian refused. Louis
Blanc, Victor Hugo, Ledru-Rollin, Raspail, Félix Pyat re¬
mained silent or turned tail altogether. Flourens had time
to come up. He broke in upon the assembly with his ti¬
railleurs of Belleville, got upon the table round which were
gathered the members of the Government, and instead of a
Commune proposed a Committee of Public Safety. Some
applauded, others protested, declaring the question was not
to substitute one kind of dictatorship for another. Flourens
got the upper hand, read the names, his own first, then those
of Blanqui, Delescluze, Millière, Ranvier, Félix Pyat, and
Mottu. Interminable discussions followed, the disorder be¬
came terrible. The men of the 4th September felt they were
saved, and smiled as they looked at the conquerors who allowed
victory to slip through their fingers.
Thenceforth all became involved in an inextricable im¬
broglio. Every room had its government, its orators. The
confusion was such that about eight o'clock reactionary Na¬
tional Guards could, under Flourens' nose, pick up Trochu
and Jules Ferry, while others carried off Blanqui when some
franc-tireurs tried to rescue him. In the cabinet of the
mayor, Etienne Arago and his adjuncts convoked the
electors for the next day under the presidency of Dorian and
Schœleher. Towards ten o'clock their placard was posted
up in Paris.
The whole day Paris had looked on. "On the morning
of .the 31st October," says Jules Ferry, "the Parisian popula¬
tion, from highest to lowest, was absolutely hostile to us.1
Everybody thought we deserved to he dismissed." Not only
did Trochu's battalions not stir, hut one of the best, led
to the succour of the Government by General Tamisier, com¬
mander-in-chief of the National Guard, raised the butt end
of their guns on arriving at the Place de l'Hôtel-de-Ville.
In the evening everything changed when it became known
that the members of the Government were prisoners, and
1 Enquête sur le 4 Septembre, vol. i. p. 395. The deposition of this
imbecile, always equally naïve, is all the more conclusive.
24
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
above all who were their substitutes! The measure seemed
too strong. Such a one, who mighRhave accepted Ledru-
Rollin or Victor Hugo, could not make up his mind to Flou-
rens and Blanqui.1 In vain the whole day drums had been
beating to arms; in the evening they proved effective. Bat¬
talions refractory in the morning arrived at the Place Ven¬
dôme, most of them believing, it is true, that the elections
had been granted; an assemblage of officers at the Bourse
only consented to wait for the regular vote on the strength of
Dorian and Schoelcher's placard. Trochu and the deserters
from the Hôtel-de-Ville again found their faithful flock. The
Hôtel-de-Ville, on the other hand, was getting empty.
Most of the battalions of the Commune, believing their
cause victorious, had returned to their quarters. In the edifice
there remained hardly a thousand unarmed men, the only
troops being Flourens' unmanageable tirailleurs, while he
wandered up and down amidst this mob. Blanqui signed and
again signed. Delescluze tried to save some remnants from
this great movement. He saw Dorian, received the formal
assurance that the elections of the Commune would take
place the next day, those of the Provisional Government the
day after; put these assurances upon record in a note where
the insurrectional committee declared itself willing to wait
for the elections, and had it signed by Millière, Flourens and
Blanqui. Millière and Dorian went to communicate this
document to the members of the Defence. Millière proposed
to them to leave the Hôtel-de-Ville together, while charging
Dorian and Schcelcher to proceed with the elections, but on
the express condition that no prosecutions were to take place.
The members of the Defence accepted,2 and Millière was
1 "We were able to unite 40,000 men by telling' the National Guards
that Blanqui and Flourens occupied the Hôtel-de-Ville. These two
names did not fail to produce their usual effect."—Enquête sur le 18
Mars, ed. Adam, vol. ii. p. 157. "If the name of Blanqui had not been
pronounced, the new elections announced by the placard of Dorian and
Schœlcher would have taken place the next day."—Enquête sur le 4
Septembre, Jules Ferry, vol. i. p. 396—431.
2 See the affirmation of Dorian. Enquête sur le 4 Septembre, vol. i. p.
527-528.
PROLOGUE.
25
just saying to them, "Gentlemen, you are free," when the
National Guards asked for written engagements. The
prisoners became indignant that their word should be doubted,
while Millière and Flourens could not make the Guards
understand that signatures are illusory. During this mortal
anarchy the battalions of order grew larger, and Jules Ferry
attacked the door opening on to the Place Lobau. Delescluze
and Dorian informed him of the arrangement which they
believed concluded, and induced him to wait. At three
o'clock in the morning chaos still reigned supreme. Trochu's
drums were beating on the Place de l'Hôtel-de-Ville. A bat¬
talion of Breton mobiles debouched in the midst of the
Hôtel-de-Ville through the subterranean passage of the
Napoleon Barracks, surprised and disarmed many of the ti¬
railleurs. Jules Ferry invaded the Government-room. The
indisciplinahle mass offered no resistance. Jules Favre and
his colleagues were set free. As the Bretons became menacing,
General Tamisier reminded them of the convention entered
upon during the evening, and, as a pledge of mutual oblivion,
left the Hôtel-de-Ville between Blanqui and Flourens. Trochu
paraded the streets amidst the pompous pageantry of his
battalions.
Thus this day, which might have buoyed up the Defence,
ended in smoke. The desultoriness, the indiscipline of the
patriots restored to the Government its immaculate character
of September. It took advantage of it that very night to
tear down the placards of Dorian and Schcelcher; it ac¬
corded the municipal elections for the 5th, but in exchange
demanded a plebiscite, putting the question in the Imperialist
style, "Those who wish to maintain the Government will
vote aye." In vain the Committee of the twenty arrondisse¬
ments issued a manifesto; in vain the Réveil, the Patrie en
Danger, the Combat, enumerated the hundred reasons which
made it necessary to answer No. Six months after the plebis¬
cite which had made the war, the immense majority of Paris
voted the plebiscite that made the capitulation. Let Paris
remember and accuse herself. For fear of two or three men
she opened fresh credit to this Government which added
26
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
incapacity to insolence, and said to it, "I want you,"'
322,000 times. The army, the mobiles, gave 237,000 ayes.
There were but 54,000 civilians and 9,000 soldiers to say
boldly, no.
How did it happen that those 60,000 men, so clear-sighted,,
prompt, and energetic, could not manage to direct public
opinion? Simply because they were wanting in cadres, in
method, in organizers. The fever of the siege had been
unable to discipline the revolutionary party, in such dire con¬
fusion a few weeks before, nor had the patriarchs of 1848
tried to do so. The Jacobins like Delescluze and Blanqui,
instead of leading the people, lived in an exclusive circle of
friends. Félix Pyat, vibrating between just ideas and literary
epilepsy, only became practical1 when hë had to save his
own skin. The others, Ledru-Rollin, Louis Blanc, Schœlcher,
the hope of the Republicans under the Empire, returned
from exile shallow, pursy, rotten to the core with vanity
and selfishness, without courage or patriotism, disdaining the
Socialists. The dandies of Jacobinism, who called themselves
Radicals, Floquet, Clémenceau, Brinon, and other democratic
politicians, carefully kept aloof from the working-men. The
old Montagnards themselves formed a group of their own,
and never came to the Committee of the twenty arrondisse¬
ments, which only wanted method and political experience
to become a power. So it was only a centre of emotions,
not of direction,—the Gravilliers section of 1870—71, daring,
eloquent, but, like its predecessor, treating of everything by
manifestoes.
There at least was life, a lamp, not always bright, but al¬
ways burning. What is the small middle-class contributing
now? Where are their Jacobins, even their Cordeliers? At
the Corderie I see the proletariat of the small middle-class,
men of the pen and orators, but where is the bulk of the
army?
All is silent. Save the faubourgs, Paris was a vast sick
1 He offered a musket of honour to any one who would kill the King-
of Prussia, and patronised a Greek-fire that was to roast the German
army.
PROLOGUE.
ri
chamber, where no one dared to speak above his breath.
This moral abdication is the true psychological phenomenon
of the siege, all the more extraordinary that it co-existed
with an admirable ardour for resistance. Men who speak of
going to seek death with their wives and children, who say,
"We will burn our houses rather than surrender them to
the enemy,"1 get angry at any controversy as to the power
intrusted to the men of the Hôtel-de-Ville. If they dread
the giddy-headed, the fanatics, or compromising collaborators,
why do they not take the direction of the movement into
their own hands? But they confine themselves to crying,
"No insurrection before the enemy! No fanatics!" as
though capitulation were better than an insurrection; as
though the 10th of August 1792 and 31st May 1793 had
not been insurrections before the enemy; as though there
were no medium between abdication and delirium. And you,
citizens of the old sections of 1792—93, who furnished
ideas to the Convention and the Commune, who dictated to
them the means of safety, who directed the clubs and fra¬
ternal societies, entertained in Paris a hundred luminous
centres, say, do you recognise your offspring in these gulls,
weaklings, jealous of the people, prostrate before the Left
like devotees before the host?
On the 5th and 7th they renewed their plebiscitory vote,
naming twelve of the twenty mayors named by Arago, four
amongst them, Dubail, Vautrain, Tirard, and Desmarets,
belonging to the pure reaction. The greater part of the ad¬
juncts were of the Liberal type. The faubourgs, always at
their post, elected Deleseluze in the nineteenth arrondisse¬
ment and Eanvier, Millière, Lefrançais, and Flourens in the
twentieth. These latter could not take their seats. The
Government, violating the convention of Dorian and Tami-
sier, had issued warrants for their arrest, and for that of
about twenty other revolutionists.2 Thus, out of seventy-
1 Enquête sur le 18 Mars, Jules Favre, vol. ii. p. 42.
2 Even Félix Pyat was arrested. He managed to get out of prison
through a jest, writing to Emmanuel Arago: "What a pity that I should
be your prisoner; you might have been my advocate." He was set free.
28
HISTORY OP THE COMMUNE.
five effective members, mayors and adjuncts, there were not
ten revolutionists.
These shadows of municipal councillors looked upon them¬
selves as the stewards of the Defence, forbade themselves any
indiscreet question, were on their best behaviour, feeding and
administering Trochu's patient. They allowed the insolent
and incapable Ferry to be appointed to the central mairie,
and Clément-Thomas, the executioner of June 1848, to be
made commander-in-chief of the National Guard. For seventy
days, feeling the pulse of Paris growing from hour to hour
more weak, they never had the honesty, the courage to say
to the Government, "Where are you leading us?"
Nothing was lost in the beginning of November. The
army, the mobiles, the marines numbered, according to the
plebiscite, 246,000 men and 7,500 officers: 125,000 National
Guards capable of serving a campaign might easily have
been picked out in Paris, and 129,000 left for the defence
of the interior.1 The necessary armaments might have been
furnished in a few weeks, the cannon especially, every one
depriving himself of bread in order to endow his battalion
with five pieces, the traditional pride of the Parisians.
"Where find 9,000 artillerists?" said Trochu. Why, in every
Parisian mechanic there is the stuff of a gunner, as the Com¬
mune has sufficiently proved. In everything else there was
the same superabundance. Paris swarmed with engineers,
overseers, foremen, who might have been drilled into of¬
ficers. There lying wasted were all the materials for a vic¬
torious army.
The gouty martinets of the regular army saw here nothing
but barbarism. This Paris, for which Hoche, Marceau,
Kleber would have been neither too young, nor too faithful,
nor too pure, had for generals the residue of the Empire and
Orleanism, Yinoy of December, Ducrot, Luzanne, Leflô, and
a fossil like Chabaud-Latour. In their pleasant intimacy
1 The Minister of War, Leflô, who naturally undervalues everything,
says, "This left us, while assuring the operations of the siege against the
Prussians, a disposable force of 230,000 to 240,000 men."
PROLOGUE.
29
they made much fun of the defence.1 Finding, however,
that the joke was lasting a little too long, the 31st October
enraged them. They conceived an implacable, rabid hatred
to the National Guard, and up to the last hour refused to
utilise it.
Instead of amalgamating the forces of Paris, of giving to
all the same cadres, the same uniforms, the same flag, the
proud name of National Guard, Trochu had maintained the
three divisions: the army, mobiles, and civilians. This was
the natural consequence of his opinion of the Defence. The
army, incited by the staff, shared its hatred of Paris, who
imposed on it, it was said, useless fatigues. The mobiles of
the provinces, prompted by their officers, the cream of the
country squires, became also embittered. All, seing the Na¬
tional Guard despised, despised it, calling them, "Les à ou¬
trance! Les trente sous!" (Since the siege the Parisians re¬
ceived thirty sous—Is. 21d.—as indemnity.) Collisions were
to be feared every day.2
The 31st of October changed nothing in the real state of
affairs. The Government broke off the negotiations, which,
notwithstanding their victory, they could not have pur¬
sued without foundering, decreed the creation of marching
companies in the National Guard, and accelerated the can¬
non-founding, but did not believe a whit the more in defence,
still steered towards peace. Riots formed the chief subject
of their preoccupation.3 It was not only from the "folly
of the siege" that they wished to save Paris, but above all
from the revolutionists. In this direction they were pushed
on by the great bourgeoisie. Before the 4th September
the latter had declared they "would not fight if the working-
class were armed, and if it had any chance of prevailing;"4
and on the evening of the 4th September. Jules Favre and
Jules Simon had gone to the Corps Législatif to réassuré
1 Appendix I.
2 Enquête sur le 18 Mars, Cresson, vol. ii. p. 135.
B Jules Simon, Souvenirs du 4 Septembre. His textual expressions.
* Enquête sur le 18 Mars, Jules Favre, vol. ii. p. 43.
30
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
them, to explain to them that the new tenants would not
damage the house. But the irresistible force of events had
provided the proletariat with arms, and to make them ineffi¬
cient in their hands became now the supreme aim of the
bourgeoisie. For two months they had been-biding their
time, and the plebiscite told them it had come. Trochu
held Paris, and by the clergy they held Trochu, all the
closer that he believed himself to be amenable only to his
conscience. Strange conscience, full of trap-doors, with more
complications than those of a theatre. Since the 4th of
September the General had made it his duty to deceive Paris,
saying, "I shall surrender thee, but it is for thy good." After
the 31st October he believed his mission twofold—saw in
himself the archangel, the St. Michael of threatened society.
This marks the second period of the defence. It may per¬
haps be traced to a cabinet in the Rue des Postes, for the
chiefs of the clergy saw more clearly than any one else the
danger of inuring the working-men to war. Their intrigues
were full of cunning. Violent reactionists would have
spoilt all, precipitated Paris into a revolution. They applied
subtle tricks in'their subterranean work, watching Trochu's
every movement, whetting his antipathy to the National
Guard, penetrating everywhere into the general staff, the
ambulances, even the mairies. Like the fisherman struggling
with too big a prey, they bewildered Paris, now apparently
allowing her to swim in her own element, than suddenly
weakening her by the harpoon. On the 28th November
Trochu gave a first performance to a full-band accompani¬
ment. General Ducrot, who commanded, presented himself
like a Leonidas: "I take the oath before you, before the whole
nation. I shall return to Paris dead or victorious. You may
see me fall; you will never see me retreat." This proclama¬
tion exalted Paris. She fancied herself on the eve of Jem-
mappes, when the Parisian volunteers scaled the artillery-de¬
fended heights; for this time the National Guard was to take
part in the proceedings.
"We were to force an opening by the Marne in order to
join the mythic armies of the provinces, and cross the river
PROLOGUE.
31
at Nogent. Ducrot's engineer had taken his measures
badly; the bridges were not in a fit state. It was neces¬
sary to wait till the next day. The enemy, instead of being
surprised, was able to put himself on the defensive. On the
30th a spirited assault made us masters of Champigny.
The next day Ducrot remained inactive, while the enemy,
disgarnishing Versailles, accumulated its forces upon Cham¬
pigny. On the 2nd they recovered part of the village.
The whole day we fought severely. The former deputies
of the Left were represented on the field of battle by a
letter to their "very dear president." That evening we
camped in our positions, but half frozen, the "dear presi¬
dent" having ordered the blankets to be left in Paris, and
we had set out—a proof that the whole thing had been
done in mockery—without tents or ambulances. The fol¬
lowing day Ducrot declared we must retreat, and, "before
Paris, before the whole nation," this dishonoured braggart
-sounded the retreat. We had 8,000 dead or wounded out of
the 100,000 men who had been sent out, and of the 50,000
engaged.
For twenty days Trochu rested on his laurels. Clément-
Thomas took advantage of this leisure time to disband and
stigmatise the tirailleurs of Belleville, who had, however, had
many dead and wounded in their ranks. On the mere
report of the commanding general at Vincennes, he also
stigmatised the 200th battalion. Flourens was arrested. On
the 20th of December these rabid purgers of our own ranks
consented to take a little notice of the Prussians. The
mobiles of the Seine were launched without cannons against
the walls of Stains and to the attack of Bourget. The enemy
received them with a 'crushing artillery. An advantage ob¬
tained on the right of the Ville-Evrard was not followed up.
The soldiers returned in the greatest consternation, some of
them crying, "Vive la paix!" Each new enterprise betrayed
Troehu's plan, enervated the troops, but had no effect on
the courage-of the National Guards engaged. During two
days on the plateau D'Ouron they sustained the fire of sixty
pieces. When there' was a goodly number of dead, Trochu
32
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
discovered that the position was of no importance, and evacu¬
ated.
These repeated foils began to wear out the credulity of
Taris. From hour to hour the sting of hunger was increas¬
ing, and horse-flesh had become a delicacy. Dogs, cats,
and rats were eagerly devoured. The women waited for
hours in the cold and mud for a starvation allowance. For
bread they got black grout, that tortured the stomach.
Children died on their mothers' empty breasts. Wood was
worth its weight in gold, and the poor had only to warm
them the despatches of Gambetta, always announcing fan¬
tastic successes.1 At the end of December their privations
began to open the eyes of the people. Were they to give in,
their arms intact?
The mayors did not stir. Jules Favre gave them little
weekly receptions, where they gossiped about the cuisine
of the siege.2 Only one did his duty—Delescluze. He had
acquired great authority by his articles in the Réveil, as
free of partiality as they were severe. On the 30th De¬
cember he interpellated Jules Favre, said to his colleagues,
"You are responsible," demanded that the municipal council
should be joined to the Defence. His colleagues protested,
more especially Dubail and Yacherot. He returned to the
charge on the 4th of January, laid down a radical motion—
the dismissal of Trochu and of Clément-Thomas, the mobili¬
sation of the National Guard, the institution of a council of
defence, the renewal of the Committee of War. No more
attention was paid him than before.
1 Alter the disaster of Orleans, which cut in two our army, he wrote : .
"The army of the Loire is far from being annihilated ; it is separated
into two armies of equal force."
2 They avoided drawing up minutes to prevent even the appearance
of being a municipality (Enquête sur le J Septembre, Jules Ferry, vol. i.
p. 406). A dozen of these brave ones met with a few adjuncts at the
mairie of the third arrondissement. They confined their whole efforts to
seeking some one to replace Trochu. One of them, M. Corbon, has
said (Enquête sur le 18 Mars, vol. ii. p. 613) : ' 'However displeased they
might have been at the manner affairs were conducted by the Defence,
they would not for the world overthrow or weaken the Government."
PROLOGUE.
33
The Committee of the twenty arrondissements supported
Delescluze in issuing a red placard on the 6th: "Has the
Government which charged itself with the national defence
fulfilled its mission? No. By their procrastination, their
indecision, their inertion, those who govern ns have led
us to the brink of the abyss. They have known neither
how to administer nor how to fight. We die of cold, almost
of hunger. Sorties without object, deadly struggles without
results, repeated failures. The Government has given the
measure of its capacity; it is killing us. The perpetuation
of this régime means capitulation. The politics, the stra¬
tegies, the administration of the Empire continued by the
men of the 4th September have been judged. Make way for
the people! Make way for the Commune!"1 This was out¬
spoken and true. However incapable of action the Committee
may have been, its ideas were just and precise, and to the
end of the siege it remained the indefatigable, sagacious moni¬
tor of Paris.
The multitude who wanted illustrious names, paid no
attention to these placards. Some of those who had signed
it were arrested. Trochu, however, felt himself attainted, and
the very same evening had posted on all the walls, "The
governor of Paris will never capitulate." And Paris again
applauded, four months after the 4th September. It was
even wondered at that, in spite of Trochu's declaration, De¬
lescluze and his adjuncts should tender their resignations.2
Nevertheless, without obstinately shutting one's eyes it
was impossible not to see the precipice to which the Govern¬
ment was hurrying us on. The Prussians bombarded our
houses from the forts of Issy and of Yanves, and on the 30th
December, Trochu, having declared all further action impos¬
sible, invoked the opinion of all his generals, and wound up
by proposing that he should be replaced. On the 2nd, 3rd,
and 4th January the Defenders discussed the election of an
1 This placard was drawn up by Tridon and Vallès.
a "See," said they, "what a terrible responsibility we should incur if
we consented any longer to remain the passive instruments of a policy
condemned by the interests of Prance and of the Republic. "
34
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
Assembly which was to follow the catastrophe.1 But for the
irritation of the patriots, Paris would have capitulated before
the 15th.
The faubourgs no longer called the men of the Govern¬
ment other than "the band of Judas." The great democratic
lamas, who had withdrawn after the 31st October, returned
to the Commune, thus proving their own helplessness and the
common sense of the people. The Republican Alliance, where
Ledru-Rollin officiated before half-a-dozen incense-bearers,
the Republican Union, and other bourgeois chapels, went so
far as to very energetically demand a Parisian Assembly to
organise the defence. The Government felt it had no time
to lose. If the bourgeoisie joined the people, it would be¬
come impossible to capitulate without a formidable émeute.
The population which cheered under the shells would not
allow itself to be given up like a flock of sheep. It was
necessary to mortify it first, to cure it of its "infatuation,"
as Jules Ferry said, to purge it of its fever. "The National
Guard will only be satisfied when 10,000 National Guards
have fallen," they said at the Government table. Urged
on by Jules Favre and Picard on the one hand, and on the
other by the simple-minded Emmanuel Arago, Garnier-Pages,
and Pelletan, the quack Trochu consented to give a last per¬
formance.
It was gotten up as a farce2 at the same time as the capitu¬
lation.3 On the 19th the Council of Defence stated that a
new defeat would be the signal of the catastrophe. Trochu
was willing to accept the mayors as coadjutors on the ques¬
tion of capitulation and revictualling. Jules Simon and
Garnier-Pages were willing to surrender Paris, and only make
some reserve with regard to France. Garnier-Pages proposed
to name by special elections mandatories charged to capit¬
ulate. Such was their vigil before the battle.
On the 18th the din of trumpets and drums called Paris to
1 See the Minutes of the Government of the Defence, evidently
arranged for the best by M. Dréo, the son-in-law of Garnier-Pages.
2 jEnquête sur le. 18 Mars, Ducrot, vol. iii. p. xx.
• See the Minutes of the Government of Defence.
PROLOGUE.
35
arms and put the Prussians on the alert. For this supreme
effort Trochu had been able to muster only 84,000 men, of
whom nineteen regiments belonged to the National Guard.
He made them pass the night, which was cold and rainy, in
the mud of the fields of Mont-Valérien.
The attack was directed against the defences that covered
Versailles from the side of La Bergerie. At ten o'clock,
with the impulse of old troops,1 the National Guards and the
mobiles, who formed the majority of the left wing and centre,2
had stormed the redoubt of Montretout, the park of Buzenval,
a part of St. Cloud, pushing forward as far as Garches, occu¬
pying, in one word, all the posts designated. General Ducrot,
commanding the left wing, had arrived two hours behind time,
and though his army consisted chiefly of troops of the line,
he did not advance.
We had conquered several commanding heights which the
generals did not arm. The Prussians were allowed to sweep
these crests at their ease, and at four o'clock sent forth
assault columns. Ours gave way at first, then, steadying
themselves, checked the onward movement of the enemy.
Towards six o'clock, when the hostile fire diminished, Trochu
ordered a retreat. Yet there were 40,000 reserves between
Mont-Valérien and Buzenval. Out of 150 artillery pieces,
thirty only had been employed. But the generals, who during
the whole day had hardly deigned to communicate with the
1 Who bears witness to the bravery of the National Guard ? Superior
officers themselves. See in the Enquête sur le 18 Mars, the depositions
of General Leflô, Vice-Admiral Pothuan, Colonel Lambert, and Trochu,
speaking from the tribune: "If I did not fear to appear intrusive, I
could show that up to the close of the day the inexperienced National
Guards took and retook with the energy of old troops, under terrific fire,
the heights that had been abandoned. It was necessary to hold them
at any price in order to effect the retreat of the troops engaged in the
centre. I had told them so, and they sacrificed themselves without
hesitation. "
5 Yinoy's corps, which took Montretout, had five regiments and one
battalion of infantry, nineteen battalions of mobiles, five regiments of
National Guards. That of General Bellemare, which took Buzenval, had
five regiments of line, seventeen battalions of mobiles, eight regiments
of National Guards.
36
HISTOKY OF THE COMMUNE.
National Guard, declared they could not hold out a second
night, and Trochu had Montretout and all the conquered po¬
sitions evacuated. Battalions returned weeping with rage. All
understood that the whole affair was a cruel mockery.1
Paris, which had gone to sleep victorious, awoke to the sound
of Trochu's alarm-bell. The General asked for an armistice
of two days to carry off the wounded and bury the dead. He
said, "We want time, carts, and many litters." The dead and
wounded did not exceed 3000 men.
This time Paris at last saw the abyss. Besides, the Defen¬
ders, disdaining all further disguise, suddenly dropped the
mask. Jules Favre and Trochu summoned the mayors. Trochu
declared that all was lost and any further struggle impossible.2
The sinister news immediately spread over the town.
During four months' siege, patriotic Paris had foreseen,
accepted all; pestilence, assault, pillage, everything save capi¬
tulation. On this point the 20th of January found Paris,
notwithstanding her credulity, her weakness, the same Paris
as on the 20th September. Thus, when the fatal word was
uttered, the city seemed at first wonder-struck, as at the sight
of some crime monstrous, unnatural. The wounds of four
months opened again, crying for vengeance. Cold, starvation,
bombardment, the long nights in the trenches, the little
children dying by thousands, death scattered abroad in the
sorties, and all to end in shame, to form an escort for Bazaine,
to become a second Metz. One fancied one could hear the
Prussian sneering. With some, stupor turned into rage.
Those who were longing for the surrender threw themselves
into attitudes. The white-livered mayors even affected to fly
into a passion. On the evening of the 21st they were again
1 "We shall give the National Guard a little peppering (ecrabouiller
impeu la garde nationale) since they wish it," said a colonel of infantry,
much annoyed at this affair. Enquête sur le 4 Septembre. Colonel Chaper,
vol. ii. p. 281.
* He told them by way of consolation that "from the evening of the
4th September he had declared that it would be madness to attempt
sustaining a siege by the Prussian army."—Enquête sur le 4 Septembre,
Corbon, vol. iv. p. 389.
PROLOGUE.
37
received by Trochu. That same morning all the generals had
unanimously decided that another sortie was impossible.
Trochu very philosophically demonstrated to the mayors the
absolute necessity of making advances to the enemy, but de¬
clared he would have nothing to do with it, insinuating that
they should capitulate in his stead. They cut wry faces, pro¬
tested, still imagining they were not responsible for this issue.
After their departure the Defenders deliberated. Jules
Favre asked Trochu to tender his resignation. But he, the
apostle, insisted upon being dismissed by them, fancying
thus to cheat history into the belief that he had to the last
resisted capitulation.1 The discussion was growing warm
when, at three o'clock in the morning, they were informed
of the rescue of Flourens and other political prisoners con¬
fined at Mazas. A body of National Guards headed by an
adjunct from the eighteenth arrondissement had presented
themselves an hour before in front of the prison. The be¬
wildered governor had let them have their way. The Defen¬
ders, fearing a repetition of the 31st October, hurried on their
resolution replacing Trochu by Vinoy.
He wanted to be implored. Jules Favre and Leftô had to
show him the people in arms, an insurrection imminent. At
that very moment, the morning of the 22nd, the prefect of
police, declaring himself powerless, had sent in his resig¬
nation. The men of the 4th September had fallen so low as
to bend their knees before those of the 2nd December. Vinoy
condescended to yield.
His first act was to arm against Paris, to dismantle her
lines before the Prussians, to recall the troops of Suresne,
Gentilly, Les Lilas, to call out the cavalry and gendarmerie.
A battalion of mobiles commanded by Vabre, a colonel of the
National Guard, fortified itself in the Hôtel-de-Ville. CÎé-
ment-Thomas issued a furious proclamation: "The factions
are joining the enemy." He adjured the "entire National
1 He has pronounced these words of perfect Jesuitism: "To yield to
hunger is to die, not to capitulate."—Jules Simon, Souvenirs du ^ Sep¬
tembre, p. 299.
38
HISTORY OP THE COMMUNE.
Guard to rise in order to smite them." He had not called
upon it to rise against the Prussians.
There were signs of anger afloat, but no symptoms of a
serious collision. Many revolutionists, well aware that all was
at an end, would not support a movement which, if success¬
ful, would have saved the men of the Defence and forced
the victors to capitulate in their stead. Others, whose patrio¬
tism was not enlightened by reason, still warm from the
ardour of Buzenval, believed in a sortie en masse. We must
at least, said they, save our honor. The evening before, some
meetings had voted that an armed opposition should be offered
to any attempt at capitulation, and had given themselves a
rendezvous before the Ilotel-de-Ville.
At twelve o'clock the drums beat to arms at the Batignolles.
At one o'clock several armed groups appeared in the square
of the Hôtel-de-Ville; the crowd was gathering. A depu¬
tation, led by a member of the Alliance, was received by
G. Chaudey, adjunct to the mayor, for the Government was
seated at the Louvre since the 31st October. The orator said
the wrongs of Paris necessitated the nomination of the Com¬
mune. Chaudey answered that the Commune was nonsense;
that he always had, and always would oppose it. Another and
more eager deputation arrived. Chaudey received it with in¬
sults. Meanwhile the excitement was spreading to the crowd
that filled the square. The 101st battalion arrived from the
left bank crying "Death to the traitors!" when the 207th of
the Batignolles, who had marched down the boulevards, de¬
bouched on the square through the Rue du Temple and drew
up before the Hôtel-de-Ville, whose doors and windows were
closed. Others joined them. Some shots were fired, the win¬
dows of the Hôtel-de-Ville were clouded with smoke, and the
crowd dispersed with a cry of terror. Sheltered by lamp-posts
and some heaps of sand, some National Guards sustained the
fire of the mobiles. Others fired from the houses in the Ave¬
nue Victoria. The fusillade had been going on for half an
hour when the gendarmes appeared at the corner of the Ave¬
nue. The insurgents, almost surrounded, made a retreat.
About a dozen were arrested and taken to the Hôtel-de-Ville,
PROLOGUE.
39
where Vinoy wanted to despatch them at once. Jules Ferry
recoiled, and had them sent before the regular court-martials.
Those who had got up the demonstration and the inoffensive
crowd of spectators had thirty killed or wounded, among others
a man of great energy, Commandant Sapia. The Hôtel-de-
Ville had only one killed and two wounded.
The same evening the government closed all the clubs and
issued numerous warrants. Eighty-three persons, most of
them innocent,1 were arrested. This occasion was also taken
advantage of to send Delescluze, notwithstanding his sixty-
five years, and an acute bronchitis which was undermining his
health, to rejoin the prisoners of the 31st October, thrown pell-
mell into a damp dungeon at Vincennes. The Réveil and the
Combat were suppressed.
An indignant proclamation denounced the insurgents as
"the partisans of the foreigners," the only resource left the
men of the 4th September in this shameful crisis. In this only
they were Jacobins. Who served the enemy? The Govern¬
ment ever ready to negotiate, or the men ever offering a des¬
perate resistance? History will tell how at Metz an immense
army, with cadres, well-trained soldiers, allowed itself to be
given over without a single marshal, chef-de-corps, or a regi¬
ment rising to save it from Bazaine;2 whereas the revolutionists
of Paris, without leaders, without organization, before 240,000
soldiers and mobiles gained over to peace, delayed the capitula¬
tion for months and revenged it with their blood.
The simulated indignation of traitors raised only a feeling
of disgust. Their very name, "Government of Defence," cried
out against them. On the very day of the affray they played
their last farce. Jules Simon having assembled the mayors
1 Deposition of General Soumairs, Enquête sur le h Septembre, vol. il.
p. 215.
' What disgrace! 175,000 men pretending that they had been sold
by a single one! In the Seven Years'War, in Westphalia, at Minden,
when General Morangies prepared to capitulate, 1500 men, roused by a
corporal, refused to surrender, forced their way, and rejoined the army
of the Count of Clermont.
40 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
and a dozen superior officers,1 offered the supreme command
to the military man who could propose a plan. This Paris,
which they had received exuberant with life, the men of the
4th September, now that they had exhausted and bled her, pro¬
posed to abandon to others. Not one of those present resented
the infamous irony. They confined themselves to refusing
this hopeless legacy. This was exactly the thing Jules Simon
waited for. Some one muttered, "We must capitulate." It
was General Lecomte. The mayors understood why they had
been convoked, and a few of them squeezed out a tear.
From this time forth Paris existed like the patient who is
expecting amputation. The forts still thundered, the dead
and the wounded were still brought in, but Jules Favre was
known to be at Versailles. On the 27th at midnight the can¬
non were silenced. Bismarck and Jules Favre had come to an
honourable understanding.2 Paris had surrendered.
The next day the Government of the Defence published
the basis of the negotiations—a fortnight's armistice, the im¬
mediate convocation of an Assembly, the occupation of the
forts, the disarmament of all the soldiers and mobiles with
the exception of one division. The town remained gloomy.
These days of anguish had stunned Paris. Only a few demon¬
strations were made. A battalion of the National Guard came
before the Hôtel-de-Ville crying "Down with the traitors!"
In the evening, 400 officers signed a pact of resistance, naming
as their chief Brunei, an ex-officer expelled from the army
under the Empire for his republican opinions, and resolved to
march on the forts of the east, commanded by Admiral Saisset,
whom the press credited with the reputation of a Beaurepaire.
At midnight the call to arms and the alarm bell summoned the
tenth, thirteenth, and twentieth arrondissements. Jlut the
night was icy cold, the National Guard too enervated for an
1 Enquête sur le J Septembre, Arnaud de l'Ariège, vol. ii. p. 320-321.
2 "I return from Versailles. I have come to terms with M. de
Bismarck, and it has been agreed upon between us as a matter of
honour the firing should cease."—Order sent by Jules Favre on the 27th,
seven o'clock evening. Vinoy, L'Armistice et la Commune, p. 67.
PROLOGUE.
41
act of despair. Two or three battalions only came to the
rendezvous. Brunei was arrested two days after.
On the 29th January the German flag was hoisted on our
forts. All had been signed the evening before. 400,000 men
armed with muskets and cannons capitulated before 200,000.
The forts, the enceinte were disarmed. Paris was to pay
200,000,000 francs in a fortnight. The Government boasted
■of having preserved the arms of the National Guard, but
every one knew that to take these it would have been necessary
to storm Paris. In fine, not content with surrendering Paris,
the. Government of the National Defence surrendered all
France. The armistice applied to all the armies of
the provinces save Bourbaki's, the only one that would have
profited by it.
On the following days there arrived some news from the
provinces. It was known that Bourbaki, pressed by the
Prussians, had, after a comedy of suicide, thrown his whole
army into Switzerland. The aspect and the weakness of the
Delegation of the Defence in the provinces had just begun to
reveal themselves, when the Mot d' Ordre, founded by Roche-
fort, who had abandoned the Government after the 31st
October, published a proclamation^ by Gambetta, stigmatizing
a shameful peace, and a whole litany of Radical decrees:
ineligibility of all the great functionaries and official deputies
of the Empire; dissolution of the conseils-généraux, revocation
of some of the judges1 who had formed part of the mixed
commission of the 2nd December. It was ignored that during
the whole war the Delegation had acted in contradiction to
its last decrees, which, coming from a fallen power, were a
mere electoral trick, and Gambetta's name was placed on most
of the electoral lists.
Some bourgeois papers supported Jules Eavre and Picard,
Who had been clever enough to make themselves looked upon
as the out-and-outers of the Government; none dared to go so
far as to support Trochu, Simon and Ferry. The variety of
electoral lists set forth by the republican party explained its
1 The decree sacrificed fifteen and spared twenty-four.
42
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
impotence during the siege. The men of 1848 refused to
accept Blanqui, hut admitted several members of the Inter¬
national in order to usurp its name, and their list, a medley
of Neo-Jacobins and Socialists, entitled itself "the list of the
Four Committees." The clubs and the workingmen's groupa
drew up lists of a more outspoken character; one bore the name
of the German Socialist deputy, Liebknecht, The most de¬
cided one was that of the Corderie.
The International and the Federal Chamber of the working-
men's societies, mute and disorganized during the siege, again'
taking up their programme, said, "We must also have working-
men amongst those in power." They came to an arrangement
with the Committee of the twenty arrondissements, and the
three groups issued the same manifesto. "This," said they,,
"is the list of the candidates presented in the name of a new
world by the party of the disinherited. France is about ta
reconstitute herself; workingmen have the right to find and
take their place in the new order of things. The Socialist-
revolutionary candidatures signify the denial of the right to
discuss the existence of the Republic; affirmation of the
necessity for the accession of workingmen to political power;
overthrow of the oligarchical Government and of industrial
feudalism." Besides a few names familiar to the public,
Blanqui, Gambon, Garibaldi, Félix Pyat, Ranvier, Tridon,
Longuet, Lefrançais, Vallès, these Socialist candidates were
known only in the workingmen's centers—mechanics, shoe¬
makers, ironfounders, tailors, carpenters, cooks, cabinet¬
makers, carvers.1 Their placards were hut few in number.
These disinherited could not compete with bourgeois enter¬
prise. Their day was to come a few weeks later, when two-
thirds of them were to be elected to the Commune. Now those
1 A. Arnaud, Avrial, Beslay, Blanqui, Bemay, Bereure, Dupas, E.
Dupont, J. Bur and, E. Buval, Eudes, Flotte, Eranlcel, Gambon, Goupil,
Granger, Humbert, Jaclard, Jarnigon, Laeambre, Lacord, Langevin,
Lefrançais, Leverdays, Longuet, Macdonnell, Malon, Meillet, Minet,
Oudet, Pindy, F. Pyat, Ranvier, Rey, Rouillier, Serraillier, Theisz,
Tolain, Tridon, Vaillant, Vallès, Varlin. The names of those who
were elected members of the Commune are in italics.
PROLOGUE.
43
only received a mandate who were accepted by the middle-
class papers, five in all: Garibaldi, Gambon, Félix Pyat, Tolain,
and Malon.
The list of representatives of the 8th February was a
harlequinade, including every republican shade and every
political crotchet. Louis Blanc, who had played the part of
a goody during the siege, and who was supported by all the
committees except that of the Corderie, headed the procession
with 216,000 votes, followed by Victor Hugo, Gambetta, and
Garibaldi; Delescluze obtained 154,000 votes. Then came a
motley crowd of Jacobin fossils, radicals, officers, mayors,
journalists, and inventors. One single member of the Govern¬
ment slipped in, Jules Favre, although his private life had
been exposed by Millière, who was also elected.1 By a cruel
injustice, the vigilant sentinel, the only journalist who during
the siege had always shown sagacity, Blanqui, found only
52,000 votes, about the number of those who opposed the
plebiscite, while Félix Pyat received 145,000 for his piping
in the Combat.2
This confused incongruous ballot affirmed at least the re¬
publican idea. Paris, trampled upon by the Empire and the
Liberals, clung to the Republic, who gave her promise for the
future. But even before her vote has been proclaimed she
heard coming forth from the provincial ballot boxes a savage
cry of reaction. Before a single one of her representatives
had left the town, she saw on the way to Bordeaux a troop of
rustics, of Pourceaugnacs, of sombre clericals, spectres of 1815,
1830, 1848, high and low reactionists, who, mumbling and
furious, came by the grace of universal suffrage to take pos¬
session of France. What signified this sinister masquerade?
How had this subterranean vegetation contrived to pierce and
overgrow the summit of the country?
1 In the Vengeur, which had taken the place of the Combat, he proved,
documents in hand, that for years Jules Favre had been guilty of
forgery, bigamy, and falsification of papers of legitimation.
2 After the five returned, sixteen candidates of La Corderie obtained
from 65,000 votes to 22,000 votes; Tridon 65,707, Duval 22,499.
44
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
It was necessary that Paris and the provinces should be
crushed, that the Prussian Shylock should drain our milliards
and cut his pound of flesh, that the state of siege should
for four years weigh down upon forty-two departments, that
100,000 Frenchmen should be cut off from life or banished
from their native soil, that the black brotherhood should
conduct their processions all over France, to bring about this
great conservative machination, which from the first hour
to the last explosion, the revolutionists of Paris and of the
provinces had not ceased to denounce to our treacherous or
sluggish governors.
In the provinces the field and the tactics were not the same.
The conspiracy, instead of being carried on within the
Government, circumvented it. During the whole month of
September the reactionists hid in their lurking-places. The
Government of National Defence had only forgotten one
element of defence—the provinces, seventy-six departments.
Yet they were agitating, showed life; they alone held in check
the reaction. Lyons had even understood her duty earlier than
Paris; in the morning of the 4th September she proclaimed
the Republic, hoisted the red flag, named a Committee of
Public Safety.—Marseilles and Toulouse organized regional
commissions.—The Defenders understood nothing of this
patriotic zeal, thought France disjointed, and delegated to
put it right again two Liberal relics very much tainted,
Crémieux and Glais-Bizoin, together with a former governor
of Cayenne, the Bonapartist Admiral Fourichon.
They reached Tours on the 18th. The patriots hastened
thither to meet them. In the west and south, they had already
organized Leagues to marshal the departments against the
enemy and supply the want of a central impulse. They
surrounded the delegates of Paris, asking them for a mot-
d'ordre, vigorous measures, the sending of commissioners, and
promised their absolute co-operation. The putridities an¬
swered, "We are entre nous, let us speak frankly. Well, then,
we have no longer any army; all resistance is impossible. We
only hold out for the sake of making better conditions." We
PROLOGUE.
45
ourselves witnessed the scene.1 There was hut one cry of in¬
dignation: "What! is this your answer when thousands of
Frenchmen come to offer you their lives and fortunes?"
On the 28th, the Lyonese broke out. Hardly four depart¬
ments separated them from the enemy, who might at any
moment come to levy a contribution on their city, and since
the 4th September they had in vain demanded arms. The
municipality, elected on the 16th in place of the Committee
of Public Safety, passed its time in squabbling with the Prefect,
Challemel-Lacour, an arrogant Neo-Jacobin. On the 27th,
instead of any serious measures of defence, the council had
reduced by fivepence the pay of the workingmen employed
in the fortifications, and appointed Cluseret general in partibus
of an army to be created.2
The Republican committees of Les Brotteaux, of La Guillo-
tière, of La Croix-Rousse,3 and the Central Committee of the
National Guard decided to urge on the Hôtel-de-Ville, and
1 Which, besides, has been recounted by Marc Dufraisse in the
Enquête sur le J Septembre, vol. iv. p. 428.
3 Cluseret, an ex-officer, decorated in 1848 for his spirited conduct.
"I unfortunately displayed too much energy in that disastrous battle,"
he wrote in Fraser's Magazine of March 1878. Attached to the Arabian
Bureaux, he threw up his commission after the Crimean war, and not
being able to play a part in Europe, engaged in the American civil war
for a short time, then withdrew to New York, where he campaigned
with his pen. Misunderstood by the bourgeoisie of the two worlds, he
again took to politics, but from the opposite side ; offered himself to the
Irish insurgents ; landed in Ireland urging them to rise, and one fine
night abandoned them. The nascent International also saw this power¬
ful general come and offer his services. He did a good deal in the way
of pamphleteering ; tried to impress upon the workmen that he was the
sword and buckler of Socialism. "We or nothing," said he to the sons
of the massacred of June. The Government of the 4th September
having also failed to appreciate his genius, he called Gambetta Prussian,
and got himself sent as delegate to Lyons by the Corderie, where Yarlin,
whom he deceived for a long time, had introduced him. He offered the
Lyons council to organise an army of volunteers which was to operate
on the flank of the enemy.
3 The working-men's quarters of Lyons.
46
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
laid before it on the 28th an energetic programme of defence.
The worlcingmen of the fortifications, led by Saigne, sup¬
ported this step by a demonstration. They filled the Place
des Terreaux, and what with speeches, what with the excite¬
ment, invaded the Hôtel-de-Ville. Saigne proposed the
nomination of a revolutionary commission, and perceiving
Cluseret, named him commander of the National Guard.
Cluseret, much concerned for his future, only appeared on
the balcony to propound his plan and recommend calm.
However, the commission being constituted, he no longer
dared to resist, but set out in search of his troops. At the
door, the mayor, Hénon, and the prefect arrested him. They
had penetrated into the Hôtel-de-Ville by the Place de la
Comédie. Saigne, springing upon the balcony, announced
the news to the crowd, which, throwing itself upon the Hôtel-
de-Ville, delivered the prospective general and in turn arrested
the mayor and prefect.
The bourgeois battalions soon arrived at the Place des
Terreaux; shortly after those of La Croix-Rousse and of La
Guillotière debouched. Great misfortune might have resulted
from the first shot. They parleyed. The commission dis¬
appeared and the general swooned.
This was a warning. Other symptoms manifested them¬
selves in several towns. The prefects even presided over
Leagues and met each other. At the commencement of Octo¬
ber, the Admiral of Cayenne had only been able to set on
foot 30,000 men, and nothing came from Tours but a decree
convoking the election for the 16th.
On the 9th, when Gambetta alighted from his balloon, all
the patriots started. The Conservatives, who had begun to
creep out of their recesses, quickly drew back again. The
ardour and the energy of his first proclamation carried people
away. Gambetta held France absolutely; he was all-powerful.
He disposed of the immense resources of France, of the in¬
numerable men; of Bourges, Brest, L'Orient, Rochefort,
Toulon for arsenals; workshops like Lille, Nantes, Bordeaux,
PROLOGUE.
47
Toulouse, Marseilles, Lyons; the seas free; incomparably
greater strength than that of 1793, which had to fight
at the same time the foreigner and internal rebellions. The
centers were kindling. The municipal councils made them¬
selves felt, the rural districts as yet showing no signs of re¬
sistance; the national reserve intact. The burning metal
needed only moulding.
The début of the delegate was a serious blunder. He
executed the decree of Paris for the adjournment of the elec¬
tions, which promised to he republican and bellicose. Bismarck
himself had told Jules Favre that he did not want an Assembly,
because this Assembly would be for war. Energetic circulars,
some measures against the intriguers, formal instructions to
the prefects, would have brightened and victoriously brought
out this patriotic fervor. An Assembly fortified by all the
republican aspirations, vigorously led, sitting in a populous
town, would have increased the national energy a hundred¬
fold, brought to light unhoped-for talents, and might have
exacted everything from the country, blood and gold. It
would have proclaimed the Republic, and in case of being
obliged by reverses to negotiate, would have saved her from
foundering, prevented reaction. But Gambetta's instructions
were formal. "Elections at Paris would bring back days like
June," said he. "We must do without Paris," was our answer.
All was useless. Besides, several prefects, incapable of in¬
fluencing their surroundings, predicted pacific elections.
Lacking the energy to grapple with the real difficulties of the
situation, Gambetta fancied he might shift them by the clap¬
trap expedient of his dictatorship.
Did he bring a great political revolution? Ho. His whole
programme was, "To maintain order and liberty and push on
the war."1 Crémieux had called the Bonapartists "republicans
going astray." Gambetta believed, or pretended to believe,
in the patriotism of the reactionists. A few pontifical zouaves
who offered themselves, the abject submission of the Bona-
1 Enquête sur le h Septembre, Gambetta, vol. i. p. 560.
48 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
partist generals, the wheedling of a few bishops,1 sufficed
to delude him. He continued the tactics of his predecessors
to conciliate everybody; he spared even the functionaries. In
the department of Finance and Public Instruction, he and
his colleagues forbade the dismissal of any official. The War
Office for a long time remained under the supreme direction
of a Bonapartist, and always carried on an underhand war
against the defence. Gambetta maintained in some prefectures
the same employés who had drawn up the proscription lists of
the 2nd December, 1851. With the exception of a few justices
of the peace and a small number of magistrates, nothing was
changed in the political personnel, the whole subordinate ad¬
ministration remaining intact.
Was he wanting in authority? His colleagues of the council
did not even dare to raise their voices; the prefects knew only
him; the generals put on the manner of school-boys in his
presence. Was a personnel wanting? The Leagues contained
solid elements; the small bourgeoisie and proletariat might
have given the cadres.
Gambetta saw here only marplots, chaos, federalism, and
roughly dismissed their delegates. Each department pos¬
sessed groups of known, tried republicans, to whom the ad¬
ministration and the part of spurring the Defence under the
direction of commissioners might have been intrusted. Gam¬
betta refused almost everywhere to refer to them; the few
whom he appointed he knew how to fetter closely. He vested
all power in the prefects, most of them ruins of 1848, or his
colleagues of the Conférence Molé, nerveless, loquacious,
timorous, anxious to have themselves well spoken of, and many
anxious to feather themselves a nest in their department.
The Defence in the provinces set out on these two crutches—
the War Office and the prefects. On this absurd plan of con¬
ciliation the Government was conducted.
Did the new delegate at least bring a powerful military
1 The Jew Crémieux lived with the Ultramontane Archbishop Guibert
(since made Archbishop of Paris) in his episcopal palace at Tours, dining
every day at his table, and in return rendering him all the little services
asked for by the clergy.
PROLOGUE.
49
conception? "No one in the Government, neither General
Trochu nor General Leflô, no one had suggested a military
operation of any kind."1 Did he at least possess that quick
penetration which makes up for want of experience? After
twenty days in the provinces he comprehended the military
situation no better than he had done at Paris. The capit¬
ulation of Metz drew from him indignant proclamations,
but he understood no more than his colleagues of the
Hôtel-de-Ville that this was the very moment to make a
supreme effort.
With the exception of three divisions (30,000 men) and
the greater part of their cavalry, the Germans had been obliged
to employ for the investment of Paris all their troops, and they
had no reserve left them. The three divisions at Orléans and
Châteaudun were kept in check by our forces of the Loire.
The cavalry, while infesting a large extent of territory in the
west, north and east, could not hold out against infantry.
At the end of October, the army before Paris, strongly fortified
against the town, was not at all covered from the side of the
provinces. The appearance of 50,000 men, even of young
troops, would have forced the Prussians to raise the blockade.
Moltke was far from disregarding the danger. He had
decided in case of need to raise the blockade, to sacrifice the
park of artillery then being formed at Villecoublay, to con¬
centrate his army for action in the open country, and only
to re-establish the blockade after the victory, that is to say,
after the arrival of the army of Metz. "Everything was ready
for our decampment; we only had to team the horses," has
been said by an eye-witness, the Swiss Colonel D'Erlach. The
official papers of Berlin had already prepared public opinion
for this event.
The blockade of Paris raised, even momentarily, might have
led, under the pressure of Europe, to an honorable peace; this
was almost certain. Paris and Prance recovering their salutary
buoyancy, the revietualling of the great town, and the con-
1 Enquête sur le 4 Septembre, Gambetta, vol. i. p. 561.
D
50
HISTORY OP THE COMMUNE.
sequent prolongation of her resistance, would have given the
time necessary for the organization of the provincial armies.
At the end of October our army of the Loire was in progress
of formation, the 15th corps at Salbris, the 16th at Blois,
already numbering 80,000 men. If it had pushed between
the Bavarians at Orléans and the Prussians at Châteaudun;
if—and this was an easy matter with its numerical superior¬
ity—it beat the enemy one after another, the route to Paris
would have been thrown open, and the deliverance of Paris
almost sure.
The Delegation of Tours did not see so far. It confined
its efforts to recovering Orléans, in order to establish there
an entrenched camp; so on the 26th General D'Aurelles de
Paladines, named by Gambetta commander-in-chief of the
two corps, received the order to rescue the town from the
Bavarians. He was a senator, a bigoted, rabid reactionist,
at best fit only to be an officer of zouaves, fuming in his heart
at the defence. It was resolved to make the attack from Blois.
Instead of conducting the 15th corps on foot, which by
Romorantin would have taken forty-eight hours, the Delega¬
tion sent it by the Yierzon railway to Tours, a journey which
took five days and could not be hidden from the enemy.
Still, on the 28th, D'Aurelles established before Blois, dis¬
posed of 40,000 men at least, and the next day he was to have
left for Orléans.
On the 28th, at nine o'clock in the evening, the commander
of the German troops had him informed of the capitulation of
Metz. D'Aurelles, jumping at this pretext, telegraphed to
Tours that he should adjourn his movement.
A general of some ability, of some good faith, would, on the
contrary, have precipitated everything. Since the German
army before Metz, now disengaged, would swoop down upon
the centre of France, there was not a day to lose to be before¬
hand with it. Every hour told. This was the critical juncture
of the war.
The Delegation of Tours was as foolish as D'Aurelles. In¬
stead of dismissing him, it contented itself with moans, order¬
ing him to concentrate his forces. This concentration was
PROLOGUE.
51
terminated on the 3d November.1 D'Aurelles then had 70,000
men established from Mer to Marchenoir. He might have
acted, for events seconded him. That very day a whole brigade
of Prussian cavalry had been obliged to abandon Mantes and
to retreat before bands of franc-tirenrs; Prench forces were
observed to be marching from Courville in the direction of
Chartres. D'Aurelles did not stir, and the Delegation re¬
mained as paralyzed as he. "M. le Ministre," wrote on the
4th November the Delegate at War, M. de Freycinet,2 "for
some days the army and myself do not know if the Govern¬
ment wants peace or war. At this moment, when we are just
disposing ourselves to accomplish projects laboriously pre¬
pared, rumors of an armistice disturb the mind? of our
generals, and I myself, I seek to revive their spirits and push
them on, I know not whether the next day I shall not he dis¬
avowed by the Government." Gambetta the same day an¬
swered: "I agree with you as to the detestable influence of
the political hesitations of the Government. From to-day we
must decide on our march forward;" and on the 7th D'Aurelles
still remained motionless. At last, on the 8th, he set out,
and went about fifteen kilometers, and in the evening again
spoke of making a halt.3 All his forces together exceeded
100,000 men. On the 9th he made up his mind to attack
at Coulmiers. The Bavarians immediately evacuated Orléans,
Far from pursuing them, D'Aurelles announced that he was
going to fortify himself before the town. The Delegation let
him do as he liked, and gave him no orders to pursue the
enemy.1 Three days after the battle Gambetta came to the
headquarters and approved of D'Aurelle's plan. The Bavarians
1 D'Aurelles de Paladines, La Premiere Armée de la Loire, p. 93.
5 De Freycinet, La Guerre en Province, p. 86, 87.
8 Ibid., p. 91.
4 On the 11th, the delegate telegraphed to D'Aurelles: "We fully
approve of the dispositions you had taken for your troops round Orléans.
... You will receive instructions. In the meantime redouble your
vigilance in prevision of a return to the offensive on the part of the
enemy."—D'Aurelles de Paladines, La Premiere Armée de la Loire, p.
130. Thus, far from speaking of attacking, the Delegation only thought
of the defensive.
52
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
during this respite had fallen hack upon Toury, and two
divisions hurried from Metz by the railway arrived before
Paris. Moltke could at his ease direct the 17th Prussian
division towards Toury, where it arrived on the 12th. Three
other corps of the army of Metz approached the Seine by forced
marches. The ignorance of the Delegation, the obstruction of
Trochu, the ill-will and blunders of D'Aurelles, frustrated the
only chances of raising the blockade of Paris.
On the 19th, the army of Metz protected the blockade in
the north and in the south. Henceforth the Delegation had
but one part to play—to prepare armies for France, solid,
capable of manoeuvring, and finding for this the necessary
time, as in ancient times the Romans did, and in our days
the Americans. It preferred bolstering up vain appearances,
amusing public opinion with the din of arms, imagining that
they could thus puzzle the Prussians also. It threw upon them
men raised but a few days before, without instruction, without
discipline, without instruments of war, fatally destined to
defeat. The prefects charged with the organization of the
mobiles, and those on the point of being mobilized, were in
continual strife with the generals, and lost themselves in the
details of the equipments. The generals, unable to make any¬
thing of those ill-supplied contingents, only advanced on
compulsion.1 Gambetta on his arrival had said in his
proclamation, "We will make young chiefs," and the important
commands were given to the men of the Empire, worn out,
ignorant, knowing nothing of patriotic wars. To these
young recruits, who should have been electrified by
stirring appeals, D'Aurelles preached the word of the
Lord and the interest of the service.2 The accomplice
1 "It was only when they could not help it that they made up their
minds to act," Gambetta has said in the Enquête sur le %■ Septembre.
The avowal is precious, coming from him.
2 It is most amusing to hear D'Aurelles chaffing Trochu without per¬
ceiving that he is just as ridiculous. In his evidence (Enquête sur le
J,. Septembre, vol. iii. p. 201) he says : "I did not deposit either a plan or
a testament at a lawyer's ; I confined myself to writing to the Bishop of
Orléans : Monsignor, the army of the Loire to-day sets out on its march
PROLOGUE.
53
of Bazaine, Bourbaki,1 on his return from England, re¬
ceived the command of the army of the East. The
weakness of the new Delegate encouraged the re¬
sistance of all malcontents. Gambetta asked the officers
whether they would accept service under Garibaldi;2 he not
only allowed them to refuse, but even released a curé who in
the pulpit had set a price on the General's head. He humbly
explained to the royalist officers that the question at issue
was not to defend the Republic but the territory. He gave
leave to the pontifical zouaves to hoist the banner of the
Sacred Heart. He suffered Admiral Fourichon to contend
for the disposal of the navy with the Delegation.3 He indig¬
nantly rejected every project for an enforced loan, and refused
to sanction those voted in some departments. He left the
railway companies masters of the transport, in the hands of
reactionists, always ready to raise difficulties. From the end
of November, these boisterous and contradictory orders, these
accumulations of impracticable decrees, these powers given
and taken back, clearly proved that only a sham resistance
was meant.
The country obeyed, giving everything with passive blind¬
ness. The contingents were raised without difficulty; there
were no refractory recruits in rural districts, although the
gendarmerie were absent with the army; the Leagues had given
way on the first remonstrance. There was only a movement
on the 31st October. The Marseilles revolutionists, indignant
at the weakness of their Municipal Council, proclaimed the
Commune. Cluseret, who from Geneva had asked the
"Prussian" Gambetta for the command of an army corps,
appeared at Marseilles, got himself named general, again
backed out and retired to Switzerland, his dignity forbidding
to meet the army of General Ducrot. Pray, Monsignor, for the salvation
of France."
1 And what other name is merited by the general who abandoned his
post in the field to go and negotiate with the sovereign whom France
had expelled ?
3 Enquête sur le 4 Septembre, Rolland, vol. iii. p. 456.
8 Ibid., Dalloz, vol. iv. p. 398.
54 HISTORY OP THE COMMUNE.
Jiim to serve as a simple soldier. At Toulouse, the population
expelled the general. At Saint-Etienne the Commune
existed for an hour. But everywhere a word sufficed to replace
the authority in the hands of the Delegation; such was thé
apprehension of everybody of creating the slightest embar¬
rassment.
This abnegation only served the reactionists. The- Jesuits,
who resumed their intrigues, had been reinstated by Gam-
betta at Marseilles, whence the indignation of the people had
expelled them. The delegate cancelled the suspension of
papers that had published letters from Chambord and
D'Aumale. He protected the judges who had formed part
of the mixed commission, released the one who had decimated
the department of the Yar, and dismissed the prefect of
Toulouse for having suspended the functions of another in
the Haute-Garonne. The Bonapartists mustered again.1 The
prefect of Bordeaux, an ultra-moderate Liberal, asking for
the authorization to arrest some of their ringleaders, Gam-
betta severely answered him, "These are practices of thé
Empire, not of the Republic." Crémieux, too, said, "The
Republic is the reign of law."
Then the Conservative Vendée arose. Monarchists, clericals,
capitalists, waited for their time; cowering in their castles,
all their strongholds remained intact; seminaries, tribunals,
general councils, which for a long time the Delegation
refused to dissolve en masse. They were clever enough to
figure here and there in the field of battle, in order to preserve
the appearance of patriotism. In à few8 weeks they had seen
through Gambetta and found out the Liberal behind the
Tribune. "
Their campaign was sketched, conducted from the begin¬
ning, by the only serious political tacticians whom France
1 If General Boyer, who saw the letter, is to be believed, the Dele¬
gation of Tours on the 24th October made officious advances to the
Empress, and then gave the order to the chargé -d'affaires at London to
go and thank her for the patriotism that she had shown in refusing to
treat with Bismarck, who trifled with her as well as with Bazaine. See
Enquête sur le 4 Septembre, vol. iv. p. 253.
PROLOGUE.
55
possesses—by the Jesuits, masters of the clergy. The arrival
of M. Thiers provided the apparent chief.
The men of the 4th September had made him their am¬
bassador. France, almost without diplomatists since Talley¬
rand, has never possessed one more easily gulled than this
little man. He had gone naively to London, to Petersburg,
to Italy, whose inveterate enemy he had always been, begging
for vanquished France alliances which had been refused her
when yet intact. He was trifled with everywhere. He ob¬
tained but one interview with Bismarck, and negotiated the
armistice rejected by the 31st October. When he arrived at
Tours in the first days of November, he knew that peace was
impossible, and that henceforth it must be war to the knife.
Instead of courageously making the best of it, of placing his
experience at the service of the Delegation, he had but one
object, to baffle the defence.
It could not have had a more redoubtable enemy. The
success of this man, without ideas, without principles of gov¬
ernment, without comprehension of progress, without courage,
would have been impossible everywhere, save with the French
bourgeoisie. But he has always been at hand when a Liberal
was wanted to shoot down the people, 'and he is a wonderful
artist in Parliamentary intrigue. No one has known like him
how to attack, to isolate a Government, to group prejudices,
hatred, and interests, to hide his intrigues behind a mask of
patriotism and common sense. The campaign of 1870—71
will certainly be his masterpiece. He had made up his mind
as to the lion's share due to the Prussians, and took no more
notice of them than if they had recrossed the Moselle. For
him the enemy was the defender. When our poor mobiles,
without cadres, without military training, succumbed to a
temperature as fatal as that of 1812, M. Thiers exulted at
our disasters. His house had become the headquarters for
the Conservative notabilities. At Bordeaux especially it
seemed to be the true seat of the Government.
Before the investment the reactionary press of Paris had
organized a provincial service, and from the outset cooled
down the Delegation. After the arrival of M. Thiers it
56 HISTORY OP THE COMMUNE.
carried on a regular war. It never ceased harassing, accusing,
pointing out the slightest shortcomings, with a view not
to instruct, but to slander, and to wind up by the fore¬
gone conclusion: Fighting is madness, disobedience legitimate.
From the middle of December this watchword, faithfully
followed by all the papers of the party, spread over the
rural districts.
For the first time country squires found their way to the
ear of the peasant. This war was about to draw off all the
men who were not in the army or in the Garde Mobile, and
camps were being prepared to receive them. The prisons of
Germany held 260,000 men; Paris, the Loire, the army of the
East, more than 350,000. Thirty thousand were dead, and
thousands filled the hospitals. Since the month of August
France had given at least 700,000 men. Where are they to
stop? This cry was echoed in every cottage: "It is the Republie
that wants war! Paris is in the hands of the levellers." What
does the French peasant know of his fatherland, and how
many could say where Alsace lies? It is he above all whom
the bourgeoisie have in view when they resist compulsory
education. For eighty years all their efforts tended to
transforming into coolies the descendants of the volunteers
of 1792.
Before long a spirit of revolt infected the mobiles, almost
everywhere commanded by reactionists of mark. Here an
equerry of the Emperor, there rabid royalists led battalions.
In the army of the Loire they muttered, "We will not fight
for M. Gambetta."1 Officers of the mobilized troops boasted
of never having exposed the lives of their men.
In the beginning of 1871 the provinces were undermined
from end to end. Some general councils that had been dis¬
solved met publicly, declaring that they considered themselves
elected. The Delegation followed the progress of this enemy,
cursed M. Thiers in private, but took good care not to arrest
him. The revolutionists who came to tell it the lengths things
were going were curtly shown out. Gambetta, worn out, not
1 Enquête sur le 4 Septembre, Admiral Jaureguiberry, vol. iii. p. 897.
PROLOGUE.
57
believing in the defence, thought only of conciliating the
men of influence and rendering himself acceptable for the
future.
At the signal of the elections, the scenery, laboriously pre¬
pared, appeared all of a piece, showing the Conservatives
grouped, supercilious, their lists ready. We were far now
from the month of October, when, in many departments, they
had not dared to put forward their candidates. The decrees
on the ineligibility of the high Bonapartist functionaries only
affected shadows. The coalition, disdaining the broken-down
men of the Empire, had carefully formed a personnel of pig-
tailed nobles, well-to-do farmers, captains of industry, men
likely to do the work bluntly. The clergy had skilfully united
on their lists the Legitimists and Orleanists, perhaps laid
down the basis for a fusion. The vote was carried like a
plebiscite. The republicans tried to speak of an honorable
peace; the peasants would only hear of peace at any price.
The towns knew hardly how to make a stand; at the utmost
elected Liberals. Out of 750 members, the Assembly counted
450 born monarchists. The apparent chief of the campaign,
the king of Liberals, M. Thiers, was returned in twenty-three
departments.
The conciliator à outrance could rival Trochu. The one
had worried out Paris, the other the Republic.
( 58 )
CHAPTEK I.
"Le chef du pouvoir exécutif, pas plus que l'Assemblée Nationale,
s'appuyant l'un sur l'autre et se fortifiant l'un par l'autre, n'avaient
en aucune manière provoqué l'insurrection parisienne."—Discours
de M. Dufaure contre l'Amnistie, Séance du 18 Mai 1876.
FIBST ATTACKS OF THE COALITION AGAINST PAEIS—THE
BATTALIONS OF THE NATIONAL GUAED FEDEEALISE AND
SEIZE THEIE CANNON—THE PEUSSIANS ENTEE PAEIS.
The invasion has brought back the "Chambre introuvable"
of 1816. After having dreamt of a regenerated France soaring
towards the light, to feel oneself hurled back half a century,
under the yoke of the Jesuits of the Congregation, of the
brutal rurals! There were men who lost heart. Many spoke
.of expatriating themselves. The thoughtless said, "The
Chamber will only last a day, since it has no mandate but
to decide on peace and war." Those, however, who had
watched the progress of the conspiracy and the leading part
taken in it by the clergy, knew beforehand that these men
would not allow France to escape their clutches before they
crushed her.
Men just escaped from famine-stricken but glowing Paris
found on their arrival at Bordeaux the Coblentz of the first
emigration, but this time invested with the power to glut
rancors that had been accumulating for forty years. Clericals
and Conservatives were for the first time allowed, without
the interference of either emperor or king, to trample to their
hearts' content on Paris, the atheist, the revolutionist, who
had so often shaken off their yoke and baffled their schemes.
At the first sitting their choler burst out. At the farther end
THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE. 59
of the hall, sitting alone on his bench, shunned by all, an
old man rose and asked to address the Assembly. Under his
cloak glared a red shirt. It was Garibaldi. At the call of
his name, he wished to answer, to say in a few words that he
resigned the mandate with which Paris had honored him.
His voice was drowned in howls. He remained standing,
raising his hand, but the insults redoubled. The chastise¬
ment, however, was at hand. "Rural majority! disgrace of
France!" cried from the gallery a young vibrating voice, that
of Gaston Crémieux, of Marseilles. The deputies rose
threatening. Hundreds of "Bravos" answered from the
galleries, overwhelming the rurals. After the sitting the crowd
cheered Garibaldi and hooted his insulters. The National
Guard presented arms, despite the rage of M. Thiers, who
under the peristyle apostrophized the commanding officer.
The next day the people returned, forming lines in front of
the theatre, and forced the reactionist deputies to undergo
their republican cheers. But they knew their strength, and
from the beginning of the sittings opened their attack. One
of the rurals, pointing to the representatives of Paris, cried,
"They are stained with the blood of civil war!" And when one
of these representatives cried, "Vive la République!" the
majority hooted him, saying, "You are only a fraction of the
country." On the next day the Chamber was surrounded by
troops, who kept off the republicans.
At the same time the Conservative papers united in their
hissings against Paris, denying even her sufferings. The Na¬
tional Guard, they said, had fled before the Prussians; its only
exploits had been the 31st October and 22nd January. These
calumnies fructified in the provinces, long since prepared to
receive them. Such was their ignorance of the siege, that
they had named some of them several times—Trochu, Ducrot,
Ferry, Pelletan, Garnier-Pages, Emmanuel Arago—to whom
Paris had refused a single vote.
It was the duty of the Parisian representatives to clear up
this darkness, to recount the siege, to denounce the men re¬
sponsible for the failure of the defence, to explain the sig¬
nificance of the Parisian vote, to unfurl the flag of republican
60 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
France against the clerico-monarchical coalition. They re¬
mained silent, contenting themselves with puerile party meet¬
ings, from which Delescluze turned away as heartbroken as
from the Assembly of the Paris mayors. Our Epimenides of
1848 answered with stereotyped humanitarian phrases the
clashing of arms of the enemy, who all the while affirmed his
programme: to patch up a peace, to bury the Republic, and
for that purpose to checkmate Paris. Thiers was named chief
of the executive power with general acclamation, and chose
for his Ministers Jules Favre, Jules Simon, Picard and
Leflô, who might still pass muster with the provincial
republicans.
These elections, these menaces, these insults to Garibaldi,
to the Paris representatives; Thiers, the incarnation of the
Parliamentary monarchy, first magistrate of the Republic, blow
after blow was struck at Paris, a feverish, hardly revictualled
Paris, hungering still more for liberty than bread. This then
was the reward for five months of suffering and endurance.
These provinces, which Paris had invoked in vain during the
whole siege, dared now to brand her with cowardice, to throw
her back from Bismarck to Chambord. Well, then, Paris
was resolved to defend herself even against France. The new
imminent danger, the hard experience of the siege, had
exalted her energy and endued the great town with one col¬
lective soul.
Already, towards the end of January, some republicans,
and also some bourgeois intriguers in search of a mandate,
had tried to group the National Guards with a view to the
elections. A large meeting, presided over by Courty, a mer¬
chant of the third arrondissement, had been held in the Cirque.
They had there drawn up a list, decided to meet again to de¬
liberate in case of double electoral returns, and had named
a committee charged to convoke all the companies regularly.
This second meeting was held on the 15th in the Yauxhall
Douane Street. But who then thought of the elections?
One single thought prevailed: the union of all Parisian
forces against the triumphant rurals. The National
Guard represented all the manhood of Paris. The clear,'
THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE. 61
simple, essentially French idea of confederating the battalions
had long been in every mind. It was received with acclamation
and resolved that the confederate battalions should be grouped
round a Central Committee.
A commission during the same sitting was charged to
elaborate the statutes. Each arrondissement represented—
eighteen out of twenty—named a commissary. Who were
these men? The agitators, the revolutionists of La Corderie,
the Socialists? No; there was not a known name amongst
them. All those elected were men of the middle classes, shop¬
keepers, employés, strangers to the coteries, till now for the
most part strangers even to politics.1 Courty, the president,
was known only since the meeting at the Cirque. From the
first day the idea of the federation appeared what it was—
universal, not sectarian, and therefore powerful. The next
day, Clément-Thomas declared to the Government that he
could no longer be answerable for the National Guard, and
sent in his resignation. He was provisionally replaced by
Yinoy.
On the 24th, in the Vauxhall, before 2,000 delegates and
guards, the commission read the statutes it had drawn up,
and pressed the delegates to proceed immediately to the
election of the Central Committee. The Assembly was tem¬
pestuous, disquiet, little inclined for calm deliberations. Each
of the last eight days had brought with it more insulting
menaces from Bordeaux. They were going, it was said, to
disarm the battalions, suppress the thirty sous, the only re¬
source of the workingmen, and exact at once the owing house-
rents and overdue commercial bills. Besides, the armistice,
prolonged for a week, was to expire on the 26th, and the
papers announced that the Prussians would enter Paris on the
27th. For a week this nightmare had weighed on all the
patriots. The meeting, too, proceeded at once to consider
1 3rd arrondissement, A. Genotal ; 4th, Alavoine ; 5th, Manet ; 6th,
V. Frontier; 7th, Badois; 8th, Morterol?; 9th, Mayer; 10th, Arnold;
11th, Piconel; 12th, Audoynaud; 13th, Soncial; 14th, Dacosta; 15th,
Masson; 16th, Pé; 17th, Weber; 18th, Trouillet; 19th, Lagarde; 20th,
A. Bonit. Courty remained president, Ramel secretary.
62 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
these burning questions. Varlin proposed: The National
Guard only recognizes the chiefs elected by itself. Another:
The National Guard protests through the Central Committee
against any attempt at disarmament, and declares that in case
of need it will offer armed resistance. Both propositions were
voted unanimously. And now, was Paris to submit to the
entry of the Prussians, to let them parade her boulevards?
It could not even be discussed. The whole assembly, springing
up over-excited, raised one cry of war. Some warnings of
prudence are disdained. Yes, they would oppose their arms
Ro the entry of the Prussians. The proposition would be sub¬
mitted by the delegates to their respective companies. And
adjourning to the 3rd March, the meeting broke up its sitting
and marched cn masse to the Bastille, carrying along with it
a great number of soldiers and mobiles.
Since the morning, Paris, fearing the loss of her liberty,
had gathered round her revolutionary column, as she had
before crowded round the statue of Strasbourg when trembling
for France. The battalions defiled, headed by drums and flags,
covering the rails and pedestal with crowns of immortelles.
From time to time a delegate ascended the plinth, and from
this tribune of bronze harangued the people, who answered
with cries of "Vive la République!" Suddenly a red flag was
carried through the crowd into the monument, reappearing
soon after at the balustrade. A formidable cry saluted it,
followed by a long silence. A man, climbing the cupola, had
the daring to go and fix it in the hand of the statue of Liberty
surmounting the column. Thus, amidst the frantic cheering
of the people, for the first time since 1848, the flag of equality
overshadowed this spot, redder than its flag by the blood of
a thousand martyrs.
The following day the pilgrimages were continued, not only
by National Guards, but by the soldiers and mobiles. The
army gave way to the inspiration of Paris. The mobiles arrived
preceded by their quartermasters carrying large black crowns;
the trumpeters, posted at each corner of the pedestal, saluted
them, and the crowd cheered them to the echo. Women
THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE. 63
dressed in black suspended a tricolor flag bearing the inscrip¬
tion, "The republican women to the martyrs." When the
pedestal was covered, the crowns and flowers soon wound them¬
selves entirely round the bust, encircling it from top to
bottom with yellow and black flowers, red and tricolor
oriflammes, symbols of mourning for the past and hope in the
future.
On the 26th the manifestations became innumerable and
irritated. A police agent, surprised taking down the names
of the battalions, was seized and thrown into the Seine.
Twenty-five battalions defiled, sombre, a prey to a terrible^
anguish. The armistice was about to expire and the Journal
Officiel did not speak of a prorogation. The journals an¬
nounced the entry of the German army by the Champs-Elysées
for the next day. The Government was sending the troops
to the left bank of the Seine and clearing out the Palace
de l'Industrie. They forgot only the cannons of the National
Guards accumulated at the Place Wagram and at Passy.
Already the carelessness of the capitulards had delivered
12,000 more muskets to the Prussians than were stipulated
for.1 Who could tell if the latter would not stretch out their
hands to these fine pieces, cast with the flesh and blood of the
Parisians, marked with the numbers of the battalions?2 Spon¬
taneously all Paris rose. The bourgeois battalions of Passy,
in accord with the municipality,3 set the example, drawing the
pieces of the Ranelagh to the Parc Monceaux.4 Other bat¬
talions came to fetch their cannon in the Park Wagram,
1 Vinoy, L'Armistice et la Commune, p. 128.
3 The reactionists have said that this fear was feigned; that the
cannon were safe from the Prussians. This is so false that the general
staff itself feared a surprise. See Mortemart, chef d'état-major, Enquête
sur le 4 Septembre, vol. ii. p. 344.
3 Enquête sur le 18 Mars, Colonel Lavigne, vol. ii. p. 467.
4 "The first cannons were taken, carried away, on the news of the
entry of the Prussians, And these, gentlemen, believe me, were carried
ofE by citizens devoted to order, the National Guards of Passy and
Auteuil, and taken where ? Prom the Ranelagh."—Jules Ferry, Enquêté
sur le 18 Mars, vol. ii. p. 63.
64
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
wheeling them by the Rues St. Honoré and Rivoli to the Place
des Vosges, under the protection of the Bastille.
During the day the troop sent by Vinoy to the Bastille had
fraternized with the people. In the evening, the rappel, the
tocsin, the trumpets had thrown thousands of armed men into
the streets, who came to mass themselves at the Bastille, the
Chateau d'Eau, and the Rue de Rivoli. The prison of St.
Pélagie was forced and Brunei set free. At two o'clock in the
morning, forty thousand men remounted the Champs-Elysées
and the Avenue de la Grande Armée, silent, in good order,
to encounter the Prussians. They waited till daybreak. On
their return, the battalions of Montmartre seized all the
cannon they found on their way, and took them to the
mairie of the eighteenth arrondissement and to the Boulevard
Ornano.
To this feverish but chivalrous outburst Vinoy could only
oppose an order of the day stigmatizing it. And this Govern¬
ment, that insulted Paris, asked her to immolate herself for
France! A placard posted up on the morning of the 27th
announced the prolongation of'the armistice, and for the
1st of March the occupation of the Champs-Elysées by 30,000
Germans.
At two o'clock the commission charged to draw up the
statutes for a Central Committee held a sitting at the mairie
of the third arrondissement. Some of its members since the
evening before, considering themselves invested with powers
by the situation, had tried to organize a permanent sub¬
committee in this mairie; but not being numerous enough,
they had adjourned until the next day and consulted the chiefs
of the battalions. The sitting, presided over by Captain
Bergeret, was stormy. The delegates of the battalion of Mont¬
martre, who had established a committee of their own in the
Rue des Rosiers, would speak only of fighting, showed their
mandats impératifs, and recalled the resolution of the Vaux-
hall. It was almost unanimously resolved to take up arms
against the Prussians. The mayor, Bonvalet, rather uneasy
at having such guests, had the mairie surrounded, and, half
THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE. 65
by persuasion, half by force, succeeded in getting rid of
them.
During the whole day the faubourgs had armed and seized
the munitions; the rampart pieces were remounted on their
carriages; the mobiles, forgetting that they were prisoners of
war, went to retake their arms. In the evening one crowd
inveigled the marines of La Pépinière Barracks, and led them
to the Bastille to fraternize with the people.
A catastrophe was inevitable but for the courage of a few
men who dared to oppose this dangerous current. All the
societies that met at the Place de la Corderie, the Central Com¬
mittee of the twenty arrondissements, the International, and
the Federation, looked with reserve upon this Central Com¬
mittee, composed of unknown men, who had never taken part
in the revolutionary campaigns. On leaving the mairie of
the third arrondissement, some delegates of battalions who
belonged to the sections of the International came to the
Corderie to tell of the sitting and the desperate resolution
come to. Every exertion was made to pacify them, and speak¬
ers were sent to the Vauxhall, where a large meeting was
being held; they succeeded in making themselves heard.
Many other citizens made great efforts to recall the people to
reason. The next morning, the 28th, the three groups of
the Corderie published a manifesto conjuring the workingmen
to beware. "Every attack," said they, "would serve to expose
the people to the blows of the enemies of the Revolution,
who would drown all social vindications in a sea of blood."
Pressed on all sides, the Central Committee was obliged to
yield, as it announced in a proclamation signed by twenty-
nine names. "Every aggression would result in the immediate
overthrow of the Republic. Barricades will be established
all round the quarters to be occupied by the enemy, so he
will parade in a camp shut out from our town." This was
the first official appearance of the Central Committee. The
twenty-nine unknown men1 capable of thus pacifying the Na-
1 A. Alavoine, A. Bouit, Frontier, Boursier, David, Buisson, Harond,
Gritz, Tessier, Ramel, Badois, Arnold, Piconel, Audoynaud, Masson,
Weber, Lagarde, J. Laroque, J. Bergeret, Pouehain, Lavalette, Fleurj.
E
fi6 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
tional Guard were applauded even by the bourgeoisie, who did
not seem to wonder at their power.
1 The Prussians entered Paris on the 1st March. This Paris
which the people had taken possession of was no longer the
Paris of the nobles and the great bourgeoisie of 1815. Black
flags hung from the houses, but the deserted streets, the closed
shops, the dried-up fountains, the veiled statues of the Place
de la Concorde, the gas not lighted at night, still more preg¬
nantly announced a town in its agony. Prostitutes who
ventured into the quarters of the enemy were publicly
whipped. A café in the Champs-Elysées which had opened
its doors to the victors was ransacked. There was but one
grand seigneur in the Faubourg St. Germain to offer his house
to the Prussians.
Paris was still wincing under this affront, when a new
avalanche of insults poured down upon her from Bordeaux.
Not only had the Assembly not found a word or act to
help her in this painful crisis, but its papers, the Journal
Officiel at their head, were indignant that she should have
thought of defending herself against the Prussians. A propo¬
sition was being signed in the bureaux to fix the seat of
the Assembly outside of Paris. The projected law on over¬
due bills and house-rents opened the prospect of numberless
failures. Peace had been accepted, hurriedly voted like an
ordinary business. Alsace, the greater part of Lorraine,
1,600,000 Frenchmen torn from their fatherland, five milliards
to pay, the forts to the east of Paris to be occupied till the
payment of the first 500,000,000 francs, and the departments
of the East till the entire payment; this was what Trochu,
Favre, and the coalitioti cost us, the price for which Bismarck
permitted us the Chambrer introuvable. And to console Paris
for so much disgrace, M. Thiers appointed as General of the
National Guard the incapable and brutal commander of the
first army of the Loire, D'Aurelles de Paladines. Two senators,
Maljoumal, Chouteau, Cadaze, Gastaud, Dutil, Matté, Mutin. Ten only
of those elected on the 15th figure in this document. Various delega¬
tions, abstentions, and irregular adhesions had given nearly twenty new
names.
THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE. 67
Vinoy and D'Aurelles, two Bonapartists, at the head of Repub¬
lican Paris—this was too much. All Paris had the presenti¬
ment of a coup-d'état.1
That evening there were large groups gathered in the
boulevards. The National Guards, refusing to acknowledge
D'Aurelles as their commander, proposed the appointment
of Garibaldi. On the 3rd two hundred battalions sent their
delegates to Yauxhall. Matters began with the reading of
the statutes. The preamble declared the Republic "the only
Government by law and justice superior to universal suffrage,
which is its offspring." "The delegates," said Article 6, "must
prevent every attempt whose object would be the overthrow
of the Republic." The Central Committee was composed of
three delegates for each arrondissement, elected by the com¬
panies, battalions, legions and of the chefs-de-légion.2 While
awaiting the regular election, the meeting there and then
named a provisional executive committee. Varlin, Pindy,
Jacques Durand, and some other Socialists of the Corderie
formed part of it, an understanding having been come to
between the Central Committee, or rather the commission
which had drawn up the statutes, and the three groups of the
Corderie. Yarlin carried a unanimous vote on the immediate
re-election of the officers of the National Guard. Another
motion was put: "That the department of the Seine constitute
itself an independent republic in case of the Assembly at¬
tempting to decapitalize Paris,"—a motion unsound in its con¬
ception, faultily drawn up, which seemed to isolate Paris from
the rest of France—an anti-revolutionist, anti-Parisian idea,
cruelly exploited against the Communé. Who then was to feed
Paris if not the provinces? Who was to save our peasants
if not Paris? But Paris had been confined to solitary life for
six months; she alone to the last moment had declared for the
1 Roger du Nord, the chief of D'Aurelles' staff, "heard it said in all
the fractions of the National Guard, 'Why place a man of such energy
at the head of the National Guard if not to make a coup d'état?'"
Enquête sur le 18 Mars, vol. ii.
! The National Guards of each of the twenty arrondissements were
formed into a separate legion.
68
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
continuation of the struggle at any price, alone affirmed the
Republic by a vote. Her abandonment, the vote of the
provinces, the rural majority, made so many men ready to die
for the universal republic fancy that the Republic might be
shut up within Paris.
(6!>)
CHAPTER II.
" Cette république a été menacée par l'Assemblée, a-t-on dit, Messieurs,
quand l'insurrection a éclaté, l'Assemblée ne s'était encore signalée
au point de vue politique que par deux actes : la nomination du chef
dti pouvoir exécutif et l'acceptation d'un cabinet républicain."—
Discours de M. Larcy, du Centre Gauche, contre l'Amnistie, Séance
du 18 Mai 1876.
THE COALITION OPENS PIRE ON PARIS—THE CENTRAL
COMMITTEE CONSTITUTES ITSELF M. THIERS ORDERS
THE ASSAULT.
To the rural plebiscite the Parisian National Guard had
answered by their federation; to the threats of the monarchists,
to the projects of decapitalization, by the manifestation of
the Bastille; to D'Aurelles' appointment, by the resolutions
of the 3rd March. What the perils of the siege had not been
able to effect the Assembly had brought about—the union
of the middle class with the proletariat. The immense majority
of Paris looked upon the growing army of the Republic without
regret. On the 3rd the Minister of the Interior, Picard, having
denounced "the anonymous Central Committee," and called
upon "all good citizens to stifle these culpable manifestations,"
no one stirred. Besides, the accusation was ridiculous. The
Committee showed itself in the open day, sent its minutes to
the papers, and had only made a manifestation to save Paris
from a catastrophe. It answered the next day: "The Com¬
mittee is not anonymous; it is the union of the representatives
of free men aspiring to the solidarity of all the members of
the National Guard. Its acts have always, been signed. It
70
HISTORY OF' THE COMMUNE.
repels with contempt the calumnies which accuse it of inciting
to pillage and civil war." The signatures followed,1
The chiefs of the coalition saw clearly which way events
were drifting. The republican army each day increased its
arsenal of muskets, and especially of cannon. There were now
pieces of ordnance at ten different places—at the Barrière
d'Italie, at the Faubourg St. Antoine, at the Buttes Mont¬
martre. A red placard informed Paris of the formation of
the Central Committee of the federation of the National
Guards, and invited citizens to organize in each arrondissement
committees qf battalions and councils of legions, and to appoint
the delegates to the Central Committee. The ensemble, the
ardour of the movement seemed to bear witness to the powerful
organization of the Central Committee. A few days more and
the answer of the people would be complete if a blow were
not struck at once.
What they misunderstood was the stout heart of the enemy.
The victory of the 22nd January blinded them. They be¬
lieved in the stories of their journals, in the cowardice of the
National Guards, in the bragging of Ducrot, who, in the
bureaux of the Assembly swore eternal hatred to the dema¬
gogues, but for whom, he said, he would have conquered.2
The bullies of the reaction fancied they could swallow Paris
at a mouthful.
The operation was conducted with clerical skill, method,
and discipline. Legitimists and Orleanists, disagreeing as
to the name of the monarch, had accepted the compromise of
Thiers, an equal share in the Government, which was called
"the pact of Bordeaux." Besides, against Paris there could
be no division.
1 Arnold, J. Bergeret, Bouit, Castioni, Chauvière, Chouteau, Courty,
Dutil, Fleury, Frontier, H. Fortuné, Lacord, Lagarde, Lavalette, Mal-
journal, Matté, Ostyn, Pieonel, Pindy, Prudhomme, Yarlin, H. Yerlet,
Viard. Many of these names, those of the representatives elected on the
3rd, were new ones. On the other hand, many of those that had figured
in the placard of the 28th were missing, because only those, signed who
were present at the sitting.
3 He dared to say from the tribune that he only returned on the 3rd
"to save Paris from any demagogic attempts."
THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE.
71
From the commencement of March the provincial papers
held forth at the same time, speaking of incendiarism and
pillage in Paris. On the 4th there was but one rumor in the
bureaux of the Assembly—that an insurrection had broken
out; that the telegraphic communications were cut off; that
General Vinoy had retreated to the left bank of the Seine.
The Government, which propagated these rumors,1 despatched
four deputies, who were also mayors, to Paris. They arrived
on the 5th, and found Paris perfectly calm, even gay.2 The
mayors and adjuncts, assembled by the Minister of the In¬
terior, attested to the tranquility of the town. But Picard,
no doubt in the conspiracy, said, "This tranquility is only
apparent. We must act." And the ultra-Conservative Yautrain
added, "We must take the bull by the horns and arrest the
Central Committee."
The Right never ceased baiting the bull. Sneers, provoca¬
tions, insults, were showered upon Paris and her representa¬
tives. Some among them, Rochefort, Tridon, Malon, and
Ranc, when withdrawing after the vote mutilating the country,
were followed by cries of "Pleasant journey to you." Victor
Hugo defending Garibaldi was hooted. Delescluze demanding
the impeachment of the members of the National Defence
was no better listened to. Jules Simon declared that he
would maintain the law against association. On the 10th the
breach was opened. A resolution was passed that Paris should
no longer he the capital, and that the Assembly should sit at
Versailles. This was calling forth the Commune, for Paris
could not remain at the same time without a Government and
without a municipality. The field of battle once found, despair
was to supply it with an army. The Government had already
1 The prefecture of Rennes placarded this despatch of the Govern¬
ment: "A criminal insurrection is being organised in Paris. I send
forces which, joined to the honest National Guards of Paris and to the
other regular troops which are still stationed there, will suppress, I
hope, this odious attempt."
2 Jules Ferry, who had remained at Paris, telegraphed on the 5th to
the Government: "Never has a Sunday been calmer, notwithstanding
sinister reports. The population is enjoying the sun and their prome¬
nades as if nothing had happened. I no longer believe in the danger. ":
n
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
decided to continue the pay of the National Guards to those
only who should ask for it. The Assembly decreed that the
bills due on the 13th November, 1870, should be made payable
on the 13th March, that is, in throe days. The Minister
Dufaure obstinately refused any concession on this point.
Notwithstanding the urgent appeals of Millière, the Assembly
refused to pass any protective bill for the tenants whose
house-rents had been due for six months. Two or three
hundred thousand workmen, shopkeepers, model makers, small
manufacturers working in their own lodgings, who had spent
their little stock of money and could not yet earn any more,
all business being at a standstill, were thus thrown upon the
tender mercies of the landlord, of hunger and bankruptcy.
From the 13th to the 17th of March 150,000 bills were dis¬
honored. Finally, the Right obliged M. Thiers to declare
from the tribune "that the Assembly could proceed to its
deliberations at Versailles without fearing the paving stones
of an émeute," thus constraining him to act at once, for the
deputies were to meet again at Versailles on the 20th.
D'Aurelles commenced operations against the National
Guard, declaring he would submit it to rigorous discipline and
purge it of its bad elements. "My first duty," said his order
of the day, "is to secure the respect due to law and
property,"—this eternal provocation on the part of the
bourgeoisie when lifted to supreme power by revolutionary
events.
The other senators also joined in. On the 7th Vinoy threw
into the streets with a pittance of eight shillings a head the
twenty-one thousand mobiles of the Seine. On the 11th, the
day on which Paris learnt her decapitalization and the
ruinous decrees, Vinoy suppressed six Republican journals,
four of which, Le Cri du Peuple, Le Mot d'Ordre, Le Père
Duchcne, and Le Vengeur, had a circulation of 200,000. The
same day the court-martial which judged the accused of the
31st October condemned several to death, among others
Flourens and Blanqui. Thus everybody was hit—bourgeois,
republicans, revolutionists. This Assembly of Bordeaux, the
THE CENTKAL COMMITTEE.
73
■deadly foe of Paris, a stranger to her in sentiment, mind, and
language, seemed a Government of foreigners. The com¬
mercial quarters as well as the faubourgs rang with a general
outcry against it.1
From this time the last hesitation disappeared. The
mayor of Montmartre, Clémenceau, had been intriguing for
•several days to effect the surrender of the cannon, and he
had even found officers disposed to capitulate; hut the bat¬
talion protested, and on the 12th, when D'Aurelles sent his
teams, the guards refused to deliver the pieces. Picard,
making an attempt at firmness, sent for Courty, saying, "The
members of the Central Committee are risking their heads,"
•and obtained a quasi-promise. The Committee expelled
Courty.
It had since the 6th met at the hall of the Corderie.
Although keeping aloof from, and entirely independent of,
the three other groups, the reputation of the place was useful
to it. It gave evidence of good policy and baffled the intrigues
•of the commandant, Du Bisson, an officer who had served
abroad and been employed in undertakings of an equivocal
character, and who was trying to constitute a Central Com¬
mittee from above with the chiefs of the battalions. The
•Central Committee sent three delegates to this group, where
they met with lively opposition. One chief of battalion, Bar-
beret, showed himself particularly restive; but another, Faltot,
carried away the Assembly, saying, "I am going over to the
people." The fusion was concluded on the 10th, the day of
the general meeting of the delegates. The Committee
presented its weekly report. It recounted the events of the
last days, the nomination of D'Aurelles, the menaces of Picard,
1 "The vote of the Assembly," wrote Jules Favre, "was received at
Paris with extreme disfavour ; not only amongst the fanatics and the
-agitators; all classes of the population showed themselves almost
unanimous. Every one saw in it an affront and a menace. It was
repeated everywhere that this was the first act of a monarchical coup-
id'état ; that the Assembly was ready to name a king, and that, knowing
the unpopularity of its work, it sought to accomplish it far from the
.eyes of those who might oppose it."
74
HISTORY OP TITE COMMUNE.
remarking very justly, "That which we are, events have made
us: the reiterated attacks of a press hostile to democracy have
taught it, the menaces of the Government have confirmed it;
we are the inexorable barrier raised against every attempt at
the overthrow of the Republic." The delegates were invited
to push forward the elections of the Central Committee. An
appeal to the army was drawn up: "Soldiers, children of
the people! Let us unite to serve the Republic. Kings and
emperors have done us harm enough." The next day the
soldiers lately arrived from the army of the Loire gathered in
front of these red placards, which bore the names and ad¬
dresses of all the members of the Committee.
The Revolution, bereft of its journals, spoke now through
placards, of the greatest variety of color and opinion, posted on
all the walls. Plourens and Blanqui, condemned in contumacy,
placarded their protestations. Sub-committees were being
formed in all the popular arrondissements. That of the thir¬
teenth arrondissement had for its chief a young iron founder,
Duval, a man of cold and commanding energy. The sub¬
committee of the Rue des Rosiers surrounded their cannon by
a ditch and had them guarded day and night.1 All these com¬
mittees quashed the orders of D'Aurelles and were the true
commanders of the National Guard.
No doubt Paris was roused, ready to redeem her abdication
during the siege. This Paris, lean and oppressed by want,
adjourned peace and business, thinking only of the Republic.
The provisional Central Committee, without troubling itself
about Yinoy, who had demanded the arrest of all its members,
presented itself on the 15th at the general assembly of the
Vauxhall. Two hundred and fifteen battalions were repre¬
sented, and acclaimed Garibaldi as commander-in-chief of
the National Guard. An orator, Lullier, led the Assembly
astray. He was an ex-naval officer, completely crack-brained,
with a semblance of military instruction, and when not heated
by alcohol having intervals of lucidity which might deceive
any one. He was named commanding colonel of the artillery.
1 This is the Committee which many took for the Central Committee.
THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE.
75
Then came the names of those elected members of the Central
Committee, about thirty in all, for several arrondissements
had not yet voted. This was the regular Central Committee
which was to he installed at the Hôtel-de-Ville. Many of those
elected had formed part of the preceding commission. The
others were all equally obscure, belonging to the proletariat
and small middle class, known only to their battalions.
What mattered their obscurity? The Central Committee
Was not a Government at the head of a party. It had no Utopia
to initiate. A very simple idea, fear of the monarchy, could
alone have grouped together so many battalions. The Na¬
tional Guard constituted itself an assurance company against
a coup-d'état-, for if Thiers and his agents repeated the word
"Republic," their own party and the Assembly cried
"Vive le Roi!" The Central Committee was a sentinel, that
was all. .
The storm was gathering; all was uncertain. The Inter¬
national convoked the Socialist deputies to ask them what to
do. But no attack was planned, nof even suggested. The
Central Committee formally declared that the first shot would
not be fired by the people, and that they would only defend
themselves in case of aggression.
The aggressor, M. Thiers, arrived on the 15th. For a long
time he had foreseen that it would be necessary to engage in
a terrible struggle with Paris; but he intended acting at his
own good time, to retake the town when disposing of an army
of forty thousand men, well picked, carefully kept aloof from
the Parisians. This plan has been revealed by a general
officer. At this moment Thiers had only the mere wreck of
an army.
The 230,000 men disarmed by the capitulation, mostly
mobiles or men having finished their term of service, had
been sent home in hot haste, as they would only have swelled
the Parisian army. Already some mobiles, marines, and
soldiers had laid the basis of a republican association with
the National Guards. There remained to Vinoy only the
division allowed him by the Prussians and 3,000 sergeants-
76
HISTORY OP THE COMMUNE.
de-ville or gendarmes, in all 15,000 men, rather ill-conditioned.
Leflô sent him a few thousand men picked np in the armies
of the Loire and of the North, but they arrived slowly, almost
without cadres, harassed, and disgusted at the service. At
Vinoy's very first review they were on the point of mutinying,
They left them straggling through Paris, abandoned, mixing
with the Parisians, who succored them, the women bringing
them soups and blankets to their huts, where they were
freezing. In fact, on the 19th the Government had only
about 25,000 men, without cohesion and discipline, two-thirds
of them gained over to the faubourgs.
How disarm 100,000 men with this mob? For, to carry off
the cannon, it was necessary to disarm the National Guard.
The Parisians were no longer novices in warfare. "Having
taken our cannon," they said, "they will make our muskets
useless." The coalition would listen to nothing. Hardly
arrived, they urged M. Thiers to act, to lance the abscess at
once. The financiers—no doubt the same who had pre¬
cipitated the war to give fresh impulse to their jobbery1—said
to him, "You will never be able to carry out financial opera¬
tions if you don't make an end of these scoundrels."2 All
these declared the taking of the cannon would be mere
child's play.
They were indeed hardly watched, but because the National
Girard knew them to be in a safe place. It would suffice to
pull up a few paving stones to prevent their removal down
the narrow steep streets of Montmartre. On the first alarm
all Paris would hasten to the rescue. This had been seen on
the 16th, when gendarmes presented themselves to take from
the Place des Vosges the cannon promised by Vautrain. The
National Guards arrived from all sides and unscrewed the
1 Some Bourse speculators, in the belief that a campaign of six weeks
would give a fresh impulse to the speculations they were living upon,
said, "It is a disagreeable moment to pass through, some 50,000 men to
be sacrificed, after which the horizon will clear and commerce revive."
—M. Thiers, Enquête sur le 4 Septembre, vol. i. p. 9.
2 Enquête sur le 18 Mars, M. Thiers, vol. ii. p. 11.
THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE.
77
pieces, and the shopkeepers of the Rue des Tournelles com¬
menced unpaving the street.
An attack was nonsensical, and it was this that determined
Paris to remain on the defensive. But M. Thiers saw nothing,
neither the disaffection of the middle classes nor the deep
irritation of the faubourgs. The little man, a dupe all
his life, even of a MacMahon, prompted by the approach
of the 20th March, spurred on by Jules Eavre and Picard,
who, since the failure of the 31st of October, believed the
revolutionists incapable of any serious action, and jealous to
play the part of a Bonaparte, threw himself head foremost
into the venture. On the 17th he held a council, and, without
calculating his forces or those of the enemy, without fore¬
warning the mayors—(Picard had formally promised them
not to attempt to use force without consulting them)—without
listening to the chiefs of the bourgeois battalions,1 this
Government, too weak to arrest even the twenty-five members
of the Central Committee, gave the order to carry off two
hundred and fifty cannon2 guarded by all Paris.
1 In the evening D'Aurelles assembled forty of the most reliable,
and asked them if their battalions would march. They all said their
men were not to be counted upon. Enquête sur le 18 Mars, vol. ii.
p. 435, 456.
* This is the number of pieces given by M. Thiers in the Enquête sur
le 18 Mars.
( 78 )
CHAPTER III.
•Nous avons donc fait ce que nous devions faire; rien n'a provoqué
l'insurrection de Paris.!'—Discours de M. Dufaure contre l'Amnistie;
Séance du 18 Mai 1876.
THE EIGHTEENTH OF MAKCH.
The execution was as foolish as the conception. On the
18th of March, at three o'clock in the morning, several,
columns dispersed in various directions to the Buttes Chau-
mont, Belleville, the Faubourg du Temple, the Bastille,, the.
Hôtel-de-Ville, Place St. Michel, the Luxembourg, the thir¬
teenth arrondissement and the Invalides. General Susbielle
marched on Montmartre with two brigades about 6,000 men
strong. All was silent and deserted. The brigade Paturel
took posession of the Moulin de la Galette without striking
a blow. The brigade Lecomte gained thè Tower of Solferino,
only meeting with one sentinel, Turpin, who crossed bayonets
with them and was hewn down by the gendarmes. They then
rushed to the post of the Rue des Rosiers, stormed it, and
threw the National Guards into the caves of the Tower of
Solferino. At six o'clock the surprise was complete. M.
Clémenceau hurried to the Buttes to congratulate General
Lecomte. Everywhere else the cannon were surprised in the
same way. The Government triumphed all along thè line,
and D'Aurelles sent the papers a proclamation written in the
conqueror's vein.
There was only something wanted—teams to convey the
spoil. Yinoy had almost forgotten them. At eight o'clock
they began to put some horses to the pieces. Meanwhile.
the fauoourgs were awaking and the early shops opening.
THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE.
79
Around the milkmaids and before the wineshops the
people began talking in a low voice; they pointed to
the soldiers, the mitrailleuse levelled at the streets,
the walls covered with the still wet placard signed by
M. Thiers and his Ministers. They spoke of paralyzed
commerce, suspended orders, frightened capitals: "In¬
habitants of Paris, in your interest the Government has
resolved to act. Let the good citizens separate from the bad
ones; let them aid public force; they will render a service
to the Republic herself," said MM. Pouyer-Quertier, De Larcy,
Dufaure and other Republicans. The conclusion is borrowed
from the phraseology of December: "The culpable shall be
surrendered to justice. Order, complete, immediate and un¬
alterable, must be re-established." They spoke of order;—
blood was to be shed.
As in our great days, the women were the first to act.
Those of the 18th March, hardened by the siege—they had
had a double ration of misery—did not wait for the men.
They surrounded the mitrailleuses, apostrophized the sergeant
in command of the gun, saying, "This is shameful; what are
you doing there?" The soldiers did not answer. Occasionally
a non-commissioned officer spoke to them: "Come, my good
women, get out of the way." At the same time a handful
of National Guards, proceeding to the post of the
Rue Doudeauville, there found two drums that had not
been smashed, and beat the rappel. At eight o'clock they
numbered 800 officers and guards, who ascended the
Boulevard Ornano. They met a platoon of soldiers of the
88th, and, crying, "Vive la République!" enlisted them.
The post of the Rue Dejean also joined them, and the butt-
end of their muskets raised, soldiers and guards together
marched up to the Rue Muller that leads to the Buttes Mont¬
martre, defended on this side by the men of the 88th. These,
seeing their comrades intermingling with the guards,
signed to them to advance, that they would let them pass.
General Lecomte, catching sight of the signs, had the men
replaced by sergents-de-ville, and confined them in the
Tower of Solferino, adding, "You will get your deserts."
80
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
The sergents-de-ville discharged a few shots, to which the-
guards replied. Suddenly a large number of National Guards,
the butt-end of their muskets up, women and children,,
debouched on the other flank by the Rue des Rosiers.
General Lecomte, surrounded, three times commanded fire.
His men stood still, their arms ordered. The crowd, ad¬
vancing, fraternized with them, and Lecomte and his officers
were arrested.
The soldiers whom he had just shut up in the tower wanted
to shoot him, but some National Guards having succeeded
in disengaging him with great difficulty—for the crowd took
him for Yinoy—conducted him with his officers to the
Château-Rouge, where the staff of the battalions of the
National Guard was seated. There they asked him for
an order to evacuate the Buttes. He signed it with¬
out hesitation.1 The order was immediately communi¬
cated to the officers and soldiers of the Rue des Rosiers. The
gendarmes surrendered their chassepots, and even cried, "Vive
la République!" Three discharges from the cannon announced
the recapture of the Buttes.
General Paturel, who wanted to carry away the cannon,
surprised at the Moulin de la Galette, came into collision with
a living barricade in the Rue Lepic. The people stopped
the horses, cut the traces, dispersed the artillerymen,
and took back the cannon to their post. In the Place
Pigalle, General Susbielle gave the order to charge the
crowd collected in the Rue Houdon, but the chasseurs,
intimidated, spurred back their horses and were laughed at.
A captain, dashing forward, sabre in hand, wounded a guard,
and fell, pierced with balls. The General fled. The gen¬
darmes, who commenced firing from behind the huts, were
soon dislodged, and the bulk of the soldiers went over to the
people.
At Belleville, the Buttes Chaumont, the Luxembourg, the
1 This order enjoining the troop to file off in the midst of the National
Guards was drawn up in pencil by a captain. Lecomte copied it in ink
without changing a word. The court-martial has denied this, in order
to glorify this general, who died so pusillanimously.
THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE.
81
troops fraternized everywhere with the crowds that had col¬
lected at the first alarm.
By eleven o'clock the people had vanquished the aggressors
at all points, preserved almost all their cannon, of which only
ten had been carried off, and seized thousands of chassepots.
All their battalions were now on foot, and the men of the
faubourgs commenced unpaving the streets.
Since six o'clock in the morning D'Aurelles had had the
rappel beaten in the central quarters, but in vain. Battalions
formerly noted for their devotion to Trochu sent only
twenty men to the rendezvous. All Paris, on reading the
placards, said, "This is the coup-d'état." At twelve o'clock
D'Aurelles and Picard sounded the alarm: "The Government
call on you to defend your homes, your families, your property.
Some misguided men, under the lead of some secret
chiefs, turn against Paris the cannon kept hack from the
Prussians." These reminiscences of June, 1848, this accusa¬
tion of indelicacy toward the Prussians, failing to rouse any
one, the whole Ministry came to the rescue: "An absurd
rumor is being spread that the Government is preparing a
coup-d'état. It has wished and wishes to make an end of an
insurrectional Committee, whose members only represent
Communist doctrines." These alarms, repeatedly sounded,
raised in all 500 men.1
The Government were at the Foreign Office, and, after the
first reverses, M. Thiers had given the order to fall back with
all the troops on the Champs-de-Mars. When he saw the
desertion of the National Guards of the Centre, he declared
that it was necessary to evacuate Paris. Several Ministers
objected, wanted a few points to be guarded, the Hôtel-de-
Ville, its haracks occupied by the brigade Derroja, the
Ecole Militaire, and that they should take a position
on the Trocadéro. The little man, quite distracted,
would only hear of extreme measures. Leflô, who had
almost been made a prisoner at the Bastille, vigorously
1 Five to six hundred, says M. Thiers; fourteen men per battalion,
says Jules Ferry. Enquête sur le 18 Mars.
F
82
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
supported him. It was decided that the whole town should
he evacuated, even the forts on the south, restored by the
Prussians a fortnight before. Towards three o'clock the
popular battalions of the Gros Caillou marched past the
Hôtel-de-Ville, headed by drums and trumpets. The Council
believed itself surrounded.1 M. Thiers escaped by a back
stair, and left for Versailles so out of his senses that at the
bridge of Sèvres he gave the written order to evacuate Mont-
Valérien.
At the self-same hour when M. Thiers ran away, the
revolutionary battalions had not yet attempted any attack
or occupied any official posts.2 The aggression of the
morning had surprised the Central Committee, as it had all
Paris. The evening before they had separated as usual,
giving themselves a rendezvous for the 18th, at eleven o'clock
at night, behind the Bastille, at the school in the Rue
Basfroi; the Place de la Corderie, actively watched by the
police, no longer being safe. Since the 15th new elections
tad added to their numbers, and they had appointed a Com¬
mittee of Defence. On the news of the attack, some ran to
the Rue Basfroi, others applied themselves to raising the
battalions of their quarters: Varlin at the Batignolles,
Bergeret, recently named chef-de-légion, at Montmartre,
Duval at the Panthéon, Pindy in the third arrondissement,
Faltot in the Rue de Sèvres. Ranvier and Brunei, without
belonging to the Committee, were agitating Belleville and the
1 M. Thiers in. the Enquête sur le 18 Mars says, firstly, "We let them
defile," then, twenty lines farther, "We repulsed them." Leflô has not
concealed the fright the Council was in: "The moment seemed critical
to me. And I said, 'I think we are done for ; we shall be carried off
and indeed the battalions had only to penetrate into the palace and we
were all taken to the last man. But the three battalions marched off
without saying anything."—Vol. ii. p. 80.
5 The report of the Enquête sur le 18 Mars said that ' 'the Committee
did not hesitate on the afternoon of the 18th March to take possession
of all the administrations. " This is if not a lie, intended to palliate the
stampede of M. Thiers,—one of the grossest proofs of the ignorance of
this report, which attributes the manifestation of the 24th of February
to an order of the Central Committee.
THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE.
83
tenth, arrondissement. At ten o'clock a dozen members
met together, overwhelmed with messages from all sides,
and receiving from time to time some prisoners. Posi¬
tive intelligence only came in towards two o'clock. They
then drew up a kind of plan by which all the fed¬
eralist battalions were to converge upon the Hôtel-de-
Ville, and then dispersed in all directions to transmit
orders.1
The battalions were indeed on the alert, but did not
march. The revolutionary quarters, fearing a resumption
of the attack, and ignoring the plenitude of their victory,
were strongly barricading themselves, and remained where
they were. Even Montmartre was only swarming with guards
in search of news, and disbanded soldiers for whom collections
were being made, as they had had nothing to eat since the
morning. Towards half-past three o'clock the Committee of
Vigilance of the eighteenth arrondissement, established in
the Rue de Clignancourt, was informed that General Lecomte
was in great danger. A crowd, consisting chiefly of soldiers,
surrounded the Château-Rouge and demanded the General.
The members of the Committee of Vigilance, Ferré,
Jaclard, and Bergeret, immediately sent an order to the com¬
mander of the Château-Rouge to guard the prisoner, who
was to be put on his trial. When the order arrived Lecomte
had just left.
He had long been asking to be taken before the Central
Committee. The chiefs of the post, much perturbed by the
cries of the crowd, anxious to get rid of their responsibility,
and believing this Committee was sitting in the Rue des
Rosiers, decided to conduct the General and his officers
there. They arrived at about four o'clock, passing through a
terribly irritated crowd, yet no one raised a hand against them.
The General was closely guarded in a small front room on
the ground floor. There the scenes of the Château-Rouge
recommenced. The exasperated soldiers asked for his death.
The officers of the National Guard made desperate efforts to
1 See Appendix II., the details of the proceedings of the Central
Committee during this day, told by one of its members.
84
HISTORY OP THE COMMUNE.
quiet them, crying, "Wait for the Committee." They suc¬
ceeded in posting sentinels and appeasing the commotion for
a time.
No member of the Committee had arrived when, at half-
past four, formidable cries filled the street, and hunted by
a fierce multitude, a man with a white beard was thrust
against the wall of the house. It was Clément-Thomas, the
man of June, 1848, the insulter of the revolutionary
battalions. He had been recognized and arrested at the
Chaussée des Martyrs, where he was examining the barri¬
cades. Some officers of the National Guard, a Garibaldian
captain, Ilerpin-Lacroix, and some franc-tireurs had tried
to stop the deadly mass, repeating a thousand times, "Wait
for the Committee! Constitute a court-martial!" They
were jostled, and Clément-Thomas was again seized and
hurled into the little garden of the house. Twenty muskets
levelled at him battered him down. During this execution
the soldiers broke the windows of the room where General
Lecomte was confined, threw themselves upon him, dragging
him towards the garden. This man, who in the morning had
three times commanded fire upon the people, wept, begged for
pity, and spoke of his family. He was forced against the wall
and fell under the bullets.
These reprisals over, the wrath of the mass subsided.
They allowed the officers of Lecomte's suite to be taken
back to the Château-Rouge, and at nightfall they were set
at liberty.
While these executions took place, the people, so long
standing on the defensive, had begun to move. Brunei sur¬
rounded the Prince Eugène Barracks, held by the 120th of
the line. The colonel, accompanied by about a hundred
officers, assuming lofty airs, Brunei had them all locked up.
Two thousand chassepots fell into the hands of the people.
Brunei continued his march by the Rue du Temple towards
the Hôtel-de-Yille. The Imprimerie Nationale was occupied
at five o'clock. At six the crowd attacked the doors of the
Napoléon Barracks with hatchets. A discharge was made,
fired from the opening, and three persons fell; but the soldiers
THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE. 85
made signs from the windows of the Rue de Rivoli, crying,
"It is the gendarmes who have fired. Vive la République!"
Soon after they opened the doors and allowed their arms to
be carried off.1
At half-past seven the Hôtel-de-Ville was almost invested.
The gendarmes who occupied it fled by the subterranean
passage of the Lobau Barracks. About half-past eight Jules
Eerry and Vabre, entirely abandoned by their men, left with¬
out any order by the Government, also stole away. Shortly
after Brunei's column debouched on the place and took pos¬
session of the Hôtel-de-Ville, where Ranvier arrived at the same
time by the quays.
The number of the battalions augmented incessantly.
Brunei had given order to raise barricades in the Rue de
Rivoli, on the quays, manned all the approaches, distributed
the posts, and sent out strong patrols. One of these, sur¬
rounding the mairie of the Louvre, where the mayors were
deliberating, almost succeeded in catching Eerry, who saved
himself by jumping out of a window. The mayors returned
,to the mairie of the Place de la Bourse.
They had already met there during the day together with
many adjuncts, much ofEended at the senseless governmental
attack, waiting for information and for ideas. Towards four
o'clock they sent delegates to the Government. M. Thiers
had already made off. Picard politely showed them out.
D'Aurelles washed his hands of the whole affair, saying the
lawyers had done it. At night, however, it became necessary
to take a resolution. The federal battalions already sur¬
rounded the Hôtel-de-Ville and occupied the Place Vendôme,
whither Varlin, Bergeret, and Arnold had conducted the bat¬
talions of Montmartre and the Batignolles. Vacherot, Vau-
train, and a few reactionists spoke of resisting at any price,
as though they had had an army to back them. Others, more
sensible, sought for some expedient. They thought they could
calm down every thing by naming as prefect of police Ed.
1 Yinoy has the impudence to say in his book L'Armistice et la
Commune: "The general assembled his men, and sworcl in hand he
bravely placed himself at the head of his troops."
86
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
Adam, who had distinguished himself against the insurgents
of June, 1848, and as General of the National Guards the
giddy Proudhonist Langlois, a former Internationalist, who
had been for the movement of the 31st of October in the
morning, against it in the evening, and was named deputy,
thanks to a scratch received while gesticulating at Buzenval.
The delegates went to propose this brilliant solution to
Jules Favre. He refused outright, saying, "We cannot
treat with assassins." This comedy was only played to
justify the evacuation of Paris, which he concealed from
the mayors. During the conference it was announced that
Jules Ferry had abandoned the Hôtel-de-Ville. The other
Jules feigned surprise, and engaged the mayors to call out
the battalions of order for the purpose of replacing the van¬
ished army.
They returned overwhelmed by this raillery, humbled at
having been altogether left in the dark about the intention of
the Government. If possessed of some political courage, they
would have gone straight to the Hôtel-de-Ville, instead of
commencing to deliberate again in their mairie. At last, at
ten o'clock in the morning, Picard informed them that they
might bring out their Lafayette. They immediately sent
Langlois to the Hôtel-de-Ville.
Soihe of the members of the Central Committee had been
there since ten o'clock, generally very anxious and very hesi¬
tating. Not one of them had dreamt that power would fall
so heavily upon their shoulders. Many did not want to sit at
the Hôtel-de-Ville. They deliberated. At last it was decided
that they would only stay during the two or three days wanted
for the elections. Meanwhile it was necessary to ward off any
attempt at resistance. Lullier was present, buzzing around
the Committee, in one of his intervals of grave lucidity,
promising to ward off all danger and appealing to the vote
of Vauxhall. He had played no part during the whole day.1
1 Ten days after he recounted in a crazy letter written in the Con¬
ciergerie that he had done everything; taken the Hôtel-de-Ville, the Pre¬
fecture of Police, the Place Vendôme, the Tuileries, &c. ; and this letter
is referred to as an authority by the report of the Enquête sur le 18 Mars!
THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE.
87
The Committee committed the blunder of appointing him
commander-in-chief of the National Guard, while Brunei, who
had rendered such service since the morning, was already
installed in the Hôtel-de-Ville.
At three o'clock, Langlois, the competitor of Lullier, an¬
nounced himself. He was full of confidence in himself, and
had already sent his proclamation to the Journal Officiel.
"Who are you?" the sentinels asked him. "General of the
National Guard," answered Langlois. Some deputies of
Paris, Lockroy, Cournet, &c., accompanied him. The Com¬
mittee consented to receive them. "Who has named you?"
said they to Langlois. "M. Thiers." They smiled at this
aplomb of a madman. As he pleaded the rights of the
Assembly they put him to the test; "Dou you recognise the
Central Committee?" "No." He decamped to run after his
proclamation.
The night was calm, fatally calm for liberty. By the gates
of the south Vinoy marched off his regiments, his artillery, and
his baggage to Versailles. The disbanded troops jogged along
peevishly, insulting the gendarmes.1 The staff, true to its
traditions, had lost its head, and left in Paris three regiments,
six batteries, and all the gunboats, which it would have
sufficed to leave to the current of the river. The slightest
demonstration of the federals would have stopped this exodus.
Far from thinking of closing the gates, the new commander
of the National Guard—he boasted of it before the council of
war—left open all issues to the army.
For the future, I shall obstain from pointing out the errors that abound
in this report, which is an ignorant and malignant résumé of the lies,
inaccuracies, and animosity accumulated in this Inquiry, from which
all the vanquished, and even the smallest adversaries, were excluded.
Entirely insufficient as a historical source, it may well serve to set
forth the intelligence and morality of the French bourgeoisie of the
epoch.
1 Enquête sur le IS Mars, Marreille, vol. ii. p. 200.
( 88 )
CHAPTEE TV.
"Nos cœurs brisés font appel aux vôtres."—Les Maires et Adjoints de
Paris et les Députés de la Seine à la Darde Nationale et à tous les
Citoyens.
THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE CONVOKES THE ELECTORS—THE
MAYORS OF PARIS AND DEPUTIES OF THE SEINE TURN
AGAINST IT.
Paris only became aware of her victory on the morning of
the 19th of March. What a change in the scene, even after
all the scene-shifting in the drama enacted during these last
seven months! The red flag floated above the Hôtel-de-Ville.
With the early morning mists the army, the Government,
the Administration had evaporated. From the depths of the
Bastille, from the obscure Bue Basfroi, the Central Com¬
mittee was lifted to the summits of Paris in the sight of all
the world. Thus on the 4th September the Empire had
vanished; thus the deputies of the Left had picked up a derelict
power.
The Committee, to its great honour, had only one thought,
to restore its power to Paris. Had it been sectarian, hatching
decrees, the movement would have ended like that of the
31st October. Happily it was composed of new-comers, with¬
out a past, and without political pretensions; men of the small
middle-class, as well as workmen, shopkeepers, commercial
clerks, mechanics, sculptors, architects, caring little for sys¬
tems, anxious above all to save the Eepublic. At this giddy
height they had but one idea to sustain them, that of securing
to Paris her municipality.
Under the Empire this was one of the favourite schemes
of the Left, by which it had mainly won over the small
THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE.
89
Parisian bourgeoisie, much humiliated at the sight of Govern¬
mental nominees enthroned at the Hôtel-de-Ville for full
eighty years. Even the most pacific amongst them were
shocked, scandalised by the incessant increase of the
budget, the multiplied loans, and the financial swindling
• of Haussmann. And how they applauded Picard, revindi¬
cating for the largest and most enlightened city of France
.at least the rights enjoyed by the smallest village, or when
he defied the Pasha of the Seine to produce regular accounts!
'Towards the end of the Empire, the idea of an elective
municipal council had taken root; it had to a certain
•extent been put into practice during the siege, and
now its total realisation could alone console Paris for her
( decentralisation.
On the other hand, the popular masses, insensible to the
bourgeois ideal of a municipal .council, were bent on the Com¬
mune. They had called for it during the siege às an arm
: against the foreign enemy; they still called for it as a
lever for uprooting despotism and misery. What did they
• care for a council, even elective, but without real liberties
;and fettered to the state—without authority over the ad¬
ministration of schools and hospitals, justice and police, and
i altogether unfit for grappling with the social slavery of its
■fellow-citizens? What the people strove for was a political
form allowing them to work for the amelioration of their
'Condition. They had seen all the constitutions and all the
representative governments run counter to the will of the so-
called represented elector, and the state power, grown more
;and more despotic, despoil the workmen even of the right
1to defend his labour, and this power, which has ordained
•even the very air to be breathed, always refusing to inter¬
fere in capitalist brigandage. After so many failures, they
were fully convinced that the actual governmental and
•legislative régime was from its very nature unable to eman-
•cipate the working-man. This emancipation they expected
from the autonomous Commune, sovereign within the limits
•compatible with the maintenance of the national unity. The
•communal constitution was to substitute for the représenta-
90
HISTORY OP THE COMMUNE.
tive lording it over his elector the strictly responsible
mandatory. The old state power grafted upon the country,
feeding upon its substance, usurping supremacy on the
foundation of divided and antagonistic interests, organising
for the benefit of the few, justice, finance, army, and police,
was to he superseded by a delegation of all the autonomous
communes.
Thus the municipal question, appealing to the legitimate
susceptibilities of the one, to the bold aspirations of the other,
gathered all classes round the Central Committee.
At half-past eight they held their first sitting in the same
room where Trochu had been enthroned. The president was
a young man of about thirty-two; Edward Moreau, a small com¬
mission agent. "He was not in favour," he said, "of sitting
at the Hôtel-de-Ville, but since they were there, it was neces¬
sary to at once regularise their situation, tell Paris what they
wanted, proceed to the elections within the briefest term
possible, provide for the public services, and protect the town
from a surprise."
Two of his colleagues immediately said, "We must first
march on Versailles, disperse the Assembly, and appeal to
France to pronounce."
Another, the author of the Vauxhall motion, said, "No. We
have only the mandate to secure the rights of Paris. If the
provinces share our views, let them imitate our example."
Some wanted to consummate the revolution before refer¬
ring to the electors. Others opposed this vague suggestion.
The Committee decided to proceed at once to the elections,
and charged Moreau to draw up an appeal. While it
was being signed, a member of the Committee arrived,
saying, "Citizens, we have just been told that most of the
members of the Government are still in Paris; an attempt
at resistance is being organised in the first and second arron¬
dissements; the soldiers are leaving for Versailles. We must
take prompt measures to lay hands on the Ministers, disperse
the hostile battalions, and prevent the enemy from leaving
the town."
In fact, Jules Favre and Picard had hardly left Paris.
THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE.
91
The clearing of the Ministries was publicly going on; files
of soldiers were still marching off through the gates of
the left bank. But the Committee continued signing, neglect¬
ing this traditional precaution—the shutting of the gates—
and lost itself in the elections. It saw not—very few saw
as yet—that this was a death-struggle with the Assembly of
Versailles.
The Committee, distributing the work to be done, appointed
the delegates who were to take possession of the Ministries
and direct the various services. Some of these delegates were
chosen outside the Committee, from amongst those who were
reputed men of action, or the revolutionists. Some one having
spoken of an increase of pay, his colleagues indignantly an¬
swered, "We are not here to imitate the Government of the
Defence. We have lived till now on our pay; it will
still suffice." Arrangements were made for the permanent
presence of some members at the Hôtel-de-Ville, and then
they adjourned at one o'clock.
Outside the joyous clamor of the people enlivened the streets.
A spring sun smiled on the Parisians. This was their first
day of consolation and of hope for eight months. Before the
barricades of the Hôtel-de-Ville, at the Buttes Montmartre,
in all the boulevards, lookers-on were thronging. Who then
spoke of civil war? Only the Journal Officiel. It recounted
the events in its own way. "The Government had exhausted
every means of conciliation," and in a despairing appeal to
the National Guard it said, "A committee taking the name
of Central Committee has assassinated in cold blood the
Generals Clément-Thomas and Lecomte. Who are the mem¬
bers of this Committee? Communists, Bonapartists, or
Prussians? Will you take upon yourselves the responsibility
of these assassinations?" These lamentations of runaways
moved only a few companies of the centre. Yet—a grave
symptom this—the young bourgeois of the Polytechnic School
came to the mairie of the second arrondissement, where the
mayors had flocked, and the students of the universities, till
now the advanced guard of all our revolutions, pronounced
against the Committee.
02 HISTORY OP THE COMMUNE.
For this revolution was made by proletarians. Who were
they? What did they want? At two o'clock every one
hurried to see the placards of the Committee just
issued from the Imprimerie Nationale. "Citizens, the
people of Paris, calm and impassible in their strength,
have awaited without fear, as without provocation, the
shameless fools who want to touch our Republic. Let
Paris and France together lay the foundation of a true
Republic, the only Government which will for ever close the
era of revolutions. The people of Paris is convoked to make
its elections." And turning to the National Guard: "You
have charged us to organise the defence of Paris and of your
rights. Our mandate has now expired. Prepare, and at once
make your communal elections. Meanwhile we shall, in the
name of the people, hold the Hôtel-de-Ville." Twenty names1
followed, which, save three or four, Assi, Lullier, and Varlin,
were only known through the placards of the last few
days. Since the morning of the 10th August, 1792, Paris
has not seen in her Ilotel-de-Ville such an advent of
obscure men.
And yet their placards were respected, their battalions
circulated freely. They took possession of the posts; at one
o'clock the Ministries of Finance and of the Interior; at two
o'clock the Naval and War Offices, the telegraph, the Journal
Officiel, and Duval was installed at the Prefecture de Police.
And they had hit the mark. What indeed could be said
against this new-born power whose first word was its own
abdication?
Everything around them bore a warlike aspect. Let us
cross the half-open barricades of the Rue de Rivoli. Twenty
thousand men camped in the square of the Hôtel-de-Ville;
bread stuck on the end of their muskets. Fifty ordnance
pieces, cannon, and mitrailleuses drawn up along the façade
1 Assi, Billioray, Ferrât, Babick, Ed. Moreau, C. Dupont, Varlin,
Boursier, Mortier, Gouhier, Lavalette, F. Jourde, Rousseau, C. Lullier,
Blanehet, J. Grollard, Barrond, H. Geresme, Fabre, Fougeret, the
members present at the morning sitting. The Committee decided later
on that its publications should bear the names of all its members.
THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE.
93
served as the chevaux de frise of the town hall. The court
and staircases encumbered with guards taking their meals,
the large Salle du Trône swarming with officers, guards, and
civilians. In the hall on the left, which was used by the staff,
the noise subsided. The room by the river-side, at the corner
of the edifice, was the ante-chamber of the Committee. About
fifty men were writing there, bending over a long table. There
discipline and silence reigned. We were far from the anar¬
chists of the 31st October. From time to time the door,
guarded by two sentinels, opened to a member of the Com¬
mittee who carried orders or made inquiries.
The sitting had recommenced. A member asked the Com¬
mittee to protest against the executions of Clément-Thomas
and Lecomte, to which it was entirely foreign. "Take care
not to disavow the people," answered another, "for fear they
in turn should disavow you." A third said, "The Journal
Officiel declares the execution took place under our eyes. We
must stop these calumnies. The people and the bourgeoisie
have joined hands in this revolution. This union must be
maintained. You want everybody to take part in the elec¬
tions." "Well, then," he was apostrophised, "abandon the
people in order to gain the bourgeoisie; the people will with¬
draw, and you will see if it is with the bourgeois that revolu¬
tions are made." 1
The Committee decided that a note should be inserted in
the Journal Officiel to re-establish the truth. Ed. Moreau
proposed and read the draft of a manifesto, which was
adopted.
1 The minutes of the first Central Committee have disappeared, but
one of its most assiduous members has restored the principal sittings
from memory. It is from his notes, checked by several of his colleagues,
that we have taken these details. It is superfluous to say that the
minutes published by the Paris Journal, which have been used by
reactionist historians, are incomplete, inexact, drawn up from hearsay,
unintelligent indiscretions, and often from pure imagination. Thus,
for instance, they make all the sittings presided over by Assi, attribut¬
ing to him the principal part, because under the Empire he was very
incorrectly supposed to have directed the strike of Creuzot. Assi nevei
had any influence in the Committee.
94
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
The Committee were discussing the date and mode of the
elections when it was informed that a large meeting of the
chiefs of battalions, the mayors and deputies of the Seine
was being held at the mairie of the third arrondissement.
M. Thiers, during the morning, had given over to the
union of the mayors the provisional administration of
Paris, and they were trying their authority on the National
Guard. The Committee was assured that they intended to
convoke the electors.
"If it is so," said several members, "we must come to an
agreement with them to make the situation regular." Others,
remembering the siege, simply wanted to have them
arrested. One member said, "If we wish to have France
with us, we must not frighten her. Think what an effect
the arrest of the deputies and mayors would produce,
and what, on the other hand, the effect of their adhesion
would be." Another, "It is important to collect an im¬
posing number of voters. All Paris will go to the ballot-
boxes if the representatives and mayors join us." "Say
rather," cried an impetuous colleague, "that you are not equal
to your position; that your only preoccupation is to disengage
yourselves." They finally decided to send Arnold to the mairie
as delegate.
He was badly enough received. The most radical ad¬
juncts and deputies, Socialists like Millière and Malon,
flatly declared against the Hôtel-de-Ville, appalled at the
dangerous initiative of the people. Many too said, "Who
are these unknown men?" Even at the Corderie, Inter¬
nationalists and former members of the Committee of the
twenty arrondissements maintained a diffident attitude. How¬
ever, the meeting decided to send commissioners to the
Hôtel-de-Ville, for, whether they liked it or not, there was
the power.
The Central Committee had, in the meantime, fixed the
elections for the Wednesday, decreed the raising of the state
of siege, the abolition of the court-martials, and amnesty for
all political crimes and ofEences. It held a third sitting at
eight o'clock to receive the commissioners. These were the
THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE. 95
deputies Clémenceau, Millière, Tolain, Cournet, Malon, and
Lockroy, the mayors Bonvalet and Mottu, the adjuncts Murat,
Jaclard, and Léo Meillet.
Clémenceau, half accomplice, half dupe of M. Thiers' coup
d'état, in his quality of mayor and deputy, was the spokesman.
He was prolix and pedantic. "The insurrection has been
undertaken upon an illegitimate motive; the cannon belong
to the State. The Central Committee is without a mandate
and in no wise holds Paris. Numerous battalions were
gathering round the deputies and mayors. Soon the Com¬
mittee will become ridiculous and its decrees will be despised.
Besides, Paris has no right to revolt against France, and must
absolutely acknowledge the authority of the Assembly. The
Committee has but one other way of getting out of the diffi¬
culty—to submit to the union of the deputies and mayors, who
are resolved to obtain from the Assembly the satisfaction
claimed by Paris."
He was frequently interrupted during this speech. What!
They dared speak of an insurrection! Who had began the
civil war, attacked first? What had the National Guards
done hut answer a nocturnal aggression, taken hack cannon
paid for by themselves? What had the Central Committee
done hut follow the people and occupy the deserted Hôtel-
de-Ville?
A member of the Committee said, "The Central Committee
has received a regular, imperative mandate. This mandate
forbids them to allow the Government or the Assembly to
touch their liberties or the Republic. Now the Assembly has
never ceased putting the existence of the Republic in question.
It has placed a dishonoured general at our head, decapitalised
Paris, tried to ruin her commerce. It has sneered at our
sufferings, denied the devotion, the courage, the abnegation
Paris has shown during the siege, hooted her best-loved rep¬
resentatives, Garibaldi and Victor Hugo. The plot against
the Republic is evident. The attempt was commenced by
gagging the press; they hoped to terminate it by the
disarmament of our battalions. Yes, our case was one of
legitimate defence. If we have bowed our heads under this
96 HISTORY OP THE COMMUNE.
new affront, there was an end of the Republic. You have*
just spoken of the Assembly of France. The mandate of
the Assembly has expired. As to France, we had not the pre¬
tension of dictating her laws—we have too often suffered under
hers—hut we will not submit to her rural plebiscites. You
see it; the question is no longer to know which of our mandates
is the most regular. We say to you the revolution is made;
but we are not usurpers. We wish to call upon Paris to name
her representatives. Will you aid us, and proceed with us
to consult the elections? We eagerly accept your co¬
operation."
As he spoke of autonomous communes and their federation,
"Have a care," said Millière; "if you unfurl this flag they will
launch all France upon Paris, and I foresee days fatal as those
of J une. The hour of the social revolution has not yet struck.
Progress is obtained by slower marches. Descend from the
heights where you have placed yourselves. Victorious
to-day, your insurrection may, be vanquished to-morrow.
Make as much of it as you can, but do not hesitate to
content yourselves with little. I adjure you to leave the field
open to the union of the mayors and deputies; your confidence
will be well placed."
One of the Committee: "Since the social revolution has
been spoken of, I declare our mandate does not go so far."
(Others of the Committee, "Yes! Yes!" No! No!") "You
have spoken of a federation, of Paris as a free town. Our duty
is more simple. It is to proceed to the elections. The people
will afterwards decide on their action. As to yielding to the
deputies and mayors, this is impossible. They are unpopular
and have no authority in the Assembly. The elections will
take place with or without their concurrence. Will they help
us? We will receive them with open arms. If not, we shall
do without them, and, if they attempt to obstruct our way, we
shall know how to reduce them to impotency."
The delegates resisted. The discussion grew hot. "But,
in fine," said Clémenceau, "what are your pretensions? Do
you confine your mandate to asking the Assembly for a munici¬
pal council?"
THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE.
97
Many of the Committee: "No! No!" "We want," said
Varlin, "not only the election of the municipal council, but
real municipal liberties, the suppression of the prefecture of
police, the right of the National Guard to name its chiefs and
to reorganise itself, the proclamation of the Republic as the
legal Government, the pure and simple remittance of the rents
due, an equitable law on overdue bills, and the Parisian terri¬
tory interdicted the army."
Malon: "I share your aspirations, but the situation is peril¬
ous. It is clear that the Assembly will listen to nothing as
long as the Committee occupies the Hôtel-de-Ville. If, on the
contrary, Paris intrusts herself again to her legal representa¬
tives, I believe they could do more than you."
The discussion was protracted until half-past ten; the Com¬
mittee defending its right to proceed to the elections, the
delegates their pretension of superseding the Committee. They
at last agreed that the Committee should send four of its
members to the second arrondissement. Varlin, Moreau, Ar¬
nold, and Jourde were appointed.
There they found the whole staff of Liberalism: deputies,
mayors, and adjuncts; Louis Blanc, Sehœlcher, Carnot, Peyrat,
Tirard, Floquet, Desmarets, Vautrain, and Dubail, about sixty
altogether. The cause of the people there had a few
partisans, sincere, but terribly dismayed by the uncertain
future. The mayor of the second arrondissement, Tirard,
presided, a Liberal, nervous, haughty, one of those who
had helped to paralyse Paris in the hands of Trochu.
In his evidence before the Rural Committee of Inquiry,
he has mutilated, travestied this sitting, where the Radieo-
Liberal bourgeoisie laid bare all its baseness. We shall now,
for the instruction of and in justice to the people, give the
plain truth.
The delegates: "The Central Committee does not wish any¬
thing better than to come to an agreement with the municipal¬
ities, if they will proceed with the elections."
Sehœlcher, Tirard, Peyrat, Louis Blanc, all the Radicals
and Liberals in chorus: "The municipalities will not treat
with the Central Committee. There is only one authority—
G
HISTORY OP THE COMMUNE.
the union of the mayors invested with the delegation by the
Government."
The delegates: "Let us not discuss the point. The Central
Committee exists. We have been named by the National Guard
and we hold the Hôtel-de-Ville. Will you proceed to make
the elections?"
"But what is your programme?"
Yarlin set it forth. He was attacked from all sides. The
four delegates had to face twenty assailants. The great argu¬
ment of the Liberals was that Paris could not convoke herself,
but ought to wait for the permission of the Assembly. A
reminiscence this of the times of the siege, when they fell
prone before the Government of the Defence.
The delegates affirmed, on the contrary: "The people
has the right to convoke itself. It is an undeniable right,
which it has more than once made use of in our history in
moments of great peril, and at present we are passing through
such a crisis, since the Assembly of Versailles is making for
monarchy."
Then recriminations followed: "You are now face to face
with force," said the delegates. "Beware of letting loose a civil
war by your resistance." "It is you who want a civil war,"
replied the Liberals. At midnight Moreau and Arnold, quite
disheartened, withdrew. Their colleagues were about to
follow, when some adjuncts entreated them to stay. "We
promise," said the mayors and deputies, "to make every effort
to obtain the municipal elections with the shortest delay."
"Very well," answered the delegates, "but we maintain our
position; we want guarantees." The deputies and mayors,
growing obstinate, pretended that Paris must surrender un¬
conditionally. Jourde was about to retire, when some of the
adjuncts again detained him. For a moment they seemed to
be coming to an understanding. The Committee was to give
up all the administrative services to the mayors, and let them
occupy one part of the Hôtel-de-Ville; itself, however, was
to continue sitting there, to retain the exclusive direction of
the National Guard, and to watch over the security of the
town. This agreement only required to be confirmed by
THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE.
99
the issue of a common proclamation, but when the heading
of the latter came to be discussed, the contest grew more
violent than before. The delegates proposed, "The deputies,
mayors, and adjuncts, in accord with the Central Committee."
These gentlemen, on the contrary, desired to hide them¬
selves behind a mask. For an hour Louis Blanc, Tirard,
and Schœlcher overwhelmed the delegates with indig¬
nities. Louis Blanc cried to them, "You are insurgents
against a most freely elected Assembly.1 We, the regular
mandatories, we cannot avow a transaction with insurgents.
We should be willing to prevent a civil war, but not to appear
as your auxiliaries in the eyes of France." Jourde an¬
swered the mannikin that this transaction, in order to
be accepted by the people of Paris, must be publicly
consented to, and, despairing of making anything out of this
meeting, withdrew.
And amongst this élite of the Liberal Bourgeoisie, former
exiles, publicists, historians of our revolutions, not one in¬
dignant voice protested, "Let us cease these cruel disputes,
this barking at a revolution. Woe to us if we do not
recognise the force manifesting itself through unknown men!
The Jacobins of 1794 denied it, and they perished; the Mon¬
tagnards of 1848 abandoned it, and they perished; the Left
under the Empire, the Government of the National Defence,
disdained it, and our integrity as a nation has perished. Let
us open our eyes, our hearts; let us break out of the beaten
track. No; we will not widen the gulf that the days of June,
1848, and the Empire have placed between us and the work¬
men. No; with the disasters of France in view, we shall not
allow her living forces still in reserve to be touched. The
more abnormal, monstrous our situation is, the more we are
bound to find the solution, even under the eye of the
Prussian. You, the Central Committee, who are the spokes¬
men of Paris, we, who are listened to by Republican France,
we will mark out a field for common action. You supply
1 Textual. It is from the little man of Paris that the little man of
Versailles borrowed the phrase while he completed it.
100
HISTORY OP THE COMMUNE.
the force, the large aspirations, we the knowledge of realities
and their inexorable behests. We shall present to the
Assembly this charter free from all Utopian views, equally
regardful of the rights of the nation and of those of the
capital. If the Assembly rejects it, we shall be the first
to make the elections, to ask for your suffrage. And
when France sees Paris raising her force counterpoised
by prudence at her Hôtel-de-Ville, vigorous new-comers
allied with men of old repute, the only possible bulwark
against royalists and clericals, she will rise as in the days
of the Federation, and at her voice Versailles will have
to yield."
But what was to be expected of men who had not even
been able to pluck up sufficient courage to wrench Paris
from Trochu? Varlin single-handed had to stand their com¬
bined attack. Exhausted, worn out—this contest had lasted
five hours—he at last gave way, but under protest. On re¬
turning to the Hôtel-de-Ville, he recovered all his wonted
energy, his calm intelligence, and told the Committee he
now saw the snare, and advised it to reject the pretensions of
the mayors and deputies.
( 101 )
CHAPTER Y.
"Je croyais que les insurgés de Paris ne pourraient pas conduire leur
oarque. "—Jules Favre, Enquête sur le 18 Mars.
THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE AFFIRMS ITSELF, REORGANISES
THE PUBLIC SERVICES, AND HOLDS PARIS.
Thus no agreement had been come to, only one of the
four delegates having, from sheer weariness, given way to a
certain extent. So on the morning of the 20th, when the
mayor Bonvalet and two adjuncts sent by the mayors came
to take possession of the Hôtel-de-Ville, the members of the
Committee unanimously exclaimed, "We have not treated."
But Bonvalet, feigning to believe in a regular agreement,
continued, "The deputies are to-day going to ask for the
municipal franchises. Their negotiations cannot succeed if
the administration of Paris is not given up to the mayors.
On pain of frustrating the efforts which will save you, you
must fulfil the engagements of your delegates."
One of the Committee: "Our delegates received no mandate
to enter into such engagements for us. We do not ask to be
saved."
Another: "The weakness of the deputies and of the
mayors is one of the causes of the revolution. If the Com¬
mittee abandons its position and disarms, the Assembly will
grant nothing."
Another: "I have just come from the Corderie. The Com¬
mittee of the second arrondissement is holding a sitting, and
it adjures the Central Committee to remain at its post till
the elections."
Others were about to speak, when Bonvalet declared that
102
HISTORY OP THE COMMUNE.
he had come to take possession of the Hôtel-de-Ville, not to
discuss, and walked off. His superciliousness confirmed the
worst suspicions. Those who the evening before had been
favourable to making terms said, "These men want to betray
us." Behind the mayors the Committee beheld the implacable
reaction. In any case, to ask them for the Hôtel-de-Ville
was to ask their lives, for the National Guards would have
believed them traitors, and punished them on the spot. In
one word, compromise had become impossible. The Journal
Officiel, for the first time in the hands of the people, and the
placards had spoken.
"The election of the municipal council will take place on
"Wednesday next, 22nd March," decreed the Central Com¬
mittee. And in a manifesto it said, "The offspring of a Re¬
public whose device bears the great word Praternity, the
Central Committee pardons its traducers, but it would con¬
vince the honest people who have believed their calumnies
through ignorance. It has not been secret, for its members
have signed their names to all its proclamations. It has not
been unknown, for it was a free expression of the suffrage
of 215 battalions. It has not been the fomenter of disorder,
for the National Guard has committed no excess. And yet
provocations have not been wanting. The Government
calumniated Paris and set on the provinces against
her, wished to impose on us a general, attempted to
disarm us, and said to Paris, 'Thou hast shown thyself
heroic, we are afraid of thee, hence we will tear from
thee the crown of the capital of Prance.' What has
the Central Committee done in answer to these attacks?
It has founded the Federation, preached moderation,
generosity. One of the greatest causes of anger against us
is the obscurity of our names. Alas ! many names were
known, well known, and this notoriety has been fatal to us.
Notoriety is cheaply gained; often hollow phrases or a little
cowardice suffice; recent events have proved this. Now that
our object is attained, we say to the people, who esteemed
us enough to listen to the advice that has often clashed
with their impatience, 'Here is the mandate you intrusted
THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE.
103
to ns.' There, where our personal interest commences,
our duty ends. Do your will. You have freed your¬
selves. Obscure a few days ago, obscure we shall return
to your ranks, and show our governors that it is possible to
descend the steps of your Hôtel-de-Ville, head erect, with
the certainty of receiving at the bottom the pressure of your
loyal and hardy hands." 1 By the side of the proclamation
of an eloquence so vivid and so novel the deputies and the
mayors placarded a few dry and colourless lines, where they
promised to demand of the Assembly that same day the
election of all the chiefs of the National Guard and the estab¬
lishment of a municipal council.
At Versailles they found a wildly excited crowd. The
terrified functionaries who arrived from Paris spread terror
about them, and five or six insurrections were announced
from the provinces. The coalition was dismayed. Paris
victorious, the Government in flight—this was not what had
been promised. These conspirators, blown up by the mine
which they had themselves sprung, raised the cry of conspiracy,
spoke of taking refuge at Bourges. Picard had certainly
telegraphed to all the provinces, "The army, to the
number of 40,000 men, is concentrated at Versailles;"
but the only army to he seen was straggling hands of soldiers
wandering about the streets. All Vinoy had been able to
do was to place a few posts along the routes of Châtillon and
Sèvres, and protect the approaches to the Assembly by some
mitrailleuses.
The President, Grévy, who during the whole war had
cowered in the provinces, sullenly hostile to the defence,
opened the sitting by stigmatising this criminal insurrection
"which no pretext could extenuate." Then the deputies of
the Seine commenced a procession towards the tribune. In¬
stead of a collective manifesto, they laid before the Assembly
a series of fragmentary propositions, without connection,
without general views, and without a preamble to explain
rI need not justify the long quotations I shall make. The French
proletarian has never been allowed to speak in books of history; at
least he should do so in the recital of his own revolution.
104
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
them. First a bill convoking with the briefest delay the
elections of Paris, then another granting to the National
Guard the election of its chiefs. Millière alone thought of
the overdue commercial bills, and proposed to prolong them
for six months.
Till then exclamations only and half-muttered insults had
been levelled at Paris, but no formal act of accusation. In
the evening sitting a deputy applied this requisite. Trochu
made a sortie. In this monstrous scene, which a Shakspere
only could depict, the gloomy man who had softly slipped*
the great town into the hands of William, threw his own
treason upon the revolutionists, accusing them of having
almost a dozen times brought the Prussians into Paris. And
the Assembly, grateful for his services, his hatred, giving
him the crown he merited, covered him with applause.
Another came to fan this rage. The evening before the
National Guards had arrested in a train arriving from
Orléans two generals in uniform. One of them was Chanzy,
unknown to the crowd, who took him for D'Aurelles.
They could not have been released without endangering
their lives, but a deputy, Turquet, who accompanied them,
was immediately set free. He rushed off to the Cham¬
ber, told them a fairy tale, and affected to be much
moved in speaking of his companions. "I hope," said
the hypocrite, "that they will not be assassinated." This
story was accompanied by the furious yelling of the
Assembly.1
From the first sitting one could see what the struggle
between Versailles and Paris was to be. The monarchical
conspirators, abandoning their dream for a moment, hastened
to do the most urgent work first: to save themselves from
the Revolution. They surrounded M. Thiers and promised
him their absolute support to crush Paris. Thus this Ministry,
that a truly National Assembly would have impeached, be-
1 The two generals have testified to the extreme consideration shown
them in their prison. See the Enquête sur le 18 Mars. Two days later,
on Chanzy's simple promise not to serve against Paris, the Central
Committee set them free.
THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE. 105
came, even through its crime, all-powerful. Scarcely recovered
from the fright of their stampede, M. Thiers and his Ministers
dared to play the swaggerers. And indeed, would not the
provinces hasten to their rescue, as in June, 1848? And
proletarians without political education, without admin¬
istration, without money, how could they he able "to steer
their hark"?
In 1831 the proletarians, masters of Lyons, had failed in
their attempt at self-government, and how much greater was
the difficulty for those of Paris! All new powers had until
then found the administrative machine in working order, in
readiness for the victor. On the 20th March the Central
Committee found it taken to pieces. At the signal from
Versailles the majority of functionaries had abandoned their
posts. Octrois, street inspection, lighting, markets, public
charity, telegraphs, all the respiratory and digestive apparatus
of the town of 1,600,000 souls, everything had to be extem¬
porised. Certain mayors had carried off the seals, the registers,
and the cash of their mairies. The military intendance left
without a farthing six thousand sick in the hospitals and
ambulances.1 M. Thiers had tried to disorganise even the
management of the cemeteries.
Poor man! who never knew anything of our Paris, of her
inexhaustible strength, her marvellous elasticity. The Central
Committee received support from all sides. The committees
of arrondissements furnished a personnel to the mairies; some
of the small middle-class lent their experience, and the most
important services were set to rights in no time by men of
common sense and energy, which soon proved superior to
routine. The employés who had remained at their posts in
order to hand over the funds to Versailles were soon discovered
and obliged to flee.
The Central Committee overcame a more menacing diffi¬
culty. Three hundred thousand persons without work,
without resources of any kind, were waiting for the thirty
sous upon which they had lived for the last seven months.
On the 19th, Varlin and Jourde, delegates to the finance
1 Enquête sur le 18 Mars, Dr. Danet, vol. ii. p. 531.
106
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
department, took possession of that Ministry. The coffers,
according to the statement of accounts handed over to them,
contained 4,600,000 francs; but the keys were at Versailles,
and, in view of the movement for conciliation then being
carried on, the delegates did not dare to force the locks.
The next day they went to ask Rothschild to open them
a credit at the bank, and he sent word that the funds
would be advanced. The same day the Central Committee
broached the question more forcibly, and sent three dele¬
gates to the bank to request the necessary advances. They
were answered that a million was placed at the disposition
of Varlin and Jourde, who at six o'clock in the evening
were received by the governor, M. Rouland. "I expected
your visit," he said. "On the morning following a change
of Government, the bank has always to find the money
for the new-comers. It is not my business to judge events;
the Bank of France has nothing to do with politics. You
are a de facto Government, and the bank gives you for to-day
a million. Only be so kind as to mention in your receipt
that this sum has been requisitioned on account of the town
of Paris." 1 The delegates took away a million francs in
bank-notes. All the employés of the Ministry of Finance had
disappeared since the morning, but with the help of a few
friends the sum was rapidly divided among the paying officers.
At ten o'clock the delegates were able to tell the Central Com¬
mittee that the pay was being distributed in all the arrondisse¬
ments.
The bank acted prudently: the Central Committee firmly
held Paris. The mayors and deputies had not been able
to unite more than three or four hundred men, although
1 Of course the Radicals have seen in this a Bonapartist manoeuvre,
have written and said from the tribune of the Assembly, "The
Bonapartist director of the Bank of France saved the Revolution;
without the million of the Monday the Central Committee would have
capitulated." Two facts answer this: From the 19th the Committee
had in the Ministry of Finance 4,600,000 francs; the municipal coffers
contained 1,200,000 francs, and on the 21st the Octroi had brought in
500,000 more.
THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE. 107
they had charged Admiral Saisset with the organisation of the
resistance. The Committee was so sure of its strength that
it had the barricades demolished. Everybody came to it,
the garrison of Vincennes spontaneously surrendering them¬
selves with the fort. Its victory was too complete, for it was
perilous, obliging it to disperse its troops in order to take
possession of the abandoned forts on the south. Lullier,
intrusted with this mission, had the forts of Ivry, Bicêtre,
Montrouge, Yanves, and Issy occupied on the 19th and
20th. The last to which he sent the National Guard,
Mont-Valérien, was the key of Paris, and, at that time, of
Versailles.
For thirty-six hours the impregnable fortress had remained
empty. On the evening of the 18th, after the order of
evacuation, it had to defend it only twenty muskets and
some chasseurs of Vincennes, interned there for mutiny. The
same, evening they burst open the locks of the fortress and
returned to Paris.
When the evacuation of Mont-Valérien became known at
Versailles, generals and deputies begged M. Thiers to have
it reoccupied. He obstinately refused, declaring this fort had
no strategical value. During the whole day of the 19th they
still failed. At last Vinoy, in his turn, urged by them, suc¬
ceeded on the 20th, at one o'clock in the morning, in wresting
an order from M. Thiers. A column was immediately
despatched, and at mid-day a thousand soldiers occupied the
fortress. Not until evening, at eight o'clock, did the battalions
of Ternes present themselves; the governor easily got rid of
their officers. Lullier, on making his report to the Central
Committee, said he had occupied all the forts, and even named
the battalion which, according to him, was then in possession
of Mont-Valérien.
( 108 )
CHAPTER Y I.
L'ideé de voir un massacre me remplissait de douleur."—Jules Favre,
Enquête sur le 4 Septembre.
THE MAYOBS, THE DEPUTIES, THE JOURNALISTS, THE ASSEM¬
BLY COMBINE AGAINST PARIS—THE REACTION MARCHES
ON THE PLACE YEMDÔME, AND IS PUNISHED.
On the 21st the situation stood out in bold relief.
At Paris—the Central Committee, with it all the workmen
and all the generous and enlightened men of the small middle-
class. The Committee said, "We have but one object—the
elections. Everybody is welcome to co-operate with us,
hut we shall not leave the Hôtel-de-Yille before they have
been made."
At Versailles—the Assembly;—all the monarchists, all
the great bourgeoisie, all the slaveholders. They yelled,
"Paris is only a rebel, the Central Committee a band of
brigands."
Between Versailles and Paris—a few Radical deputies,
all the mayors, many adjuncts. They comprised the Liberal
bourgeois, that sacred herd that makes all revolutions and
allows all the empires to be made. Despised by the As¬
sembly, disdained by the people, they cried to the Central
Committee, "Usurpers!" and to the Assembly, "You will
spoil all."
The day of the 21st is memorable, for on it all these voices
made themselves heard.
The Central Committee: "Paris has in nowise the intention
of separating from France; far from it. For France she has
borne with the Empire and the Government of the National
Defence, with all their treachery and defections, certainly
not to abandon her now, but only to say to her as an elder
THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE. 109
sister: Sustain thyself as I have sustained myself; oppose thy¬
self to oppresion as I have done."
And the Journal Officiel, in the first of those articles where
Moreau, Longuet, and Rogeard commented upon the new
revolution, said: "The proletarians of the capital, amidst the
failures and treasons of the ruling classes, have understood
that the hour has struck for them to save the situation by
taking into their own hands the direction of public affairs.
Hardly possessed of the government, they have hastened to
convoke the people of Paris to the ballot-boxes. There is no
example in history of a provisional government so anxious
to divest itself of its mandate. In the presence of conduct so
disinterested, one may well ask how a press can be found
unjust enough to pour out upon these citizens slander,
contumely, and insult? The workingmen, those who pro¬
duce everything and enjoy nothing, are they then for ever
to he exposed to outrage? The bourgeoisie, which has
accomplished its emancipation, does it not understand that
now the time for the emancipation of the proletariat is come?
Why, then, does it persist in refusing the proletariat its
legitimate share?"
It was the first Socialist note struck in the movement.
Parisian revolutions never remain purely political. The
approach of the foreigner, the abnegation of the workmen,
had, on the 4th September, silenced all social demands.
Peace once concluded, the workmen in power, their voice
would naturally make itself heard. How just was this
complaint of the Central Committee! Wliat an act of
accusation the French proletariat could draw up against its
masters! And on the 18th March, 1871, could not the
people, making greater their great words of 1848, say, "We
had placed eighty years of patience at the service of our
country" ?
The same day the Central Committee suspended the sale
of objects pledged in the pawnshops, prolonged the overdue
bills for a month, and forbade landlords to dismiss their tenants
till further notice. In three lines it did justice, beat Versailles,
and gained Paris.
110 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
On the other hand, the representatives and mayors told the
people, "No election; everything is for the best. We wanted
the maintenance of the National Guard; we shall have it.
We wanted Paris to recover her municipal liberty; we shall
have it. Your requests have been brought before the As¬
sembly. The Assembly has satisfied them by a unanimous
vote, which guarantees the municipal elections. Awaiting
these, the only legal elections, we declare that we shall abstain
from the elections announced for to-morrow, and we protest
against their illegality."
Thrice-lying address! The Assembly had not said a word
of the National Guard; it had promised no municipal liberty,
and several of the signatures were supposititious.
The bourgeois press followed suit. Since the 19th the
Figarist papers, supported by the police, the altar, and the
alcove, the Liberal gazettes, by which Trochu had prepared
the capitulation of Paris, had not ceased to fall foul of the
federal battalions. They spoke of the public coffers and pri¬
vate property being pillaged, of Prussian gold streaming into
the faubourgs, of documentary evidence hurtful to the mem¬
bers of the Central Committee destroyed by them. The Re¬
publican journals also discovered gold in the movement, but
Bonapartist gold; and the best of them, naively convinced that
the Republic belonged to their patrons, inveigled against the
accession of the proletariat, saying, "These people dishonour
us." Emboldened by the mayors and deputies, they all agreed
to revolt; and on the 21st, in a collective declaration, asked
the electors to consider as null and void the illegal convocation
of the Hôtel-de-Ville.
Illegality! Thus the question was put by the Legitimists,
twice imposed on us by foreign bayonets; by the Orléanists,
raised to power through barricades; by the brigands of Decem¬
ber; even by the exiles returned home, thanks to an insur¬
rection. What! When the bourgeois, who make all laws,
always act illegally, how are the workmen to proceed, against
whom all the laws are made?
These attacks of the mayors and deputies and of the press
screwed up the courage of the Hectors of the reaction. - Fof
THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE.
Ill
two days this rabble of runaways, who during the siege had
infested the cafés of Brussels and the Haymarket of London,
gesticulated on the fashionable boulevards, asking for order
and work. On the 21st, at about ten o'clock, at the Place de
la Bourse, about a hundred of these strange workingmen
marched round the Stock Exchange, banners flying, and ad¬
vancing along the boulevards to the cries of "Vive l'Assem¬
blée!" came to the Place Vendôme, shouting before the general
staff, "Down with the Committee!" The commander of the
Place, Bergeret, told them to send delegates. "No, no!" cried
they; "no delegates! You would assassinate them!" The
federals, losing patience, had the Place cleared. The riotous
fops gave themselves a rendezvous for the next day before the
new Opera-House.
At the same hour the Assembly made its demonstration.
The draft of an address to the people and the army, a tissue
of lies and insults to Paris, having just been read, and Millière
having pointed out that it contained some unfortunate ex¬
pressions, was hooted. The demand of the Left to at least
conclude the address with the words "Vive la République!"
was frantically refused by an immense majority. Louis Blanc
and his group, entreating the Assembly to immediately ex¬
amine their project of municipal law and oppose a vote to
the elections that the Committee announced for the next day,
M. Thiers answered, "Give us time to study the question."
"Time!" exclaimed M. Clémenceau, "we have none to lose."
Then M. Thiers gave those drones a lesson they richly de¬
served: "What would be the use of concessions?" said he.
"What authority have you at Paris? Who would listen to you
at the Hôtel-de-Ville? Do you think that the adoption of
a bill would disarm the party of brigands, the party of as¬
sassins?" Then he charged Jules Favre to expatiate on this
theme for the special benefit of the provinces. For an hour
and a half that bitter follower of Guadet, spinning round
Paris his elaborate periods, limed her with his venom. No
doubt he again saw himself on the 31st October, when the
people held him in their power and pardoned hi'm, a cruel
remembrance for his rankling spirit. He commenced by read-
112 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
ing the declaration of the press, "courageously written," said
he, "under the knife of the assassins."' He spoke of Paris as
in the power of "a handful of scoundrels, putting above the
right of the Assembly I know not what bloody and rapacious
ideal." Then, humbly supplicating monarchists and Catholics:
"What they want," cried he, "what they have realised, is an
attempt at that baleful doctrine which in philosophy may be
called individualism and materialism, and which in politics
means the Republic placed above universal suffrage." At this
idiotic quibbling the Assembly burst into roars of applause.
"These new doctors," continued he, "have the pretension of
separating Paris from France. But let the insurgents know
this: if we left Paris, it was with the intention of returning
in order to combat them resolutely. (Bravo! bravo!) Then
stirring the panic of those rurals who every moment expected
to see the federal battalions coming down upon them: "If
some of you fall into the hands of these men, who have only
usurped power for the sake of violence, assassination and
theft, the fate of the unfortunate victims of their ferocity
would be yours." And finally, garbling, improving with
ferocious skill the maladroitness of an article in the Journal
Officiel on the execution of the generals: "No more tem¬
porising. For three days I combated the exigencies of the
victor who wanted to disarm the National Guard. I ask
pardon for it of God and of man." Each new insult, each
banderillo thrust into the flesh of Paris, drew from
the Assembly mad hurrahs. Admiral Saisset stamped,
emphasizing certain phrases of the speaker with his
hoarse interjections. Goaded by these wild cheers, Jules
Favre doubled his invective. Since the Gironde, since
Isnard's curse, Paris had not undergone such an im¬
precation. Even Langlois, unable to stand it any longer,
exclaimed, "Oh, it is outrageous, atrocious to speak thus!"'
And when Jules Favre concluded, implacable, impassible,
only foaming a little at the mouth: "France will not be
lowered to the bloody level of the wretches who oppress the
capital," the whole Assembly rose raving. "Let us appeal
to the provinces," shrieked the rurals. And Saisset: "Yes,
THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE.
113
let us appeal to the provinces and march on Paris."
In vain one of the deputies of the Seine adjured the
Assembly not to let them return to Paris empty-handed.
This great bourgeoisie, which had just surrendered the
■honour, the fortune, and the territory of France to the
Prussian, trembled with rage at the mere thought of conceding
anything to Paris.
After this horrible scene, the Radical deputies found
nothing better to do than to issue a lachrymose address
inviting Paris to be patient. The Central Committee was
obliged to adjourn the elections till the 23rd, for several
mairies belonged to the enemy; but on the 22nd it warned
the papers that provocation to revolt would be severely
repressed.
The matadors of reaction, reanimated by Jules Favre's
speech, took this warning for an idle boast. On the 22nd at
mid-day they assembled at the Place du Nouvel Opera. At
one o'clock they numbered a thousand dandies, squireens,
journalists, notorious familiars of the Empire, who marched
down the Rue de la Paix to the cry of "Vive l'ordre!" Their
plan was, under the cloak of a pacific demonstration, to force
the Place Vendôme and to expel the Federals from it; then,
masters of the mairie of the first arrondissement, of half
of the second and of Passy, they would have cut Paris
in two and menaced the Hôtel-de-Ville. Admiral Saisset
followed them. ,
Before the Rue Neuve St. Augustin these pacific demon¬
stration-men disarmed and ill-treated two detached sentries
of the National Guard. Seeing this, the Federals of the Place
Vendôme seized their muskets and hurried in marching order
to the top of the Rue Neuve des Petits-Champs. They were
but 200, the whole garrison of the place; the two cannon
levelled at the Rue de la Paix had no cartridges. The re¬
actionists soon encountered the first line with the cry,
"Down with the Committee! Down with the assassins!"
waving a banner and their handkerchiefs, while some of them
stretched out their hands to seize the muskets. Bergeret,
H
114 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
Maljournal, members of the Committee, in the first ranks,
summoned the rioters to retire. Furious cries of "Cowards!
brigands!" drowned their voices, and sword-canes were pointed
at them. Bergeret made a sign to the drummers. A dozen
times the sommations were made and repeated. For several
minutes only the roll of the drums was heard, and between
these savage cries. The ranks in the rear of the manifestation
pushed on those in front and tried to break through the lines
of the Federals. At last, despairing no doubt of succeeding
by mere bravado, the insurgents fired their revolvers;1 two
guards were killed and seven wounded;2 Mai journal was struck
in the thigh.
The muskets of the guards went off, so to say, spon¬
taneously. A volley and a terrible cry, followed by silence
more dismal. In a few seconds the crowded Rue de la Paix
was emptied. In the deserted road, strewn with revolvers,
sword-canes, and hats, lay about a dozen corpses. If the
Federals had only aimed at foes' hearts, there would have
been 200 killed, for in this compact mass no shot would
have missed. The insurgents had killed one of their own,
the Vicomte de Molinat, fallen in the front ranks, his
face towards the place, a ball in the occiput. On his body
was found a poniard fixed by a small chain. A witty ball
struck in the rear the chief editor of the Paris Journal,
the Bonapartist De Pêne, one of the basest revilers of the
movement.
The runaways traversed Paris shouting, "Murder!" The
shops of the boulevards were closed and the Place de la Bourse
filled with rabid groups. At four o'clock some of the
reactionist companies appeared, resolute, in good order, their
muskets on their shoulders, and took possession of the quarters
of the Bourse.
At three o'clock the event became known at Versailles. The
1 The aggression was so evident, that not one of the twenty court-
martials that searched into every detail of the revolution of the 18th
March dared allude to the affair of the Place Vendôme.
2 Their names were published in the Journal Officiel.
THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE. 115
Assembly had just rejected Louis Blanc's bill on the municipal
council, and Picard was reading another one refusing all
justice to Paris, when the news arrived. The Assembly pre¬
cipitately raised the sitting; the Ministers looked dumb-
foundered.
All their swaggering of the evening before had only been
meant to frighten Paris, to encourage the men of order, and
provoke a coup-de-main. The incident had occurred, but the
Central Committee triumphed. For the first time M. Thiers
began to believe that this Committee, able to repress a riot,
might after all be a Government.
The news in the evening was more reassuring. The fusillade
seemed to have roused the men of order. They were flocking
to the Place de la Bourse. A great many officers just returned
from Germany came to offer their help. The reactionary com¬
panies were establishing themselves solidly in the mairie of
the ninth arrondissement and reoccupying that of the sixth,
dislodging the Federals of the station of St. Lazare, guarding
all the approaches of the occupied quarters, and forcibly ar¬
resting the passers-by. They formed a town within the town.
The mayors were constituting a permanent committee in the
mairie of the second arrondissement. Their resistance was
now provided with an army.
( 116 )
CHAPTER TII.
THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE TRIUMPHS OVER ALL OBSTACLES
AND CONSTRAINS THE MAYORS TO CAPITULATE.
The Central Committee was equal to the occasion. Its
proclamations, its Socialist articles in the Officiel, the trucu¬
lence of the mayors and deputies, had at last rallied round
it all the revolutionary groups. It had also added to its mem¬
bers some men better known to the masses.1 By its order
the Place Vendôme was provided with barricades; the
battalions of the Hôtel-de-Ville were reinforced; strong patrols
remounted the boulevards before the reactionary posts of the
Rues Vivienne and Drouot. Thanks to it, the night passed
tranquilly.
As the elections on the next day had become impossible,
the Committee declared they could only take place on the
26th, and said to Paris: "The reaction, excited by your mayors
and your deputies, has declared war on us. We must accept
the struggle and break this resistance." It announced that
it would summon before it all the journalists libelling the
1 Here are the names of those who signed the proclamations and
notices of the Committee. We shall restore, as far as possible, their
correct orthography, often altered, even in the Officiel, to the extent of
giving fictitious names:—Andignoux, A. Arnaud, G. Arnold, A. Assi,
Babick, Barroud, Bergeret, Billioray, Bcuit, Boursier, Blanchet, Castioni,
Chouteau, C. Dupont, Eudes, Fabre, Ferrât, Fleury, H. Fortuné, Fou-
geret, Gaudier, Geresme, Gouhier, Grêlier, J. Grollard, Josselin, Jourde,
Lavalette, Lisbonne, Lullier, Maljournal, Ed. Moreau, Mortier, Prud-
homme, Ranvier, Rousseau, Yarlin, Viard. Notwithstanding the
decision of the Committee, all its members did not always sign the
proclamations. Finally, some who took part in certain deliberations
never signed at all.
THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE. 117
people. It sent a battalion of Belleville to reoccupy the mairie
of the sixth, and replaced by its delegates the mayors and ad¬
juncts of the third, tenth, eleventh, twelfth, and eighteenth
arrondissements, in spite of their protestations. M. Clémenceau
wrote that he yielded to force, but would not himself resort
to force. This was all the more magnanimous that his whole
force consisted of himself and his adjunct. The Federals in¬
stalled themselves at the Batignolles on the railway lines, and
stopped the trains, thus preventing the occupation of the
St. Lazare station. Lastly, the Committee proceeded energeti¬
cally against the Bourse.
The reaction counted upon famine to make the Committee
capitulate. The million of the Monday was gone; a second
one had been promised. On the Thursday morning, Varlin
and Jourde, going to fetch an instalment, received only
threats. They wrote to the governor: "To starve out the
people, such is the aim of a party that styles itself honest.
Famine disarms no one; it will only encourage devastation.
We take up the glove that has been flung down to us." And,
without deigning to take any notice of the swashers of the
Bourse, the Committee sent two battalions to the bank, which
had to give in.
At the same time the Committee neglected nothing in
order to reassure Paris. Numerous ticket-of-leave men had
been let loose upon the town. The Committee denounced
them to the vigilance of the National Guard, and posted upon
the doors of the Hôtel-de-Ville, "Every individual taken in
the act of stealing will be shot." Picard's police had failed
to put an end to the gamblers who every night since
the siege had encumbered the streets; a single order of
the Committee sufficed. The great scarecrow of the re¬
actionists was the Prussians, and Jules Eavre had an¬
nounced their early intervention. The Committee pub¬
lished the despatches that had passed between it and the
commander of Compiègne, to this effect: "The German
troops will remain passive so long as Paris does not take a
hostile attitude." The Committee had answered with great
dignity: "The Revolution accomplished at Paris is of an
118 HISTORY OP THE COMMUNE.
essentially municipal character. We are not qualified to dis¬
cuss the preliminaries of peace voted by the Assembly." Paris
was therefore without anxiety on that head.
The only disturbance proceeded from the mayors. Author¬
ised by M. Thiers, they appointed as chief of the Rational
Guards Saisset, the madman of the sitting of the 21st,
giving him Langlois and Schœlcher as coadjutors, and made
every effort to attract National Guards to the Place de la
Bourse, where they distributed the pay due to the guards
of the invaded mairies. Many came only to get the pay,
not to fight. Even the chiefs began to be divided amongst
themselves. The most rabid certainly spoke of sweeping
away everything before them. Those were Yautrain, Duhail,
Denormandie, Degouve-Henuncques, and Héligon, an ex-
workingman, an idle fellow, admitted into the bourgeois
servants' hall, and bumptious like other lackeys. But many
others flagged and thought of conciliation, especially since
some of the deputies and adjuncts—Millière, Malon, Dereure,
and Jaclard—had withdrawn from the union of the mayors,
thus still further setting forth its frankly reactionary
character. Finally, some soft-headed mayors, still believing
that the Assembly needed only enlightenment, extemporised
a melodramatic scene.
They arrived at Versailles on the 23rd, at the moment
when the rurals, again plucking up their courage, made
an appeal to the provinces to march on Paris. In most
solemn attitude these mayors put in their appearance before
the tribune of the president, girdled with their official
scarfs. The Left applauded, crying "Vive la République!"
The Lamourettes returned the compliment. But the Right
and the Centre cried "Vive la France! Order! Order!"
and with clenched hands they apostrophised the deputies
of the Left, who naively answered, "You insult Paris!" to
which the others replied, "You insult France!" and they left
the House. In the evening a deputy, who was also a mayor,
Arnaud He l'Ariège, read from the tribune the declaration
that they had brought, and wound up by saying, "We
are on the eve of an awful civil war. There is but one way
THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE. 119
to prevent it—that the election of the commander-in-chief
of the National Guard be fixed for the 28th, and that of the
municipal council for the 3rd of April." These propositions
were referred to the Committee.
The mayors returned home indignant. A despatch of the
evening before had already disquieted Paris. M. Thiers an¬
nounced to the provinces that the Bonapartist Ministers,
Rouher, Chevreau, and Boitelle, arrested by the people of
Boulogne, had been protected, and that Marshal Canrobert,
one of the accomplices of Bazaine, had offered his services to
the Government. The insult inflicted upon the mayors irri¬
tated the whole middle-class, and called forth a sudden change
in their Republican journals. The attacks against the Central
Committee relaxed. Even the Moderates began to expect the
worst from Versailles.
The Central Committee took advantage of this change of
opinion. Having just been informed of the proclamation
of the Commune at Lyons, it spoke out all the more clearly
in its manifesto of the 24th. "Some battalions, misled by
their reactionary chiefs, have thought it their duty to clog
our movements. Some mayors and deputies, forgetting their
mandates, have encouraged this resistance. "We rely upon
your courage for the accomplishment of our mission. It is
objected that the Assembly promises us at some indefinite
period the election of the municipal council and that
of our chiefs, and that consequently our resistance ought
not to be prolonged. "We have been deceived too often
to be entrapped again; the left hand would take back what
the right hand gives. See what the Government has
already done. In the Chamber, through the voice of Jules
Favre, it has challenged a terrible civil war, called on the
provinces to destroy Paris, and covered us with the most odious
calumnies."
Having spoken, the Committee now acted, and named three
generals—Brunei, Duval, and Eudes. It had to confine
the drunkard Lullier, who, assisted by a staff of traitors,
had the evening before allowed a whole regiment of the
army encamped at the Luxembourg to leave Paris with arms
120 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
and baggage. Now, too, it was known that Mont-Valérien
was lost by his fault.
The generals made a profession not to be misunderstood:
"This is no longer a time for Parliamentarism. We must act.
Paris wishes to be free. The great city will not permit public
order to be disturbed with impunity."
A direct caution this addressed to the camp of the Bourse,
which, moreover, was visibly growing less. The desertions
from it multiplied at every sitting of the rurals. Women
came to fetch their husbands. The Bonapartist officers,
overshooting the mark, irritated moderate Republicans. The
programme of the mayors—submission to Versailles—dis¬
couraged the middle-class. The general staff of this helter-
skelter army had been foolishly established at the Grand
Hôtel. There sat the crazy trio—Saisset, Langlois, and
Schcelcher—who, from extreme confidence, had fallen into
a state of utter dejection. The most crack-brained of them,
Saisset, took upon himself to announce by placards that the
Assembly had granted the complete recognition of the
municipal franchise, the election of all the officers of the
National Guard, including the general-in-chief, modifications
of the law on the overdue commercial bills, and a bill on
rents favourable to the tenants. This gigantic hoax only
mystified Versailles.
The Committee, pushing forward,1 ordered Brunei to seize
the mairies of the first and second arrondissements. Brunei,
with 600 men of Belleville, two pieces of artillery, and
accompanied by two delegates of the Committee, Lisbonne
and Protot, presented himself at three o'clock at the
mairie of the Louvre. The bourgeois companies assumed
an air of resistance. Brunei had his cannon advanced, when
the passage was at once opened to him. He declared to the
adjuncts, Meline and Ad. Adam, that the Committee would
proceed with the elections as soon as possible. The adjuncts,
intimidated, sent to the mairie of the second arrondissement
1 This order had been given the evening before. The treachery of
Du Bisson, nominated chief of the staff by Lullier, had prevented its
execution.
THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE. 121
to ask for the authorisation to treat. Dubail answered that
they might promise the elections for the 3rd April. Brunei
insisted on appointing the 30th March. The adjuncts
acquiesced. The National Guards of the two camps saluted
this agreement with enthusiastic acclamations, and mingling
their ranks, marched to the mairie of the second arrondisse¬
ment. In the Rue Montmartre a few companies of the Bourse
army, trying to stop the way, were told, "Peace is made," and
they let them pass. At the mairie of the second arrondisse¬
ment, Schœlcher, who presided at the meeting of the mayors,
Dubail, and Yautrain resisted, refusing to ratify the con¬
vention, insisting on the date of the 3rd April. But the great
majority of their colleagues accepted that of the 30th, and
the election of the commander-in-chief of the National Guard
for the 3rd April. Immense cheers hailed the good news, and
the popular battalions, saluted by the bourgeois battalions,
■defiled through the Rue Yivienne and the boulevards, dragging
along their cannon, mounted by lads with green branches in
their hands.
The Central Committee could not accept this transaction.
Twice it had postponed the elections. A new adjournment
would have given certain mayors five days for plotting and
playing into the hands of Versailles. Besides, the Federal
battalions, on foot since the 18th, were really tired out.
Ranvier and Arnold the same evening went to the mairie
of the second arrondissement to say that the Hôtel-de-Ville
adhered to the date of the 26th for the elections. The
mayors and adjuncts, many of whom had only the one
purpose, as they have avowed since,1 of gaining time, in¬
veighed against a breach of faith. The delegates protested,
1 Tirard: "My whole preoccupation and that of my colleagues had
"been to postpone the elections so as to reach the date of the 3rd
April."—Enquête sur le 18 Mars, vol. ii. p. 340. Yautrain: "My col¬
leagues and I thus gained eight days more."—Ibid., p. 379. J. Favre:
"For eight days we were the only barricade raised up between the
insurrection and the Government."—Ibid., p. 385. Desmarets: "I
believed it necessary to remain exposed to danger in order to give the
Government of Versailles time for arming."—Ibid., p. 412.
122
HISTORY OP THE COMMUNE.
for Brunei had had no mandate but that of occupying the
mairies. For several hours everything was tried to talk over
the delegates, but they held their ground, and went away
at two o'clock in the morning without any conclusion being
arrived at. After their departure the more intractable discussed
the chance of resistance. The irrepressible Dubail wrote a
call to arms, sent it to the printing-office, and spent the
whole night with his faithful Héligon in transmitting orders
to the chiefs of battalions and providing the mairie with
mitrailleuses.
While they were thus bent upon resistance the rurals
thought themselves betrayed. Every day they became more
nervous, being deprived of their creature-comforts, obliged
to camp in the lobbies of the castle of Versailles, exposed
to all winds and to all panics. They felt weary of the
incessant interference of the mayors, and were thunderstruck
by the proclamation of Saisset. They fancied that M. Thiers
was coquetting with the émeute, that the petit bourgeois,
as he hypocritically called himself, wanted to cozen the
monarchists, and, using Paris as his lever, overthrow them.
They spoke of removing him, and appointing as com¬
mander-in-chief one of the D'Orléans, Joinville or D'Aumale.
Their plot might have come to a head at the eve¬
ning sitting, when the proposition of the mayors was to
be read. M. Thiers was beforehand with them, implored
the Assembly to adjourn the discussion, adding that an ill-
considered word might cost torrents of blood. Grévy shuffled
through the sitting in ten minutes. But the rumour of a plot
got abroad.
Saturday was the last day of the crisis. Either the Central
Committee or the mayors had to disappear. The Committee
on that very morning placarded: "The transport of
mitrailleuses to the mairie of the second arrondissement
compels us to maintain our resolution. The election will
take place on the 26th March." Paris, which had believed
peace concluded, and for the first time since five days had
passed a quiet night, was very angry at seeing the mayors
recommence the wrangle.. The idea of the election had made
THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE. 123
its way in all ranks, and many papers declared for it, even
among those that had signed the protestation of the 21st.
No one could understand this quarrel about a date. One
irresistible current of fraternisation swayed the whole town.
The ranks of the two or three hundred soldiers of order
who had remained faithful to Dubail dwindled away from
hour to hour, leaving Admiral Saisset alone to make
his proclamation in the desert of the Grand Hôtel. The
mayors had no longer an army when, at ten o'clock,
Ranvier came to ask for their final decision. Their dis¬
pute grew hot when some deputies of Paris on their return
from Versailles announced the news that the Due d'Aumale
was proclaimed lieutenant-general. Several mayors and ad¬
juncts then at last understood that the Republic was at stake,
and, convinced of their impotence, capitulated. The draft
of a placard was drawn up to be signed by the mayors,
deputies, and for the Central Committee by the two delegates
Ranvier and Arnold. The Committee wanted to sign en
masse, and slightly modified the text, saying, "The Central
Committee, round which the deputies of Paris, the mayors,
and adjuncts have rallied, convokes . . ." Thereupon some
of the mayors, on the look-out for a pretext, rose, crying,
"This is not our convention; we said the deputies, the mayors,
the adjuncts, and the members of the Committee . . . ;"
and, at the risk of rekindling the embers, placarded the
protest. Yet the Committee might well say, "Which have
rallied?" since it had yielded no point. However, Paris over¬
ruled the mischief-mongers. Admiral Saisset had to dis¬
band the four men who remained to him. Tirard in a
placard advised the electors to vote; for M. Thiers that same
morning had given him the hint, "Do not continue a useless
resistance. I am reorganising the army. I hope that in a
fortnight or three weeks we shall have a sufficient force to
relieve Paris." 1
Five deputies only signed the address for the election,
MM. Lockroy, Floquet, Clémenceau, Tolain, and Greppo;
the rest of Louis Blanc's group had kept aloof from Paris for
1 Enquête sur le 18Mars, Tirard, vol. ii. p. 342.
124
HISTORY OP THE COMMUNE.
several days. These weaklings, having all their life sung
the glories of the Revolution, when it rose up before them
ran away appalled, like the Arab fisher at the apparition of
the genie.
With these mandarins of the tribune of history and of
journalism, mute and lifeless, contrast strangely the sons of
the multitude, obscure, but rich in will, faith, and eloquence.
Their farewell address was worthy of their advent: "Do not
forget that the men who will serve you best are those whom
you will choose from amongst yourselves, living your life,
suffering the same ills. Beware of the ambitious as much as
of the upstarts. Beware also of mere talkers. Shun those
whom fortune has favoured, for only too rarely is he who pos¬
sesses fortune prone to look upon the workingman as a brother.
Give your preference to those who do not solicit your
suffrages. True merit is modest, and it is for the working-
men to know those who are worthy, not for these to present
themselves."
They could indeed "come down the steps of the Hôtel-de-
Ville head erect," these obscure men who had safely anchored
the revolution of the 18th March. Named only to organise
the National Guard, thrown at the head of a revolution with¬
out precedent and without guides, they had been able to resist
the impatient, quell the riot, re-establish the public services,
victual Paris, baffie intrigues, take advantage of all the
"blunders of Versailles and of the mayors, and, harassed
on all sides, every moment in danger of civil war, known how
to negotiate, to act at the right time and in the right place.
They had embodied the tendency of the movement, limited
their programme to communal revindications, and conducted
the entire population to the ballot-box. They had inaugu¬
rated a precise, vigorous, and fraternal language unknown to
all bourgeois powers.
And yet they were obscure men, all with an incomplete
education, some of them fanatics. But the people thought
with them. Paris was the brazier, the Hôtel-de-Ville the flame.
In the Hôtel-de-Ville, where illustrious bourgeois have only
THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE. 125
accumulated folly upon defeat, these new-comers found victory
because they listened to Paris.
May their services absolve them from two grave faults—
allowing the escape of the army and of the functionaries,
and the retaking of Mont-Valérien by Versailles. It has been
said that on the 19th or 20th they ought to have marched
on Versailles. But on the first alarm these would have
fled to Fontainebleau, with the Administration and the
Left, everything that was wanted to govern and deceive
the provinces. The occupation of Versailles would only
have displaced the enemy, and it would not have been for
long, as the popular battalions were too badly provided, too
badly commanded, to hold at the same time this open town
and Paris.
At all events, the Central Committee left its successor all
the means necessary to disarm the enemy.
( 126 )
CHAPTEK Till.
"Une portion considérable de la population et de la garde nationale de
Paris sollicite le concours des départements pour le rétablissement de
l'ordre. "—Circulaire, de M. Thiers aux Préfets, le 27 Mars,
PROCLAMATION OF THE COMMUNE.
This week ended with the triumph of Paris. Paris-
Commune again resumed her part as the capital of
France, again became the national initiator. For the tenth
time since 1789 the workmen put France upon the right
track.
The bayonets of Prussia had laid bare our country, such
as eighty years of bourgeois domination had left it—a Goliath
at the mercy of his driver.
Paris broke the thousand fetters which bound France
down to the ground, like Gulliver a prey to ants; restored
the circulation to her paralysed limbs; said, "The life of
the whole nation exists in each of her smallest organisms;
the unity of the hive, and not that of the barracks. The
organic , cell of the French Eepublic is the municipality, the
commune."
The Lazarus of the Empire and of the siege resuscitated,
having torn the napkin from his brow and shaken off the grave-
clothes, was about to begin a new existence with the regen¬
erated Communes of France in his train. This new life gave
to all Paris a youthful aspect. Those who had despaired a
month before were now full of enthusiasm. Strangers ad¬
dressed each other and shook hands. For indeed we were not
strangers, but bound together by the same faith and the same
aspirations.
Sunday the 26th was a day of joy and sunshine. Paris
breathed again, happy like one just escaped from death
THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE. 127
or great peril. At Versailles the. streets looked gloomy,
gendarmes occupied the station, brutally demanded passports,
confiscated all the journals of Paris, and at the slightest ex¬
pression of sympathy for the town arrested you. At Paris
everybody could enter freely. The streets swarmed with
people, the cafés were noisy; the same lad cried out the Paris
Journal and the Commune; the attacks against the Hôtel-de-
Ville, the protestation of a few malcontents, were posted on
the walls by the side of the placards of the Central Committee.
The people were without anger because without fear. The
voting paper had replaced the chassepot.
Picard's hill only gave Paris sixty municipal councillors,
three for each arrondissement, whatever might he its popula¬
tion. Thus the 150,000 inhabitants of the eleventh arrondisse¬
ment had the same number of representatives as the 45,000
of the sixteenth. The Central Committee had decreed that
there was to be a councillor for every 20,000 inhabitants, and
for each fraction of 10,000; ninety in all. The elections were
to be conducted with the lists of February and in the usual
manner; only the Committee had expressed the wish that for
the future open voting should be considered the only mode
worthy of democratic principles. All the faubourgs obeyed,
and gave an open vote. The electors of the St. Antoine
quarter formed in long columns, and, headed by a red flag,
their voting papers stuck in their hats, defiled before the
column of the Bastille, and in the same order marched to their
sections.
The adhesion and convocation of the mayors dissipating all
scruple, also made the bourgeois quarters vote. The elections
became legal since plenipotentiaries of the Government had
given their consent. Two hundred and eighty-seven thousand
men voted, relatively a far greater number than in the elections
of February; for since the opening of the gates after the siege,
a great part of the easy classes had rushed to the provinces
there to recruit their health.
The elections were conducted in a way becoming a free
people. At the approach to the halls, no police, no intrigues.
And yet M. Thiers dared telegraph to the provinces: "The
128
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
elections will take place to-day without liberty and without;
moral authority." The liberty was so absolute that in all Paris,
not one single protestation occurred.
The moderate papers even commended the articles of the
Officiel, in which the delegate Longuet set forth the part of
the future Communal Assembly: "Above all, it must define
its mandate, fix the boundaries of its attributes. Its first work
must be the discussion and the drawing up of its charter.
This done, it must consider the means of having that statute
of the municipal autonomy recognised and guaranteed by the
central power." The plainness, the prudence, the moderation
which marked all official acts was beginning to move the most
obdurate. Only the hatred of the Versaillese did not abate.
That same day M. Thiers cried from the tribune, "No, France
will not let those wretches triumph who would drown her in
blood."
The next day 200,000 "wretches" came to the Hôtel-de-
Ville there to instal their chosen representatives, the battalion
drums beating, the banners surmounted by the Phrygian cap
and with red fringe round the muskets; their ranks, swelled
by soldiers of the line, artillerists, and marines faithful to
Paris, came down from all the streets to the Place de Grève
like the thousand streams of a great river. In the middle
of the Hôtel-de-Ville, against the central door, a large
platform was raised. Above it towered the bust of the
Republic, a red scarf slung round it. Immense red streamers
beat against the frontal and the belfry, like tongues of fire
announcing the good news to France. A hundred battalions
thronged the place, and piled their bayonets, lit up by the
sun, in front of the Hôtel-de-Ville. The other battalions
that could not get into the place lined the streets up to the
Boulevard de Sebastopol and to the quays. The banners
were grouped in front of the platform, some tricolour, all
with red tassels, symbolising the advent of the people.
While the place was filling, songs burst forth, the bands played
the Marseillaise and the Chant du Depart, trumpets sounded
the charge, and the cannon of the old Commune thundered
on the quay.
THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE. 129
Suddenly the noise subsided. The members of the Central
Committee and of the Commune, their red scarfs over their
shoulders, appeared on the platform. Ranvier said, "Citizens,
my heart is too full of joy to make a speech. Permit me
only to thank the people of Paris for the great example
they have given the world." A member of the Committee
announced the names of those elected. The drums beat a
salute, the hands and two hundred thousand voices chimed
in with the Marseillaise. Ranvier, in an interval of silence,
cried out, "In the name of the People the Commune is
proclaimed."
A thousandfold echo answered, "Vive la Commune!" Caps
were flung up on the ends of bayonets, flags fluttered in the
air. From the windows, on the roofs, thousands of hands
waved handkerchiefs. The quick reports of the cannon, the
hands, the drums, blended in one formidable vibration.
All hearts leaped with joy, all eyes filled with tears.
Never since the great Federation had Paris been thus
moved.
The filing off was very cleverly managed by Brunei, who,
while having the place evacuated on the one hand, brought
in those battalions that were without, all equally anxious to
acclaim the Commune. Before the bust of the Republic the
flags were lowered, the officers saluted with their sabres, the
men raised their muskets. Not until seven o'clock did the last
procession pass by.
The agents of M. Thiers returned in dismay to tell him,
"It was really the whole of Paris that took part in the mani¬
festation." And the Central Committee might well exclaim
in its enthusiasm, "To-day Paris opened a fresh page in the
book of history, and there inscribed her powerful name.
Let the spies of Versailles, who are prowling around us, go
and tell their masters what the common movement of an entire
population means. Let these spies carry back to them the
image of the magnificent spectacle of a people recovering their
sovereignty."
This lightning would have made the blind to see. 287,000
voters, 200,000 men with the same watchword. This was not
i
130 HISTORY OP THE COMMUNE.
a secret committee, a handful of factious rioters and bandits,
as had been said for ten days. Here was an immense force
at the service of a definite idea—Communal independence,
the intellectual life of France—an invaluable force in this
time of universal anaemia, a godsend as precious as the com¬
pass saved from the wreck and saving the survivors. This was
one of those great historical turning-points when a people may
be remoulded.
Liberals, if it was in good faith that you called for
decentralisation under the Empire; Republicans, if you
have understood June, 1848, and December, 1851; Radicals,
if you really want the self-government of the people,
listen to this new voice, avail yourselves of this marvellous
opportunity.
But the Prussian! What does it matter? Why not forge
arms under the eye of the enemy? Bourgeois, was it not in
sight of the foreigner that your ancestor Etienne Marcel tried
to remake France? And your Convention, did not it first act
in the very midst of the hurricane?
What did they answer? Death to Paris!
The red sun of civil discord melts veneer and all masks.
There they are side by side as in 1791, 1794, and 1848,
Monarchists, Clericals, Liberals, Radicals, all of them, their
hands raised against the people—one army in different uni¬
forms. Their decentralisation is rural and capitalist fed¬
eralism; their self-government, the exploitation of the budget
by themselves, just as the whole political science of
their statesmen consists only in massacre and the state
of siege.
What bourgeoisie in the world after such immense disasters
would not with careful heed have tended such a reservoir of
living force? They, seeing this Paris capable of engendering
a new world, her heart swelled with the best blood of France,
had but one thought—to bleed Paris.
( 131 )
CHAPTER IS.
"Toutes les parties de la France sont unies et ralliées autour de l'Assem¬
blée et du gouvernement."—Circulaire de M. Thiers à la Province,
le S3 au soir.
THE COMMUNE AT LYONS, ST. ETIENNE, AND CREUZOT.
What was the state of the provinces?
For some days, without any of the Parisian journals, they
lived upon lying despatches of M. Thiers,1 then looked at the
signatures to the proclamations of the Central Committee, and
finding there neither the Left nor the democratic paragons,
said, "Who are these unknown men?" The Republican
bourgeois, misinformed on the events occurring during the
siege of Paris—very cleverly hoodwinked, too, by the Con¬
servative press—as their fathers had formerly said, "Pitt and
Coburg," when unable to comprehend popular movements,
they cried, "These unknown men can be nothing but Bona-
partists." The people alone showed true instinct.
The Paris Commune found its first echo at Lyons. This
was a necessary reverberation. Since the advent of the As-
1 He then and there inaugurated this incomparable lying campaign,
the progress of which we shall closely watch. On the 19th he said,
"The army, to the number of 40,000 men, is concentrated in good order
at Versailles." There were 23,000 men (the number given by himself
in the Enquête) totally disbanded. On the 20th: " The Government did
•not want to enter into a bloody struggle, though provoked." By the
21st the army had grown to 45,000 men: "The insurrection is disavowed
by everybody." On the 22nd : "From all sides the Government is offered
battalions of mobiles to support it against anarchy." On the 27th,
while the votes were being counted : ' 'A considerable proportion of the
population and of the National Guard of Paris solicits the help of the
provinces to re-establish order."
132 HISTORY OP THE COMMUNE.
sembly the workmen found themselves watched. The mu¬
nicipal councillors, weak men, some of them, almost to
reaction, had lowered the red flag under the pretext that
"the proud flag of resistance à outrance should not survive
the humiliation of Prance." The clumsy trick had not
deceived the people, who, at the Guillotière, mounted guard
round their flag. The new prefect, Valentin, an ex-officer
as brutal as vulgar, a kind of Clément-Thomas, sufficiently
forewarned the people what sort of Republic was in store
for them.
On the 19th, at the first news, Republicans were on the
alert, nor did they hide their sympathy for Paris. The next
day Valentin issued a provocative proclamation, seized the
Parisian journals, and refused to communicate any despatches.
On the 21st, in the municipal council, some of the members
grew indignant, and one said, "Let us at least have the
courage to be the Commune of Lyons." On the 22nd, at mid¬
day, eight hundred delegates of the National Guard assembled
at the Palais de St. Pierre. A motion was put proposing to
choose between Paris and Versailles. A citizen just arrived
from Paris explained the movement there, and many wanted
the meeting to declare itself immediately for Paris. The
Assembly finally sent delegates to the Hôtel-de-Ville to ask
for the extension of the municipal liberties, the appointment
of the mayor as chief of the National Guard, and his investiture
with the functions of prefect.
The municipal council was just sitting. The mayor, Hénon,
a wooden-headed relic of 1848, opposed all resistance to Ver¬
sailles. The mayor of the Guillotière, Crestin, a known Re¬
publican, demanded that they should at least protest. Others
wanted the council to extend its prerogatives. Hénon threat¬
ened to tender his resignation if they went on like that, and
proposed they should repair to the prefect, who was then con¬
voking the reactionary battalions.
The delegates of the Palais St. Pierre arrived, and were
roughly received by Hénon. One deputation succeeded the
other, always meeting with the same rebuffs. However, during
this time the battalions of Brotteaux and La Guillotière were
THE COMMUNE IN THE PROVINCES. 133
preparing, and at eight o'clock a dense mass filled
the Place des Terreaux in front of the Hôtel-de-Ville,
crying, "Vive la Commune ! Down with Versailles !"
.The reactionary battalions did not respond to the prefect's
appeal.
Part of the council had met again at nine o'clock, while the
others, together with Hénon, were still wrangling with the
delegates. After an answer from the mayor, which left them
no hope of coming to an understanding, the delegates invaded
the council-chamber, and the crowd, apprised of this, rushed
into the Hôtel-de-Ville. The delegates, sitting down round
the council table, named Crestin mayor of Lyons. He refused,
and, summoned to give his reasons, declared that the direction
of the movement belonged to those who had initiated it.
After a great uproar, the National Guards acclaimed a Com¬
munal Commission, at the head of which they placed five
municipal councillors—Crestin, Durand, Bouvatier, Perret
and Velay. The delegates sent for Valentin, and asked
him if he were for Versailles. He answered that his procla¬
mation could leave no doubt on that head, whereupon he
was put under arrest. Then they decided on the proclama¬
tion of the Commune, the dissolution of the municipal council,
the dismissal of the prefect and of the general of the National
Guard, who was to be replaced by Ricciotti Garibaldi, noted
alike by his name and his services in the army of the
Vosges. These resolutions were announced to the people and
hailed with cheers. The red flag was again unfurled from the
balcony.
The next day, the 23rd March, early in the morning, the
five councillors named the evening before backed out, thus
obliging the insurgents to present themselves single-handed
to Lyons and the neighboring towns. "The Commune,"
they said, "must vindicate for Lyons the right to impose
and administer her own taxes, to have her own police, and
to dispose of her National Guard, which is to occupy all
posts and forts." This rather meagre programme was a little
further expanded by the committees of the National Guard
and the Republican Alliance: "With the Commune, the taxes
134
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
will be lightened, the public money will no longer be squan¬
dered, social institutions demanded by the working-class will
be founded. Much misery and suffering will be alleviated
pending the final disappearance of that hideous social evil;
pauperism." Insufficient proclamations these, inconclusive,
mute as to the danger of the Republic and the clerical con¬
spiracy, the only levers by which the small middle-class might,
have been roused.
So the Commisssion found itself isolated. It had taken
the fort of Charpennes, accumulated cartridges, disposed the
cannons and mitrailleuses round the Hôtel-de-Ville; but
the popular battalions, except two or three, had withdrawn
without leaving a picket, and the resistance was being
organised. General Crouzat at the station picked up all
the soldiers, marines, and mobiles dispersed about Lyons.
Hénon named a general of the National Guard. The officers
of the battalions of order protested against the Commune,
and placed themselves at the disposition of the municipal
council, which sat in the cabinet of the mayor, close to the
Commission.
Forgetting it had dissolved the Council the evening before,
it invited the Council to hold their sitting in the ordinary
council-room. They arrived at four o'clock. The Commission
gave up the place to them, National Guards occupying that
part of the room reserved to the public. Had there been some
vigour in this middle class, some foreboding of the Conserva¬
tive atrocities, the Republican councillors would have taken
the lead of this popular movement; but they were still, some
of them, the same mercantile aristocrats, chary of their gold
and their persons during the war of the national defence; the
others, the same overweening Radicals who had always striven
for the subordination instead of the emancipation of the
working-class. While they were deliberating without coming
to any resolution, the assistants, growing impatient, uttered
a few exclamations shocking to their lordliness, and they
brusquely raised the sitting in order to go and draw up an
address with Hénon.
In the evening two delegates of the Central Committee of
THE COMMUNE IN THE PROVINCES. 135
Paris arrived at the club of the Rue Duguesclin. They were
taken to the Hôtel-de-Ville, where from the large balcony
they harangued the mass, who answered with cries of "Vive
Paris! Vive la Commune!" and Ricciotti's name was again
acclaimed.
But this was only a demonstration. The delegates were
themselves too inexperienced to keep alive and direct this
movement. On the 24th there remained on the Place de
Terreaux hut a few groups of idlers. The rappel sounded in
vain. The four important journals of Lyons, Radical, Liberal
and Clerical, "energetically repudiated all connivance with
the Parisian, Lyonese, and other insurrections;" and General
Crouzat spread the rumour that the Prussians, camping at
Dijon, threatened to occupy Lyons within twenty-four hours
if order were not re-established. The Commission, more and
more deserted, again turned to the Council, which now held
its sitting at the Bourse, proposing to hand over the ad¬
ministration to them. The Council refused to treat. "No,"
said the mayor, "we will never accept the Commune." And
as the mobiles from Belfort were announced, the Council
decided to give them a solemn reception. This was a declara¬
tion of war.
The parley had been going on the whole afternoon until
late into the evening. Little by little the Hôtel-de-Ville grew
empty, and the members of the Commission disappeared. At
four o'clock in the morning the only two who remained can¬
celled their powers,1 dismissed the sentries who guarded the
prefect, and left the Hôtel-de-Ville. The next day Lyons
found her Commune gone.
On the same evening, when dying out at Lyons, the revo¬
lutionary movement hurst forth at St. Etienne. Since the
31st October, when they had almost succeeded in officially
1 "Considering," said they in their declaration, "that the Provisional
Commune of Lyons, acclaimed by the National Guard, is no longer
feeling itself supported by them, the members of the Commune declare
themselves released from their engagements towards their electors, and
resign all powers they have received."
136
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
proclaiming the Commune, the Socialists had not ceased call¬
ing for it, despite the resistance, and even the threats, of the
municipal council.
There were two Republican centres—the Committee of the
National Guard, spurred on by the revolutionary club of the
Rue de la Yierge, and the Republican Alliance at the head
of the advanced Republicans. The municipal council was,
with one or two- exceptions, composed of those Radicals who
know not how to resist the people without being crushed by
the reaction. The Committee and the Alliance agreed to ask
for its renewal.
The 18th March was enthusiastically welcomed by the
workmen. The Radical organ, L'Eclaireur, said, without
drawing any conclusion: "If the Assembly prevails, the
Republic is done for; if, on the other hand, the deputies of
Paris separate from the Central Committee, they must have
a good reason for it." The people went straight on. On the
23rd the Club de la Yierge sent delegates to the Hôtel-de-
Yille to ask for the Commune. The mayor promised to sub¬
mit the question to his colleagues. The Alliance also came
to demand the adjunction to the council of a certain number
of delegates.
The next day, the 24th, the delegations returned. The
Council tendered their resignation, and declared they
would only officiate till their replacement by the electors,
to be convoked with the briefest delay. This was a
defeat, for the same day the prefect ad interim, Morellet,
adjured the population not to proclaim the Commune,
but to respect the authority of the Assembly. At seven
o'clock in the evening a company of the National Guard
relieved the sentinel to the cries of "Yive la Commune!"
The Central Committee invited the Alliance to join them in
taking possession of the Hôtel-de-Yille. The Radicals
refused, saying that the promise of the Council sufficed;
that the movements of Paris and Lyons were of a vague
character, and that it was necessary to affirm order and public
tranquility.
During these negotiations the people had assembled at the
THE COMMUNE IN THE PROVINCES. 137
Club de la Vierge, accusing the first delegates of weakness,
resolved to send others, and to accompany them, so that
they could not give way. At ten o'clock two columns of 400
men each drew up before the rails that cover the Hôtel-de-
Ville. These had been closed by order of the new prefect,
M. He l'Espée, an autocrat of iron works, who had just then
arrived, eager to subdue the disturbers. But the people began
pulling down the rails, and it was necessary to let in their
delegates. They found the mayor and Morellet, asked for
the Commune, and provisionally the adjunction of a popu¬
lar commission. The mayor refused, the former prefect
obstinately tried to demonstrate that the Commune was
a Prussian invention. Hopeless of convincing the delegates,
he went to warn M. De l'Espée—the prefecture being con¬
tiguous to the mairie—and both then making off by the garden,
succeeded in rejoining General Lavoye, the commander of
the garrison.
At midnight the delegates, unable to obtain anything,
declared that nobody would be allowed to leave the
Hôtel-de-Ville, and proceeding to the rails, told the
demonstrators to reflect. Some ran off in quest of arms,
others penetrated into the Salle des Prudhommes, where
they held a meeting. The night passed tumultuously. The
delegates, who had just learned the miscarriage of the
movement at Lyons wavered. The people threatened and
were for beating the rappel. The mayor refused. At last, at
seven o'clock, he found an expedient, and promised to propose
a plebiscite on the establishment of the Commune. A delegate
read this declaration to the people, who at once withdrew from
the Hôtel-de-Ville.
At the same moment M. De l'Espée conceived the
brilliant idea of beating the rappel,. which the people had
in vain asked for since midnight. He picked up some National
Guards of order, re-entered the now empty Hôtel-de-Ville,
and promulgated his victory. The municipal council inform¬
ing him of the morning's agreement, De l'Espée refused to
fix the date of the elections. Besides, said he, the general had
promised him the aid of the garrison.
138 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
At eleven o'clock the prefect's call to arms had reassembled
all the popular battalions. Groups formed before the Hôtel-
de-Ville, crying "Vive la Commune!" De l'Espée sent for
his troops, consisting of 250 foot-soldiers and two squadrons
of hussars, who came up sluggishly. The multitude sur¬
rounded them; the Council protested; and the prefect had
to discharge his warriors, there remaining to face the
crowd only a line of firemen, and in the Hôtel-de-Ville two
companies, of which but one was favourable to the party of
order.
Towards mid-day a delegation summoned the Council to
keep their promise. The councillors present—only few in
number—were not adverse to accepting as coadjutors two dele¬
gates from each company, but De l'Espée formally declared
against any concession. At four o'clock a very numerous
delegation from the Committee presented itself. The prefect
spoke of retrenching, himself and of strengthening the gates
for defence; but the firemen raised the butt end of their
muskets, opened the passage, and De l'Espée had to receive
some of the delegates.
The crowd outside waxed unruly, impatient at these useless
parleys. At half-past four the workmen from the manufactory
of arms arrived, when a shot was fired from one of the houses
of the place, killing Lyonnet, a workingman. A hundred
shots answered; the drums beat, the trumpets sounded the
charge, and the battalions rushed into the Hôtel-de-Ville,
while others searched the house whence the attack was sup¬
posed to have come.
At the noise of the firing the prefect broke off the con¬
ference and tried to escape as on the night before, mistook
his way, was recognised and seized, together with the
deputy of the procureur de la République, brought back with
the latter into the large hall, and shown from the balcony.
The crowd hooted him, convinced that he had given the order
to fire upon the people. One of the reactionist guards,
M. De Ventavon, on his flight from the mairie, was taken
for the murderer of Lyonnet, and carried about on the litter on
which the corpse had just been transported to the hospital.
THE COMMUNE IN THE PROVINCES. 139
The prefect and the procureurs deputy were left in the
large hall in the midst of exasperated men. Many accused
De l'Espée of having provoked the fusillade of the miners of
Aubin under the Empire. He protested, stating that he had
been director of the mines of Archambault, not those of
Aubin. Little by little, the crowd, tired out, dispersed, and
at eight o'clock about forty guards only remained in the hall.
The prisoners took some food, when the president of the Com¬
mune, which was constituting itself in a neighbouring room,
seeing everything calm, also withdrew. At nine o'clock the
crowd returned, crying, "La Commune! La Commune!
Sign!" De l'Espée offered to sign his resignation, but added
that he did so under compulsion. The prisoners were in
charge of two men, Victoire and Fillon, the latter an old
exile, quite distracted, who turned now against the crowd,
now against the prisoners. At ten o'clock, being hard pressed
by the throng of people, Eillon, as in a dream, faced about, ,
fired two shots from his revolver, killing his friend
Victoire and wounding a drummer. Instantaneously the
muskets were levelled at him, and Fillon and De l'Espée
fell dead. The deputy, covered by the corpse of Fillon,
escaped the discharge. The next day he and M. De Ventavon
were set free.
During the evening a Commission constituted itself, chosen
from amongst the officers of the National Guards and the
habitual orators of the Club de la Vierge. It had the
station occupied, took possession of the telegraph, seized the
cartridges of the powder-magazine, and convoked the electors
for the 29th. "The Commune," it said, "does not mean in¬
cendiarism, nor theft, nor pillage, as so many are pleased to
give out, but the conquest of the franchises and the inde¬
pendence ravished from us by imperial and monarchical legis¬
lation; it is the true basis of the Republic." This was the
whole preamble. In this industrial hive, by the side of the
thousands of miners of La Ricamarie and Firminy, they found
not a word to say on the social question. The Commission
only knew how to beat the rappel, which, as at Lyons, was not
responded to.
140 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
The next day, Sunday, the town, calm and curious, read the
proclamation of the Commune, placarded side by side with
the appeals of the general and of the procureur. While this
latter, as became a good Radical, spoke of a Bonapartist plot,
the general invited the Council to withdraw its resignation.
He went to the councillors, who had taken refuge in the bar¬
racks, and said to them, "My soldiers won't fight, but I have
a thousand chassepots. If you will make use of them, for¬
ward!" The councillors protested their unfitness for military
exploits; but at the same time, as at Lyons, refused to com¬
municate with the Hôtel-de-Ville, considering "that one can
only treat with honest men."
On the 27th the Alliance and L'Eclaireur altogether with¬
drew, and the Commission gradually dwindled down. In the
evening, the few faithful still holding out received two young
men, whom the delegates from the Central Committee at
Lyons had sent. They urged resistance; but the Hôtel-de-
Yille was being deserted, and on the morning of the 28th
there were only about a hundred left. At six o'clock General
Lavoye presented himself with the francs-tireurs of the Vosges
and some troops come from Montbrison. The National Guards,
on his appeal to lay down their arms in order to avoid blood¬
shed, consented to evacuate the mairie.
Numerous arrests were made. The Conservatives over¬
whelmed the Commune with the customary insults, and re¬
counted that cannibals had been seen amongst the murderers
of the prefect.1 L'Eclaireur did not fail to demonstrate that
1 Certain infamous evidence must be quoted in full in order to give
a notion of the delirium tremens of the great bourgeoisie when speaking
of the Commune. Pour months after these events the Prefect Ducros,
the inventor of the famous bridges of the Marne, deposed before the
Commission d'Enquête sur le 18 Mars: ' ' They did not respect his corpse;
they cut o£E his head. In the night, horrible to say, one of the men who
had participated in the assassination, and who has been put on his trial,
came to a café offering those present pieces of M. De l'Espée's skull,
and cracking under his teeth pieces of the same skull." And Dueros
dared to add : ' ' The man had been arrested, put on his trial, and
acquitted." Horrible imaginings, which even the Radicals of St. Etienne
have stigmatised.
THE COMMUNE IN THE PKOVINCES. 141
the movement was purely Bonapartist. The workingmen felt
themselves vanquished, and at the solemn funeral of M. De
l'Espée not loud hut deep curses were uttered.
At Creuzot, also the proletarians were defeated. Yet the
Socialists administered the town from the 4th September, the
mayor, Dumay, being a former workman at the iron works.
On the 25th, at the news from Lyons, they spoke of proclaim¬
ing the Commune. At their review on the 26th the National
Guards cried "Vive la Commune!" and the crowd accompanied
them to the Place of the Mairie, held by the colonel of
curassiers, Gerhardt. He ordered the foot-soldiers to fire.
They refused. He then ordered the cavalry to charge; but
the guards levelled their bayonets and invaded the mairie.
Dumay pronounced the abolition of the Versailles Govern¬
ment, proclaimed the Commune, and the red flag was
hoisted.
But therë, as everywhere else, the people did not move.
The commander of Creuzot came back the next day with a
reinforcement, dispersed the crowd, which was standing
curious and passive in the square, and took possession of the
mairie.
In four days all the revolutionary centres of the east, Lyons,
St. Etienne, and Creuzot, were lost to the Commune.
( 142 )
CHAPTEK X.
THE COMMUNE AT MARSEILLES, TOULOUSE, AND NARBONNE,
Since the elections of the 8th February, the advent of the
reactionists, the nomination of M. Thiers, the patched-np and
shameful peace, the monarchy in prospect, the defiances and
the defeats were as bitterly resented by the valiant town of
Marseilles as by Paris. There the news of the 18th March
fell upon a powder-magazine. Nevertheless, further details
were looked for, when the 22nd brought the famous despatch
of Eouher-Canrobert.
The clubs, playing a great part in the ardent life of Mar¬
seilles, were at once thronged. The prudent and methodical
Radicals affected the club of the National Guard; the popular
elements met at the El Dorado. There they applauded
Gaston Crémieux, an elegant and effeminate speaker, now
and then happy at epigrammatic turns, as, for instance, at
Bordeaux. Gambetta owed him his election at Marseilles
under the Empire. Crémieux at once hurried to the club of
the National Guard, denounced Versailles, told them they
could not allow the Republic to perish, but ought to act. The
club, though highly indignant at the despatch, cautioned him
against over-hastiness. The proclamations of the Central
Committee, they said, did not announce any clearly defined
politics. Signed by unknown names, they might well proceed
from Bonapartists.
This Jacobin argument was ridiculous at Marseilles, where
the despatch of M. Thiers had given the signal for the
commotion. Who smacked of Bonapartism—these unknown
men rising against Versailles, or M. Thiers patronising
THE COMMUNE IN THE PEOYINCES. 143
Bouher and his Ministers, and boasting of Canrobert's
offer?
After a speech of Bouchet, the deputy of the procureur
de la République, Gaston Crémieux reconsidering his first
impulsive step, and accompanied by the delegates of the
club, repaired to the El Dorado. There he read and made
comments upon the Officiel of Paris, which he had got from
the prefect, and calmed the excitement. "The Government
of Versailles have raised their crutch against what they call
the insurrection of Paris; but it has broken in their
hands, and their attempt has brought forth the Commune.
Let us swear that we are united for the defence of the
Government of Paris, the only one that we recognise."
They separated, ready for resistance, but resolved to bide
their time.
Thus the excited population still checked itself when the
prefect goaded it by the most stupid of provocations. This
Admiral Cosnier, a distinguished naval officer, but politically
a mere cipher, quite out of his element in these surroundings,
where he had only just arrived, was the passive tool of the
reaction, which since the 4th September had already several
times fallen out with the National Guard—the civiques—who
had proclaimed the Commune and expulsed the Jesuits. The
Bev. Father Tissier, though absent, was still its leader. The
moderation of the town it mistook for cowardice. Like M.
Thiers on the 17th, it believed itself strong enough to make
a brilliant stroke.
In the evening the Admiral held council with the mayor,
Bories, an old wreck of 1848, who had dabbled in all the
clerico-liberal coalitions, the procureur de la République,
Guibert, a timid trimmer, and General Espivent de la
Villeboisnet, one of those cruel caricatures in which the
civil wars of South America abound. An obtuse Legitimist,
a besotted zealot, the Syllabus incarnate, a carpet knight
and former member of the Mixed Commissions of 1851,
during the war he had been expelled from Lille by the
people, indignant alike at his utter incapacity and his
antecedents. He brought the council the mot d'ordre of
144 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
the priests and reactionists, and proposed convoking the
National Guards to make an armed manifestation in favour
of Versailles. He would have asked for more, no doubt, but
the garrison was solely composed of waifs of the army of the
East and of a few disbanded artillerists. Cosnier, quite led
astray, approved of the manifestation, and gave orders to
the mayor and to the colonel of the National Guards to pre¬
pare for it.
On the 23rd March, at seven o'clock in the morning, the
call to arms sounded. The ingenious idea of the prefect had
spread over the town, and the popular battalions made ready
to do it honour. From ten o'clock they arrived at the Cours
du Chapitre, and the artillery of the National Guard was drawn
up along the St. Louis Cours. At twelve, francs-tireurs,
National Guards, soldiers of all arms mingling, gathered in
the Belzunce Cours. Soon all the battalions of the Belle-de-
Mai and of Endourre1 mustered in full strength, while the
battalions of order remained invisible.
The municipal council, taking fright, disavowed the mani¬
festation and placarded a Republican address. The club of
the National Guard joined the council and demanded the
return of the Assembly to Paris and the exclusion from public
functions of all the accomplices of the Empire. The deputy
of the procureur Bouchet tendered his resignation.
All this time the battalions were marching up and down
crying 'Vive Paris!" Popular orators harangued them, and
the club, apprehensive of an imminent explosion, sent
Gaston Crémieux, Bouchet, and Frayssinet, to ask the
prefect to break up the ranks and communicate the
despatches from Paris. The delegates were discussing with
Cosnier, when a terrific clamour rose from without. The
prefecture was besieged.
At four o'clock the battalions, on foot for six hours, had
moved, headed by their drums. Twelve or thirteen thousand
men having debouched through the Cannebière and the
Rue St. Ferréol, drew up before the prefecture. The dele¬
gates of the club tried to parley, when a shot was fired,
1 The popular quarters of Marseilles.
THE COMMUNE IN THE PROVINCES. 145
and the crowd, rushing into the prefecture, arrested the
prefect, his two secretaries, and General Ollivier. Gaston
Crémieux appeared on the balcony, spoke of the rights of
Paris, and recommended the maintenance of order. The crowd
cheered, but still continued to enter and ask for arms. G.
Crémieux had two columns formed and sent them to the iron
works of Menpenti, whose guns were surrendered.
During this tumult a Commission of six members was
formed: G. Crémieux, Job, Etienne, a street-porter, Maviel,
a shoemaker, Gaillard, a mechanic, and Allerini, who deliber¬
ated in the midst of the crowd. G. Crémieux proposed set¬
ting at liberty the prisoners just made, but from all sides they
cried, "Keep them as sureties." The Admiral was conducted
into a neighbouring room, closely watched, and—strange'
mania of all these popular movements—asked for his resig¬
nation. Cosnier, quite out of his latitude, signed what he
was asked for.1
The Commission placarded that all the powers were con¬
centrated in its hands, and feeling the necessity of strengthen¬
ing itself, invited the municipal council and the club of the
National Guard to send three delegates each. The council
named David Bosc, Desservy, and Sidore; the club, Bouchet,
Cartoux, and Eulgéras. The next day they made a moderate
proclamation: "Marseilles has wished to prevent the civil war
provoked by the circulars of Versailles. Marseilles will sup¬
port a regularly constituted Republican Government sitting
in the capital. The Departmental Commission, formed with
the concourse of all Republican groups, will watch over the
Republic till a new authority emanating from a regular Gov¬
ernment sitting at Paris relieves it."
The names of the municipal council and of the club re¬
assured the middle-class. The reactionists continued drawing
in their horns, and the army had evacuated the town during
the night. Leaving the prefect in the trap into which he
had thrust him, the coward Espivent, on the investment
1 This abdication was revealed before the court-martial by the advo¬
cate of one of the accused. Cosnier, fearing that it might be interpreted
as an act of cowardice, blew out his brains.
146 HISTOEY OF THE COMMUNE.
of the prefecture, went to hide himself- at the mistress's
of a commander of the National Guard named Spir,
on whom he afterwards conferred the knighthood of the
Legion of Honour for this service to moral order. At mid¬
night he sneaked off and rejoined the troops, who, without
hindrance from the people, lulled into security by its victory,
reached the village of Aubagne, about seventeen kilometres
from Marseilles.
Thus Marseilles was entirely in the hands of the people.
The victory was even too complete for heads prone to exulta¬
tion. That "city of the sun" is not propitious to soft tints;
its sky, its fields, its men all affect crude colours. On the
24th the civil guards hoisted the red flag and already
deemed the Commission too lukewarm. Sidore, Desservy,
and Fulgéras, regardless of their duty, kept aloof from the
prefecture; Cartoux had gone to Paris for information, and
so the whole burden weighed upon Bosc and Bouchet, who,
with Gaston Crémieux, strove to regularise the movement.
Having said that the red flag was inopportune, the deten¬
tion of the hostages useless, they soon became suspected
and menaced. On the evening of the 24th, Bouchet, quite
discouraged, gave in his resignation, but, on G. Crémieux'
complaint to the club of the National Guard, consented to
resume his post.
These disagreements were already bruited about the town,'
and on the 25th the Commission was obliged to announce
that "the most perfect accord united it with the municipal
council." But the latter on the same day declared itself
the only existing power, and called upon the National Guard
to rouse from apathy. Trimming between the reaction and
the people, it began that miserable play that was to end in
ignominy.
While the Liberals were imitating the Tirards and the
deputies of the extreme Left, to whom Dufaure referred in
his despatches, Espivent in every point copied General Thiers.
He had rifled all the administrative departments of Marseilles.
The treasury office of the garrison had been shuffled off to
Aubagne. Fifteen hundred Garibaldians of the army of the
THE COMMUNE IN THE PROVINCES. 147
Vosges and soldiers who were rejoining their depots in
Africa were left without bread, without pay, without feuttles-
de-routes, and would have remained without refuge if Gaston
Crémieux and Bouchet had not caused a provisional quarter¬
master to be named by the council. Thanks to the Com¬
mission, those who had shed their blood for France received
bread and shelter. Gaston Crémieux said to them in an
address, "You will remember when the time comes, the
fraternal hand that we have held out to you." He was a
gentle enthusiast, who beheld the revolution under rather a
bucolic aspect.
On the 26th the isolation of the Commission became
more obvious. No one armed against it, but no one joined
it. Almost all the mayors of the department refused to
placard its proclamations, and at Aries a manifestation
in favor of the red flag miscarried. The fiery spirits at
the prefecture did nothing to explain the import of the
flag which they had unfurled, and, in the midst of this
dull calm, in view of Marseilles looking on curiously, it hung
from the campanile of the prefecture motionles and mute as
an enigma.
The capital of the south-west also saw its insurrection
die out. Toulouse had vibrated at the thunder-burst of
the 18th March. In the Faubourg St. Cyprien there was
an intelligent and valiant workingmen's population that
formed the very sinews of the National Guard, and had
since the 19th relieved the watch to the cries of "Vive
Paris!" A few revolutionists summoned the prefect,
Duportal, to pronounce for or against Paris. For a month
the Emancipation, which he directed, had made a campaign
against the rurals, and he had even in a public meeting
emphasized his Republican views. But he was not the man
to take the initiative, and refused to break with Versailles.
The clubs, however, beset him, obliging the officers of the
National Guard to take an oath to defend the Republic, and
asked for cartridges. M. Thiers, seeing that Duportal would
after all follow their lead, named as prefect De Kératry, the
148
HISTORY OP THE COMMUNE.
former prefect of police of the 4th September. He arrived
on the night of the 21st--22nd at the house of the general
of the division, Nansouty, and being told that the garrison
consisted of only 600 disbanded men, and that the whole
National Guard would declare for Duportal, he beat his retreat
on Agen.
On the 23rd the National Guard prepared a manifestation
in order to take possession of the arsenal, when Duportal and
the mayor rushed off to the Capitol, the Hôtel-de-Ville of
Toulouse. The mayor declared that the intended review was
not to take place, and Duportal that he would tender his resig¬
nation rather than pronounce for the movement. But the
generals, afraid of this outbreak of the faubourg, took refuge
in the arsenal. The mayor and the municipal council, under¬
standing it would no longer do to continue their Platonic
rôle, fled in their turn, and hence Duportal, left alone in his
prefecture, shone forth as a great revolutionist, and therefore
all the more worthy of the sympathy of the National Guard.
He exerted himself to reassure the generals, went to the
arsenal, intimated there his firm resolution to maintain order
in the name of the Government of Versailles, the only one
he recognised as legitimate, and was so successful that they
advised M. Thiers to keep him in his post. Kératry,
availing himself of his declaration, requested his aid to take
possession of the prefecture, and Duportal gave him a rendez¬
vous before the officers of the mobiles and of the National
Guard, convoked for the next day, the 24th. Kératry under¬
stood and remained at Agen.
The object of this meeting was to find the volunteers
against Paris asked for by the Assembly. Four officers of
mobiles out of sixty offered their services to Versailles.
The officers of the National Guard did not come to the
prefecture, but, on the contrary, prepared at that same
moment a demonstration against Kératry. At one o'clock
2,000 men were assembled in the Place du Capitole, and,
their banner flying, repaired to the prefecture, where
Duportal received their officers. One of them declared
that, far from supporting the Assembly, they were ready to
THE COMMUNE IN THE PROVINCES. 149
march against it, and that if M. Thiers did not make peace
with Paris they would proclaim the Commune. At this name
cries hurst forth from all corners of the room, "Vive la Com¬
mune! Vive Paris!" The officers, growing hot, decreed the
arrest of Kératry, proclaimed the Commune, and summoned
Duportal to place himself at their head. He tried to hack
out, and proposed to act only as the officious prompter of
the chiefs of the Commune; hut the officers, inveighing against
defection, induced him to come out to the square of the pre¬
fecture, where he was acclaimed by the National Guard, and
they proceeded to the Capitol.
Hardly arrived in the large hall, the leaders seemed much
embarrassed. They offered the presidency in turn to the
mayor, to other municipal councillors, who slunk away,
and to Duportal, who got off by drawing up a manifesto,
which was read from the large balcony. "The Commune
of Toulouse," it said, "declares for the Republic one and
indivisible, adjures the deputies of Paris to be the inter¬
mediaries between the Government and the great town, and
summons M. Thiers to dissolve the Assembly." The mass
cheered this milk-and-water Commune, which believed in the
deputies of the Left and the oppression of M. Thiers by the
rural majority.
In the evening some officers of the National Guard ap¬
pointed an Executive Commission, composed, with two or three
exceptions, of mere talkers; in this the principal leaders of
the movement did not figure. It contented itself with
placarding the manifesto, and neglected the smallest pre¬
cautions, even that of occupying the railway station. The
generals, nevertheless, did not dare to stir from their arsenal,
where they were joined on the 26th by the first president of
the court and the procureur-general, who launched an address
calling upon the population to rally round them. The
National Guard wanted to answer by storming the arsenal,
and already the faubourg flocked to the Capitol. But the
Commission preferred to negotiate, sent word to the arsenal
that it would dissolve if the Government appointed a Re¬
publican prefect in the stead of Kératry and entirely ahan-
150 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
doned Duportal, who, it is true, had done nothing. The
negotiations lasted all the evening, and the National Guard,
tired out, deceived by their chiefs, and fancying everything
settled, returned to their homes.
Kératry, well informed of all these failures, arrived the next
day at the railway station with three squadrons of cavalry,
proceeded to the arsenal, broke off the negotiations, and gave
the order to march. At one o'clock the Versaillese army, 200
cavalry and 600 ill-assorted soldiers strong, opened its cam¬
paign. One column occupied the St. Cyprien Bridge, in order
to separate the town from the faubourg, another proceeded
to the prefecture* and the third, with Nansouty, Kératry, and
the magistrates, marched on the Capitol.
About 300 men filled the courts, the windows, and the
terrace. The Versaillese deployed their troops and placed
six guns in line at about sixty yards from the edifice, thus
recklessly exposing their infantry and artillerists to the mus¬
kets of the insurgents. The first president of the court and
the procureur-general advanced to parley, hut obtained
nothing. Kératry made the sommations, his voice being
drowned by cries. A single blank-cartridge volley would have
scared soldiers and artillerists, who might besides have been
harassed on both flanks. But the leaders had fled from the
Capitol. The courage of a few men might still have brought
about a fight, when the Republican Association interposed,
persuaded the guards to retreat, and saved Kératry. The
prefecture was taken just as easily, and that same evening
Kératry installed himself there. The members of the Execu¬
tive Commission the next day published a manifesto of such
platitude as to secure them impunity, and one of them got
himself named mayor by Kératry.
Thus the generous workingmen of Toulouse, who had risen
to the cry of "Vive Paris!" were left in the lurch by those who
had raised the insurrection. A disastrous cheek this for Paris,
for the whole south would have followed the example of
Toulouse if victorious.
The man of thought and energy, wanting in all these
THE COMMUNE IN THE PROVINCES. 151
movements, appeared in the insurrection of Narbonne. The
old city, Gallic in its enthusiasm, Roman in its tenacity, is
the true centre of democracy in the department of Aude.
Nowhere during the war had a more vigorous protest been
entered against the shortcomings of Gambetta. For this
very reason the National Guards of Narbonne had not yet
received their muskets, when those of Carcassonne had long
since been armed. At the news of the 18th March, Nar¬
bonne did not hesitate, but declared for Paris. To proclaim
the Commune, an exile of the Empire, a man of strong
convictions and firm character, Digeon, was at once applied
to. Digeon, as modest as resolute, offered the direction of the
movement to his comrade in exile, Marcou, the recognised
chief of the democracy in the Aude, one of the most ardent
opponents of Gambetta during the war. Marcou, a crafty
lawyer, afraid of compromising himself, and dreading the
energy of Digeon in the chief town of the department, induced
him to leave for Narbonne. Digeon arrived there on the 23rd,
and first thought of converting the municipal council to the
principles of the Commune. But on the refusal of the mayor,
Raynal, to summon the council, the people, out of all patience,
invaded the Hôtel-de-Ville on the evening of the 24th, and
arming themselves with the muskets detained by the
municipality, installed Digeon and his friends. He ap¬
peared on the balcony, proclaimed the Commune of Narbonne
united to that of Paris, and immediately proceeded to take
measures of defence.
The following day Raynal tried to rally the garrison, and
some companies formed before the Hôtel-de-Ville; but the
people, especially the women, worthy of their Parisian sisters,
disarmed the soldiers. A captain and a lieutenant were re¬
tained as hostages; the rest of the garrison went and shut itself
up in the St. Bernard Barracks. As Raynal still continued
stirring up resistance, the people arrested him on the 26th;
and Digeon, with the three hostages, at the head of a detach¬
ment of Federals, went to take possession of the prefecture,
placing pickets at the railway station and telegraph office.
To get arms he forced the arsenal, where, despite their
152 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
lieutenant, who commanded them to fire, the soldiers sur¬
rendered their guns. The same day the delegates from the
neighbouring Communes arrived, and Digeon set to work to
generalise the movement.
He had clearly understood that the departmental insur¬
rections would soon founder if not well combined, and he
wanted to hold out a helping hand to the rising of Toulouse
and of Marseilles. Béziers ând Cette had already promised
him their support, and he was preparing to leave for Béziers,
when, on the 28th, two companies of Turcos arrived, soon fol¬
lowed by other troops sent from MontDellier, Toulouse, and
Perpignan. From this moment Digeon was obliged to stand
on the defensive. He had barricades thrown up, reinforced
the posts, ordering the Federals always to await the attacks
and to aim at the officers.
We shall return to this subject later on. Paris now recalls
us. The other provincial movements were but momentary
vibrations. On the 28th,. when Paris was still elated with
victory, all the Communes of France were already swept away
save those of Marseilles and Narbonne.
( 153 )
CHAPTER XI.
THE COUNCIL OF THE COMMUNE WATERS FROM ITS FIRST
SITTINGS—THE MAYORS AND ADJUNCTS ELECTED DESERT
EN MASSE.
The Place of the Hôtel-de-Ville was still astir when the
newly elected members of the Commune assembled in the
municipal council-hall.
The ballot had returned sixteen mayors, adjuncts, and
Liberals of all shades,1 a few Radicals,2 and about sixty Revo¬
lutionists of all sorts.3
How came these latter to be chosen? All must be told,
1 Ad. Adam, Mélirte, Rochard, Barré (1st arrondissement, Louvre);
Brelay, Loiseau-Pinson, Tirard, Chéron (2nd, Bourse) ; Ch. Murat (3rd,
Temple); A. Le Roy, Eobinet (6th, Luxembourg); Desmarets, E.
Ferry, Nast (9th, Opéra) ; Marmottan, De Bouteillier (16th, Passy).
a Goupil (6th, Luxembourg); E. Lefévre (7th, Palais-Bourbon); A.
Banc, U. Parent (9th, Opéra).
3 Demay, A. Arnaud, Pindy, C. Dupont (3rd, Temple) ; A. Arnould,
Lefrançais, Clémence, E. Gérardin (4th, Hôtel-de-Ville) ; Eégère, Jourde,
Tridon, Blanchet, Ledroit (5th, Panthéon); Beslay, Varlin(6th, Luxem¬
bourg) ; Parizel, Urbain, Brunei (7th, Palais-Bourbon) ; Raoul Eigault,
Vaillant, A. Arnould, Alix (8th, Champs-Elysées); Gambon, Félix,
Pyat, H. Fortuné, Champy, Babick, Rastoul (10th, Enclos St. Lau¬
rent) ; Mortier, Delescluze, Assi, Protot, Eudes, Avrial, Verdure (llth,
Popincourt); Varlin, Geresme, Theisz, Fruneau (12th, Reuilly); Léo
Meillet, Duval, Chardon, Frankel (13th, Gobelins); Billioray, Martelet,
Decamp (14th, Observatoire); V. Clément, J. Vallès, Lange vin (15th,
Vaugirard); Varlin, E. Clément, Ch. Gérardin, Chalain, Malon(17th,
Batignolles) ; Blanqui, Theisz, Dereure, J. B. Clément, Ferré, Ver-
morel, P. Grousset (18th, Montmartre); Oudet, Puget, Delescluze, J.
Miot, Ostyn, Flourens (19th, Buttes-Chaumont) ; Bergeret, Ranvier,
Flourens, Blanqui (20th, Menilmontant). Blanqui had been arrested
in the South of France, where he had gone for the sake of his health.
154 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
and virile truth at last substituted for the stale flattery of the
old romantic school styling itself "Revolutionary." There
might be something more terrible than the defeat: to mis¬
construe or to forget its causes.
Responsibility weighs heavily enough upon the elected, but
we must not charge it all to one side—the electors also have
their share of it.
The Central Committee had told the people on Sunday,
the 19th instant, "Prepare for your communal elections."
They thus had a whole week in which to frame a mandate
and select their mandatories. No doubt the resistance of the
mayors and the occupation of the military posts kept away
many of the revolutionary electors from their arrondissements,
but there still remained enough citizens to conduct the work
of selection.
Never had a mandate been more indispensable, for the
question at issue was to give Paris a communal constitution,
acceptable to all France. Never did Paris stand in such need
of enlightened and practical men, capable at once of negotiat¬
ing and of combating.
Yet there was never less preparatory discussion. A few-
men only recalled to prudence a people habitually so over¬
scrupulous in electoral matters, and which had just made a
revolution to get rid of their representatives. The Committee
of the twenty arrondissements issued a manifesto very per¬
tinent in several points, and which might have served as an
outline; the two delegates at the Home Office tried, through
an article in the Officiel, to impress Paris with the importance
of her vote. Not a single assembly framed the general pro¬
gramme of Paris; only two or three arrondissements gave some
sort of mandate.
Instead of voting for a programme, they voted for names.
Those who had demanded the Commune, made a mark at
the Corderie or during the siege, were elected without
being asked for further explanations, some even twice, like
Flourens, in spite of the blunders of the 31st October.
Only seven or eight, and those not the best, of the obscure
men of the Central Committee were named, the latter, it is
THE COMMUNE IN PARIS. 155
true, having decided not to present itself for election. The
public meetings in many arrondissements sent up the most
violent talkers, romanticists sprung up during the siege, and
lacking all knowledge of practical life. Nowhere were the
candidates put to any test. In the ardour of the struggle they
took no thought for the morrow. One might have fancied that
the object in view was a simple manifestation, not the founda¬
tion of a new order of things.
Twenty-four workmen only were elected, and of these a
third belonged rather to the public meetings than to the Inter¬
national or the workingmen's societies. The other delegates
of the people were chosen from the small middle-class and
the so-called liberal professions, accountants, publicists-
there were as many as twelve of these—doctors and lawyers.
These, save a few really studious men, whether veterans or
new-comers, were as ignorant as the workmen of the political
and administrative mechanism of the bourgeoisie, albeit
full of their own personality. The safety of the Central
Committee lay in this, that it was unadorned with great
men, each one provided with a formula of his own. The
Council of the Commune, on the contrary, abounded in
chapels, groups, semi-celebrities, and hence endless competi¬
tion and rivalry.
Thus the precipitation and heedlessness of the Revolu¬
tionary electors sent up to the Hôtel-de-Ville a majority
of men, most of them devoted, but chosen without
discernment, and, into the bargain, abandoned them to
their own inspirations, to their whims, without any determined
mandate to restrain and guide them in the struggle entered
upon.
Time and experience would no doubt have corrected this
negligence, but time was wanting. The people never holds
sway but for an hour, and woe to them if they are not then
ready, armed cap-à-pie. The elections of the 26th March were
irreparable.
Only about sixty of those elected were present at the first
sitting. At its opening, the Central Committee came to con¬
gratulate the Council. The chairman by seniority, Beslay,
156 HISTORY OP THE COMMUNE.
a capitalist of a fraternising tnrn of mind, made the opening
speech. He very happily defined this young revolution:
"The enfranchisement of the Commune of Paris is the
enfranchisement of all the communes of the Republic. Your
adversaries have said that you have struck the Republic.
It is as with the pile, to he driven deeper into the earth. The
Republic of 1793 was a soldier, who wanted to centralise all
the forces of the nation; the Republic of 1871 is a workman,
who above all wants liberty to fecundate peace. The Com¬
mune will occupy itself with all that is local, the Department
with what is regional, the Government with what is national.
Let us not overstep this limit, and the country and the
Government will be happy and proud to applaud this revo¬
lution." This was the naïve illusion of an old man, who,
nevertheless, had had the experience of a long political life.
This programme, so moderate in its form, was nothing less
than the death-knell of the great bourgeoisie, as shown during
this very sitting.
There were already some jarring notes. The violent and
the giddy-headed launched out into random motions, and
wanted the Commune to declare itself omnipotent. Tirard,
elected by his arrondissement, improved this occasion to with¬
draw, stating that his mandate was purely municipal, that he
could not recognise the political character of the Commune,
gave in his resignation, and ironically bade farewell to the
Council: "I leave you my sincere good wishes; may you succeed
in your task," &c.
The insolence of this dishonest man, who for eight days
had been busy in fomenting civil war and now threw up the
mandate solicited in his address to the electors, evoked general
indignation. The more impatient wanted to have him ar¬
rested, others to declare his mandate forfeited. He escaped
scot-free because he had said at the Versailles tribune, "When
you enter the Hôtel-de-Ville, you are not sure to return
from it."
This incident no doubt induced the Council to vote the
secrecy of their sittings, their awkward pretext being that
the Commune was not a parliament. This decision produced
THE COMMUNE IN PARIS. 157
a very bad effect, violating the best traditions of the great
Commune of 1792—93, as it gave the Council the appear¬
ance of a conspiracy, and it was found necessary to quash
it two weeks after, when the newspapers abounded in fan¬
tastic reports, as a natural consequence of the secret sittings.
But the publicity never consisted in anything but the in¬
sertion of curtailed reports in the Officiel. The Council never
admitted the public, whose presence would have prevented
many faults.
The next day the Council subdivided itself into com¬
missions charged with the various services. A Military
Commission, and others of Finance, Justice, Public Safety,
Labour and Exchange, Provisions, Foreign Affairs, Public
Services, and Education were named. The Executive
Commission was composed of Lefrançais, Duval, Félix
Pyat, Bergeret, Tridon, Eudes, and "Vaillant, of whom
Duval, Bergeret, and Eudes also belonged to the Military
Commission.
It had just been voted that all decrees should be signed
The Commune—a vote too soon forgotten—when the dele¬
gates of the Central Committee were announced. After
waiting half an hour they were introduced. "Citizens," said
their spokesman, "the Central Committee comes to hand over
to you its revolutionary powers. We resume the functions
defined by our statutes."
This was the moment for the Council to affirm its
authority. The only representative of the population,
alone responsible, it should now have absorbed all powers,
not tolerating the co-existence of a Committee which was
sure always to remember the paramount position it had
held and strive to recover it. In the previous sitting,
the Council had done justice to the Central Committee
in voting that they had deserved well of Paris and the Re¬
public, and now taking them at their word, ought to have
declared that the rôle of the Committee had come to an end.
Instead of an authoritative decision in this sense, recrimina¬
tions were resorted to.
A member of the Council recalled the promise of the
158 HISTORY OP THE COMMUNE.
Central Committee to dissolve after the elections. Unless
they aimed at power, there was no necessity for the main-
tenance of their organisation. Varlin and Beslay defended
the existence of the Committee, which was combated by
Jourde and Rigault. The delegates, who would have yielded
to a peremptory word, held out against this weakness.
"This is," they said, "the Federation that has saved the
Republic. The last word is not yet said. To dissolve
this organisation is to break your strength. The Central
Committee does not pretend to share in the govern¬
ment. It remains the bond of union between you and the
National Guard, the right hand of the Revolution. We again
become what we were, the great conseil de famille of the
National Guard."
This simile made a marked impression. The debate was pro¬
longed, and the delegates of the Committee withdrew, no con¬
clusion having been arrived at.
Thereupon, without preamble, like a Jack-in-the-box, Félix
Pyat jumped up and proposed the abolition of the con¬
scription.
On the 3rd March he had stolen away from the National
Assembly, as he had on the 31st October deserted the Hôtel-
de-Ville, and, a few days after, sneaked out of prison. On
the 18th March he did not stir, while Delescluze had joined
the revolution from the first day. Félix Pyat waited for the
triumph, and on the eve of the elections came to sound the
timbrel before the Committee, "which teaches modesty to the
proudest name and inspires men of genius with a feeling of
inferiority." Elected by about 12,000 votes in the tenth
arrondissement, he was now forward to take his seat at the
Hôtel-de-Ville.
The hour awaited for twenty years had at last struck; he
was about to tread the boards. Amidst the crowd of drama¬
tists, thaumaturgists, romanticists, visionaries, and Jacobin
relics, trailing since 1830 at the heels of the social revolution,
his business had been that of appeals to regicide, to revolu¬
tionary chouannerie, of epistles, allegories, toasts, invocations,
evocations, pieces of rhetoric on the events of the day, tin-
THE COMMUNE IN PARIS. 159
kering the old Montagnard wares, and doing them up with a
little humanitarian varnish. Under the Empire his rabid
manifestoes had been the joy of the police and of the Bona-
partist journals, excellent sops to throw to the people, who
could not extract from them a practical idea or a grain
of sense. This intoxication was more than half-feigned.
The dishevelled madman of, the stage behind the scenes
turned crafty, trickish, and wary to a degree. At bottom
he was only a splenetic sceptic, sincere only in his self-
idolatry. He came to the Commune his pockets crammed with
decrees.
When he read his motion, it was lustily cheered by the
romanticists and passed at once. Yet still in the morning
the Council had intimated nothing of the sort, but only stated
in the proclamation in which they presented themselves to
Paris: "To-day the decision on house-rents, to-morrow that
on the overdue bills, the public services re-established and
simplified, and the National Guards reorganised, these are our
first acts." And now it abruptly encroached upon national
affairs. Commune in the morning, Constituent Assembly in
the evening.
If they wanted to change the revolution from a communal
into a national one, they ought to have said so, boldly set forth
their whole programme, and demonstrated to France the
necessity of their attempt. But what signified this decree,
improvised at random, without a preliminary declaration and
without a sequel? This quid pro quo was not even taken up.
Under pretext of avoiding parliamentarism, the matters at
issue were hurried over.
Then the Council decreed the general release of rents due
between October, 1870, and July, 1871. Versailles had offered
only delays; this was contrary to equity. The Council released
rents for the good reason that property ought to bear its share
of the general sacrifices; but it did not except a lot of in¬
dustrials who had realised scandalous profits during the siege.
This was contrary to justice.
Finally, they neglected to announce themselves to the
provinces, already so forsaken by the Central Committee.
160 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
A commission had certainly been charged to draw up an
address, hut its work had not pleased, and another one had
been named, so that what with one commission and another,
the programme of the Commune was kept in suspense for
twenty-two days, and the Council had allowed all the insur¬
rections of the provinces to die out without giving them any
advice or ideas.
These encroachments, this disorder, disturbed Paris with
the thought that the new power had neither very clear ideas
nor consciousness of the situation. The Liberal fraction of
the Council took advantage of this pretext to withdraw. If
their convention of the 20th had been sincere, if they had
cared for the destinies of Paris, the mayor and adjuncts ,
elected would have courageously stood by their mandates.
Like those of the provinces, they deserted, but were still
more culpable, since they had not protested against their
elections. Many had never been seen at the Hôtel-de-Ville;
others wrung their hands, lamenting, "Where are we going?"
Some shammed mortal illness: "You see I am at my last gasp."
Those who have been most abusive since, then sought for
humble evasions. Not one broke boldly.
Their resignations,1 the double elections, left twenty-two
seats vacant on the 30th, when the Council verified the cre¬
dentials. Faithful to the best traditions of the French Re¬
public, it admitted the Hungarian Frankel, one of the most
intelligent members of the International, elected in the
thirteenth arrondissement. Six candidates had not received
the eighth part of the votes required by the law of 1849; the
Council passed by this irregularity because the arrondissements
of these candidates, composed of reactionary quarters, were
emptying themselves from day to day.
The men of order, twice chastised, continued migrating
to Versailles, which they stocked with a new store of rancour
and rhodomontades. The town had assumed a warlike aspect;
all announced that the struggle was near at hand. Already
M. Thiers had cut off Paris from France. On the eve of
the April term, the 31st March, the director of the
1 See Appendix III.
THE COMMUNE IN PARIS. 161
general post-office, Rampont, belying the word of honour
he had given the delegate of the Central Committee, Thiesz,
made off after having disorganised the postal service, and
M. Thiers suppressed all the goods trains and kept back all
correspondence destined for Paris.
On the 1st April he officially announced war. "The
Assembly," he telegraphed to the prefects, "is sitting at
Versailles, where the organisation of one of the finest
armies that France has ever possessed is being completed.
Good citizens may then take heart and hope for the end of
a struggle which will be sad but short." A cynical boast
of that same bourgeoisie which had refused to organise armies
against the Prussians. "One of the finest armies," was as yet
only the rabble of the 18th March, strengthened by five or
six regiments; about 35,000 men, with 3,000 horses, and 5,000
gendarmes or sergents-de-ville, the only corps that had any
solidity.
Paris would not believe in the existence even of this army.
The popular papers demanded a sortie, speaking of the journey
to Versailles as a promenade. The most impetuous was the
Vengeur, in which Félix Pyat furiously shook his cap and
bells. He exhorted the Commune "to press Versailles. Poor
Versailles! it no longer remembers the 5th and 6th October,
1789, when the women of the Commune alone sufficed to
catch its king." On the morning of Sunday the 2nd April
the same member of the Executive Commission announced
to Paris: "Yesterday at Versailles the soldiers, requested
to vote by aye 'or no if they were to march on Paris,
answered No!"
( 162 )
CHAPTER XII.
SORTIE OF THE THIRD APRIL—THE PARISIAN'S ARE REPULSED
EVERYWHERE—FLOURENS AND DUVAL ARE KILLED—THE
VERSAILLESE MASSACRE SOME PRISONERS.
That very day, the 2nd April, at one o'clock, without
warning, without summons, the Versaillese opened fire and
threw their shells into Paris.
For several days their cavalry had exchanged shots with
our advanced posts at Châtillon and Putteaux. We occupied
Courbevoie, that commands the route to Versailles, which
made the rurals very anxious. On the 2nd, at ten o'clock in
the morning, three brigades of the best Versailles troops,
10,000 strong, arrived at the cross-roads of Bergères. Six or
seven hundred cavalry of the brigade Gallifet supported this
movement, while we had only three federal battalions at Cour¬
bevoie, in all five or six hundred men, defended by a half-
finished barricade on the road of St. Germain. Their watch,
however, was well kept; their vedettes had killed the head-
eurgeon of the Versaillese army, whom they had mistaken for
a colonel of gendarmerie.
At mid-day the Versaillese, having cannonaded the barracks
of Courbevoie and the barricade, launched themselves to the
assault. At the first shots from our men they scampered off,
abandoning on the road cannon and officers. Vinoy was
obliged to come himself and rally the runagates. Meanwhile
the 113th of the line outflanked Courbevoie on the right, and
the infantry of marines turned the left, marching through
Putteaux. Too inferior in number and fearing to be cut off
from Paris, the Federals evacuated Courbevoie, and, pursued
by shells, fell back on the Avenue de Neuilly, leaving twelve
THE COMMUNE IN PARIS. 163
dead and some prisoners. The gendarmes had taken five, one
of whom was a child of fifteen, beating them unmercifully,
and shot them at the foot of Mont-Valérien. This expedition
concluded, the army regained its cantonment.
At the report of the cannon all Paris started. No one
believed in an attack, so completely did all, since the 28th,
live in an atmosphere of confidence. It was no doubt an
anniversary, a misunderstanding at the utmost. When the
news, the ambulance-carriages, arrived; when the word was
spoken, "The siege is recommencing!" an explosion of horror
shook all the quarters. An affrighted hive, such was Paris.
The barricades were again thrown up, the call to arms
beaten everywhere, and the cannon drawn to the ramparts
of the Porte-Maillot and of the Ternes. At three o'clock
80,000 men were on their legs crying, "To Versailles!" The
women excited the battalions, and spoke of marching in the
vanguard.
The Executive Commission met and placarded a proclama¬
tion: "The royalist conspirators have attacked; despite the
moderation of our attitude, they have attacked. Our duty is
to defend the great city against these culpable aggressions."
In the Commission, the generals Duval, Bergeret, and Eudes
declared for an attack. "The enthusiasm," they said, "is
irresistible, unique. What can Versailles do against 100,000
men? We must sally out." Their colleagues resisted,
especially Félix Pyat, confronted with his rant and
vapourings of the morning. His poltroonery stood him
in the stead of a life-preserver. "One does not start," said
he, "at random, without cannon, without cadres, and with¬
out chiefs;" and he demanded the return of the strength
of the troops. Duval, who since the 19th March had been
strongly bent upon a sortie, violently apostrophised him:
"Why, then, for three days have you shouted, 'To Versailles?' "
The most energetic opponent of the sortie was Lefrançais.
Finally, the four civil members—that is, the majority—
decided that the generals should present a detailed state¬
ment as to their forces in men, artillery, munitions, and trans¬
ports. The same evening the Commission named Cluseret
164 HISTORY OP THE COMMUNE.
delegate at War jointly with Eudes, who, being a member of
the so-called party of action, owed this post only to the patron¬
age of his old cronies.
In spite of the majority of the Commission, the generals
set out. They had, besides, received no formal order to the
contrary. Félix Pyat had even concluded by saying, "After
all, if you think you are ready . . ." They saw Flourens
always ready for a coup-de-main, other colleagues equally
adventurous, and, on their own authority, certain of being
followed by the National Guard. They sent to the chefs-de-
légion the order to form columns. The battalions of the
right bank were to concentrate at the Place Vendôme and
Place Wagram; those of the left hank, at the Place d'Italie
and Champ-de-Mars.
These movements, without staff officers to guide them, were
very badly executed. Many men marched hither and thither,
grew tired. Yet at midnight there were still about 20,000
men on the right hank of the Seine and about 17,000 on
the left.
From eight o'clock to midnight the Council was sitting.
The inexorable Félix Pyat, always pertinent, demanded the
abolition of the budget of public worship. The majority
immediately satisfied him. He might just as well have
decreed the abolition of the Versaillese army. Of the sortie,
of the military preparations deafening Paris, no one breathed
a word in the Council—no one disputed the field with
the generals.
The plan of the latter, which they communicated to
Cluseret, was to make a strong demonstration in the di¬
rection of Eueil, while two columns were to march on Ver¬
sailles by Meudon and the plateau of Châtillon. Bergeret,
assisted by Flourens, was to operate on the right; Eudes and
Duval were to command the columns of the centre and the
left. A simple idea, and easy of execution with experienced
officers and solid heads of columns. But most of the battalions
had been without chiefs since the 18th March, the National
Guards without cadres, and the generals who assumed the
responsibility of leading 40,000 men had never conducted
THE COMMUNE IN PARIS
165
a single battalion into the field. They neglected even the
most elementary precautions, knew not how to collect artillery,
ammunition-waggons, or ambulances, forgot to make an order
of the day, and left the men for several hours without food
in a penetrating fog. Every Federal chose the chief he liked
best. Many had no cartridges, and believed the sortie to
be a simple demonstration. The Executive Commission had
just placarded a despatch from the Place Vendôme, head¬
quarters of the National Guard: "Soldiers of the line are all
coming to us, and declare that, save the superior officers, no
one wants to fight."
At three o'clock in the morning Bergeret's column, about
10,000 men strong and with only eight ordnance pieces,
arrived at the bridge of Neuilly. It was necessary to give
the men, who had taken nothing since the evening before,
time to recover themselves. At dawn they moved in the di¬
rection of Rueil. The battalions marched by sections in line
in the middle of the road, without scouts, and cheerfully
climbed the Plateau des Bergères, when suddenly a shell burst
into their ranks, followed by a second. Mont-Valérien had
opened fire.
A terrible panic broke the battalions, amidst thousandfold
cries of "Treason!" the whole National Guard believing that
we occupied Mont-Valérien. Many members of the Com¬
mune, of the Central Committee, at the Place Vendôme, knew
the contrary, and very foolishly concealed it, living in the
hope that the fortress would not fire. It possessed, it is true,
only two or three badly appointed guns, the range of which
the Guards might have escaped by one quick movement; but,
surprised when in a state of blind confidence, they fancied
themselves betrayed, and fled on all sides. Bergeret exhausted
every means to stay them. A shell cut in two "the brother
of the chief of his staff, an officer of the regular
army gone over to the Commune. The greater part of
the Federals dispersed in the fields and regained Paris.
The 91st only and a few others, 1,200 men in all, remained
with Bergeret, and, dividing into small groups, reached Rueil.
Shortly after, Flourens arrived by the road of Asnières,
166
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE,
bringing hardly a thousand men.1 The rest had lagged
behind in Paris or on the way. Flourens, all the same,
pressing forward, arrived at the Malmaison, put Gallifet's
chasseurs to flight, and the Parisian vanguard pushed as far
as Bougival.
The Versaillese, surprised by this sortie, only drew up very
late, towards ten o'clock. Ten thousand men were launched
against Bougival, and the batteries placed on the hill of La
Jonchère cannonaded Rueil. Two brigades of cavalry on the
right and that of Gallifet on the left defended the wings. The
Parisian vanguard—a mere handful of men—offered a de¬
termined resistance, in order to give Bergeret time to operate
his retreat, which commenced towards one o'clock, on Neuilly,
where they fortified the bridge-head. Some valiant men, who
had obstinately held out in Rueil, with great difficulty gained
the bridge of Asnières, whither they were pursued by the
c-avalry, who took some prisoners.
Flourens was surprised at Rueil, and the house which he
occupied with some officers surrounded by gendarmes. While
preparing to defend himself, the officer of the detachment,
Captain Desmarets, cleft his head with so furious a blow of
the sabre that the brains gushed out. The body was thrown
into a dust-cart and taken to Versailles, where the fine ladies
gathered to enjoy the spectacle. Thus ended, the large-hearted
man, loved of the Revolution.
At the extreme left Duval had passed the night with six
or seven thousand men on the plateau of Châtillon. Towards
seven o'clock he formed a column of picked men, advanced
to Petit-Bicêtre, dispersed the outpost of General du Barail,
and sent an officer to reconnoitre Villecoublay, that com¬
manded the route. The officer announced that the roads were
free, and the Federals advanced without fear. When near
the hamlet firing commenced. The men deployed as
skirmishers, and Duval, uncovered, in the middle of the
road, set them the example. They held out for several hours.
A few shells would have sufficed to dislodge the enemy; but
1 MacfMahon, with his coup-d'œil of Reischoffen and Sedan, saw there
17,000 men. Enquête sur le 18 Mars, vol. ii. p. 22.
THE COMMUNE IN PARIS. 167
Duval had no artillery. Even cartridges were already wanting,
and he had to send to Châtillon for more.
The bulk of the Federals who occupied the redoubt,
confounded in an inextricable disorder, already believed
themselves surrounded on all sides. The messengers of
Duval on their arrival begged, menaced, but could not obtain
either reinforcements or munitions. An officer even ordered
a retreat. The unfortunate Duval, totally abandoned, was
assailed by the Derroja brigade and the whole Pellé division,
8,000 men. He retired with his troops to the plateau of
Châtillon.
Our efforts in the centre were not more fortunate. Ten
thousand men had left the Champ-de-Mars at three o'clock
in the morning with Ranvier and Avrial. General Eudes
as his whole battle array had ordered the troops to move
on. At six o'clock the 61st reached the Moulineaux, de¬
fended by gendarmes; these were soon forced to retreat
to Meudon, strongly occupied by a Versaillese brigade
entrenched in the villas and provided with mitrailleuses.
The Federals had only eight pieces, while Paris possessed
hundreds, and each of these had only eight rounds. At six
o'clock, weary of shooting at walls, they retreated to Molineaux.
Ranvier went in search of cannon, and mounted them in the
fort of Issy, thus preventing the Versaillese from taking the
offensive.
We were beaten at all points, and the Communalist papers
shouted "Victory!" Led astray by staffs which did not even
know the names of the generals, the Executive Commission
announced the junction of Flourens and Duval at Courbevoie.
Félix Pyat, again become bellicose, six times cried in his
Vengeur, "To Versailles!"1 Despite the runaways of the
morning, the popular enthusiasm did not flag. A battalion
of 300 women marched up the Champs-Elysées, the red flag
at their head, demanding to sally forth against the enemy.
1 "To Versailles, if we don't want again to resort to balloons! To
Versailles, if we don't want to fall back upon pigeons ! To Versailles,
if we don't want to be reduced to bran bread," &c., &c.—Le Vengeur,
3rd April.
168 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
The journals of the evening announced the arrival of Flourens
at Versailles.
At the ramparts the sad truth was discovered. Long files
of guards re-entered by all the gates, and at six o'clock the
only army outside Paris was the guards on the plateau de
Châtillon. A few shells falling in their midst completed the
disorder. Some of the men threatened Duval, who was
making desperate efforts to keep them together. He remained,
surrounded only by a handful of men, but always equally reso¬
lute. The whole night he, usually so taciturn, did not cease
repeating, "I will not retreat."
The next day at eight o'clock the plateau and the neigh¬
bouring villages were surrounded by the brigade Derroja and
the division Pellé. "Surrender and your lives will be spared,"
General Pellé had told them. The Parisians surrendered.
The Versaillese at once seized the soldiers fighting in the
ranks of the Federals and shot them. The prisoners, between
two lines of chasseurs, were sent on to Versailles, while their
officers, bare-headed, their galons torn off, were put at the
head of the convoy.
At Petit-Bieêtre they met the general-in-chief, Vinoy.
He commanded the officers to be shot, but the chief
of the escort reminding him of General Pellé's promise,
Vinoy said, "Is there a chief?" "Myself," said Duval,
darting from the ranks. Another advanced: "I am the
chief of Duval's staff." Then the commander of the volun¬
teers of Montrouge placed himself by their side. "You
are awful scoundrels," said Vinoy; and, turning to his
officers, "Shoot them." Duval and his comrades disdained
to reply, cleared a ditch, and leant against a wall on which
were inscribed the words, "Duval, horticulturist." They un¬
dressed, and, crying "Vive la Commune," died for it. A horse¬
man tore off Duval's boots and carried them about as a trophy,1
1 These details, related in part by the journals of the time, have been
completed by numerous comrades of Duval whom we have questioned.
In his mutilated, lying, naïvely cynical book, Vinoy dared to say:
"The insurgents threw down their arms and surrendered at discretion;
the man called Duval was Mlled in the affray. "
THE COMMUNE IN PARIS.
169
and an editor of the Figaro took possession of his blood-stained
collar.
Thus the army of order inaugurated the civil war by the
massacre of the prisoners. It had begun on the 2nd; on the
3rd, at Chatou, General Gallifet had three Federals shot who
were surprised in an inn taking their meal, and then he pub¬
lished a ferocious proclamation: "War has been declared by
the bandits of Paris. They have assassinated my soldiers. It
is a merciless war which I declare against these assassins. I
had to make an example."
The general who called the combatants of Paris
"bandits" and these assassinations "an example" was a
scamp of high life, first ruined, then kept by actresses.
Famous for his brigandage in Mexico, he had in a few years
obtained a generalship of brigade by the charms of his wife,
prominent in the orgies of the Imperial court. Nothing is
more edifying in this civil war than the standard-bearers of
the "honest people."
Their band in full strength hastened to the Paris Avenue
at Versailles to receive the prisoners of Châtillon. The whole
Parisian emigration, functionaries, elegants, women of
the world and of the streets, all came with the rage of
hyenas to strike the Federals with closed hands, with
canes and parasols, pushing off their kepis and cloaks,
crying, "Down with the assassins! To the guillotine!"
Amongst these "assassins" was the geographer Elisée
Reclus, taken with Duval. In order to give them time to
glut their fury, the escort made several halts before conduct¬
ing their prisoners to the barracks of the gendarmes. They
were then thrown into the docks of Satory, and thence carried
to Brest in cattle-trucks.
Picard wanted to associate all the honest people of the
provinces in this baiting. "Never," telegraphed this Falstaff
of pustulous aspect, "have baser countenances of a base
■demagogy met the afflicted gaze of honest men."
Already, the evening before, after the assassinations of
Mont-Valérien and of Chatou, M. Thiers had written to his
170
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
prefects, "The moral effect is excellent." Odious repetition
of those words, "Order reigns in Warsaw," and "The chassepôt
has done wonders." Ah! it is well known that it was not
the French bourgeoisie, hut a daughter of the people who
spoke those great words, "I have never seen French blood
shed without my hair standing on end."
( 171 )
CHAPTEE XIII.
THE COMMUME IS VANQUISHED AT MARSEILLES AND NAR-
BONNE.
The same sun that saw the scale turn against Paris looked
also on the defeat of the people of Marseilles.
The paralytic Commission still continued to dose, when,
on the 26th, Espivent beat the réveille, placed the department
in a state of siege, and issued a proclamation à la Thiers.
The municipal council began to tremble, and on the 27th
withdrew their delegates from the prefecture. Gaston
Crémieux and Bouchet were at once sent to the Mairie to
aDnounce that the Commission was ready to withdraw before
the council. The council asked for time to consider.
The evening was passing away, and the Commission search¬
ing for a loophole by which to escape from a position become
untenable, when Bouchet proposed to telegraph to Versailles
that they would resign their powers into the hands of a
Eepublican prefect. Poor issue of a great movement!
They knew what the Republican prefects of M. Thiers were.
The Commission, jaded, discouraged, let Bouchet draw up
the telegram, when Landeck, Amouroux, and May arrived, sent,
they said, by Paris. They spoke in the name of the great
town. Bouchet wanted to verify their powers and contested
their validity, which were indeed more than contestable,
whereat the members of the Commission grew indignant.
The magic name of victorious Paris resuscitated the enthu¬
siasm of the first hours, and Bouchet left the place. At
midnight the municipal council decided to maintain its
resolution, and communicated this to the club of the National
Guard, who immediately followed their example. At half-
past one in the morning the delegates of the club informed
the Commission that their powers were at an end. The
172 HISTORY OP THE COMMUNE.
Liberal bourgeoisie, eoward-like, stole away, the Radicals
backed out, and the people remained alone to face the
reaction.
This was the second phase of the movement. The most
exalted of the three delegates, Landeck, became an authority
paramount to the Commission. The cold-blooded Republi¬
cans who heard him and knew of his past dealings with the
Imperialist police, suspected a Bonapartist under the grossly
ignorant bully. He was indeed but a juggler, meant for the
itinerant stage, of grotesque vanity, and shrinking from noth¬
ing, because ignorant of everything. The situation waxed
tragic with this mountebank for a leader. G-. Crémieux,
unable to find another issue, was still for the solution of the
evening before. On the 28th he wrote to the municipal
council that the Commission was ready to retire, leaving them
the responsibility of events, and urged his colleagues to re¬
lease the hostages; this only rendered him the more suspected
of moderatism. Closely watched, threatened, he lost heart
at these disputes, and that same evening left the prefecture.
His secession divested the Commission of all authority. It
succeeded in discovering his retreat, made an appeal to his
devotion to the cause, and led him back to the prefecture,
there to resume his strange part of a chief at once captive
and responsible.
The municipal council did not answer G. Crémieux' letter
and on the 29th the Commission renewed its proposal. The
council still remained silent. In the evening 400 delegates
of the National Guard, met at the museum, decided to federate
the battalions, and appointed a commission charged to negoti¬
ate between the Hôtel-de-Ville and the prefecture. But these
delegates represented only the revolutionary element of the
battalions, and the Hôtel-de-Ville plunged more and more
into a slough of despond.
A war of proclamations now ensued between the two powers.
On the 30th the council answered the deliberations of the
museum meeting by a proclamation of the chiefs of the re¬
actionary battalions. The Commission launched a manifesto
demanding the autonomy of the Commune and the abolition
THE COMMUNE IN THE PROVINCES. 173
of prefectures; immediately after, the council declared the
general secretary of the prefect the legal representative of
the Government, and invited him to retake his post. The
secretary turned a deaf ear and took refuge aboard La
Couronne, many councillors also betaking themselves to the
frigate—gratuitous cowardice, since the most notorious re¬
actionists went to and fro without being in the least interfered
with. The energy of the Commission was mere show; it
arrested only two or three functionaries, the procureur
Guibert, the deputy, and for a short time the director of
the custom-house, and the son of the mayor. General Ollivier
was set free as soon as it became known that he had refused
to form part of the Mixed Commissions of 1851. They even
were so facile as to leave a post close to the prefecture in
the hands of chasseurs forgotten by Espivent. 'The flight
of the council, therefore, appeared only the more shameful.
The town continued to be calm, gay, facetious. One day the
advice-boat Le Renard coming to show its cannon at the
Cannebière, the crowd thronging on the quay hooted so much
that it was obliged to slip its cable and rejoin the frigate in
the new harbour.
Therefore the Commission inferred this, that no one would
dare to attack them, and thus took no measures of defence.
They might easily have armed the heights of Notre-Dame-
de-la-Garde, which commanded the town, and enlisted a great
number of Garibaldians, some officers of the last campaign
having offered to organise everything. The Commission
thanked them, said that the troops would not come, and that
even if they did, they would fraternise with the people. They
contented themselves with hoisting the black flag, addressing
a proclamation to the soldiers, and accumulating at the pre¬
fecture arms and cannon without projectiles of corresponding
calibre. Landeck, for his part, wanting to distinguish him¬
self, declared Espivent's grade forfeited, and in his place
nominated a former cavalry sergeant named Pelissier.
trUntil the assumption of his functions," said the decree,
"the troops will remain under the orders of General
Espivent." This gross farce dated from the 1st April.
174 HISTOBY OP THE COMMUNE.
Before the court-martial which tried him, Pelissier hit
the mark. When asked, "Of what armies were you
general?" "I was general of the situation," was his reply;
and indeed he never did lead any troops. On the morning
of the 24th the workmen had returned to their work, for
the National Guards, save the guardians of the prefecture,
were not paid. Men to garrison the posts were found with
difficulty, and at midnight the prefecture had hut a hundred
defenders.
A coup-de-main would have been easy, and some rich
bourgeois wanted to try it. The men were there and the
manœuvres agreed upon. At midnight the Commission
was to be carried off and the prefecture taken possession of,
while Espivent was to march on the town so as to get there
by daybreak. An officer was despatched to Aubagne. The
general refused under the pretext of prudence, but his retinue
revealed the true motive of the refusal. "We," they told the
messenger, "have stolen away from Marseilles like thieves; we
want to re-enter it as conquerors."
Such a performance seemed rather difficult with the army
of Aubagne, 600 or 700 men, without cadres and without dis¬
cipline. One single regiment, the 6th Chasseurs, showed a
more martial carriage. But Espivent relied upon the sailors
of La Couronne, the National Guards of order, in continual
relations with him, and above all, on the well-known supine-
ness of the Commission.
The latter tried to strengthen itself by the adjunction
of delegates from the National Guard. They voted the
dissolution of the municipal council, and the Commission
convoked the electors for the 3rd April. This measure,
if taken on the 24th March, might perhaps have settled
everything, but on the 2nd April it was only a stroke in
the air.
On the 3rd, at the news from Versailles, Espivent sent an
order to the chiefs of the reactionary battalions to hold them¬
selves in readiness. In the evening, at eleven o'clock, Gari-
baldian officers came to inform the prefecture that the troops
at Aubagne were moving. The Commission recommenced
THE COMMUNE IN THE PROVINCES. 175
its old refrain: "Let them come; we are ready to receive them."
At half-past one they decided to heat the retreat, and
towards four o'clock some men mustered at the prefecture.
About a hundred franc-tireurs established themselves at the
station, where the Commission had not even thought of placing
a battery.
At five o'clock Marseilles was on the alert. Some reactionary
companies appeared at the Place du Palais de Justice and
in the Cours Bonaparte; the sailors of La Couronne were
drawn up before the Bourse; the first shots were fired at
the station.
Espivent's troops presented themselves at three points—
the station, the Place Castellane, and La Plaine. The franc-
tireurs, notwithstanding a fine defence, were soon surrounded
and obliged to retreat. The Versaillese shot the Federalist
stationmaster under the eyes of his son, a child of sixteen,
who threw himself at the feet of the officer, offering his life
for his father's. The second stationmaster, Funel, was able to
escape with only a broken arm. The columns of La Plaine
and L'Esplanade pushed their advanced posts as far as 300
yards from the prefecture.
The Commission, always in the clouds, sent an embassy to
Espivent. G-. Crémieux and Pélissier set out, followed by an
immense mass of men and children, crying <fVive Paris!"
At the outposts of the Place Castellane, the seat of the staff,
the chief of the 6th Chasseurs, Villeneuve, came forward
towards the delegates. "What are your intentions?" asked
G. Crémieux. "We want to re-establish order." "What!
you would dare fire on the people?" cried G. Crémieux, and
commenced haranguing, when the Versaillese threatened to
order his chasseurs to march on. The delegates then had
themselves conducted to Espivent. He first spoke of putting
them under arrest, but then would allow them five minutes
for the evacuation of the prefecture. G. Crémieux on his
return found the chasseurs struggling with the crowd, who
sought to disarm them. A new current of people, preceded
by a black flag, arrived, making a vigorous push against the
soldiers. A German officer of Espivent's staff arrested Pelis-
176 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
sier, but the Versaillese chiefs, seeing their men waver, ordered
a retreat.
The mass applauded, believing they would disband.
Two infantry corps had already refused to march, and
the Place de la Prefecture was filled with groups certain
of success. Suddenly, towards ten o'clock, the chasseurs
debouched by the Rues de Rome and De l'Armény. The
people shouted and surrounded them, when many raised the
butt-end of their muskets. One officer who, urging on his
company, made them cross bayonets, fell, his head pierced
by a bullet. His men charged the Federals, who took
refuge and were taken prisoners in the prefecture, whither
the chasseurs followed. The volleys of the National Guards
of order and the chasseurs from the Cours Bonaparte and
from the house of the Frères Ignorantins, keeping up a run¬
ning fire, were replied to by the Federals from the windows
of the prefecture.
The fusillade had lasted two hours, and no reinforcement
arrived in support of the Federals. Inexpugnable in the pre¬
fecture, a solid square building, they were none the less van¬
quished, having neither provisions nor sufficient munition,
and it would have sufficed to wait with arms ordered till they
had exhausted their cartridges. But the general of the
Sacré Cœur would not put up with such a half-triumph.
This was his first campaign; he wanted blood, and, above
all, noise. Since eleven o'clock he had had the prefecture
bombarded from the top of Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde, a dis¬
tance of about 500 yards. The Fort St. Nicolas also opened
its fire, but its shells, less far-seeing than those of our Lady-
de-la-Garde, dashed down upon the aristocratic houses of the
Cours Bonaparte, killing one of those heroic guards of order
who fired from behind the soldiers. At three o'clock the
prefecture hoisted a flag of truce. Espivent continued to
fire. An envoy was sent to him, but he insisted upon their
surrender at discretion. At five o'clock more than 300 shells
had traversed the edifice, wounding many Federals. Little
by little, the defenders, seeing that they were not supported,
left the place. The prefecture had long ceased firing when
THE COMMUNE IN THE PROVINCES. 17?
Espivent was still bombarding it. The fright of this brute
was so great that he continued throwing shells till night¬
fall. At half past seven the sailors of La Couronne and Le
Magnanime courageously stormed the prefecture, void of all
its defenders.
They found the hostages safe and sound, as were the
chasseurs taken prisoner in the morning. Yet the Jesuitic
repression was atrocious. The men of order arrested at hazard,
and dragged their victims into the lamp-stores of the station.
There an officer scrutinised the prisoners, made a sign to
one or the other of them to step out, and blew out his brains.
The following days there were rumours of summary executions
in the barracks, the forts and the prisons. The number of
dead the people lost is unknown, but it exceeded 150, besides
many wounded who concealed themselves. The Ver-
saillese had thirty killed and fifty wounded. More than
900 persons were thrown into the casemates of the Château
d'If and of the Fort St. Nicolas. G. Crémieux was arrested
at the porter's of the Israelite Cemetery. He voluntarily
discovered himself to those who sought him, strong in his
good faith, and still believing in the judges. The brave
Etienne was also taken. Landeck, of course, had made his exit
in good time.
On the 5th Espivent entered triumphantly, acclaimed with
savage frenzy by the reactionists. But from the further
ranks of the crowd cries and hisses rose against the murderers.
At the Place St. Ferréol a captain was fired at, and the people
stoned the windows of a house from which the sailors had been
cheered.
Two days after the struggle, on its return from La Couronne,
the municipal council recovered its voice to strike the
vanquished.
The National Guard was disarmed, a fierce reaction raged,
the Jesuits again lorded it, and Espivent paraded about, re¬
ceiving ovations to the cries of "Vive Jésus! Vive le Sacré
Cœur!" The club of the National Guard was closed, Bouchet
arrested, and the Radicals, insulted, persecuted, once more
saw what it costs to desert the people.
M
178
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
Narbonne, too, was subdued. On the 30th March the pre¬
fect and the procureur-general issued a proclamation in which
they spoke of "the handful of factious men," presented
themselves as upholders of the true Republic, and telegraphed
everywhere the failure of the provincial movements. "Is
this a reason," Digeon answered in a placard, "to lower
before force this red flag dyed in the blood of our martyrs?
Let others consent to live eternally oppressed." Where¬
upon he prepared for battle, and barricaded the streets
leading to the Hôtel-de-Ville. The women, always to the
fore, pulled up pavements and piled up furniture. The
authorities, afraid of a serious resistance, sent M. Marcou
to his friend Digeon. The Brutus of Carcassonne bestrode
the Hôtel-de-Ville, accompanied by two Republicans of
Limoux, to offer in the name of the procureur-general a
full and complete amnesty to those who would evacuate the
edifice. They offered Digeon twenty-four hours to gain the
frontier. Digeon assembled his council, and all refused to
fly. M. Marcou hastened to inform the military authorities
that they might now act.1 General Zentz was at once sent
to Narbonne.
At three o'clock in the morning a detachment of Turcos
reconnoitred the barricades of the Rue du Pont. The Fed¬
erals, anxious to fraternise, cleared it, and were received with
. a volley, killing two men and wounding three. On the 31st,
at seven o'clock, Zentz in a proclamation announced that the
bombardment was about to recommence. Digeon at once
wrote to him, "I have the right to reply to such a savage
menace in the same style. I warn you that if you bombard
1 ' ' The general commanding the department and the procureur-general,
aware that I had tor thirty years been the friend of the man who com¬
manded the Commune at Narbonne, came to solicit my intervention to
induce him to submit. It was arranged that if I did not succeed I
should immediately send a telegram to General Robinet, in order that
the military authorities might act in consequence. At midnight I sent
the telegram. ... You do not know me; it is thanks to my personal
influence that order was maintained at Carcassonne.''—Speech of M.
Marcou to the Assembly in answer to M. de Gavardie, Sitting of the 27th
January 1874.
THE COMMUNE IN THE PROVINCES. 179
the town, I shall have the three prisoners who are in my power
shot." Zentz for all answer arrested the envoy, and had brandy
distributed to the Turcos, the only troops who would march.
These brutes arrived at Narbonne eager to loot, and had
already pillaged three cafés. The light was about to begin,
when the procureur-general again sent two envoys, offering
amnesty to all those who would evacuate the Hôtel-de-Ville
before the opening of the fire, but the execution of. the
hostages would he punished by the massacre of all. its occu¬
pants. Digeon wrote out these conditions under the dictation
of one of the envoys, read them to the Federals, and left
every one free to withdraw. At this moment .the procureur-
general presented himself with the Turcos before the terrace
of the garden. Digeon rushed thither. The procureur
-harangued the multitude, and as he spoke of indulgence,
iDigeon protested that an amnesty had just been promised.
• The procureur drowned the discussion in a roll of drums,
.read the legal sommation in front of the Hotel-de-Ville, and
asked for the hostages, whom the soldiers who had deserted
delivered over to him.
All these parleys had profoundly enervated the defence.
Besides, the Hôtel-de-Ville could do nothing against a bom¬
bardment that would have battered the town. Digeon had
the edifice evacuated, and shut himself up alone in the cabinet
of the mayor,' resolved to sell his life dearly; but the people,
in spite of his resistance, carried him off. The Hôtel-de-Ville
was empty when the Turcos arrived. They plundered in all
■ ' its corners, and officers were seen to deck themselves with
stolen valuables. '
Notwithstanding the formal promises of amnesty, numerous
warrants of arrest were issued. Digeon refused to fly, and
wrote to the procureur-general that he might arrest him.
Such a man at. Toulouse would have saved the movement and
■ raised the whole South.
Limoges had one glimpse of hope on the fatal day of the
. 4th April. That revolutionary capital of the Centre could
not look on the efforts of Paris unmoved. On the 23rd March
180
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
the Société Populaire, centralised all the democratic forces
and passed a vote of thanks to the army of Paris for its
conduct on the 18th. When Versailles called for volunteers,
the Society enjoined the municipal council to prevent such
an incitement to civil war. The workingmen's societies
despatched a delegate to Paris soon after the proclamation
of the Commune, there to inquire into its principles, and
to request the sending of a commissary to Limoges. The
members of the Commune replied that this was impossible
for the present, that they would consider it by and by; and
never sent anybody. The Société Populaire was thus obliged
to act alone. It urged the municipal council to hold
a review of the National Guards, certain that it would
result in a demonstration against Versailles. The council,
composed, with few exceptions, of timid men, tried to gain
time, when the news of the 3rd April became known. On
the morning of the 4th, on reading on the walls the trium¬
phant telegram from Versailles, the workmen revolted. A
detachment of five hundred soldiers was about to leave for
Versailles; the crowd followed them to the station, and
the workmen urged them to join the people. The soldiers,
surrounded, much excited, fraternised, surrendered their
arms, many of which were taken to the Société Populaire, and
hidden there.
The rappel was at once beaten. The colonel of cuirassiers,
Billet, who, accompanied by orderlies, rode through the town,
was hemmed in by the people, and constrained to cry, "Vive
la République!" At five o'clock the whole National Guard
was in arms on the Place de la Mairie. The officers
met in the Hôtel-de-Ville, where a councillor proposed
to proclaim the Commune. The mayor objected, but the
cry resounded on all sides. Captain Coissac took upon
himself to go to the station in order to stop the
train ready for the departure of the troops. The other
officers consulted their companies, which answered with
one unanimous cry, "Vive Paris! A bas Versailles!" Soon
after, the battailons, filing off before the Hôtel-de-Ville,
preceded by two municipal councillors in their official costume,
THE COMMUNE IN THE PEOYINCES. 181
went to ask the general for the release of the soldiers
arrested during the course of the day. The general gave the
order to set them free, and at the same time sent word
to Colonel Billet to prepare against the insurrection. From
the Place Tourny the Federals repaired to the prefecture,
occupying it in spite of the resistance of the Conservative
National Guards, and commenced throwing up some barri¬
cades. A few soldiers arriving from the Rue des Prisons,
several citizens adjured the officers not to commence a civil
war. These hesitated, retired, when Colonel Billet, at the
head of about fifty cuirassiers, debouched on the Place de
l'Eglise St. Michel, and ordered his men to advance and draw
swords. They fired their pistols, the Federals answered,
and the colonel was mortally wounded. His horse turning
about, carried its rider as far as the Place St. Pierre, the
other horses following, and the Federals thus remained
masters of the field. But lacking organisation, they dis¬
banded in the night and left the prefecture. The next day
the company that occupied the station seing themselves
abandoned withdrew. The arrests began, and many were
obliged to hide.
Thus the revolts of the great towns died out one by one
like the lateral craters of an exhausted volcano. The revo¬
lutionists of the provinces showed themselves everywhere
completely disorganised, without any faculty to wield power.
Everywhere victorious at the outset, the workmen had only
known how to pronounce for Paris. But at least they showed
some vitality, generosity, and pride. Eighty years of bourgeois
domination had not been able to transform them into a nation
of mercenaries; while the Radicals, who either combated or
held aloof from them, once more attested the decrepitude, the
egotism of the middle-class, always ready to betray the work-
ingmen to the "upper" classes.
( 18 2 )
CHAPTER XIV.
THE GREAT RESOURCES OP THE COMMUNE—THE GREAT WEAK¬
NESS OF THE COUNCIL—NOMINATION OF CLUSERET—
DECREE CONCERNING THE HOSTAGES—THE CENTRAL
COMMITTEE—THE BANK.
After an armistice of seventy days, Paris again took up
the struggle for France single-handed. It was no longer the
territory only which she strove for, but the very ground-work
of the nation. Victorious, her victory would not be sterile
as those of the battlefield; regenerated, the people would
set to the great work of remaking the social edifice;
vanquished, all liberty would he quenched, the bourgeoisie
turn its whips into scorpions, and a generation glide into
the grave.
And Paris, so generous, so fraternal, did not shudder at
the impending civil war. She stood up for an idea that
exalted her battalions. While the bourgeois refuses to fight,
saying, "I have a family," the workman says, "I fight for my
children."
For the third time since the 18th March Paris had hut one
soul. The official despatches, the hireling journalists estab¬
lished at Versailles, pictured her as the pandemonium of
all the black-legs of Europe, recounted the thefts, the arrests
en masse, the endless orgies, detailed sums and names.
According to them, honest women no longer dared venture
into the streets; 1,500,000 persons oppressed by 20,000
ruffians were offering up ardent prayers for Versailles.
But the traveller running the risk of a visit to Paris, found
the streets and boulevards tranquil, presenting their usual
aspect. The pillagers had only pillaged the guillotine,
solemnly burnt before the mairie of the eleventh arrondisse-
THE COMMUNE IN PARIS.
183
ment. From all quarters the same murmur of execration
rose against the assassination of the prisoners and the,
ignoble scenes at Versailles. The incoherence of the first
acts of the Council was hardly noticed while the ferocity
of the Versaillese was the topic of the day. Persons coming
full of indignation against Paris, seeing this calm, this union
of hearts, these wounded men crying f£Vive la Commune!"
these enthusiastic battalions; there Mont-Valérien vomiting
death, here men living as brothers, in a few hours caught the
Parisian malady.
This was a fever of faith, of blind devotion, and of hope—
of hope above all. What rebellion had been thus armed?
It was no longer a handful of desperate men fighting behind
a few pavements, reduced to charging their muskets with
slugs or stones. The Commune of 1871, much better armed
than that of 1793, possessed at least 60,000 men, 200,000
muskets, 1,200 cannon, five forts; an enceinte covered by
Montmartre, Belleville, the Panthéon overtowering the whole
city, munitions enough to last for years, and milliards at her
bidding. What else is wanted to conquer? Some revolutionary
instinct. There was not a man at the Hôtel-de-Ville who did
not boast of possessing it.
The sitting of the 3rd April during the battle was stormy.
Many inveighed against this mad sortie. Lefrançais, indig¬
nant at having been deceived, withdrew from the Commission,
which, called upon to explain, threw all the blame upon the
generals. The friends of the latter took up their defence, de¬
manded that news should he waited for. Soon the disastrous
tidings were brought, and they could not hesitate any longer.
For such a usurpation of authority there was but one
atonement possible. Flourens and Duval had made it
voluntarily. The others ought to have followed. Thus the
dead would have been appeased, similar follies once for all cut
short, and the authority of the Commune brought home to the
most refractory.
But the men at the Hôtel-de-Ville were not of such in¬
flexibility. Many had fought, plotted together under the
Empire, lived in the same prisons, identified the Revolution
184
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
with their friends. And besides, the generals, were they alone
guilty? So many battalions could not have bestirred them¬
selves all the night without the Council being informed
thereof. Though blind or deaf, they were none the less re¬
sponsible. In order to be just they ought to have decimated
themselves. They felt this, no doubt, and did not dare strike
the generals.
They might at least have dismissed them. They eon-
tented themselves with replacing them on the Executive Com¬
mission, and notified this measure most respectfully. "The
Commune was desirous to leave them all liberty in the con¬
duct of the military operations; it was as far from wishing
to disoblige them as from wishing to weaken their authority."
And yet their heedlessness, their incapacity, had been mortal.
Their ignorance only saved them from the suspicion of having
betrayed. This indulgence was big with promises for the
future,
This future meant Cluseret. From the first days he had
beset the Central Committee, the Ministries, in quest of a
generalship, his hands full of war plans against the mayors.
The Committee would have nothing to do with him. He
then clung to the Executive Commission, which on the 2nd
April, at seven o'clock in the evening, appointed him delegate
at war, with the order to enter upon his duties immediately.1
The rappel was being beaten at that moment for the fatal
sortie. Cluseret took good care not to take possession of
his post, allowed the generals to ruin themselves, and on
the 3rd appeared before the Council to denounce their
"gaminerie." It was this military pamphlet-monger, with
no pledge but his decoration, won against the Socialists of
1848, who had played the marionette in three insurrections,
whom the Socialists of 1871 charged with the defence of their
Revolution.
The choice was execrable, the very idea of naming a dele¬
gate faulty. The Council had just decided to keep on the
defensive. To guard the lines, regularise the services, pro¬
vision and administer the battalions, the best delegate would
1 Such is the text of the decree.
THE COMMUNE IN PARIS.
185
have been common sense. A commission, composed of a few
active and laborious men, would have offered all guarantees
of security.
Moreover, the Council failed to point out what sort of
defence they had in view. The defence of the forts, of the
redoubts, of the accessory positions, required thousands of
men, experienced officers, a war with the mattock as well as
the musket. The National Guard was not qualified for such
soldiership. Behind the ramparts, on the contrary, it became
invincible. It would have sufficed to blow up the forts of the
south, to fortify Montmartre, the Panthéon, and the Buttes-
Chaumont, to strongly arm the ramparts, to create a second,
a third enceinte, to render Paris inaccessible or untenable to
the enemy. The Council did not indicate either of these sys¬
tems, but allowed its delegates to dabble with the two, and
finally annulled the one by the other.
If they wished by the appointment of a delegate to con¬
centrate the military power, why not dissolve the Central Com¬
mittee? The latter acted, spoke more boldly and much better
than the Council which had excluded it from the Hotel-de-
Ville. The Committee had installed itself in the Rue de
l'Entrepôt, behind the Customs House, near its cradle.
Thence on the 5th April it launched a fine proclamation:
"Workmen, do not deceive yourselves about the import of
the combat. It is the engagement between parasitism and
labour, exploitation and production. If you are tired of
vegetating in ignorance and wallowing in misery, if you want
your children to be men enjoying the benefit of their labour,
and not mere animals trained for the workshop and the battle¬
field, if you do not want your daughters, whom you are unable
to educate and overlook as you yearn to do, to become instru¬
ments of pleasure in the arms of the aristocracy of money,
if you at last want the reign of justice, workmen, be in¬
telligent, rise!"
The Committee certainly declared in another placard that
it did not pretend to any political power, but power in times
of revolution of itself belongs to those who define it. For
eight days the Council had not known how to interpret the
186
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
Commune, and its whole baggage consisted in two insig¬
nificant decrees. The Central Committee, on the contrary,
very distinctly set forth the character of this contest, that
had become a social one, pointed out behind the struggle for
municipal liberties that devouring sphinx the question of the
proletariat.
The Council might have profited by the lesson, endorsed
if necessary that manifesto, and then, referring to the pro¬
testations of the Committee, obliged it to dissolve itself.
This was all the more easy that the Committee, much
weakened by the elections, only existed thanks to four or
five members and its eloquent mouthpiece, Moreau. But the
Council contented itself with mildly protesting at the sitting
of the 5th, and as usual letting things get along as best they
could.
It was already drifting from weakness to weakness; and
yet, if ever it believed in its own energy it was that day.
The savagery of the Yersaillese, the assassination of the
prisoners, of Flourens and Duval, had excited the most calm.
They had been there full of life three days ago, these brave
colleagues and friends. Their empty places seemed to cry
out for vengeance. Well, then, since Versailles waged a war
of cannibals, they would answer an eye for an eye, a tooth
for a tooth. Besides, if the Council did not act, the people,
it was said, would perhaps revenge itself, and more terribly.
They decreed that any one accused of complicity with Ver¬
sailles would be judged within forty-eight hours, and if guilty,
retained as a hostage. The execution by Versailles of a de¬
fender of the Commune would be followed by that of a
hostage—by three said the decree, in equal or double number
said the proclamation.
These different readings betrayed the troubled state of
their minds. The Council alone believed in having fright¬
ened Versailles. The bourgeois journals certainly shouted
"Abomination!" and M. Thiers, who shot without any de¬
crees, denounced the ferocity of the Commune. At bottom
they all laughed in their sleeves. The reactionists of any
mark had long since fled; there only remained in Paris the
THE COMMUNE IN PARIS. 187
small fry and a few isolated men, whom, if needs be, Versailles
was ready to sacrifice.1 The members of the Council, in their
childish impetuosity, had not seen the real hostages staring
them in the face—the bank, the civil register, the domains
and the suitors' fund. These were the tender points by which
to hold the bourgeoisie. Without risking a single man, the
Commune had only to stretch out its hand and bid Versailles
•negotiate or commit suicide.
The timid delegates of the 26th March were not the men
to dare this. In allowing the Versaillese army to file off, the
Central Committee had committed a heavy fault; that of the
Council was incomparably more damaging. All serious rebels
have commenced by seizing upon the sinews of the enemy—
the treasury. The Council of the Commune was the only
revolutionary Government that refused to do so. While abol¬
ishing the budget of public worship, which was at Versailles,
they bent their knees to the budget of the bourgeoisie, which
was at their mercy.
Then followed a scene of high comedy, if one could laugh
at negligence that has caused so much bloodshed. Since the
19th March the governors of the bank lived like men con¬
demned to death, every day expecting the execution of their
treasure. Of removing it to Versailles they could not dream.
It would have required sixty or eighty vans and an army
corps. On the 23rd, its governor, Rouland, could no longer
stand it, and fled. The sub-governor, De Plœue, replaced
him. From his first interview with the delegates of the
Hôtel-de-Ville he had seen through their timidity, given
battle, then seemed to soften, yielded little by little, and
doled out his money franc by franc. The bank, which Ver¬
sailles believed almost empty, contained: coin, 77 millions;2
1 M. Barthélémy St. Hilaire, M. Thiers' secretary, answered Barrai
de Montaut, who spoke of the possibility of a massacre in the prisons:
"The hostages! the hostages! But we can do nothing. What should
we do? So much the worse for them."—Enquête sur le IS Mars, vol. ii.
p. 271.
a M. Beslay, in his book Mes Souvenirs, Paris, 1873, says: "The
cash in hand was forty and some odd millions." These "some odd"
Were no less thai/ 203 millions. They presented the good man fictitious
188 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
bank-notes, 16G millions; bills discounted, 899 millions; se¬
curities for advances made, 120 millions; bullion, 11 millions;
jewels in deposit, 7 millions; public effects and other titles in
deposit, 900 millions; that is, 2 milliards 180 million francs:
800 millions in bank-notes only required the signature of the
cashier, a signature easily made. The Commune had then
three milliards in its hands, of which over a milliard realised,
enough to buy all the generals and functionaries of Versailles;
as hostages, 90,000 depositors of titles, and the two milliards
in circulation whose guarantee lay in the boxes in the Rue
de la Vrillière.
On the 29th March old Beslay presented himself before
the tabernacle. De Plœuc had mustered his 430 clerks, armed
with muskets without cartridges. Beslay, led through the
lines of these warriors, humbly prayed the governor to be
so kind as to supply the pay of the National Guard. De
Plœuc answered superciliously, spoke of defending himself.
"But," said Beslay, "if, to prevent the effusion of blood, the
Commune appointed a governor." "A governor! never!" said
De Plœuc, who understood his man; 'Tut a delegate! If you
were that delegate we might come to an understanding."
And, doing the pathetic, "Come, M. Beslay, help me to save
this. This is the fortune of your country; this is the fortune
of France."
Beslay, deeply moved, hurried off to the Executive Com¬
mission, repeated his lesson all the better that he believed
it and prided himself on his financial lore. "The bank," he
said, "is the fortune of the country: without it, no more in¬
dustry, no more commerce. If you violate it, all its notes
will be so much waste-paper."1 This trash circulated in the
statements, with which they gulled him. In his evidence and the an¬
nexes (Enquête sur le 18 Mars, vol. iii. errata, p. 438), M. de Plœuc has
given the true statements.
1 These were all the reasons he could ever allege, even in his book
written in Switzerland, whither M. de Plœuc himself went to deposit
him after the fall of the Commune. Besides his life being saved, he,
later on, received a judicial ordinance to the effect that no further judi¬
cial proceedings were to be taken against him.
THE COMMUNE IN PARIS. 189
Hôtel-de-Ville, and the Proudhonists of the Council, forget¬
ting that their master put the suppression of the bank at
the head of his revolutionary programme, backed old Beslay.
At Versailles itself, the capitalist stronghold had no more in¬
veterate defenders than those of the Hôtel-de-Ville. If
some one had at least proposed, "Let us at least occupy the
bank," hut the Executive Commission had not the nerve to
do this, and contented itself with commissioning Beslay.
De Plœuc received the good man with open arms, installed
him in the nearest cabinet, even persuading him to sleep at
the bank, made him his hostage, and once more breathed
freely.
Thus since the first week the Assembly of the Hôtel-de-
Ville showed itself weak towards the authors of the sortie,
weak towards the Central Committee, weak towards the
bank, trifling in its decrees, in the choice of its delegate to
the War Office, without a military plan, without a programme,
without general views, and indulging in desultory discussions.
The Radicals who had remained in the Council saw whither
it was drifting, and, not inclined to play the martyrs, they sent
in their resignations.
0 Revolution! thou dost not await the well-timed day
and hour. Thou comest suddenly, blind and fatal as the
avalanche. The true soldier of the people accepts "the com¬
bat wherever hazard may place him. Blunders, defections,
compromising companions do not dishearten him. Though
certain of defeat, he struggles still; his victory looms in
the future.
( 190 )
CHAPTER XY.
THE FIRST COMBATS OF NEUILLY AND ASNIERES—ORGANI¬
SATION AND DEFEAT OF THE CONCILIATORS.
The rout of the 3rd April daunted the timorous but
exalted the fervent. Battalions inert until then rose; the
armament of the forts no longer lagged. Save Issy and
Vanves, rather damaged, the forts were intact. All Paris
soon heard these fine cannon of seven, which Trochu had
disdained,1 firing so lustily and with such correct aim, that
on the evening of the 4th the Yersaillese were obliged to
evacuate the plateau of Châtillon. The trenches that pro¬
tected the forts were manned. Les Moulineaux, Clamart, Le
Val-Fleury resounded with the fusillade. To the right we
reoccupied Courbevoie, and the bridge of Neuilly was barri¬
caded.
Thence we continued to threaten Versailles. Vinoy re¬
ceived the order to take Neuilly. On the morning of
the 6th, Mont-Valérien, recently armed with 24-pounders,
opened fire on Courbevoie. After six hours of bombard¬
ment the Federals evacuated the cross-roads and took up a
position behind the large barricade of the bridge of Neuilly.
The Versaillese cannonaded it while it was protected by the
Porte-Maillot.
This Porte-Maillot, which has become legendary, had only
a few cannon exposed to the fire from above of Mont-
Valérien. For forty-eight days the Commune found men
to hold this untenable post. Their courage electrified all.
1 Out of 400 pieces cast by Paris during the siege, the Government of
the National Defence only accepted forty, on the pretence that the others
•were imperfect.—Vinoy, Siège de Paris, p. 287.
THE COMMUNE IN PARIS. 191
The crowd went to the Arc-de-Triomphe to see them, and the
boys hardly waited for the explosion to run after the fragments
of the shells.
The Parisian intrepidity soon reappeared in the first
skirmishes. The bourgeois papers themselves regretted
that so much ardour should not have been spent on the
Prussians. The panic of the 3rd April had witnessed heroic
deeds, and the Council, happily inspired, wanted to give
the defenders of the Commune a funeral worthy of them.
It appealed to the people. On the 6th, at two o'clock, an
innumerable multitude hurried up to the Beau j on Hospital,
whither the dead had been transported. Many, shot after
the combat, bore on their arms the marks left by cords.
There were heartrending scenes. Mothers and wives bend¬
ing over these bodies uttered cries of fury and vows of
vengeance. Three immense catafalques, each containing
thirty-five coffins, covered with black crape, adorned with
red flags, drawn by eight horses each, slowly rolled towards
the great boulevards, preceded by trumpets and the Vengeurs
de Paris. Delescluze and five members of the Commune,
with their red scarfs on and bare-headed, walked as chief
mourners. Behind them followed the relations of the victims,
the widows of to-day supported by those of to-morrow.
Thousands upon thousands, men, women, and children, im¬
mortelles in their button-holes, silent, solemn, marched to
the sound of the muffled drums. At intervals subdued
strains of music burst forth like the spontaneous mut-
terings of sorrow too long contained. On the great
boulevards we numbered .200,000, and 100,000 pale
faces looked down upon us from the windows. The
women sobbed, many fainted. This - Via Sacra of the
Revolution, the scene of so many woes and so many joys, has
perhaps never witnessed such a communion of hearts.
Delescluze exclaimed in ecstasy, "What an admirable
people! Will they still say that we are a handful of
malcontents?" At the Père la Chaise he advanced to the
common grave. Wrinkled, stooping, sustained only by his
indomitable faith, this dying man saluted the dead. "I will
192 HISTORY OP THE COMMUNE.
make you no long speeches; these have already cost us too
dear Justice for the families of the victims; justice
for the great town which, after five months of siege, betrayed
by its Government, still holds in its hands the future of
humanity. . . . Let us not weep for our brothers who have
fallen heroically, but let us swear to continue their work, and
to save Liberty, the Commune, the Republic!"
The following day the Versaillese cannonaded the barri¬
cade and the Avenue of Neuilly. The inhabitants, whom
they had not the humanity to forewarn, were obliged to
take refuge in their cellars. Towards half-past four the fire
of the Versaillese ceased, and the Federals were snatching
a little rest, when the soldiers debouched en masse on the
bridge. The Federals, surprised, attempted to arrest their
progress, wounding one general and killing two, one of
whom, Besson, was responsible for the surprise of Beaumont
l'Argonne during the march on Sedan. But the soldiers in
overwhelming force succeeded in pushing as far as the old park
of Neuilly.
The loss of this outlet was all the more serious that Bergeret,
in a letter published in the Officiel, had answered for Neuilly.
The Executive Commission replaced him by the Pole Dom-
browski, whom Garibaldi had demanded for his general staff
during the war in the Vosges. Bergeret's staff protested,
and their bickerings led to the arrest of their chief by the
Council, already grown suspicious. The National Guard it¬
self showed some distrust of the new general. The Com¬
mission had to present him to Paris, and, misinformed, in¬
vented a legend in his favour. Dombrowski was not long in
making it good.
The same day the Federals of Neuilly beheld a young man,
small of stature, in a modest uniform, slowly inspecting the
vanguards in the thick of the fire. It was Dombrowski.
Instead of the explosive glowing French bravery, the cool
and, as it were, unconscious courage of the Slaav. In a few
hours the new chief had conquered all his men. The able
officer soon revealed himself. On the 9th, during the night,
with two battalions from Montmartre, Dombrowski, accom-
THE COMMUNE IN PARIS. 193
panied by Ver morel, took the Versaillese by surprise at
Asnières, drove them off, seized their cannon, and from the
ironclad railway carriages cannonaded Courbevoie and the
bridge of Neuilly from the flank. At the same time his-,
brother stormed the castle of Béeon, that commands the road
from Asnières to Courbevoie. Vinoy having tried to retake
this post on the night of the 12th—13th, his men were shame-
folly repulsed, and fled to Courbevoie as fast as their legs
would carry them.
Paris was ignorant of this success, so defective was the
service of the general staff. This brilliant attack was the deed
of one man, just as the defence of the forts was the spontaneous
work of the National Guard. There was as yet no direction.
Whoever cared to rush into some venture did so; whoever
wanted cannon or reinforcements went to ask for them at the
Place Vendôme, at the Central Committee, at the Hôtel-de-
Ville, of the généralissime Cluseret.
The latter had made his début with a blunder, calling out
only the unmarried men from seventeen to thirty-five, thus
depriving the Commune of-its most energetic defenders, the
grey-headed men, the first and last under fire in all our inr
surrections. Three days after, this decree had to be revoked.
On the 5th, in his report to the Council, this profound
strategist announced that the attack of Versailles masked a
movement for occupying the forts of the right bank, at that
moment in the hands of the Prussians. Like Trochu, he
blamed the cannonades of the last few days, for squandering,
as he said, the munitions. And this when Paris abounded in
powder and shell; when her young troops should have been
amused and sustained by artillery; when the Versaillese of
Châtillon, incessantly pursued by our fire, were obliged to
remove every night; when an uninterrupted cannonade alone
could save Neuilly.
The Council was no wiser in its measures of defence. It
decreed compulsory service and the disarmament of the re¬
fractory; but the perquisitions, made at random, without the
assistance of the police, did not procure a man or a hundred
muskets the more. It voted life-pensions to the widows, to
N
194
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
the parents of the Federals killed in combat, to their children
an annuity till the age of eighteen, and adopted the orphans.
Excellent measures these, raising the spirits of the combatants,
only they assumed the Commune victorious. "Was it not better,
as in the cases of Duval and Dombrowski, to give at once a
few thousand francs to those having a right to them? In fact,
these unfortunate pensioners received but fifty francs from
the Commune.
These measures, incomplete, ill-managed, implied a want
of study and of reflection. The members came to the Council
as to a public meeting, without any preparation, there to
proceed without any method. The decrees of the day before
were forgotten, questions only half solved. The Council
'created councils of war and court-martials, and allowed the
Central Committee to regulate the procedure and the pen¬
alties; it organised one-half of the medical service and
Cluseret the other; it suppressed the title of general, and the
superior officers retained it, the delegate at War conferring
it on them. In the middle of a sitting, Félix Pyat bounded
from his chair to demand the abolition of the Vendôme
column, while Dombrowski was' making desperate appeals for
reinforcements.
He had hardly 2,500 men to hold Neuilly, Asnières, and the
whole ^peninsula of Gennevilliers, while the Versaillese were
accumulating their best troops against him. From the 14th to
17th April they cannonaded the castle of Béeon, and on the
morning of the 17th attacked it with a brigade. The 250
Federals who occupied it held out for six hours, and the sur¬
vivors fell back upon Asnières, where panic entered with them.
Dombrowski, Okolowitz, and a few sturdy men hastened
thither, succeeded in re-establishing a little order and fortified
the bridge-head. Dombrowski asking for reinforcements, the
War Office sent him only a few companies. The following
day our vanguard was surprised by strong detachments, and
the cannon of Courbevoie battered Asnières. After a well-
contested struggle, towards ten o'clock, several battalions,
worn out, abandoned the southern part of the village. In the
northern part the combat was desperate. Dombrowski, in
THE COMMUNE IN PARIS.
195
spite of telegram after telegram received only 300 men. At
five o'clock in the evening the Versaillese made a great
effort, and the Federals, exhausted, fearing for their retreat,
threw themselves upon the bridge of boats, which they crossed
in disorder.
The reactionary journals made much ado about this re¬
treat. Paris was stirred by it. This fierce obstinacy of the
combat began to open the eyes of the optimists. Till then
many persons believed it all some dreadful misunderstanding
and formed groups of conciliation. How many thousands
in Paris failed to understand the plan of M. Thiers and the
coalition till the day of the final massacre! On the 4th
April some manufacturers and tradesmen had created the
National Union of the Syndical Chambers, and taken for their
programme, maintenance and enfranchisement of the Re¬
public, acknowledgment of the municipal franchises of Paris.
The same day, in the Quartier des Ecoles, professors, doctors,
lawyers, engineers, and students placarded a manifesto de¬
manding a democratic and laical Republic, an autonomous
Commune and the federation of the communes. An analogous
group placarded a letter to M. Thiers: "You believe in a riot,
and you find yourself brought face to face with precise and
universal convictions. The immense majority of Paris de¬
mands the Republic as a right superior to all discussion.
Paris has seen in the whole conduct of the Assembly the
premeditated design of re-establishing the monarchy." Some
dignitaries of the Freemason lodges appealed at once to Ver¬
sailles and to the Council: "Stop the effusion of such precious
blood."
Finally, a certain number of those mayors and adjuncts who
had not capitulated till the eleventh hour, like Floquet, Cor-
bon, Bonvalet, &c., pompously got up the Republican Union
League for the Rights of Paris. Now they asked for the re¬
cognition of the Republic, the right of Paris to govern her¬
self, and the custody of the town exclusively confided to the
National Guard; all that the Commune had wanted—all
that they had contented against from the 19th to the 25th
of March.
196 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
Other groups were forming. All agreed on two points—
the consolidation of the Republic and the recognition of the
rights of Paris. Almost all the Communal journals repro¬
duced this programme, and the Republican journals accepted
it. The deputies of Paris were the last to speak, and then
only to fall foul of Paris. In that lachrymose and jesui-
tical tone with which he has travestied history,1 in those
long-winded sentimental periods which serve to mask the
aridity of his heart and the pettiness of his mind, that king
of gnomes, Louis Blanc, wrote in the name of his colleagues:
"Not one member of the majority has as yet questioned the
Republican principle. ... As to those engaged in the insur¬
rection, we tell them that they ought to have shuddered at
the thought of aggravating, of prolonging the scourge of the
foreign occupation by adding thereto the scourge of civil
discords."
It is this that M. Thiers repeated word for word to the
first conciliators, the delegates of the Union Syndicale, who
applied to him on the 8th May: "Let the insurrection dis¬
arm; the Assembly cannot disarm. But Paris wants the Re¬
public. The Republic exists; by my honour, so long as I am
in power, it will not succumb. But Paris wants municipal
franchises. The Chamber is preparing a law for all com¬
munes; Paris will get neither more nor less." The delegates
read a project of compromise which spoke of a general am¬
nesty and a suspension of arms. M. Thiers let them read
on, did not formally contest a single article, and the delegates
returned to Paris convinced that they had discovered the basis
of an arrangement.
They had hardly left when M. Thiers rushed off to the
Assembly, which had just endowed all communes with the
right of electing their mayors. M. Thiers ascended the trib-
1 Sometimes even to falsification. In his account of the 9th Ther¬
midor, he makes Barrêre say to Billaud-Varennes, "Do not attack
Robespierre;" and on the strength of this expatiates on the greatness
of his hero. Now, the report of Courtois that he quotes, hoping, no
doubt, that no one would examine the accuracy of the statement, says,
"Attack only," and not "Do not attack."
THE COMMUNE IN PARIS.
197
une, demanding that this right should be restricted to towns
of less than 20,000 souls. They cried to him, "It is already
voted." He persisted, declaring that "in a republic the Go¬
vernment must be all the better armed because order is the
more difficult to maintain;" threatened to hand in his resig¬
nation, and forced the Assembly to annul its vote.
On the 10th, the League of the Rights of Paris sounded
the trumpet and had a solemn declaration placarded: "Let
the Government give up assailing the facts accomplished on
the 18th March. Let the general re-election of the Com¬
mune be proceeded with. ... If the Government of Ver¬
sailles remains deaf to these legitimate revindications, let it
be well understood that all Paris will rise to defend them."1
The next day the delegates of the League went to Versailles,
and M. Thiers took up his old refrain, "Let Paris disarm,"
and would hear neither of an armistice nor of an amnesty.
"Pardon shall be extended" said he, "to those who will dis¬
arm, save to the assassins of Clément-Thomas and Lecomte."
This was to reserve himself the choice of a few thousands. In
short, he wanted to be replaced in his position of the 18th
March with victory into the bargain. The same day he said
to the delegates of the Masonic lodges, "Address yourselves
to the Commune; what is wanted is the submission of the in¬
surgents, and not the resignation of legal power." To facili¬
tate this submission, the next day the Officiel of Versailles com¬
pared Paris to the plain of Marathon infested by a band of
"brigands and assassins." On the 13th, a deputy, Brunet,
having asked whether the Government would or would not
make peace with Paris, the Assembly adjourned this inter¬
pellation for a month.
The League, thus well whipped, went on the 14th to the
Hôtel-de-Ville. The Council, foreign to all these negotia¬
tions, left them entirely free, and had only forbidden a meet¬
ing announced at the Bourse by ill-disguised Tirards. It con-
1 It seems there was a split in the League. The Radicals, Floquet,
Corbon, &c., disapproved of this semi-commanding attitude, and boasted
of it later on before the Committee of Inquiry into the 18th March ; but
during the Commune they made no public protest against this address.
198
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
tented itself with opposing to the League its declaration of the
10th: "You have said that if Versailles remained deaf all
Paris would rise. Versailles has remained deaf; arise." And
to make Paris the judge, the Council loyally published in its
Officiel the report of the conciliators.
CHAPTER XYI.
THE MANIFESTO OF THE COUNCIL THE COMPLEMENTARY
ELECTIONS OF THE 16TH APRIL SHOW A MINORITY WITHIN
THE COUNCIL FIRST DISPUTES THE GERMS OF DEFEAT.
For the second time the situation was distinctly marked
out. If the Council did not know how to define the Com¬
mune, was it not in the most unmistakable manner, and
before the eyes of all Paris, declared to mean a camp of rebels
by the fighting, the bombardment, the fury of the Versail-
lese, and the rebuff of the conciliators? The complementary-
elections of the 16th April—death, double election returns,
and resignations had given thirty-one vacant seats—revealed
the effective forces of the insurrection. The illusion of the
26th March had vanished; the votes were now taken under
fire. Also the journals of the Commune and the delegates
of the Syndical Chambers in vain summoned the electors to
the ballot-box. Out of 146,000 who had mustered in these
arrondissements at the election of the 26th March, there came
now only 61,000. The arrondissements of the councillors who
had deserted their seats gave 16,000 instead of 51,000 votes.
It was now or never the moment to explain their pro¬
gramme to France. The Executive Commission had on the
6th, in an address to the provinces, protested against the
calumnies of Versailles, but had confined itself to the state¬
ment that Paris fought for all France, and had not set forth
any programme. The Republican protestations of M. Thiers,
the hostility of the extreme Left, the desultory decrees, had
completely led astray the provinces. It was necessary to set
them right at once. On the 19th, a commission charged to
200 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
draw up a programme presented its work, or rather the work
of another. Sad and characteristic symbol this; the de¬
claration of the Commune did not emanate from the
Council, its twelve publicists notwithstanding. Of the five
members charged to draw up the project, only Delêseluze
contributed some passages; the technical part was the work
of a journalist, Pierre Denis.
In the Cri du Peuple he had taken up and formulated as
a law the whim of Paris a free town, hatched in the first
gush of passion of the Yauxhall meetings. According to this
legislator, Paris was to become a Hanseatic town, crowning
herself with all liberties, and from the height of her proud
fortress say to the enchained communes of France, "Imitate
me if you can; but mind, I shall do nothing for you but set
an example." This charming plan had turned the heads of
several members of the Council, and too many traces of it
were visible in the declaration.
"What does Paris demand?" it said. "The recognition of
the Republic. Absolute autonomy of the Commune extended
to all localities of France. The inherent rights of the Com¬
mune are: the vote of the communal budget; the settlement
and repartition of taxes; the direction of the local services; the
organisation of its magistracy, of its internal police, and of
education; the administration of communal goods; the choice
and permanent right of control over the communal magis¬
trates and functionaries; the absolute guarantee of individual
liberty, of the liberty of conscience and the liberty of labour;
the organisation of urban defence and of the National Guard;
the Commune alone charged with the surveillance and assur¬
ance of the free and just exercise of the right of meeting and
of publicity. . . . Paris wants nothing more. ... on condition
of finding in the great central administration, the delegation
of the federated communes, the realisation and practical appli¬
cation of the same principle."
What were to be the powers of that central delegation, the
reciprocal obligations of the Communes? The declaration did
not state these. According to this text, every locality was to
THE COMMUNE IN PARIS. . 201
possess the right to shut itself up within its autonomy. But
what to expect of autonomy in Lower Brittany, in nine-tenths
of the French Communes, more than half of which have not
600 inhabitants,1 if even the Parisian declaration violated the
most elementary rights, charged the Commune with the sur¬
veillance of the just exercise of the right of meeting and of
publicity, forgetting to mention the right of association? It
is notorious, it has been proved but too well. The rural auton¬
omous communes would be a monster with a thousand
suckers attached to the flank of the Revolution.
No! Thousands of mutes and blind are not fitted to con¬
clude a social pact. Weak, unorganised, bound by a thousand
trammels, the people of the country can only be saved by the
towns, and the people of the towns guidefl by Paris. The
failure of all the provincial insurrections, even of the large
towns, had sufficiently testified this. When the declaration
said, "Unity such as has been imposed upon us until to-day
by the Empire, the monarchy and parliamentarism is only
despotic, unintelligent centralisation," it laid bare the cancer
that devours France; but when it added, "Political unity, as
understood by Paris, is the voluntary association of all local
initiative," it showed that it knew nothing whatever of the
provinces.
The declaration continued, in the style of an address, some¬
times to the point: "Paris works and suffers for all France,
whose intellectual, moral, administrative, and economical
regeneration she prepares by her combats and her sufferings.
. . . The communal revolution, commenced by the popular
initiative of the 18th March, inaugurates a new era." But
in all this there was nothing definite. Why not, taking up
the formula of the 28th March, "To the commune what is
communal, to the nation what is national," define the future
commune, sufficiently extended to endow it with political life,
1 Seventy-three communes have more than 20,000 inhabitants; 108
have from 10,000 to 20,000; 309 from 5000 to 10,000; 249 from 4000
to 5000; and 581 from 3000 to 4000. There are then only 1320 com-,
munes having more than 8000 inhabitants, 800 at most that possess any!
political life.
202 HISTORY OP THE COMMUNE.
sufficiently limited to allow its citizens easily to combine their
social action, the commune of 15,000 to 20,000 souls, the
canton-commune, and clearly set forth its rights and those
of Prance? They did not even speak of federating the large
towns for the conquest of their common enfranchisement.
Such as it was, this programme, obscure, incomplete, im¬
possible in many points, could not, spite of some generous
ideas, contribute much to the enlightenment of the pro¬
vinces.
It was only a project. No doubt the Council was going to
discuss it. It was voted after the first reading. No debate,
hardly an observation. This assembly, which gave four days
to the discussion on overdue commercial bills, had not one
sitting for the study of this declaration, its programme in case
of victory, its testament if it succumbed.
To make things worse, a new malady infected the Council,
the germs of which, sown for some days, were brought to full
maturity by the complementary elections. The Romanticists
gave rise to the Casuists, and both came to loggerheads on the
verification of the new mandates.
On the 30th March the Council had validated six elections
with a relative majority. The reporter on the election of the
16th proposed declaring all those candidates elected who had
received an absolute majority. The Casuists grew indignant.
"This would be," said they, "the worst blow that any Govern¬
ment had dealt universal suffrage." But is was impossible
to go on continually convoking the electors. Three of the
most devoted arrondissements had given no result; one of
them, the thirteenth, being deprived of its best men, then
fighting at the advanced posts. A new ballot would only set
forth in bolder relief the isolation of the Commune; and then,
is the moment of the fight, when the battalion is decimated,,
deprived of its chief, the opportune time for insisting upon a
regular promotion?
The discussion was very warm, for in this outlawed Hôtel-
de-Ville there sat outrageous legality-mongers. Paris was to
be strangled by their saving principles. Already, in the name
of holy autonomy, which forbade intervention with the auto-
THE COMMUNE IN PARIS.
203
nomy of one's neighbour, the Executive Commission had re¬
fused to arm the communes round Paris that asked to march
against Versailles. M. Thiers took no more efficient measure
to isolate Paris.
Twenty-six voices against thirteen voted the conclusions
of the report. Twenty elections only were declared valid.1
which was illogical; one with less than 1100 votes was ad¬
mitted, another with 2500 rejected. All the elections should
have been declared valid, or none at all. Eour of the new
delegates were journalists, six only workmen. Eleven sent
by the public meetings came to strengthen the Romanticists.
Two whose elections had been validated by the Council refused
to sit because they had not obtained the eighth part of the
votes. The author of the admirable Propos de Labicnus,
Rogeard, allowed himself to be deceived by a false scruple of
legality—the only weakness of this generous man, who de¬
voted to the Commune his pure and brilliant eloquence. His
resignation deprived the Council of a man of common sense,
but once more served to unmask the apocalyptic Félix Pyat.
Since the 1st April, scenting the coming storm and pro¬
fessing the same horror for blows as Panurge, Félix Pyat had
attempted to leave Paris, sent in his resignation as member
of the Executive Commission to the Council, and declared
his presence at Versailles indispensable. The Versaillese
hussars making the sortie too perilous, he had condescended
to stay, but at the same time assuming two masks, one for
the Hôtel-de-Ville, the other for the public. In the Council,
at the secret sittings, he urged violent measures with the
vivacity of a wild cat; in the Vengeur he held forth pon-
tifically, shaking his grey hairs,■ saying, "To the ballot-box,
1 Vesinier, Cluseret, Pillot, Andrieu (1st arrondissement, Louvre);
Pothier, Serraillier, J. Durand, Johannard (2nd, Bourse); Courbet,
Rogeard (6th, Luxembourg); Sieard (1th, Palais-Bourbon); Briosne
(9th, Opéra) ; Philippe, Lonelas (12th, Reuilly) ; Longuet (16th, Passy) ;
Dupont (17th, Batignolles); Cluseret, Arnold (18th, Montmartre);
Menotti Garibaldi (19th, Buttes-Chaumont) ; Yiard, Trinquet (20th
Ménilmontant).
204 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
not to Versailles!" In his own paper he had two faces. Did
he want the suppression of the journals, he signed "Le Ven¬
geur;" did he want to cajole, he signed Félix Pyat. The
defeat of Asnières struck him again with fear, and anew he
looked out for a loophole. The resignation of Rogeard opened
it. Under the shelter of this pure name Félix Pyat slipped
in his resignation. "The Commune has violated the law,"
wrote he. "I do not want to be an accomplice." And, to
debar himself from any return to the Council, he involved
the dignity of the latter. If, said he, it persisted, he would
be forced, to his great regret, to send in his resignation
fCbefore the victory."
He had counted on stealing away as from the Assembly
of Bourdeaux; but his roguery disgusted the Council. The
Vengeur had just blamed the suppression of several reac¬
tionary papers demanded many and many a time by Félix
Pyat. Vermorel denounced this duplicity. One member:
"It has been said here that resignations would be considered
as treason." Another: "A man must not leave his post when
that post is one of peril and of honour." A third formally
demanded the arrest of Félix Pyat. "I regret," said another,
"that it has not been distinctly laid down that resignation
can only be tendered to the electors themselves." And Deles-
cluze added, "Nobody has the right to withdraw for personal
rancour or because some measure does not chime in with his
ideal. Do you then believe that every one approves what
is done here? Yes; there are members who have remained,
and who will remain till the end, notwithstanding the insults
hurled at us. For myself, I am decided to remain at my
post, and if we do not see victory, we shall not be the last
to fall on the ramparts or on the steps of the Hôtel-de-
Ville."
These manly words were received with prolonged cheers.
No one's devotion was more meritorious. The habits of
Delescluze, grave and laborious, his high aspirations, alien¬
ated him more than any other from many of his colleagues,
light-headed idlers, prone to personal bickerings. One day,
weary of this chaos, he wanted to resign. It sufficed to tell
THE COMMUNE IN PARIS. 205
him that his withdrawal would be very prejudicial to the cause
of the people to persuade him to remain, and await, not vic¬
tory—as well as Félix Pyat he knew that impossible—but the
death that fecundates the future.
Félix Pyat, so lashed from all sides, not daring to snap at
Deleseluze, turned round upon Yermorel, whom for all ar¬
gument he called "spy;" and as Yermorel was a member of the
Commission of Public Safety, accused him in the Vengeur of
putting out of the way evidence accumulated against him at
the prefecture of police. This member of the leporide species
called Yermorel "bombic." Such was his mode of discussion.
Under the veil of literary refinement lurked the amenities of
Billingsgate. In 1848, in the Constituante, he called Proud-
hon "swine? and in 1871, in the Commune, he called Tridon
"dunghill." He was the only member of this Assembly, where
there were workmen of rude professions, who introduced rib¬
aldry into the discussions.
Yermorel, replying in the Cri du Peuple, easily floored
him. The electors of Félix Pyat sent him three summations
to remain at his post: "You are a soldier; you must stay in
the breach. It is we alone who have the right to revoke you. "
Ferreted out by his mandatories, threatened with arrest by
the Council, this Greek chose the lesser danger, and re-entered
the Hotel-de-Ville in mincing attitude.
Versailles was jubilant at these miserable triflings. For
the first time the public became acquainted with the interior
of the Council, its infinitesimal coteries, made up of purely
personal friendships or antipathies. Whoever belonged to
such a group got thorough support, whatever his blunders.
Far more; in order to be allowed to serve the Commune, it
was necessary to belong to such a confraternity. Many sin¬
cerely devoted men offered themselves, tried democrats,
intelligent employés, deserters from the Government, even
Republican officers. They were overweeningly met by some
ineapable upstarts of yesterday, whose devotion was not to
outlast the 20th May. And yet the insufficiency of the
personnel and the want of talent each day became more over-
200
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
whelming. The members of the Council complained that noth-
ing was getting on. The Executive Commission did not know
how to command, nor its subordinate how to obey; the Coun¬
cil devolved power and retained it at the same time, inter¬
fered every moment with the slightest details of the service;
conducted the government, the administration, and the
defence like the sortie of the 3rd April.
( 207 )
CHAPTEB XVII.
OUR PARISIENNES—SUSPENSION OF ARMS FOR TIIE EVACUA¬
TION OF NEUILLY—THE ARMY OF VERSAILLES AND THAT
OF PARIS.
The glorious flame of Paris still hid these failings. One
must have been enkindled by it to describe it. Beside it the
Communard journals, in spite of their romanticism, show
pale and dull. It is true the mise en scene was unpretending.
In the streets, in the silent boulevards, a battalion of a
hundred men setting out for the battle or returning from it;
a woman who follows, a passer-by who applauds—that is all.
But it is the drama of the Revolution, simple and gigantic as
a drama of /Eschvlus.
The commander in his vareuse, dusty, his silver lace singed,
his men greyheads or youths, the veterans of June 1848 and
the pupils of March, the son often marching by the side of
the father.1
This woman, who salutes or accompanies them, she is the
true Parisienne. The unclean androgyne, born in the mire
of the Empire, the madonna of the pornographers, the Dumas
fils and the Feydeaux, has followed her patrons to Versailles
or works the Prussian mine at St. Denis. She, who is now
uppermost, is the Parisienne, strong, devoted, tragic, knowing
how to die as she loves. A helpmeet in labour, she will also
be an associate in the death-struggle. A formidable equal¬
ity this to oppose to the bourgeoisie. The proletarian is
doubly strong—one heart and four hands. On the 24th of
March a Federal addressed these noble words to the bourgeois
battalions of the first arrondissement, making them drop
1 Appendix IV.
208 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
their arms: "Believe me, you cannot hold out; your wives are
all in tears, and ours do not weep."
She does not keep back her husband.1 On the contrary,
she urges him to battle, carries him his linen and his soup,
as she had before done to his workshop. Many would not
return, but took up arms. At the plateau de Châtillon they
were the last to stand the fire. The cantinières, simply
dressed as workwomen, not fancy costumes, fell by dozens.
On the 3rd April, at Meudon, the Citoyenne Lachaise,
cantiniere of the 66th battalion, remained the whole day
in the field of battle, tending the wounded, alone, without a
doctor.
If they return, it is to call to arms. Having formed a
central committee at the mairie of the tenth arrondissement,
they issued fiery proclamations: "We must conquer or die.
You who say, 'What matters the triumph of our cause if I
must lose those I love?' know that the only means of saving
those who are dear to you is to throw yourselves into the
struggle." Their committees multiplied. They offered them¬
selves to the Commune, demanding arms, posts of danger,
and complaining of the cowards who swerved from their duty.2
Madame André Léo, with her eloquent pen, explained the
meaning of the Commune, summoned the delegate at the
War Office to avail himself of the "holy fever that burns in
1 And what sublime faith in their naïveté! We heard in an omnibus
two women on their return from the trenches. The one wept; the
other said to her, "Do not distress yourself; our husbands will come
back. And then the Commune has promised to take care of us and of
our children. But no! it is impossible they should be killed in de¬
fending so good a cause. Besides I would rather have my husband
dead than in the hands of the Versaillese."
2 "My heart bleeds to see that only those ready to volunteer engage
in the combat. This is not, citizen delegate, a denunciation ; far from
me such a thought ; but I fear lest the weakness of the members of the
Commune should cause our great projects for the future to miscarry."
This heroic letter is taken from a book, Le Fond de la Société sons la
Commune, which contains documents found by the army in different
mairies and administrations. The work in general is an odious caricature,
of which the author himself, a Joseph Prudhomme, in the shape of a
bloodhound, is certainly the most ridiculous trait.
THE COMMUNE IN PARIS.
209
the hearts of the women." A young Russian lady, of noble
birth, educated, beautiful, rich, called Demitrieff, was the
Théroigne de Méricourt of this Revolution. The proletarian
character of the Commune was embodied in Louise Michel, a
teacher in the seventeenth arrondissement. Gentle and
patient with the little children, who adored her, in the cause
of the people the mother became a lioness. She had or¬
ganised a corps of ambulance nurses, who tended the wounded
even under fire. There they suffered no rivals. They also
went to the hospitals to save their beloved comrades from the
harsh nuns; and the eyes of the dying brightened at the mur¬
mur of those gentle voices that spoke to them of the Republic
and of hope.
In this contest of devotion the children fought with men
and women. The Versaillese, victorious, took 660 of them,
and many perished in the battle of the streets. Thousands
served during the siege. They followed the battalions to the
trenches, in the forts, especially clinging to the cannon. Some
gunners of the Porte-Maillot were boys of from thirteen to
fourteen years old. Unsheltered, in the open country, they
performed exploits of mad heroism.1
This Parisian flame radiated beyond the enceinte. The
municipalities of Sceaux and St. Denis united at Vincennes
to protest against the bombardment, revindicate the muni¬
cipal franchises and the establishment of the Republic. Its
heat was even felt in the provinces.
They began to believe Paris was impregnable, and laughed
much at the despatches of M. Thiers, saying on the 3rd
' April, "This day is decisive of the fate of the insurrection;"
on the 4th, "The insurgents have to-day suffered a decisive
defeat;" on the 7th, "This day is decisive;" on the 11th,
"Irresistible means are being prepared at Versailles;" on the
12th, "We expect the decisive moment." And despite so
many decisive successes and irresistible means, the Versaillese
army was all the while baffled at our advanced posts. Its only
decisive victories were against the houses of the enceinte and
the suburbs.
1 Appendix V.
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
The neighbourhood of the Porte-Maillot, the Avenue de
la Grande Armée, and the Ternes were continually lighting
np with conflagrations. Asnières and Levallois were filling
with ruins, the inhabitants of Neuilly starving in their
cellars. The Versaillese threw against these points alone
1500 shells a day; and yet M. Thiers wrote to his prefects,
"If a few cannon-shots are heard, it is not the act of the
Government, but of a few insurgents trying to make us
believe they are fighting, while they hardly dare show them¬
selves."
The Commune assisted the bombarded people of Paris,
but could do nothing for those of Neuilly, caught between
two fires. A cry of pity went up from the whole press. All
the journals demanded an armistice for the evacuation of
Neuilly; the Freemasons and the Ligue des Droits de Paris
interposed. With much trouble, for the generals did not
want an armistice, the delegates got a suspension of arms for
eight hours. The Council appointed five of its members to
receive the bombarded people; the municipalities prepared
them an asylum, and some of the women's committees left
Paris to assist them.
On the 25th, at nine o'clock in the morning, the cannon
from the Porte-Maillot to Asnières were silent. Thousands
of Parisians went to visit the ruins of the Avenue and the
Porte-Maillot, a mortar of earth, granite, and fragments of
shells; stood still, deeply moved, before the artillerists leaning
on their famous pieces, and then dispersed all over Neuilly.
The little town, once so coquettish, displayed in the bright
rays of the sun its shattered houses. At the limits agreed
upon were two barriers, one of soldiers of the line, the other
of Federals, separated from each other by an interval of about
twenty yards. The Versaillese, chosen from amongst their
most reliable troops, were watched by officers with hangdog
looks. The Parisians, good fellows, approached the soldiers,
speaking to them. The officers immediately ran up shou¬
ting furiously. When a soldier gave a polite answer to two
ladies, an officer threw himself upon him, tore away his
musket, and pointing the bayonet at the Parisiennes, cried,
THE COMMUNE IN PARIS. 211
"This is how one speaks to them." Some persons having
crossed the boundary marked out were taken prisoners. Still
five o'clock struck without any massacre having occurred. The
Avenue grew empty. Each Parisian on returning home carried
his sack of earth to the fortifications of the Porte-Maillot,
which found themselves re-established as if by magic.
In the evening the Yersaillese again opened fire. It had
not ceased against the forts of the south. That same day
the enemy unmasked on this side the batteries he had been
constructing for a fortnight,—the first part of the plan of
General Thiers.
He had on the 6th placed all the troops under the com¬
mand of that MacMahon, his stains of Sedan still upon him.
The army at this time was 46,000 strong, for the most part
the residuum of depots, incapable of any serious action. To
reinforce it and obtain soldiers, M. Thiers had sent Jules
Favre whining to Bismarck. The Prussians had set free 60,000
prisoners on harsher conditions of peace, and authorised his
gossip Thiers to augment to 130,000 men the number of sol¬
diers round Paris, which, according to the preliminaries of
peace, were not to have exceeded 40,000 men. On the 25th
April the Yersaillese army comprised five corps, two of them,
those of Douai and Clinchant, composed of the released pris¬
oners from Germany and a reserve commanded by Yinoy, all
in all 110,000 men. It increased to 170,000 receiving rations,
of whom 130,000 were combatants. M. Thiers displayed real
ability in setting it against Paris. The soldiers were well fed,
well dressed, severely overlooked; discipline was re-established.
There occurred mysterious disappearances of officers guilty
of having given utterance to their horror at this fratricidal
war. Still this was not yet the army for an attack, the men
always scampering away before a steady resistance. Despite
official brag, the generals only counted upon the artillery, to
which they owed the successes of Courbevoie and of Asnières.
Paris was only to be overcome by fire.
As during the first siege, Paris was literally hemmed in by
bayonets, but this time half-foreign, half-French. The Ger-
212 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
man army, forming a semicircle from the Marne to St. Denis,
occupying the forts of the east and of the north; the Ver-
saillese army, closing the circle from St. Denis to Villeneuve
St. Georges, mistress only of Mont-Valérien. The latter
could then only attack the Commune by the west and south.
The Federals had then the five forts of Ivry, Bicêtre, Mont-
rouge, Vanves, and Issy to defend themselves, with the
trenches and the advanced posts that united them to each
other, and the principal villages, Neuilly, Asniéres, and St.
Ouen.
The vulnerable point of the enceinte facing the Versaillese
was on the south-west, the salient of the Point du Jour, de¬
fended by the fort of Issy. Sufficiently covered on the right
by the park, the castle of Issy and a trench uniting it to
the Seine, commanded by our gunboats, this fort was over¬
topped in front and on the left by the heights of Bellevue,
Meudon, and Châtillon, M. Thiers armed them with siege
pieces which he had sent from Toulon, Cherbourg, Douai,
Lyons, and Besançon—293 ordnance pieces—and their effect
was such that from the first days the fort of Issy was shaken.
General Cissey, charged with the command of these operations,
immediately commenced manoeuvring.
To crush the fort of Issy and that of Vanves, which sup¬
ported it, then to force the Point du Jour, whence the troops
could deploy into Paris, such was M. Thiers' plan. The only
object of the operations from St. Ouen to Neuilly was to pre¬
vent our attack by Courbevoie.
What forces and what plan did the Commune oppose?
The returns stated about 96,000 men and 4000 officers for
the active National Guard; for the reserve, 100,000 men and
3500 officers.1 Thirty-six free corps claimed to number 3450
men. All deductions made, 60,000 combatants might have
been obtained had they known how to set about it. But the
weakness of the Council, the difficulty of supervision and re-
1 Very approximate numbers. The return of the Officiel of the 6th
May is very incomplete. In general, these statements were erroneous,
fictitious, especially after the administration of Meyer.
THE COMMUNE IN PARIS.
213
pression, allowed the lèss brave and those who did not stand
in need of pay, to shirk all control. Many contrived to limit
their services to the interior of Paris. Thus for want of order
the effective forces remained very weak, and the line from St.
Ouen to Ivry was never held by more than 15,000 or 16,000
Federals.
The cavalry existed only on paper. There were only 500
horses to drag the guns or the waggons and to mount the
officers and estafettes. The engineer department remained
in a rudimentary state, the finest decrees notwithstanding. Of
the 1200 cannon possessed by Paris, only 200 were utilised.
There were never more than 500 artillerists, while the returns
stated 2500.
Dombrowski occupied the bridge of Asnières, Levallois, and
Neuilly with 4000 or 5000 men at the utmost.1 To protect
his positions he had at Clichy and Asnières about thirty ord¬
nance pieces and two ironclad railway carriages, which from
the 15th April to the 22nd May, even after the entry of the
Versaillese, did not cease running along the lines; at Levallois,
a dozen pieces. The ramparts of the north assisted him, and
the valiant Porte-Maillot covered him at Neuilly.
On the left bank, from Issy to Ivry, in the forts, the vil¬
lages, and the trenches, there were 10,000 to 11,000 Federals.
The fort of Issy contained on an average 600 men and 50
pièces of 7 and 12 centimetres, of which two-thirds were in¬
active. The bastions 72 and 73 relieved him a little, aided
by four ironclad locomotives established on the viaduct of the
1 The figures which I give have been carefully verified de visu, first
during the struggle, afterwards with generals, superior officers, and
functionaries of the War Office. General Appert has drawn up merely
fantastic returns. He has created imaginary brigades, manufactured
effective returns by counting as regular combatants all men who, at any
time, might have been told off for active service, and constantly dupli¬
cated the items of his accounts. He has thus contrived to give more
than 20,000 men to Dombrowski, and as much as 50,000 to the three
commanders—quite ridiculous figures. His report swarms with mis¬
takes as to names and functions ; he does not even know the names
of certain general commanders. It possesses no kind of historical
value.
214 HISTOEY OF THE COMMUNE.
Point du Jour. Underneath, the gunboats, rearmed, fired on
Breteuil, Sèvres, Brimborion, even daring to push as far as
Châtillon, and, unsheltered, cannonaded Meudon. A few-
hundred tirailleurs occupied the park and the castle of Issy,
the Moulineaux, Le Val, and the trenches which united the
fort of Issy to that of Vanves. This latter, exposed like Issy,
valiantly supported its efforts with a garrison of 500 men and
about 20 cannon. The bastions of the enceinte supported it
very little.
The fort of Montrouge, with 350 men and 10 to 15 ord¬
nance pieces, had only to support the fort of Vanves. That of
Bicétre, provided with 500 men and 20 pieces, had to fire at
objects hidden from its view. Three considerable redoubts
protected it—the Hautes Bruyères, with 500 men and 20
pieces; the Moulin Saquet, with 700 men and about 14 pieces;
and Villejuif, with 300 men and a few howitzers. At the
extreme left, the fort of Ivry and its dependencies had 500
men and about 400 pieces. The intermediate villages, Gen-
tilly, Cachan, and Arcueil, were occupied by 2000 to 2500
Federals.
The nominal command of the forts of the south, first
confided to Eudes, assisted by an ex-officer of Garibaldi, La
Cecilia, on the 20th passed into the hands of the Alsatian
Wetzel, an officer of the army of the Loire. From his head¬
quarters of Issy he was to superintend the trenches of Issy
and of Vanves and the defence of the forts. In reality,
their commanders, who often changed, did just as they
pleased.
The command, from Issy to Arcueil was, towards the
middle of April, entrusted to General Wroblewski, one of
the best officers of the Polish insurrection, young, an adept
in military science, brave, methodical, and shrewd, turning
everybody and everything to account; an excellent chief for
young troops.1
1 A member of the Council discovered him, and presented him at the
War Office, where he explained his ideas: "But," it was remarked to
him, "this is word for word what Félix Pyat does not cease saying to
THE COMMUNE IN PARIS. 215
All these general officers never received but one order:
"Defend yourselves." As to a general plan, there never was
one. Neither Cluseret nor Rossel held councils of war.
The men were also abandoned to themselves, being neither
cared for nor controlled. Scarcely any, if any, relieving of
the troops under fire ever took place. The whole strain fell
upon the same men. Certain battalions remained twenty,
thirty days in the trenches, while others were continually kept
in reserve. If some men grew so inured to fire that they
refused to return home, others were discouraged, came to
show their clothes covered with vermin and asked for rest.
The generals were obliged to retain them, having no one to
put in their places.
This carelessness soon destroyed all discipline. The brave
wanted to rely only upon themselves, and the others slunk
from the service. The officers did the same, some leaving
their posts to assist the fight at a contiguous place, others
returning to the town. The court-martial sentenced a few of
them very severely. The Council quashed the sentences, and
commuted one condemnation to death to three years' im¬
prisonment.
As they recoiled from rigour, from regular war discipline,
they ought to have changed their method and their tactics.
But the Council was now even less capable of showing will
of its own than on the first day. It always lamented that
things were at a stand-still, but did not know how to set them
going. On the 26 th, the military commission, declaring that
decrees and orders remained a dead letter, charged the muni¬
cipalities, the Central Committee, and the chefs-de-légions
with the reorganisation of the National Guard. Not one of
these mechanisms functioned methodically; the Council had
not even thought of organising Paris by sections; the Central
us." "A few days ago," answered Wroblewski, "I sent Félix Pyat a
memorandum." Rossel went to Pyat's bureau, and there found the
memorandum. For several days this trickster had been making capital
of the ideas of Wroblewski without the least allusion to their author,
and astounding the Commission by his common sense and technical
knowledge.
216 HISTORY OP THE COMMUNE.
Committee intrigued; the chefs de légions were agitated; cer¬
tain members of the Council and generals dreamt of a mili¬
tary dictatorship. In the midst of this fatal wrestling, the
Council discussed during several sittings whether the pawn¬
tickets to be given back gratuitously to their owners should
amount to twenty or thirty francs, and whether the Officiel
should be sold for five centimes.
Towards the end of April, no observer of any perspicacity
could fail to see that the defence had become hopeless. In
Paris, active and devoted men exhausted their strength in
enervating struggles with the bureaux, the committees, the
sub-committees, and the thousand pretentious rival adminis¬
trations, often losing a whole day in order to obtain posses¬
sion of a single cannon. At the ramparts, some artillerists
riddled the line of Versailles, and, asking for nothing hut
bread and iron, stood to their pieces until torn away by
shells. The forts, their casemates staved in, their embrasures
destroyed, lustily answered the fire from the heights. Brave
skirmishers, unprotected, surprised the line-soldiers in their
lurking-places. All this devotion and dazzling heroism were
spent in vain, like the steam of an engine escaping through
hundreds of issues.
( 217 )
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE PUBLIC SEBYICES—FINANCE—WAR—POLICE—EXTERIOR
—JUSTICE—EDUCATION—LABOUR AND EXCHANGE. *
The insufficiency and the weakness of the Executive Com¬
mission became so shocking, that on the 20th the Council
decided to replace it by the delegates of the nine commis¬
sions, amongst whom it had distributed its different functions.
These commissions were renewed the same day. In general
they were rather neglected; and how could one man attend
to the daily sittings of the Hôtel-de-Ville, to his commission
■and his mairie? For the Council had charged its members
flvith the administration of their respective arrondissements;
and the real work of the several commissions weighed on the
delegates who had presided over them from their origin, and
for the most part were not changed on the 20th April They
continued to act, as heretofore, almost single-handed. Before
proceeding with our narrative we will look more narrowly into
their doings.
Two delegations required only good-will—those of the vic¬
tualling department and of the public or municipal services.
The provisioning of the town was carried on through the
neutral zone, where M. Thiers, however anxious to starve
Paris,1 could not prevent a regular supply of food. All the
foremen having remained at their posts, the municipal ser¬
vices did not suffer. Four delegations—Finance, War, Public
^Safety, Exterior—required special aptitude. The three others,
Education, Justice, Labour and Exchange, had to propound
the philosophical principles of this revolution. All-the dele-
1 Appendix VI.
218 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
gates save Frankel, a workman, belonged to the small middle-
class.
The Commission of Finance centered in Jourde, who, with
his inexhaustible garrulity, had eclipsed the too modest Yarlin.
The task imposed was to procure every morning 675,000 francs
for the payment of the services, to feed 250,000 persons, and
find the sinews of war. Besides the 4,658,000 francs in the
coffers of the Treasury, 214 millions in shares and other
effects had been found in the Finance Office; but Jourde could
not or would not negotiate them, and to fill his exchequer he
had to lay hold of the revenues of all the administrations—
the telegraph and postal offices, the octrois, direct contribu¬
tions, custom house offices, markets, tobacco, registration
and stamps, municipal funds and the railway duties. The
bank, little by little, paid back the 9,400,000 francs due to
the town, and even parted with 7,290,000 francs on its own
account. From the 20th March to the 30th April, twenty-
six millions were thus scraped together. During the same
period the War Office alone absorbed over twenty. The In¬
tendance received 1,813,000 francs, all the municipalities to¬
gether 1,446,000, the Interior 103,000, Marine 29,000, Justice
5500, Commerce 50,000, Education one thousand only, Ex¬
terior 112,000, Firemen 100,000, National Library 80,000,
Commission of Barricades 44,500, L'Imprimerie Nationale
100,000, the Association of Tailors and Shoemakers 24,882.
These proportions remained almost the same from the 1st May
to the fall of the Commune. The expenses of the second
period rose to about twenty millions. The sum total of the
expenses of the Commune was about 46,300,000 francs, of
which 16,696,000 were supplied by the bank, and the rest
by the various services, the octrois yielding nearly twelve
millions.
Most of these Services were under the superintendence of
workmen or former subordinate employés, and were all car¬
ried on with a fourth part of their ordinary numerical
strength. The director of the postal department, Theisz, a
chaser, found the Service quite disorganised, the divisionary
bureaux closed, the stamps hidden away or carried off, the
THE COMMUNE IN PARIS. 219
material, seals, the carts, &c., taken away, and the coffers
empty. Placards posted up in the hall and courts ordered the
employés to proceed to Versailles on pain of dismissal, but
Theisz acted with promptitude and energy. When the sub¬
ordinate employés who had not been forewarned came as
usual to organise the mail service, he addressed them, discussed
with them, and had the doors shut. Little by little they gave
way. Some functionaries who were Socialists also lent their
help, and the direction of the various services was intrusted
to the head-clerks. The divisionary bureaux were opened, and
in forty-eight hours the collection and distribution of letters
for Paris reorganised. As to the letters destined for the prov¬
inces, clever agents threw them into the offices of St. Denis
and ten miles round, while for the introduction of letters into
Paris every latitude was given to private initiative. A supe¬
rior council was instituted, which raised the wages of postmen,
sorters, porters, caretakers of the bureaux, shortened the time
of service as supernumeraries, and decided that the ability of
the employés should be tested for the future by means of tests
and examinations.1
The Mint, directed by Camélinat, a bronze-mounter, one of
the most active members of the International, manufactured
the postage stamps. At the Mint, as at the general post-
office, the Versaillese director and principal employés had
first parleyed, then made off. Camélinat, supported by some
friends, bravely took this place, had the works continued, and
every one contributing his professional experience, improve¬
ments in the machinery as well as new methods were intro¬
duced. The bank, which concealed its bullion, was obliged
to furnish about 110,000 francs' worth, immediately coined
into five-franc pieces. A new coin-plate was engraved, and
was about to be put into use, when the Versaillese entered
Paris.
The department of Public Assistance also depended on that
of the Finances. A man of the greatest merit, Treilhard,
an old exile of 1851, reorganised this administration, which
1 Appendix VII., report by Theisz.
220 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
he found entirely out of order. Some doctors and agents
of the service had abandoned the hospitals; the director and
the steward of the Petits-Ménages at Issy had fled, thus re¬
ducing many of their pensioners to go out begging. Some
employés forced our wounded to wait before the doors of thë
hospital, while the sisters of mercy tried to make them blush
for their glorious wounds; but Treilhard soon put all in
order, and, for the second time since 1792, the sick and the
infirm found friends in their guardians and blessed the Com¬
mune. This kind-hearted and intellectual man, who was
assassinated by a Versaillese officer on the 24th May at the
Panthéon, has left a very elaborate, report on the suppression
of bureaux of charity, which chain the poor to the Govern¬
ment and to the clergy. He proposed having them replaced
by a bureau of assistance in each arrondissement, under the
direction of a communal committee.
The Telegraph-office, Registration, and Domains, cleverly
directed by the honest Fontaine; the Service of the Contri¬
butions, entirely re-established by Faillet and Combault; the
National Printing Press, which Debock reorganised and ad¬
ministered with remarkable dexterity,1 and the other depart¬
ments connected with that of Finance, ordinarily reserved
to the great bourgeoisie, were managed with skill and econ¬
omy—the maximum of the salaries, 6000 francs, was never
reached—by workmen, subordinate employés; and this is
not one of their least crimes in the eyes of the Versaillese
bourgeoisie.
Compared with the Finance department, that of War was
a region of darkness and utter confusion. Officers and guards
encumbered the offices of the Ministry, some demanding muni¬
tions and victuals, others complaining of not being relieved.
They were sent back to the Place Vendôme, maintained in
the teeth of common sense, and directed by the rather equi¬
vocal colonel, Henry Prudhomme. On the floor below, the
Central Committee, installed there by Cluseret, bustled, spent
time and breath in endless sittings, found fault with the dele¬
gate at war, amused itself with creating new insignia, received
1 Appendix VIII.
THE COMMUNE IN PARIS. 221
the malcontents of the Ministry, asked returns from the
general staff, claimed to give advice on military operations. In
its turn, the Committee of Artillery, founded on the 18th
March, wrangled about the disposal of the cannon with the
War Office. The latter had the pieces of the Champ-de-Mars
and the Committee those of Montmartre. Attempts at creat¬
ing a central park of artillery,1 or even at learning the exact
number of the ordnance pieces, were made in vain. Pieces,
of long range remained to the last moment lying along the
ramparts, while the forts had only pieces'of seven and twelve,
centimetres to answer the huge cannon of Marine, and often
the munitions sent were not of corresponding calibre. The
commissariat, assailed by adventurers of all sorts, took their
stores at haphazard. The construction of the barricades,
which were to form a second and third* enceinte, instituted
on the 9th April, had been left to a crotchety fellow, sowing
works broadcast without method and against the plans of
his superiors. All the other Services were conducted in the
same style, without fixed principles, without limitation of
their respective provinces, the wheels of the machine not work¬
ing within one another. In this concert without a conductor,
each instrumentalist played what he liked, confusing his own.
score with his neighbour's.
A firm and supple hand would soon have restored har¬
mony. The Central Committee, despite its assumption of
lecturing the Commune, which it said was "its daughter and
must not be allowed to go astray," was now only an assem¬
blage of talkers devoid of all authority. It had, to a great
extent, been renewed since the establishment of the Com¬
mune, and the much-contested elections to it—for many
aspired to the title of member—had given a majority of
flighty, heedless men.2 In its present state this Committee
1 There were Ave parks—the Hotel-de-Ville, the Tuileries, the Ecole
Militaire, Montmartre, Vincennes. In all, including the artillery of
the forts and that of the open country, the Commune had more than
1100 cannon, howitzers, mortars, and mitrailleuses.
1 The second Central Committee was composed of forty members, of
whom twelve only had formed part of the first Committee.
222 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
derived its whole importance from the jealousy of the Council.
The Committee of Artillery, monopolised by brawlers, would
have yielded at once to the slightest pressure. The com¬
missariat and the other services depended entirely upon the
action of the delegate at "War.
The phantom general, stretched on his sofa, hatched orders,
circulars, now melancholy, now commanding, and never stirred
a finger to watch over their execution. If some member of
the Council came to rouse him,"What are you doing? Such
a place is in peril;" he answered loftily, "All my precautions
are taken; give my combinations time to be accomplished,"
and turned over again. One day he bullied the Central Com¬
mittee, which left the Ministry to go and sulk in the Rue
de l'Entrepôt; a week later he went after the same Com¬
mittee, reinstating it at the War Office. Vain to shameless-
ness,1 he showed sham letters from Todleben proposing plans
of defense, and spent his time in posing to correspondents
of foreign journals. With an affectation of pride, he never
put on a uniform, which, however, at that time was the true
dress of the proletarian. It took the Council almost a month
to recognise that this pithless braggart was only a disappointed
officer of the standing army, his airs of an innovator notwith¬
standing.
Many hopes turned to the chief of his staff, Rossel, a young
Radical, twenty-eight years old, self-restrained, puritanic, who
was sowing his revolutionary wild oats. A captain of en¬
gineers in the army of Metz, he had attempted to resist
Bazaine, and escaped from the Prussians. Gambetta had
appointed him colonel of engineers at the camp of Ne vers,
where he was still lingering on the 18th March. He was
dazzled; saw in Paris the future of France, and his own; threw
up his commission and hurried thither, where some friends
placed him in the 17th Legion. He was haughty, soon he-
came unpopular, and was arrested on the 3rd April. Two
members of the Council, Malon and Ch. Gérardin, had him
1 "Do you know," said he to Deleseluze, "that Versailles has offered
me a million?" "Be silent 1" answered Deleseluze, turning his back
upon him.
THE COMMUNE IN PARIS.
223
set free and presented him to Cluseret, by whom he was
accepted as chief of the general staff. Rossel, fancying that
the Central Committee was a power, made up to it, seemed
to ask it for advice, and sought out the men he thought
popular. His coldness, his technical vocabulary, his clear¬
ness of speech, his get up as a great man, enchanted the
bureaux, but those who studied him more closely noticed his
unsteady look, the infallible sign of a perturbed spirit. By
degrees the young revolutionary officer became the fashion,
and his consular bearing did not displease the public, sickened
at the flabbiness of Cluseret.
Nothing, however, justified this infatuation. Chief of the
general staff since the 5th April, he allowed all the Ser¬
vices to shift for themselves; the only one in some measure
organised, the Control of General Information, was the work
of Moreau, who every morning furnished the War Office and
the Commune with detailed, and often very picturesque, re¬
ports on the military operations and the moral condition of Paris.
This was about all the police the Commune had. The Com¬
mission of Public Safety, which should have thrown light
upon the most secret recesses, emitted only a fitful glim¬
mering.
The Central Committee had appointed Raoul Rigault, a
young man of twenty-four, much mixed up in the revolu¬
tionary movement, as civil delegate to the prefecture of police,
but under the severe direction of Duval. Rigault well kept
in hand might have made a very good subaltern, and so long
as Duval lived he did not go wrong. The unpardonable fault
of the Council was to place him at the head of a service
where the slightest mistake was more dangerous than at the
advanced posts. His friends, who, with the exception of a
small number, Ferré, Regnard, and two or three others, were
as young and as giddy-headed as himself, discharged in a
boyish way the most delicate functions. The Commission
of Public Safety, which ought to have superintended Rigault,
only followed his example. There, above all, did they live
as boon companions, apparently unaware of having assumed
the guardianship of, and the responsibility for, 100,000 lives.
224 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
No wonder the mice were soon seen playing round the pre¬
fecture of police. Papers suppressed in the morning were
cried out in the evening in the streets; the conspirators
wormed themelves into all the services without exciting
the suspicion of Rigault or his companions. They never dis¬
covered anything; it was always necessary to do it for them.
They made arrests like military marches in the daytime, with
large reinforcements of National Guards. After the decree
on the hostages, they had only managed to lay hands on four
or five ecclesiastics of mark, the Gallican Archbishop Darboy,
an arrant Bonapartist; his grand-vicar, Lagarde; the curate of
the Madeleine; Deguerry, a kind of De Morny in cassock; the
Abbé Allard, the Bishop of Surat; and a few Jesuits of nerve.
Chance only delivered into their hands the president of the
Court of Appeal, Bonjean,1 and Jecker, the famous inventor
of the expedition to Mexico.2
This culpable heedlessness, which the people have paid for
with their blood, was the salvation of criminals. Some Na¬
tional Guards had brought to light the mysteries of the
Picpus convent, discovered three unfortunate women shut
up in grated cages, strange instruments,3 corselets of iron,
straps, racks, which smacked strangely of the Inquisition, a
treatise on abortion, and two skulls still covered with hair.
One of the prisoners, the only one whose reason had not
given way, said that she had been in this cage for ten years.
The police contented itself with sending the nuns to St.
Lazare.4 Some inhabitants of the tenth arrondissement had
1 He was arrested on the 20th March in his private room in the Palace
of Justice, where he had given the proeureur-general a rendezvous.
2 He was recognised as he asked for his passport at the prefecture of
police.
2 The correspondent of the Times wrote in the number of 9th May:
"The superior and her nuns explained that these were orthopaedic
instruments—a superficial falsehood. The mattress and straps struck
me as being easily accounted for; I have seen such things used in
French midwifery and in cases of violent delirium ; but the rack and
its adjuncts are justly objects of grave suspicion, for they imply a use
of brutal force which no disease at present known would justify."
* The nun who filled the post of superior, a big and bold virago,
answered Rigault in an easy-going manner. "Why have you shut up
THE COMMUNE IN PARIS.
225
discovered feminine skeletons in the caves of the St. Laurent
Church. The prefecture only made a show of inquiry that
ended in nothing.
However, in the midst of all these faults, the humani¬
tarian idea revealed itself, so thoroughly sound was this pop¬
ular revolution. The chief of the Bureau of Public Safety,
making an appeal to the public for the victims of the war,
said, "The Commune has sent bread to ninety-two wives of
those who are killing us. The widows belong to no party.
The Republic has bread for every misery and care for all
the orphans." Admirable words these, worthy of Châlier and
of Chaumette. The prefecture, overrun by denunciations, de¬
clared that it would take no account of the anonymous ones.
"The man," said the Officiel, "who does not dare to sign a
denunciation serves a personal rancour and not the publie
interest." The hostages were allowed to obtain from with¬
out food, linen, books, papers, to be visited by their friends,
and to receive the reporters of foreign journals. An offer
was even made M. Thiers to exchange the hostages of greatest
mark, the Archbishop, Deguerry, Bon jean, and Lagarde, for
the single Blanqui. To conduct this negotiation the Vicar-
General was sent to Versailles, after having sworn to the
Archbishop and the delegate to return to his prison in case
of non-success. But M. Thiers thought that Blanqui would
give a head to the movement, while the Ultramontanes,
eagerly covetous of the episcopal seat of Paris, took good care
not to save the Gallican Darboy, whose death would be a double
profit, leaving them a rich inheritance, and giving them at
small expense a martyr. M. Thiers refused, and Lagarde re¬
mained at Versailles.1 The Council did not punish the
these women ?" "To do their families a service; they were mad. See
gentlemen, you are young men of good families ; you'll understand that
sometimes one is glad to conceal the madness of one's relations." "But
do you not know the law?" "No, we obey our superiors." "Whose
hooks are these?" "We know nothing about them." Thus affecting
simpleness, they sold the simpletons.
1 This negotiation has in part been recounted in the Officiel of the
Commune. We add further details. Soon after his arrest the Arch¬
bishop wrote to M. Thiers begging him to stop the execution of the
p
226 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
Archbishop for this want of faith, and a few days after set his
sister at liberty. Never even in the days of despair was the
prisoners, on which the lives of the hostages depended. M. Thiers did
hot answer. An old friend of Blanqui's, Flotte, went to the President
to propose an exchange, and said that the Archbishop might incur peril.
M. Thiers made a decided gesture : '• What does it matter to me?" Flotte
' again took up the negotiation through Darboy, who named Deguerry
as envoy to Versailles. The prefecture, unwilling to give up such a
hostage, the Vicar-General Lagarde took Deguerry's place. The Arch¬
bishop furnished him with instructions, and on the 12th April Flotte
conducted Lagarde to the station and made him swear to return if he
failed in his mission. Lagarde swore, "Even if to be shot, I shall
return. Can you believe that I could for a single moment harbour the
thought of leaving Monseigneur alone here ?" At the moment when the
train was about to start, Flotte insisted again, " Do not go if you have
not the intention of returning." The priest again renewed his oath. He
, went off, and handed over a letter in which the Archbishop solicited the
exchange. M. Thiers, pretending to know nothing of this one, answered
the first, which a Communalist journal had just published. His answer
is one of his masterpieces of hypocrisy and falsehood: "The facts to
which you call my attention are absolutely false, and I am really sur¬
prised that so enlightened a prelate as you, Monseigneur.... Our soldiers
, have never shot prisoners nor sought to kill the wounded. That, in the
heat of the combat, they may have turned their arms against men who
assassinate their generals, is possible ; but, the combat terminated, they
resume the natural generosity of the national character. I therefore spurn,
Monseigneur, the calumny that has been told you. I affirm that our
soldiers have never shot prisoners." On the 17th Flotte received a letter
in which Lagarde informed him that his presence was still indispensable
at Versailles. Flotte complained to the Archbishop, who could not
believe in this desertion. "It is impossible," said he, "that M. Lagarde
should remain at Versailles; he will come back; he has sworn it to me
myself," and he gave Flotte a note for Lagarde. The latter answered
that M. Thiers retained him. On the 23rd Darboy wrote to him again:
"On the reception of this letter, M. Lagarde is immediately to retrace
his steps to Paris and to re-enter Mazas. This delay compromises us
gravely, and may have the saddest results." Lagarde did not answer
any more.
Blanqui, transported to the Fort du Taureau, was rigorously kept in
solitary confinement. His friends thought of delivering him, and a
sum of 50,000 francs was prepared for his release. But much more
would have been necessary, and, above all, adroit agents, for the least
imprudence would have cost the life of the prisoner. The affair was
procrastinated, and part of the funds were still in the coffers of the
, Committee of Public Safety at the entry of the Versaillese,
THE COMMUNE IN PARIS. 227
privilege of women forgotten. The culpable nuns of Picpus
and the other religieuses conducted to St. Lazare were confined
in a special part of the building.
The prefecture and the delegation of Justice also evinced
their humanity in ameliorating the service of the prisons.
The Council in its turn, striving to guarantee individual
liberty, decreed that every arrest should be immediately noti¬
fied to the delegate of Justice, and that no perquisition should
be made without a regular warrant. National Guards, mis¬
informed, having arrested certain individuals reputed sus¬
picious, the Council declared in the Officiel that every arbi¬
trary act would be followed by a dismissal and immediate
prosecution. A battalion looking for arms at the gas com¬
pany's thought itself authorised to seize the cash-box; the
Council at once had the sum returned. The commissary of
police who arrested Gustave Chaudey, arraigned for having
commanded fire on the 22nd January, had also seized the
money of the prisoner; the Council dismissed the commissary.
To prevent all abuse of power, it ordered an inquiry into
the state of the prisoners and the motives of their detention,
authorising at the same time all its members to visit the
prisoners. Rigault thereupon sent in his resignation, which
was accepted, for he was beginning to weary everybody, and
Delescluze had been obliged to rebuke him. His pranks filled
the columns of the Versaillese journals, always on the look¬
out for scandals. They accused this childish police of ter¬
rorising Paris, and represented the members of the Council,
who refused to endorse the condemnations of the court-
martial, as assassins. The Eigarist historians have kept up
this legend. That vile bourgeoisie, which bent its head under
the 30,000 arrests of December, the lettres de cachet of the
Empire, and applauded the 50,000 arrests of May, still howls
about the 800 or 900 arrests made under the Commune.
They never exceeded this figure in two months of strife, and
two-thirds of those arrested were only imprisoned a few days,
many only a few hours. But the provinces, only fed with
news by the Versaillese press, believed in its inventions,
amplified in the circulars of M. Thiers telegraphing to the
228 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
prefects: "The insurgents are emptying the principal houses
of Paris in order to put the furniture to sale."
To enlighten the provinces and provoke their intervention,
such was the rôle of the delegation of the Exterior, which,
under an ill-chosen title, was only second in importance to
that of War. Since the 4th April—(I shall afterwards recount
these movements)—the departments had been stirring. Save
that of Marseilles, in part disarmed, the National Guard every¬
where had guns. In the centre, east, west and south, power¬
ful diversions might easily have been made, the stations occu¬
pied, and thereby the reinforcements and artillery destined
for Versailles arrested.
The delegation contented itself with sending some few
emissaries, without knowledge .of the localities they were sent
to, without tact and without authority. It was even ex¬
ploited by traitors, who pocketed its money and handed over
its instructions to Versailles. Well-known Republicans, fami¬
liar with the habits of the provinces, offered their services
in vain. There, as elsewhere, it was necessary to be a
favourite. Finally, for the work of enlightening and rous¬
ing France to insurrection, only a sum of 100,000 francs was
allowed.
The delegation put forth only a small number of mani¬
festoes, one a true and eloquent résumé of the Parisian revo¬
lution, and two addresses to the peasants, one by Madame
André Leo, simple, fervent, quite within the reach of the
peasantry: "Brother, you are being deceived. Our interests
are the same. What I ask for, you wish it too. The
affranchisement which I demand is yours. . . . What Paris
after all wants is the land for the peasant, the instrument
for the workmen." This good seed was carried away in free
balloons, which, by a cleverly-contrived mechanism, from
time to time dropped the printed papers. How many were
lost, fell among thorns!
This delegation, created only for the exterior, entirely for¬
got the rest of the world. Throughout all Europe the
working-classes eagerly awaited news from Paris, were in
THE COMMUNE IN PARIS. 229
their hearts fellow-combatants of the great town, now be¬
come their capital, multiplied their meetings, processions,
and addresses. Their papers, poor for the most part, courage¬
ously struggled against the calumnies of the bourgeois press.
The duty of the delegation was to hold out a hand to
these priceless auxiliaries: it did nothing. Some of these
papers exhausted their last means in defense of the Com¬
mune, which allowed its defenders to succumb for want of
bread.
The delegation, without experience, without resources,
conld not fight against the astute cleverness of M. Thiers.
It showed great zeal in protecting foreigners, and sent the
rich silver plate of the Ministry to the Mint, but it did al¬
most no real work. ,'
Now we come to the delegations of vital importance. Since,
by the force of events, the Commune had become the cham¬
pion of the Revolution, it ought to have proclaimed the
aspirations of the century, and, if it was to die, leave at
least their testament on its tomb. It would have sufficed to
state lucidly the ensemble of institutions demanded for forty
years by the revolutionary party.
The delegate of Justice, a lawyer, had only to make a
summary of the reforms long since demanded by all Socialists.
It was the part of a proletarian revolution to show the aris¬
tocracy of our judicial system the despotic and antiquated
doctrines of the Code Napoleon; the sovereign people hardly
ever judging themselves, but judged by a caste issued from
another authority than their own, the absurd hierarchy of
judges and tribunals, the tabellionat, the procureurs, 400,000
notaries, solicitors, sheriffs' officers, registrars, bailiffs, advo¬
cates and lawyers, draining national wealth to the amount
of many hundreds of millions. It was, above all, for a revo¬
lution made in the name of the Commune to endow the
Commune with a tribunal at which the people, restored to
their rights, should judge by jury all cases, civil and com¬
mercial, misdemeanours as well as crimes; a final tribunal,
without any appeal but for informalities, to state how soli-
230 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
eitors, registrars, sheriffs, may be rendered useless, and the
notaries replaced by simple registration officers. The dele¬
gate mostly limited himself to appointing notaries, sheriffs'
officers, and bailiffs, provided with a fixed salary,—very use¬
less appointments in a time of war, and which, besides, had
the fault of consecrating the principle of the necessity for
such officers. Scarcely anything progressive came of it. It
was decreed that, in case of arrests, the minutes were to
state the motives and the names of the witnesses to be called,
while the papers, valuables and effects of the prisoners
were to be deposited at the Suitors' Fund. Another decree
ordered the directors of lunatic asylums to send the nominal
and explanatory statement concerning their patients within
four days. If the Council had thrown some light on these
institutions, which veil so many crimes, humanity would
have been its debtor. However, these decrees were never
executed.
Did practical instinct make up for want of science on the
part of the delegation? Did it shed light upon the mys¬
teries of the caves of Picpus, the skeletons of St. Laurent?
It seemed to take no notice of them, and the reaction made
merry at these supposed discoveries. The delegation even
missed the opportunity of winning over to the Commune, if
only for one day, all Republicans of France. Jecker was in
their power. Rich, brave, audacious, he had always lived
certain of impunity, since bourgeois legality inflicts no
chastisement for crimes like the Mexican expedition. The
Revolution alone could smite him. Nothing was more easy
than to proceed against him. Jecker, pretending to have
been the dupe of the Empire, craved to make revelations.
In a public court, before twelve jurors chosen at hazard, in
the face of the world, through him the Mexican expedition
might have been sifted, the intrigues of the clergy unveiled,
the pockets of the thieves turned out; it might have been
shown how the Empress, Miramon, and Morny had set the
plot on foot, in what cause and for what men France had
lost seas of blood and hundreds of millions. Afterwards the
expiation might have been accomplished in the open day,
THE COMMUNE IN PAEIS. 231
on the Place de la Concorde, in face of the Tuileries. Poets,
who rarely get shot, would perhaps have sighed, but the
people, the eternal victim, would have applauded, and said,
"The Revolution alone does justice." They neglected even to
question Jecker.
The delegation at the Education department was bound
to write one of the finest pages of the Commune, for, after
so many years of study and experiments this question should
spring forth ready armed from a truly revolutionary brain.
The delegation has not left a memoir, a sketch, an address,
a line, to bear witness for it in the future. Yet the dele¬
gate was a doctor, a student of the German universities.
He contented himself with suppressing the crucifixes in the
schoolrooms and making an appeal to all those who had
studied the question of teaching. A commission was charged
to organise primary and professional instruction, whose work
consisted in announcing the opening of a school on the 6th
May. Another commission for the education of women was
named on the day the Versaillese entered Paris.
The administrative action of the delegate was confined to
impracticable decrees and a few appointments. Two devoted
and talented men, Elie Reclus and B. Gastineau, were charged
with the reorganisation of the National Library. They for¬
bade the lending of books, thus putting an end to the scan¬
dalous practice by which a privileged few carved out a private
library from public collections. The federation of artists,
presided over by Courbet, elected member of the Council on
the 16th April, occupied itself with the reopening and super¬
intendence of the museums.
Nothing would be known of the ideas of this revolution
on education were it not for a few circulars of the munici¬
palities. Many had reopened the schools abandoned by the
Congregationists and the municipal teachers, or driven away
the priests who had remained. The municipality of the
twentieth arrondissement clothed and fed the children; that
of the fourth said, "To teach children to love and respect
their fellow-creatures, to inspire them with a love of justice,
232 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
to teach them that they must instruct themselves in the in¬
terests of all, such are the principles of morality on which for
the future communal education will be based." "The teachers
of the schools and infant asylums," declared the municipality
of the seventeenth arrondissement, "will for the future ex¬
clusively employ the experimental and scientific method, that
which always starts from facts, physical, moral, intellectual"!
But these vague formulas could not make amends for the want
of a complete programme.
Who, then, will speak for the people? The delegation of
Labour and Exchange. Exclusively composed of revolution¬
ary Socialists, its purpose was, "The study of all the reforms
to be introduced into the public services of the Commune or
into the relations of the working men and women with their
employers; the revision of the commercial code and custom¬
house duties; the transformation of all direct and in¬
direct taxes, the establishment of statistics of labour." It in¬
tended collecting from the citizens themselves the materials
for the decrees to be submitted to the Commune.
The delegate to this department, Leo Frankel, procured the
assistance of a commission of initiative composed of working-
men. Registers for offers and demands of work were opened
in all the arrondissements. At the request of many journey¬
men bakers night-work was suppressed, a measure of hygiene
as much as of morality. The delegation prepared a project
for the suppression of pawnshops, a decree concerning stop¬
pages of wages, and supported the decree relative to work¬
shops abandoned by their runaway masters.
Their plan gratuitously returned the pledged objects to
the victims of war and to the necessitous. Those who might
refuse to confess this latter title were to receive their pledges
in exchange for a promise of repayment in five years. The
Teport terminated with these words: "It is well understood
that the suppression of the pawnshops is to be succeeded by
a social organisation giving serious guarantees of support to
the workmen thrown out of employment. The establishment
THE COMMUNE IN PARIS. 233
of the Commune necessitates institutions protecting the work¬
men from the exploitation of capital."
The decree that abolished stoppages of salaries and wages
put an end to one of the most crying iniquities of the capi¬
talist régime, these fines often being inflicted on the most
futile pretext by the employer himself, who is thus at once
judge and plaintiff.
The decree relative to the deserted workshops made resti¬
tution to the mass, dispossessed since centuries, of the prop¬
erty of their own labour. A commission of inquiry named
by the Syndical Chambers was to draw up the statistics and
the inventory of the deserted workshops to be given back into
the hands of the workmen. Thus "the expropriators were in
their turn expropriated." The nineteenth century will not
pass away without having begun this revolution; every prog¬
ress in machinery brings it nearer. The more the exploita¬
tion of labour concentrates itself in a few hands, the more
the working multitude are massed together and disciplined.
Soon, conscious and united, the producing class will, like the
young France of 1789, have to confront but a handful of
privileged appropriators. The most inveterate revolutionary
Socialist is the monopolist.
No doubt this decree contained voids and stood in need
of an elaborate explanation, especially on the subject of the
co-operative societies to which the workshops were to be
handed over. It was no more than the other applicable in
this hour of strife, and required a number of supplementary
decrees; but it at least gave some idea of the claims of the
working-class, and had it nothing else on its credit side, by
the mere creation of the Commission of Labour and Exchange,
the revolution of the 18th March would have done more for
the workmen than all the bourgeois Assemblies of France since
the 5th May, 1789.
The delegation of Labour wanted to look carefully into the
contracts of the commissariat. It demonstrated that in the
case of contracts adjudicated to the lowest bidder, the running
down of prices falls upon wages and not on the profit of the
234
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
contractor. "And the Commune is blind enough to lend itself
to such manœuvres," said the report, "and at this very moment,,
when the workingman dares death rather than submit any
longer to this exploitation." The delegate demanded that the
estimate of charges should specify the cost of labour, that the
orders should by preference be given to the workmen's cor¬
porations, and the contracting prices fixed by arbitration be¬
tween the commissariat, the Syndical Chamber of the corpora¬
tion, and the delegate of Labour.
To overlook the financial administration of all the delega¬
tions, the Council in the month of May instituted a superior
commission charged to audit their accounts. It decreed that
functionaries or contractors guilty of peculation or theft should
be punished with death.
In short, save the delegation of Labour, where they did
work, the fundamental delegations were unequal to their task.
All committed the same fault. During two months they
had in their hands the archives of the bourgeoisie since
1789. There was the Cour des Comptes (a judicial board
of accounts) to disclose the mysteries of official jobbery; the
Council of State, the dark deliberations of despotism; the
Prefecture of Police, the scandalous under-currents of social
power; the Ministry of Justice, the servility and crimes of
the most oppressive of all classes. In the Hôtel-de-Ville there
lay deposited the still unexplored records of the first Revo¬
lution, of those of 1815, 1830, 1848, and all diplomatists of
Europe dreaded the opening of the portfolios at the Foreign
Office. They might have laid bare before the eyes of the
people the intimate history of the Revolution, the Directory,
the first Empire, the monarchy of July, 1848, and of Napoleon
III. They published only two or three fascicles.1 The dele¬
gates slept by the side of these treasures, heedless, as it seemed,
of their value.
The Radicals, seeing these lawyers, these doctors, these
publicists, who allowed Jecker to remain mute and the
1 Georges Duehêne began examining the commercial transactions of the
Government of National Defence, but he published nothing.
THE COMMUNE IN PARIS. 235
Cour des Comptes closed, would not believe in such
ignorance, and still affect to unriddle the enigma with the
word "Bonapartism." A stupid accusation, given the lie by
a thousand proofs. For the honour even of the delegates the
bitter truth must be told. Their ignorance was not simulated,
but only too real. To a great extent it was the offspring of
past oppression.
( 236 )
CHAPTER XIX.
THE FREEMASONS JOIN THE COMMUNE—THE FIRST EVACUA¬
TION OF THE FORT OF ISST—CREATION OF THE COM¬
MITTEE OF PUBLIC SAFETY.
M. Thiers was fully acquainted with the failings of the Com¬
mune, but he also knew the weakness of his army. Besides,
he piqued himself upon playing the soldier before the
Prussians. In order to appease his colleagues, eager for
the assault on Paris, he received haughtily the con¬
ciliators, who multiplied their advances and their lame
combinations.
Everybody intermeddled, from the good and visionary Con¬
sidérant down to the cynic Girardin, down to Saisset's ex-aide-
de-camp Schœlcher, who had replaced his plan of battle of
the 24th March by a plan of conciliation. These encounters
became the common topics of raillery. Since its pompous
declaration, "All Paris will rise," the Ligne des Droits de
Paris had been altogether sunk out of sight. It was perfectly
understood that these Radicals were in search of some decent
contrivance to back out of the peril. At the end of April their
sham movements served only as a foil to set off the courageous
conduct of the Freemasons.
On the 21st April the Freemasons, having gone to Ver¬
sailles to ask for the armistice, complained of the municipal
law recently voted by the Assembly. "What!" M. Thiers
replied, frbut this is the most liberal one we have had in
France for eighty years." "We beg your pardon, and how
about the communal institutions of 1791?" "Ah! you want
to return to the follies of our fathers?" "But, after all, are
you then resolved to sacrifice Paris?" "There will be some
houses riddled, some persons killed, but the law will be en-
THE COMMUNE IN PAEIS. 237
forced." The Freemasons had this hideous answer placarded
in Paris.
On the 26th they met at the Châtelet, and several pro¬
posed that they should go and plant their banners on the
ramparts. A thousand cheers answered. M. Ftoquet, who,
with an eye to the future, had sent in his resignation as
deputy, together with MM. Lockroy and Clémenceau, pro¬
tested against this co-operation of the small middle-class with
the people. His shrill voice was drowned in the enthusiastic
cries in the hall.1 On the motion of Eanvier, the Freemasons
went up to the Hôtel-de-Ville, preceded by their banner, where
they were met by the Council in the Court of Honour. "If
at the outset," said their spokesman, Thirifocq, "the Free¬
masons did not wish to act, it was because they wanted to
have certain proof that Versailles would not hear of con¬
ciliation. They are ready to-day to plant their banner on
the rampart. If one single ball touches it, the Freemasons
will march with the same ardour as yourselves against the
common enemy." This declaration was loudly applauded.
Jules Vallès, in the name of the Commune, tendered his red
scarf, which was twisted round the banner, and a delegation
of the Council accompanied the brethren to the Masonic
temple in the Eue Cadet.
They came three days after to redeem their word. The
announcement of this intervention had given great hope to
Paris. From early in the morning an immense crowd en¬
cumbered the approaches to the Carrousel, the rendezvous
of all the lodges; and, despite a few reactionary Freemasons,,
who had protested in a placard, at ten o'clock 10,000 brethren,
representing fifty-five lodges, had gathered in the Carrousel.
Six members of the Council led them to the Hôtel-de-Ville
in the midst of the crowd and a lane of battalions. A band,
playing music of solemn and ritual character, preceded the
procession; then came superior officers, the grand-masters,.
1 Before the Commission of Inquiry at the Assembly he has assumed
the attitude of a Daniel in the lions' den. The meeting, however, con¬
tented with hissing him, for Paris let these impotent drones buzz as.
much as they liked without taking any notice of them.
238 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
the members of the Council, and the brethren, with their
wide blue, green, white, red or black ribbon, according to
their grade, grouped around sixty-five banners that had
never before been displayed in public. The one carried at
the head of the procession was the white banner of Yincennes,
bearing in red letters the fraternal and revolutionary inscrip¬
tion, "Love one another" A lodge of women was especially
cheered.
The banners and a numerous delegation were introduced
into the Hôtel-de-Ville, the members of the Council waiting
to receive them on the balcony of the staircase of honour.
The banners were fixed along the steps. These standards of
peace by the side of the red flag, this small middle-class join¬
ing hands with the proletariat under the proud image of the
Republic, these cries of fraternity dazzled, brightened up even
the most downcast. Félix Pyat indulged in a rhapsody of
words and rhetorical antitheses. Old Beslay was much more
eloquent in a few words broken by true tears. A brother
solicited the honour of being the first to plant on the ram¬
part the banner of his lodge, La Persévérance, founded in
1190, in the era of the great federations. A member of the
Council presented the red flag: "Let it accompany your
banners; let no hand henceforth turn us against each
other." And the orator of the delegation, Thirifocq, point¬
ing to the banner of Yincennes: "This will be the first to
be presented before the ranks of the enemy. We will say to
them, 'Soldiers of the mother country, fraternise with us,
come and embrace us.' If we fail, we shall go and join the
companies of war."
When the delegates left the Hôtel-de-Yille, a free balloon,
marked with the three symbolical points, made an ascent,
here and there dropping the manifesto of the Freemasons.
The immense procession having shown the Bastille and the
boulevards its mysterious banners, frantically applauded, ar¬
rived about two o'clock at the cross-roads of the Champs-
Elysées. The shells of Mont-Yalérien obliged them to take
the bye-streets on their way to the Arc-de-Triomphe. There
a delegation of all the venerables went to plant the banners
THE COMMUNE IN PARIS. 239
at the most dangerous posts, from the Porte-Maillot to the
Porte-Bineau. When the white flag was hoisted on the outpost
-of the Porte-Maillot the Versaillese ceased firing.
The delegates of the Freemasons and some members of the
Council, appointed by their colleagues to accompany them,
advanced, headed by their banner, into the Avenue of Neuilly.
At the bridge of Courbevoie, before the Versaillese barricade,
they found an officer who conducted them to General Montau-
don, himself a Freemason. The Parisians explained the object
of their manifestation, and asked for a truce. The general
proposed that they should send a deputation to Versailles.
Three delegates were chosen, and their companions returned
to the town. In the evening silence reigned from St. Ouen
to Neuilly, Dombrowski having taken upon himself to con¬
tinue the truce. For the first time for twenty-five days the
sleep of Paris was not disturbed by the report of cannon.
The next day the delegates returned. M. Thiers had hardly
deigned to receive them, had shown himself impatient, irri¬
tated, decided to grant nothing and to admit no more deputa¬
tions. The Freemasons then resolved to march to battle with
their insignia.
In the afternoon the Alliance Républicaine des Départe¬
ments made an act of adhesion to the Commune. Millière,
who had quite joined the movement without being able to
gain the confidence of the Hôtel-de-Ville, exerted himself to
group the provincials residing at Paris. Vrho does not know
what the provinces contributed in blood and sinew to the
great town? Out of 35,000 prisoners of French origin figuring
in the official reports of Versailles, there were, according
to their own statement, only 9,000 born Parisians. Each
departmental group was to strain itself to enlighten its
native place, to send circulars, proclamations, delegates.
On the 30th all the groups met in the Court of the
Louvre to vote an address to the departments, and all, about
15,000 men, headed by Millière, went to the Hôtel-de-Ville
"to renew their adhesion to the patriotic work of the Com-
;mune of Paris."
240 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
The procession was still passing when a sinister rumour
spread: the fort of Issy had been evacuated.
Under cover of their batteries, the Versaillese, pushing for¬
ward, had on the night of the 26th to the 27th surprised the '
Moulineaux, by which the park of Issy may be reached. On
the following day sixty pieces of powerful calibre concentrated
their shells on the fort, while others occupied Yanves,
Montrouge, the gunboats and the enceinte. Issy answered
valiantly, but our trenches, to which Wetzel ought to have
attended, were in bad condition. On the 29th the bombard¬
ment redoubled and the projectiles ploughed the park. At
eleven o'clock in the evening the Versaillese ceased firing,
and in the nocturnal stillness surprised the Federals and
occupied the trenches. On the 30th, at five o'clock in the
morning, the fort, which had received no warning of this
incident, found itself surrounded by a semi-circle of Ver¬
saillese. The commander, Mégy, was disconcerted, sent for
reinforcements, but received none. The garrison grew
alarmed, and these Federals, who had cheerfully withstood
a hailstorm of shells, took fright at a few skirmishers.
Mégy held a council, and the evacuation was decided upon.
The cannon were precipitately spiked—so badly that they
were unnailed the same evening—and the bulk of the garri¬
son left. Some men with different notions of duty made
it a point of honour to stay at their post. In the course of
the day a Versaillese officer summoned them to surrender
within a quarter of an hour on pain of being shot. They did
not even answer.
At three o'clock Cluseret and La Cécilia arrived at Issy
with a few companies picked up in haste. They deployed as
skirmishers, drove the Versaillese from the park, and at six
o'clock the Federals reoccupied the fort. At the entrance
they found a child, Dufour, near a wheelbarrow filled with
cartridges and cartouches, ready to blow himself up, and, as he
believed, the vault with him. In the evening Vermorel and
Trinquet brought other reinforcements, and we reoccupied
all our positions.
At the first rumour of the evacuation, National Guards
THE COMMUNE IN PAEIS. 241
had hurried to the Hôtel-de-Ville interpellating the Executive
Commission. It denied having given any order to evacuate the
fort, and promised to punish the traitors if there were any.
In the evening it arrested Cluseret on his arrival from the
fort of Issy. Strange rumours circulated about him, and he
quitted the Ministry without leaving the slightest trace of
any useful work whatever. As to the defence of the interior,
all he had done was to bury cannon at the Troeadéro, which,
he said, were to breach Mont-Valérien. At a later period, after
the fall of the Commune, he endeavoured to throw his whole
incapacity upon his colleagues, treating them in English
reviews as vain and ignorant fools, imputing villanies to a
man like Delescluze, stating that his arrest had ruined every¬
thing, and modestly calling himself the "incarnation of the
people."1
This panic of Issy was the origin of the Committee of
Public Safety. Already on the 28th April, at the end of
the sitting, Miot, one of the best-bearded men of 1848, had
risen to demand "without phrases" the creation of a Com¬
mittee of Public Safety, having authority over all the Com¬
missions. Being pressed to give his reasons, he majestically
replied that he believed the Committee necessary. There
was only one opinion as to the necessity of strengthening
the central control and action, for the second Executive
Commission had shown itself as impotent as the first, each
delegate going his own way and decreeing on his own ac¬
count. But what signified this word Committee of Public
Safety, this parody of the past and scarecrow of boobies?
It jarred with this proletarian revolution, this Hôtel-de-Ville,
whence the original Committee of Public Safety had torn
away Chaumette, Jacques Boux and the best friends of the
people. But the Romanticists of the Council had only a
smattering of the history of the Revolution, and this high-
sounding title delighted them. They would have there and
then voted it hut for the energy of some colleagues, who
insisted on a discussion. "Yes," said these latter, "we
want a vigorous Commission, but give us no revolutionary
1 Appendix IX.
Q
242 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
pasticcio. Let the Commune be reformed; let it cease to
be a small talkative parliament, quashing one day, just as
it suits its caprices, what it created the day before." And
they proposed an Executive Committee. The votes were
equally divided.
The affair of Issy turned the scale. On the 1st May 34
Ayes against 28 Noes carried the title of Committee of
Public Safety. On the whole of the project 48 voted for
and 23 against. Several had voted for the Committee not¬
withstanding its title, with the only object of creating a
strong power. Many explained their Votes. Some alleged
they were obeying the mandat impératif of their electors.
Some wanted "to make the cowards and traitors tremble;"
others simply declared, like Miot, that "it was an indis¬
pensable measure." Félix Pyat, who had egged on Miot,
and violently supported the proposition in order to win back
the esteem of the ultras, gave this cogent reason: "Yes:
considering that the words Salut Public are absolutely of
the same epoch as the words French Republic and Commune
of Paris." But Tridon: "No: because I dislike useless and
ridiculous cast-off old clothes." Vermorel: "No: they are
only words, and the people have too long taken up with
words." Longuet: "Not believing any more in words of salva¬
tion than in talismans and amulets, I vote No." Seventeen
collectively declared against the institution of a Committee,
which, they said, would create a dictatorship, and others
pleaded the same motive, which was puerile enough. The
Council remained so sovereign that eight days after it over¬
turned the Committee.
Having protested by this vote, the opponents ought after¬
wards to have made the best of the situation. Tridon
had certainly said, "I see no men to put in such a Com¬
mittee;" all the more reason not to leave the place to the
Romanticists. Instead of coming to an understanding with
those of their colleagues who were desirous to concentrate
the power and not galvanise a corpse, the opponents folded
their arms. "We can," they said, "appoint no one to an
institution considered by us as useless and fatal. ... We
THE COMMUNE IN PARIS. 243
consider abstention as the only dignified, logical, and politic
attitude."
The ballot, thus stigmatised beforehand, gave a power with¬
out authority; there were only 37 votes. Ranvier, A. Arnaud,
Leo Meillet, Ch. Gérardin, Félix Pyat were named. The
alarmists might comfort themselves. The only one of real
energy, the upright and warm-hearted Ranvier, was at the
mercy of his blind kindliness.
The friends of the Commune, the brave soldiers of the
trenches and of the forts, then learnt that there was a
minority at the Hôtel-de-Ville. It put in its appearance at
the very moment when Versailles unmasked its batteries.
This minority, which, with the exception of some ten mem¬
bers, comprised the most enlightened and the most laborious
members of the Council, was never able to accommodate
itself to the situation. These men could never understand
that the Commune was a barricade, not a government. This
was the general error, the superstitious belief in their govern¬
mental longevity; hence, for instance, they delayed for
seven months the date for the total return of the pledges
at the pawnshops. There were perhaps as many dreamers
in the minority as in the majority. Some put forward their
principles like the head of a Medusa, and would have made
no concessions even for the sake of victory. They strained
the reaction against the principle of authority to the verge
of suicide. "We," they said, "were for liberty under the
Empire; in power we will not deny it." Even in exile they
have fancied that the Commune perished through its
authoritative tendencies. With a little diplomacy, by yield¬
ing to circumstances and the weaknesses of their colleagues,
they might have detached from the majority all men of Teal
value.1 Tridon had come to them uninvited, but his was
a superior mind; they ought to have made advances to
the others, opposing to the mere braggarts precise ideas,
1 The minority formed a nucleus of twenty-two members : Andrieu,
Arnold, A. Arnould, Avrial, Beslay, Clémence, V. Clément, Courbet,
Frankel, E. Gérardin, Jourde, Lefrançais, Longuet, Malon, Ostyn, Pindy,
Serraillier, Theisz, Tridon, Vallès, Varlin, Vermorel.
244 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
and by true energy reduced the turbulent. They remained
unrelenting, dogged, and contented themselves with forcible
protests.
Thenceforth divergences degenerated into hostilities. The
council-room was small, badly ventilated; the soon over¬
heated atmosphere ruffled the temper. The discussions grew
bitter, and Félix Pyat turned them into attacks. Delescluze
never spoke but for union, concord. The other would have
preferred the Commune dead rather than saved by one of
those he bore a grudge to, and he hated whoever smiled at
his craziness. He did not mind discrediting the Council,
aspersing its most devoted members, so that he resented a
trespass on his vanity. He could lie with perfect effrontery,
carve aut some infamous calumny, slaver a colleague, then
suddenly, in emotional attitude, open his arms, exclaiming,
"Let us embrace." He now accused Yermorel of having sold
his journal to the Empire after having offered it to the
Orléanists. He glided about in the lobbies, the Commissions,
a Barrère of the boards, now insinuating, now foaming, now
patriarchal. "The Commune! why it is my child! I have
watched over it for twenty years. I have nursed, I have rocked
it." To hear him, the 18th March was owing to him. He thus
enlisted the naïve, the light-headed sent to the Council by
the public meetings, and, despite his blank incapacity, shown
by the man while a member of the first executive, despite his
attempts at fight, he picked up twenty-four voices at the elec¬
tion of the Committee of Public Safety. The aspic profited
by it to hiss forth discord.
Disunion within the Council was fatal, the mother of
defeat. It ceased—let the people know this as well as then-
faults—when they thought of the people, when they rose
above these miserable personal quarrels. They followed the
funeral of Pierre Leroux, who had defended the insurgents
of June, 1848; ordered the demolition of the Bréa church,
built in memory of a justly punished traitor; of the expiatory
monument, an affront to the Revolution; were not forgetful
of the political prisoners still at the Bagnio, and ennobled
the Place d'Italie with the name of Duval. All Socialist
THE COMMUNE IN PARIS. 245
decrees passed unanimously; for though they differed they
were all Socialists. There was but one voice in the Council
to expel two of its members guilty of some former offence,1
and no one even in the thick of the peril dared to utter the
word capitulation.
1 Blanehet, an ex-Capuein and bankrupt, and E. Clément, who under
the Empire had offered his services to the police.
(. 246 )
CHAPTER XX.
ROSSEL REPLACES CLUSERET—THE RIVALRIES—THE DEFENCE
OP THE FORT OF ISSY.
The last act of the second Executive Commission was to
name Itossel delegate at War. On the same evening (the 30th
April) it sent for him. He came at once, recited the history
of famous sieges, and promised to make Paris impregnable.
No one. asked him for a written plan, and there and then, as
on the stage, his nomination was signed. He forthwith wrote
to the Council, "I accept these difficult functions, but I want
your entire support in order not to succumb under the weight
of these circumstances."
Eossel knew these circumstances through and through.
For twenty-five days chief of the general staff, he was the best-
informed man in Paris as to all her military resources. He
was familiar with the members of the Council, of the Central
Committee, the officers, the effective forces, the character of
the troops he undertook to lead.
At the outset he struck a wrong chord in his answer to the
Versaillese officer who had summoned the fort of Issy to sur¬
render. "My dear comrade, the first time you permit yourself
to send us such an insolent summons, I shall have your flag of
truce shot. Your devoted comrade." The cynical levity
smacked of the condottiere. Certainly he who threatened to
shoot an innocent soldier, and bestowed his dear, his devoted
comrade upon a collaborator of Galiffet, was foreign to the
great heart of Paris and her civil war.
No man understood Paris, the National Guard, less than
Rossel. He imagined that the Père Duchesne was the real
mouthpiece of the workmen. Hardly raised to the Ministry,
THE COMMUNIS IN PARIS. 247
he spoke of putting the National Guard into barracks, of
cannonading the runaways; he wanted to dismember the
legions and form them into regiments, with colonels named
by himself. The Central Committee, to which the chefs-de-
légion belonged, protested, and the battalions complained to
the Council, which sent for Rossel. He set forth his project
in a professional way in sober, precise words, so different
from the Pyatical declamations, that the Council believed it
beheld a man and was charmed. Still his project was the
breaking-up of the National Guard, and the Council no
more than the Executive Commission got a general plan of
defence from him. He certainly demanded that the munici¬
palities should he charged with concentration of arms, the
horses, and prosecution of the refractory, but he made no con¬
dition sine quâ non.
He sent in no report on the military situation. He gave
orders for the construction of a second enceinte of barricades,
and of three citadels at Montmartre, the Trocadero, and the
Panthéon, hut never personally concerned himself about their
execution. He extended the command of General "Wroblewski
over all troops and forts on the left bank, but three days after
restricted it again to bestow it upon La Cécilia, who had none
of the qualities necessary in a superior commander. He never
gave the generals any instructions for attack or defence.
Despite certain fits and starts, he had in reality so little
energy that he named Eudes commander of the second active
reserve at the very moment when, against formal orders, this,
latter left the fort of Issy, which he had commanded since
the reoccupation.
The Versaillese had recommenced firing with perfect fury;
The shells, the bombs, battered the casemates, the grapeshot
paved the trenches with iron. In the night of the 1st—2nd,
the Versaillese, always proceeding by nocturnal surprises,
attacked the station of Clamart, which was taken almost
without a struggle, and the castle of Issy, which they had
to conquer foot by foot. On the morning of the 2nd the
fort again found itself in the same situation as three days
before. A part of the village of Issy was even in the hands
248 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
of the soldiers. During the day the franc's-tireurs of Paris
dislodged them at the point of the bayonet. Eudes,
who in vain demanded reinforcements, went to the War
Office to declare that he would not remain if Wetzel were
not discharged. Wetzel was replaced by La Cécilia, but Eudes
did not return to the fort, and left the command to the chief
of his staff.
Thus since the 3rd it was evident that everything would
go on as under Cluseret, and the Central Committee grew
bolder. It had been thrown more and more into the shade,
for the Commission of War kept it at a distance. Its sittings,
more and more confused and void, were little attended—by
about ten members, sometimes even by less. The enterprise
of Rossel against the legions gave it back a little authority
and daring. On the 3rd, in accord with the chefs-de-légion,
they resolved to ask the Council for the direction and ad¬
ministration of the War Office. Rossel got wind of the
affair, and had one of its members arrested; the others in
great numbers, the chefs-de-légion with their sabres at their
sides, went up to the Hôtel-de-Ville, where they were re¬
ceived by Félix Pyat, deeply moved by the odd conceit that
they came to lay hands on him. "Nothing is getting along
at the War Office," said they. "All the services are in disorder.
The Central Committee offers itself to direct them. The
delegate will conduct the operations, the Committee- will see
to the administration." Félix Pyat approved of the idea
and submitted it to the Council. The minority took umbrage
at the pretensions of the Committee, and even spoke of having
them arrested. The majority left the matter to the Com¬
mittee of Public Safety, which issued a decree admitting the
co-operation of the Central Committee. Rossel accepted the
situation and announced it to the chiefs of corps. The Com¬
mission of War continued, in spite of all this, to squabble with
the Committee.
Our men paid dearly for these small cabinet revolutions.
Tired out, badly commanded, they were negligent of their
watches, and thus exposed to every surprise. The most ter¬
rible one took place in the night of the 3rd—4th May at the
THE COMMUNE EN" PARIS. 249
redoubt of the Moulin Saquet, held by 500 men at this
moment. They were sleeping in their tents, when the Ver-
saillese, having seized the sentinels, entered the redoubt and
butchered about fifty Federals. The soldiers pierced the tents
with their bayonets, slashing the corpses, and then made off
with five pieces and 200 prisoners. The captain of the 55th
was accused of having betrayed the watchword. The truth
is not known, as—incredible fact!—the Council never inquired
into the affair.
M. Thiers announced this "elegant coup-de-main" 1 in a
bantering despatch to the effect that they had killed two
hundred men; that "such was the victory the Commune might
announce in its bulletins." The prisoners, taken to Versailles,
were received by the elegant rabble who killed time in the
cafés of St. Germain, now become the headquarters of high-
life prostitution, or who went to the heights to see the shells
battering the walls and the Parisians. But what were these
insipid amusements by the side of a convoy of prisoners, whom
they could beat, spit upon, and revile, a thousand times re¬
newing the agonies of Mathô?
The simply bestial ferocity of the soldiers was much less
horrible. These poor wretches firmly believed that the
Federals were thieves or Prussians, and that they tortured
their prisoners. There were some who, taken to Paris, for a
long time refused all nourishment in dread of poison. The
officers propagated these horrible stories; some even believed
them.2 The greater part, arriving from Germany in a state
1 La Guerre des Communeux by a superior officer of the Versailles®
army.
3 On the 12th May, at the barricade of Petit-Vanves, an officer of
engineers of the Lacretelle division, second corps, Captain Rozhem,
was taken prisoner. When brought before the commander of the
trenches, "I know what is in store for me," said he; "shoot me."
The commander shrugged his shoulders and took him to Delèscluze.
"Captain," said the delegate, "promise that you will not fight against
the Commune and you are free." The officer promised, and, deeply
moved, asked Delescluze for permission to shake hands with him. This
is one fact among a hundred such. Is it necessary to add that from the
' 3rd April to the 23rd May the Federals did not shoot one single prisoner,
• officer or soldier ?
250 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
of extreme irritation against Paris,1 6aid publicly, "We shall
give these scoundrels no quarter," and they set the example
of summary executions. On the 25th April, at the Belle-
Epine, near Ville-Juif, four National Guards, surprised by
mounted chasseurs, called upon to surrender, laid down their
arms. The soldiers were leading them when an officer ap¬
peared, and, without further ado, discharged his revolver at
them. Two were killed; the two others, left for dead, were
able to drag themselves as far as the neighbouring trenches,
where one of them expired.2 The fourth was transported to
the ambulance. Paris, erstwhile besieged by the Prussians,:
was now tracked by tigers.
These sinister forebodings of the lot reserved to the van¬
quished made the Council indignant, but did not enlighten,
it. The disorder grew greater with the danger. Rossel set
nothing going. Pyat, whom he had often silenced with
a word, abhorred him, and never ceased undermining his:
authority. "You see this man," said he to the Romanticists,,
"well, he is a traitor—a Caesarian! After the Trochu plan,,
the Rossel plan." On the 8th May he had the direction of
the military operations transferred to Dombrowski, leaving
only nominal functions to Rossel, who, apprised of this that
same evening, hurried to the Committee of Public Safety
and forced it to revoke the decree.3 On the 4th Félix
Pyat sent orders to General Wroblewski without informing
Rossel. The next day Rossel complained to the Council of
the Committee of Public Safety of this mischievous inter¬
ference, which embroiled everything. "Under these circum¬
stances I cannot be responsible," haid he, and demanded the
publicity of the sittings, as he had always been received in
1 Appendix X.
2 This tact was established through the minute inquiry which the
Council charged three of its members to make. Two of these, G-ambon
and Langevin, are by their characters above all suspicion. They received
the declaration of the wounded man and saw one of the bodies, the two
others not having been found.
3 It never appeared in the Officiel, but was announced in the Vengeur; •
for Félix Pyat abused his functions in order to give his journal the first
news of the official decisions. This time he was a little too quick.
THE COMMUNE IN PARIS. 251
private audience. Instead of forcing him to communicate
his plan, they amused themselves with making him pass
a sort of Freemason examination. The antediluvian Miot
asked him what were his democratic antecedents. Rossel
extricated himself very cleverly. "I will not tell you that
I have studied the question of social reforms profoundly, but
I abominate this society which has just betrayed France in
so dastardly a way. I do not know what will be the new
order of Socialism. I like it on trust, and it will anyhow be
better than the old one." Everybody put him the questions
he chose personally, and not through the medium of the presi¬
dent. He answered them all with sangfroid and precision,
disarming all their scruples, and carried away cheers, but
nothing more.
Had he possessed the strong head he was credited with,
he would long since have fathomed the situation, under¬
stood that for this struggle without precedent new tactics
were wanted, found a field of battle for these improvised
soldiers, organised the internal defence, and awaited Ver¬
sailles from the heights of Montmartre, the Trocadéro, and
Mont-Valérien. But he dreamt of battles, was at bottom but
a bookish soldier, original only in speech and style. While
always complaining of want of discipline and of men, he
allowed the best blood of Paris to be shed in the sterile
struggles without the town, in heroic challenges at Neuilly,
Vanves, and Issy.
At Issy above all. It was no longer a fort, hardly a strong
position, but a medley of earth and rubble-work battered by
shells. The staved-in casemates opened a view upon the
country, the powder magazines were laid bare, half of
bastion 3 was in the moat, one could drive up to the breach
in a carriage. Ten pieces at most answered the fire of
sixty Versaillese ordnance pieces, while the fusillade of the
trenches aimed at the embrasures killed almost all our
artillerists. On the 3rd the Versaillese renewed their sum¬
mons to surrender; they were answered with the word of
Cambronne. The chief of the general staff left by Eudes
had also made off, but happily the fort remained in the
252 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
valiant hands of the engineer Rist and of Julien, commander
of the 14th battalion of the eleventh arrondissement. It is to
them and to the Federals who stood by them that the honour
of this prodigious defence belongs. Here are a few notes from
their military journal.
"4th May.—We are receiving explosive balls that burst
with the noise of percussion-caps. The waggons do not come;
food is scanty and the shells of seven centimetres, our
best pieces, will soon fail us. The reinforcements promised
every day do not appear. Two chiefs of battalions have been
to Rossel. He received them very badly, and said that he
had the right to shoot them for having abandoned their
post. They explained our situation. Rossel answered that
a fort defends itself with the bayonet and quoted the
work of Carnot. Still he has promised reinforcements.
The Freemasons have planted their banner on our ramparts.
The Versaillese knocked it down in an instant. Our am¬
bulances are full; the prison and corridor that lead to it are
crammed with corpses. An ambulance omnibus arrives in the
evening. We put in as many of our wounded as possible.
During its passage from the fort to Issy the Versaillese pepper
it with balls.
"5th.—The fire of the enemy does not cease for a moment.
Our embrasures no longer exist; the pieces of the front still
answer. At two o'clock we receive ten waggons of shells
of seven centimetres. Rossel has come. He looked at
the works of the Versaillese for a long time. The enfants-
perdus who serve the pieces of bastion 5 are losing many
men; they remain steadfast. There are now in the
dungeons two yards deep of corpses. All our trenches,
riddled by artillery, have been evacuated. The trench of
the Versaillese is sixty yards from the counterscarp.
They push on more and more. The necessary precautions
are taken in case of an attack to-night. All the flank pieces
are loaded with grapeshot. We have two mitrailleuses
above the terre-plein to sweep at once the moat and the
glacis.
"6th.—The battery of Fleury regularly discharges its six
THE COMMUNE IN PARIS. 253
rounds on us every five minutes. A eantinière has just
been brought to the ambulance, wounded in the left side of
the groin. For four days past three women have gone into
the thickest of the fire to tend the wounded. This one is
dying and bids us remember her two little children. No more
food. We eat only horse-flesh. Evening: the rampart is
untenable.
"ph.—We are receiving as many as ten shells a minute.
The ramparts are totally uncovered. All the pieces, save two
or three, aTe dismounted. The Yersaillese works almost
touch us. There are thirty more dead. We are about to be
surrounded."
( 254 )
CHAPTER XXI.
"La plus grande infamie dont l'histoire moderne ait gardé le souvenir,
s'accomplit à cette heure, Paris est bombardé. "—Jules Favre, Jules
Simon, E. Picard, Trochu, Jules Ferry, E. Arago, Garnier-Pages,
Pelletan. Proclamation du Gouvernement de la Defense Nationale
à propos du bombardement Prussien.
' ' Nous avons écrasé tout un quartier de Paris. '*—M. Thiers à l'Assemblée
Nationale, Séance du 5 Août 1871.
PARIS IS BOMBARDED—THE FORT OF ISSY SUCCUMBS—THE
COUNCIL ELECTS A NEW COMMITTEE OF PUBLIC SAFETY—
ROSSEL FLIES.
We must leave this heroic atmosphere to return to the
quarrels of the Council and of the Central Committee.
Why did they not hold their sittings at the Muette or under
the eyes of the public? 1 The shells of Montretout, which
had just unmasked its powerful battery, the severe atti¬
tude of the people, would no doubt have made them unite
against the common enemy. He had commenced to batter
in breach.
On the 8th May, in the morning, seventy marine pieces
began to attack the enceinte from the bastion 60 to the Point
du Jour. The shells of Clamart already reached the quay of
Javelle, and the battery of Breteuil covered the Grenelle
quarter with projectiles. In a few hours half Passy had become
uninhabitable.
M. Thiers accompanied his shells with a proclamation:
1 On the 3rd May they had voted that the public should be admitted,
and even charged two members to find a suitable hall ; but the decree
was not executed, although in the Hôtel-de-Ville itself there was the
splendid St. Jean Hall, which might have been prepared in a few
hours.
THE COMMUNE IN PARIS.
255
"Parisians, the Government will not bombard Paris, as the
men of the Commune will not fail to tell you. It will dis¬
charge its cannon. ... It knows, it would have understood,
even if you had not' said so on all sides, that as soon as the
soldiers cross the enceinte you will rally round the national
flag." And he invited the Parisians to open the gates to him.
What was the action of the Council in reply to this appeal to
treason?
On the 8th it entered upon a random discussion on the
minutes of its sittings1 and the publicity of the latter, which
one member of the majority wanted to suppress altogether.
-The minority complained of the Central Committee, which
had encroached upon all services in spite of the Commission
of War; it had driven away Yarlin from the commissariat,
entirely reorganised by him. They asked whether the Govern¬
ment called itself Central Committee or Commune. Félix
Pyat justified himself by accusing Rossel. "It is not the fault
of the Committee of Public Safety if Rossel has neither
the strength nor the intelligence to keep the Central Com¬
mittee within its functions." The friends of Rossel an¬
swered, accusing Pyat of continually interfering even in
purely military questions. If the Moulin Saquet had been
surprised, it was because Wroblewski, who commanded on that
side, received a formal order from Félix Pyat to repair to
Issy, "It is false," said Pyat; "I have never given such an
order." They let him thoroughly enmesh himself, and then
produced the order, written entirely in his own hand. He
took hold of it, turned it round, feigned astonishment, and was
.finally obliged to confess.2 The discussion then reverted to the
1 The reports in the Officiel, confided to inexperienced writers, who
abridged or amplified at pleasure, again altered at the printing-office,
frequently interrupted by the formation of secret committees, give but
a very vague idea of these sittings.
' "Committee of Public Safety, No. 98.—Paris, 3rd May 1871.—
General Wroblewski,—Please repair immediately to the fort of Issy. It
is urgent to make provision for several services, engineering, artillery,
&c. The members of the Committee of Public Safety. Félix Pyat,
Ant. Arnaud. Enclosed is a despatch from the commander of the fort."
Before the public, ignorant of this despatch, Pyat kept up his lie.
256 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
Central Committee—were they to dissolve it, arrest its mem¬
bers, or surrender to it the administration of the War Office?
The Council, as usual, did not dare to decide, and, after
a confused debate, abode by the resolution of the 3rd May—
the Central Committee will be held subordinate to the Military
Commission.
At this very moment strange scenes were enacted at the
War Office. The chefs-de-légion, who were stirring more and
more against Rossel, had that day resolved to ask him
for the report of all the decisions he was about to take with
respect to the National Guard. Rossel knew of their
project. In the evening, when they arrived at the Min¬
istry, they found in its court an armed platoon, and beheld
Rossel watching them from his window. "You are
audacious," said he; "do you know that this platoon
is here to shoot you?" They, without appearing to care
much: "There is no need of audacity; we simply come
to speak to you of the organisation of the National Guard."
Rossel relaxed, went to the window, gave orders to the platoon
to re-enter. This burlesque demonstration did not miss its
effect. The chefs-de-légion disputed the project on the regi¬
ments point by point, demonstrating its impossibility. Tired
of arguing, Rossel said to them, "I am fully aware that I
have no forces, but I affirm you have not either. You
have, say you? Well, give me the proof. To-morrow,
at eleven o'clock, bring me 12,000 men to the Place de la
Concorde, and I will try to do something." He wanted to
make an attempt by the Clamart station. The chefs-de-légion
engaged to find the men, and spent the whole night in search
of them.
While these contests went on, the fort of Issy was being
He said in the Vengeur: "The only order given directly to the generals
by the Committee of Public Safety to defend Issy, which Rossel did not
defend, was addressed to General Wroblewski, intrusted with the forts
of the south. The Committee of Public Safety, in ordering him to watch
over Issy, did not displace him." In point of fact, not Wroblewski was
charged with the defence of the fort of Issy, but La Cecilia, who since
the reoccupation held the chief post on this side, and commanded
Wetzel, intrusted with the defence of the approaches of the fort.
THE COMMUNE IN PARIS. 257
evacuated. Since the morning it had been reduced to the
last extremity. Any of its defenders who approached the guns
was a dead man. In the evening the officers assembled, and
came to the conclusion that they could no longer hold out.
Thereupon the men, driven away from all sides by the shells,
massed themselves under the entrance vault, when a shell from
the Moulin de Pierre fell in their midst, killing sixteen of
them. Rist, Julien, and several others, who were stubbornly
bent upon holding these ruins, were at last obliged to yield.
About seven o'clock the evacuation began. The commander,
Lisbonne, one of the members of the first Central Committee,
a man of extraordinary courage, covered the retreat amidst a
shower of bullets.
A few hours after, the Versaillese, crossing the Seine,
established themselves before Boulogne in front of the
bastions of the Point du Jour, and opened a trench three
hundred yards from the enceinte. All that night and the
whole morning of the 9th the War Office and the Com¬
mittee of Public Safety knew nothing of the evacuation of
the fort.
On the 9th, at mid-day, the battalions asked for by Rossel
were drawn up along the Place de la Concorde. Rossel ar¬
rived on horseback, hardly looked at the front lines, and then
addressed the chefs-de-légion, "There are not enough men
here for me;" and at once turning about, rode off to the War
Office, where he was informed of the evacuation of the fort
of Issy. He seized his pen, wrote, "The tricolor flag floats
from the fort of Issy, abandoned yesterday evening by the
garrison," and, without apprising the Council or the Com¬
mittee of Public Safety, gave the order to placard ten thousand
copies of these two lines, while six thousand was the number
usually printed.
He next sent in his resignation: "Citizens, members of
the Commune, I feel myself incapable of any longer bearing
the responsibility of a command where every one deliberates
and no one obeys. The Central Committee of Artillery has
deliberated and prescribed nothing. The Commune has de-,
liberated and resolved upon nothing. The Central Com-:
R
258 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
mittee deliberates and has not yet known how to act.
During this delay the enemy has hemmed in the fort of
Issy by imprudent attacks, for which I would punish him
if I had the smallest military force at my disposal." He
then recounted in his own fashion, and very inaccurately,
the evacuation of the fort, the review on the Place de la
Concorde; said that, instead of the 12,000 men promised,
there were only 7,000/ and concluded: "Thus the nullity
of the Committee of Artillery prevented the organisation of
the artillery; the hesitation of the Central Committee stopped
the administration; the paltry pre-occupations of the chefs-
de-légion paralysed the mobilisation of the troops. My pre¬
decessor committed the fault of struggling against this absurd
situation. I retire, and have the honour to ask you for a cell
at Mazas."
He thus thought to clear his military reputation; but point
hy point he might have been categorically answered. Why
did you accept this "absurd" situation with which you were
thoroughly conversant? Why did you make no conditions
on entering the Ministry on the 1st April, no condition to
the Council on the 2nd and 3rd May? Why did you send
away at least 7,000 men this morning, when you pre¬
tend not to have "the smallest military force" at your
disposal? Why did you know nothing for fifteen hours
of the evacuation of a fort whose straits it was your
duty to watch from hour to hour? Where is your second
enceinte? Why has no work been done at Montmartre and
the Panthéon?
Rossel might perhaps have addressed his reproaches to the
Council, but he committed an unpardonable fault in sending
his letters to the journals. Thus in less than two hours he
had disheartened 8,000 combatants, spread panic, stigmatised
the brave men of Issy, denounced the weakness of the defence
to the enemy, and that at the very moment when the Ver-
saillese were rejoicing over the taking of Issy.
There every one was merrymaking. M. Thiers and Mac-
1 The chefs-de-Ugion have said 10,000. The truth lies between the
two.
THE COMMUNE IN PARIS. 259
Mahon harangued the soldiers, who, singing, brought hack <
the few pieces found in the fort. The Assembly suspended
its sittings and came into the marble court to applaud these
children of the people who thought themselves victors.
M. Thiers a month later said from the tribune, "When I see
these sons of our soil, strangers often to an education that
elevates, die for you, for us, I am profoundly touched."
Touching emotion this of the hunter before his pack. Re¬
member this avowal and the sort of men for whom you die,
sons of the soil!
And at the Hôtel-de-Vilfe they were still disputing! Rigault
recriminated. The majority of the Council had named him
procureur of the Commune in spite of his culpable levity at
the Prefecture. The discussion was growing angry when
Delescluze entered hastily and exclaimed, "You discuss when
it has been placarded that the tricolor flag floats from the fort
of Issy. I make an appeal to you all. I had hoped that
France would be saved by Paris and Europe by France.
The Commune is pregnant with a power of revolutionary
instinct capable of saving the country. Cast aside to-day
all your animosities. We must save the country. The
Committee of Public Safety has not answered our ex¬
pectations. It has been an obstacle instead of a stimulus.
With what is it occupying itself? With individual ap¬
pointments instead of general measures. A decree signed
Meillet names this citizen himself governor of the fort of
Bicêtre. We had a man there, a soldier,1 who was thought
too severe. It is desirable that all were as severe as he.
Your Committee of Public Safety is undone, crushed beneath
the weight of the memories attached to it. I say it must
disappear."
The Assembly, thus brought hack to a sense of its duty,
resolved into a secret committee, thoroughly discussing the
Committee of Public Safety. What had it done for a week
past? Installed the Central Committee at the War Office, in¬
creased the disorder, sustained two disasters. Its members
lost themselves in details or else did amateur service. One
1 P. Vichard, ex-chief of the staff of the Garibaldian General Bossack.
260 HISTORY OP THE COMMUNE.
deserted the Hôtel-de-Ville to go and shut himself up in a
fort; if at least it had been that of Issy or of Vanves! Félix
Pyat passed the greater part of his time in the office of the
Vengeur, there venting his spleen in long-winded articles. A
member of the Committee of Public Safety endeavoured to
defend it by pleading the vagueness of its attributes. He was
answered that Article 3 of the decree gave the Committee
full powers over all the Commissions. Finally, after many
hours, they decided to renew the Committee at once; to ap¬
point a civil delegate to the War Office; to draw up a proclama¬
tion; to meet, save in cases of emergency, only three times a
week; to establish the new Committee permanently at the
Hôtel-de-Ville, while the other members of the Council were
to stay regularly in their respective arrondissements. Deles-
cluze was named Delegate at War.
In the evening, at ten o'clock, there was a second meeting
for the nomination of the new Committee. The majority voted
Félix Pyat, quite exasperated at the attacks of the afternoon,
to the chair. He opened the sitting by demanding the arrest
of Rossel. Cleverly grouping together appearances which
seemed proofs to the suspicious, he made Rossel the scape¬
goat of the faults of the Committee, turning the anger of
the Council against him. For half an hour he disparaged
the absent man, whom he would not have dared attack to
his face. "I told you, citizens, that he was a traitor. You
would not believe me. You are young; you did not, like
our paragons of the Convention, know how to mistrust mili¬
tary power." This reminiscence ravished the Romanticists.
They had but one dream—to be Conventionnels. So difficult
was it for this revolution of proletarians to rid itself of
bourgeois tinsel.
The ire of Pyat was not wanted to convince the Assembly.
Rossel's act was culpable in the eyes of the least prejudiced.
His arrest was decreed unanimously, less two voices, and the
Commission of War received the order to carry it out.
They next passed to the nomination of the Committee. The
minority, a little reassured by the election of Delescluze and
Jourde, which seemed to acknowledge the right of the Council
THE COMMUNE IN PARIS.
261
to appoint the delegates, resolved to take part in the vote,
and asked for a place in the list of the majority. This
was an excellent occasion to efface all differences, to re¬
establish union against Versailles. But the perfidious
promptings of Félix Pyat had induced the Romanticists
to look upon their colleagues of the minority as veritable
reactionists. After his speech the sitting was suspended;
little .by little the members of the minority found themselves
alone in the council-hall. They looked for their col¬
leagues and surprised them in a neighbouring room
deliberating apart. After a violent altercation they all re¬
turned to the Council.
A member of the minority demanded that they should put
an end to these shameful divisions. A Romanticist answered
by asking for the arrest of the factious minority, and the
President, Pyat, was about to empty the vials of his wrath,
when Malon cried to him, "Silence! you are the evil genius
of this revolution. Do not continue to spread your venomous
suspicions, to stir up discords. It is your influence that is
ruining the Commune!" And Arnold, one of the founders
of the Central Committee, "It is still these fellows of 1848
who will undo the revolution."
But it was too late now to engage in the struggle, and the
minority was to expiate its doctrinairism and maladroitness.
The whole list of the majority passed; Ranvier, Arnaud, Gam-
Ion, Delescluze, and Eudes. The nomination of Delescluze
to the War Office having left a vacancy, there was after two
days a second vote, and the minority proposed Varlin. The
majority, abusing their victory, committed the impropriety of
preferring Billioray, a most worthless member.
The Council broke up at one o'clock in the morning. "Did
not we do them? and what do you think of the way I managed
the business?" said Félix Pyat to his friends on leaving the
chair.1 This honest mandatory, altogether absorbed in the
work of "doing" his colleagues, had forgotten to verify the
1 Heard and reported by Lefrançais, whose veracity is above suspi¬
cion. Etude sur le Mouvement Commùnaliste par G. Lefrançais, p. 294.
Neuchâtel, 1870.
262 HISTORY OP THE COMMUNE.
capture of the fort of Issy. And that same evening, twenty-
six hours after the evacuation, the Hôtel-de-Ville placarded
on the door of the mairies, "It is false that the tricolor flag
floats on the fort of Issy. The Versaillese do not and shall
not occupy it." This contradiction was as good as Trochu's
apropos of Metz.
During these tempests at the Hôtel-de-Ville the Central
Committee had sent for Rossel, reproached him with the
placard of the afternoon, and the unusual number of copies
printed. He defended himself acrimoniously. "It was my
duty. The greater the danger, the greater the duty to make
it known to the people." Yet he had done nothing of the
kind on the surprise of the Moulin-Saquet. After his de¬
parture the Committee deliberated at length. Some one said,
"We are lost if we get no dictatorship." For some days this
idea was uppermost in the Committee. The latter voted
quite seriously that there should be a dictator, and that the
dictator was to be Rossel. A deputation of five members
gravely went to fetch him; he came down to the Committee,
pretended to reflect, and finally said, "It is too late. I am
no longer delegate. I have sent in my resignation." Some
waxing angry with him, he rebuked them and left. In
his cabinet he found the Commission of War, Deleseluze,
Tridon, Avrial, Johannard, Varlin, and Arnold, who had just
arrived.
Deleseluze explained their mission. Rossel listened very
calmly; said that though the decree was unjust, he submitted
to it. He then described the military situation, the rivalries
of all kinds that had continually clogged him, the weakness
of the Council. "It has not known," said he, "how to
utilise the Central Committee, nor how to break it at the
opportune time. Our resources are quite sufficient, and
I am ready, for my own part, to assume all responsibility,
but on the condition of being supported by a strong and
homogeneous power. I could not in the face of history take
upon myself the responsibility for certain necessary re¬
pressions without the assent and support of the Commune."
He spoke at great length in that clear and nervous style
THE COMMUNE IN PARIS. 263
that twice in the Council had won over his most decided
adversaries. The Commission, much struck by his argu¬
ments, withdrew to another room. Delescluze declared that
he could not make up his mind to arrest Rossel till the
Council had heard him. His colleagues were of the same
opinion, and left the ëx-delegate under the guard of Avrial
and Johannard, who the next morning conducted him to
the Hôtel-de-Ville. Avrial stayed with Rossel in the
questor^s office, while Johannard went to apprise the Council
of their arrival.
Some wanted Rossel to be heard; the greater number,
distrustful of themselves, were afraid lest his voice should
again bring round the Council, maintained that his hearing
was contrary to equity, and cited the example of Cluseret,
who had been arrested without being heard, as though one
injustice could sanction another. The admission of Rossel
was refused.
Ch. Gérardin, a member of the Council, repaired to the
questor's office. "What has the Commune decided?" said
Avrial. "Nothing yet," answered Ch. Gérardin, who never¬
theless had just left the sitting, and seeing Avrial's revolver
on the table, he said to Rossel, "Your guardian fulfils his duty
conscientiously." "I do not suppose," answered Rossel hur¬
riedly, "that this precaution concerns me. Besides, Citizen
Avrial, I give you my word of honour as a soldier that I shall
not seek to escape."
Avrial, very tired of his post as sentry, had already asked
the Council to relieve him. Receiving no answer, he thought
he might leave his prisoner under the guard of a member
of the Committee of Public Safety—for Ch. Gérardin had
not yet been discharged from his functions—and he proceeded
, to the Council. "When he returned, Rossel and Ch. Gérardin
were gone. The ambitious young man had slunk like a weasel
out of this civil war into which he had heedlessly thrown
himself.
One may divine whether Pyat was sparing of adjectives
against the fugitive. The new Committee having just been
informed of the discovery of two conspiracies, launched a
264 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
desperate proclamation: "Treason had slipped into our ranks.
The abandonment of the fort of Issy announced in an impious
placard by the wretch who surrendered it, was only the first
act of the drama. A monarchical insurrection in our midst
coinciding with the surrender of one of our gates was to follow.
All the threads of the dark plot are now in our hands. Most
of the culprits are arrested. Let all eyes be open, all arms
ready to strike the traitors!"
This was going off into melodrama when cold blood
and precision were wanted. And the Committee boasted
strangely when it pretended to have arrested "most of the
culprits" and that it held "in its hands all the threads of the
dark plot."
( 265 )
CHAPTER XXII.
THE CONSPIRACIES AGAINST THE COMMUNE.
The Commune had given rise to the various trades of the
plot-monger, the betrayer of gates, the conspiracy-broker.
Vulgar sharpers, Jonathan Wilds of the gutter, whom a
shadow of police would have scared away, they had no other
strength than the weakness of the prefecture and the careless¬
ness of the delegations. The evidence relative to them is to
a certain extent still in the keeping of the Versaillese; but
they have themselves published a good deal, often borne wit¬
ness against each other, and what with private information,
what with the opportunities offered by our exile, we shall be
able to penetrate into this realm of blackguardism.
From the end of March they levied contributions upon all
the Ministries of Versailles, offering for a few sous to sur¬
render some of the gates of Paris or to kidnap the members
of the Council. By degrees they were more or less classed.
The colonel of the staff, Corbin, was charged with the or¬
ganisation of the faithful National Guards still at Paris.
The commander of a reactionary battalion, Charpentier,
a former drill officer of St. Cyr, offered him his services,
was accepted, and presented a few of his cronies, Durouchoux,
Demay, and Gallimard. Their instructions were to recruit
clandestine battalions, who were to occupy the strategic points
of the town on the day when the general attack would
summons all the Federals to the ramparts. A naval officer,
Domalain, offered at that moment to surprise Montmartre,
the Hôtel-de-Ville, the Place Vendôme, and the commissariat,
with a few thousand volunteers, whom he professed to
266 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
have at hand. He entered into partnership with Char¬
pentier.
They bestirred themselves with might and main, grouped
an astonishing number of persons around official posts, and
soon gave notice of 6,000 men and 150 artillerists provided
with spiking machines. All these brave ones only waited for
a signal. In the meanwhile, money was of course wanted to
keep up their zeal, and Charpentier and Domalain, through
the agency of Durouchoux, indeed drew several hundred
thousand francs from the Versaillese.
Towards the end of April they found a redoubtable rival
in Le Mère de Beaufond, an ex-naval officer and governor of
Cayenne ad interim. Instead of drumming up for bourgeois
recruits, an idea he declared ridiculous, Beaufond proposed
paralysing the resistance by means of clever agents who
should provoke defections and disorganise the services. His
plan, quite in accord with M. Thiers' notions, was favourably
looked upon at Versailles, which gave him full powers.
He took as helpmates two men of resolution, Laroque,
a clerk at the bank, and Lasnier, an ex-officer of Schœlcher's
legion.
Besides these, the Ministry had still other bloodhounds—
the Alsatian Aronshonne, colonel of a free corps during the
war, cashiered by his men, who at Tours had accused him
of theft; Franzini, later on extradited by England and con¬
demned as a swindler; Barrai de Montaut, who boldly pre¬
sented himself at the War Office, and, thanks to his aplomb,
got himself named chief of the seventh legion; the Abbé
Cellini, chaplain of one knows not what fleet, patronised by
Jules Simon; last, the noble-minded conspirators, the great
generals disdained by the revolution, Lullier, Du Bisson,
Ganier d'Abin. These honest Republicans could not allow
the Commune to ruin the Republic. If they accepted money
from Versailles, it was only with a view to saving Paris and
the Republican party from the men of the Hôtel-de-Ville.
They wanted to overthrow the Commune, but betray it, oh!
no, by no means!
One Brière de St.-Lagier framed comprehensive reports on
THE COMMUNE IN PARIS. 267
all these knights, and M. Thiers' secretary, Troncin-Dumersan,
condemned three years after as swindler, travelled back¬
wards and forwards between Paris and Versailles, brought the
money, superintended and held in his hand all the threads of
these multifarious conspiracies, the one being often carried on
behind the hack of the other. .
Thence continual collisions. The ragamuffins mutually de¬
nounced each other. Brière de St.-Lagier wrote: "I beg M. le
Ministre of the Interior to have M. Le Mère de Beaufond
watched. I strongly suspect him of being a Bonapartist. The
money he has received has been used to a great extent to pay
his debts." By way of compensation another report said, "I
suspect MM. Domalain, Charpentier, and Brière de St.-Lagier.
They often meet at Peter's, and instead of occupying them¬
selves with the great cause of the deliverance, imitate Pan¬
tagruel. They pass for Orleanists." 1
The most venturesome of these enterprisers, Beaufond,
managed to enter into relations with the general staff of
Colonel Henry Prodhomme, with the Ecole Militaire, com¬
manded by Vinot, and with the War Office, where the chief
of the artillery, Guyet, contrived to embroil the service of
the munitions. His agents, Lasnier and Laroque, worked
upon a certain Muley, who, having circumvented the Central
Committee, got himself named chief of the seventeenth legion,
and to some extent disabled it. An officer of artillery, Cap¬
tain Piguier, placed at their disposal by the Ministry, traced
the plan of the barricades, and one of the band could write
on the 8th May, "No torpedoes are laid; the army may enter
to the flourish of trumpets." How they had recourse to direct
subornation; now acting the part of fervent Communards,
they knew how to draw out information; while the imprudence
of the functionaries singularly facilitated their task. Staff
officers, chiefs of services, fond of assuming consequential
airs, discussed the most delicate matters in the cafés of
the boulevards, full of spies.2/ Cournet, who had succeeded
1 All the unpublished reports that I quote and on which I rely have
been copied from the originals.
1 Appendix XI.
268 HISTORY OP THE COMMUNE.
Rigault at the prefecture of police, despite the gravity of
his deportment, did not better the service of general safety.
Lullier, twice arrested, each time escaping, openly spoke
in the cafés of sweeping away the Commune. Troncin-
Dumersan, known for twenty years as the police agent
of the Ministry of the Interior, freely promenaded on the
boulevards, passing his retainers in review. The contractors
charged with the fortification of Montmartre every day found
new pretexts to defer the opening of the works; the Bréa
Church remained intact; the undertaker of the demolition
of the expiatory monument managed to put it off till the entry
of the troops. Hazard alone discovered the brassard (armlet)
plot, and the fidelity of Dombrowski disclosed that of Vaysset.
/ This commercial agent had gone to Versailles to propose
to the Ministry an operation of revictualling. Shown out, he
again turned up, but this time with the offer to bribe Dom¬
browski. Under the patronage of Admiral Saisset—more
crazy than ever—he got up his enterprise in the shape of a
commercial society, found shareholders, twenty thousand
francs for the incidental expenses, and entered into communi¬
cation with an aide-de-camp of Dombrowski's named Hutzin-
ger, afterwards employed by the Versaillese police as spy
amongst the exiles in London. Vaysset told him that Ver¬
sailles would give Dombrowski a million if the general sur¬
rendered the gates under his command. Dombrowski at once
apprised the Committee of Public Safety, and proposed to
allow one or two Versaillese army corps to enter the town
and then to crush them by battalions lying in ambush. The
Committee would not risk this venture, but ordered Dom¬
browski to follow up the negotiation.1 Hutzinger accompanied
Vaysset to Versailles, saw Saisset, who offered to surrender
himself as hostage in guarantee of the execution of the prom¬
ises made to Dombrowski. The admiral was even, on a certain
night, to repair secretly to the Place Vendôme, and the Com¬
mittee of Public Safety, forewarned, was preparing to arrest
him, when Barthélémy St. Hilaire dissuaded Saisset from
this new blunder.
1 Appendix XII.
THE COMMUNE IN PARIS. 269
/Then M. Thiers began to abandon the hope of taking the
town by surprise. This was his hobby of the first days of May.
Upon the faith of a bailiff, who promised to get the Dâuphine
gate surrendered by his friend Laporte, chief of the sixteenth
legion, M. Thiers had built up a whole plan in spite of the
repugnance of MacMahon and of the army, eager for a tri¬
umphal entry./ In the night of the 3d May the whole active
army and part of the reserve were set on foot, and General
Thiers went to sleep at Sèvres. At midnight the troops were
massed in the Bois de Boulogne before the lower lake, their
eyes fixed on the closed gates. The latter were to be thrown
open by a reactionary company which had formed at Passy
under the orders of Wéry, a lieutenant of the thirty-eighth,
acting as deputy of his former commander, Lavigne. But the
intelligent conspirators had forgotten to warn Lavigne, and
the company that was to relieve the Federals having had no
order from their superior, suspected an ambush, and refused
the service. Thus the trusty watch was not relieved. At
dawn, after waiting in vain for several hours, the troops re¬
turned to their cantonments. Two days after Laporte was
arrested and set free again, much too soon.
Beaufond, taking up the bailiff's plan, guaranteed the sur¬
render of the gates of Auteuil and Dauphine for the night of
the 12th to the 13th May. M. Thiers, again caught, forwarded
all the gear for an escalade, and several detachments were
directed towards the Point du J our, while the army held itself
in readiness to follow. But at the last moment the profound
combinations of the conspirators were foiled,2 and, as on the
3rd, the army had to turn tail. This attempt was known to
1 " It was better to take possession of the town by main force," said the
apostolic Comte de Mun (Enquête sur le 18 Mars, vol. ii. p. 277). "Thus
right manifests itself in peremptory manner"—the right of carnage, no
doubt. "It was better that it should not be said that we had got in by
the back-door."
3 It has been stated that a Polish officer of Dombrowski's staff, killed
afterwards during the street fight, was the agent in this attempted
treason. I have been unable, in spite of a minute search, to discover
the least proof of this imputation.
270 HISTORY OP THE COMMUNE.
the Committee of Public Safety, who had known nothing of
the first one.
Lasnier was arrested the next day. The Committee had
just laid hands upon the tricolor armlets which the National
Guards of order were to have worn on the entry of the army.
The woman Legros, who made them, neglected to pay the
girls in her employ. One of them, believing that the work
was done on account of the Commune, went to ask for her
wages at the Hôtel-de-Ville. Inquiries made at the woman
Legros' put them on the traces of Beaufond and his accom¬
plices. Beaufond and Laroque managed to hide; Tronein-
Dumersan packed off to Versailles. Charpentier thus re¬
mained master of the field. Corbin urged him to organise his
men by tens and hundreds, and traced him out a whole plan by
which to get possession of the Hôtel-de-Ville immediately
after the entry of the troops. Charpentier, always imper¬
turbable, diverted him day by day by news of fresh conquests,
spoke of 20,000 recruits, asked for dynamite to blow up the
houses,1 and in true Pantagruelic style gobbled up the con¬
siderable sums made over to him by Durouchoux.
M fer all, the whole gang of conspirators did not succeed in
surrendering one single gate, but they lent considerable aid
in disorganising the services. Still great care should be taken
in availing oneself of their reports, often inflated with imagi¬
nary successes to justify the disbursement of the hundreds of
thousands of francs that they pocketed./
1 See a letter from Colonel Corbin, quoted in the Histoire des Conspira¬
tions sous la Commune, a work by A. J. Dalsême, arranged in the form
of a novel, but containing some documents
( 271 )
CHAPTER XXIII.
C'est par le canon et par la politique que nous avons pris Paris."—M.
Thiers, Enquête sur le 18 Mars.
M. THIERS' POLICY WITH REGARD TO THE PROVINCES—THE
EXTREME LEFT BETRAYS PARIS..
Who was the great conspirator against Paris? The Extreme
Left.
On the 19th March, what remained to M. Thiers wherewith
to govern France? He had neither an army, nor cannon,
nor the large towns. These possessed arms, and their
workmen were on the alert. If that small middle-class
which makes the provinces endorse the revolutions of the
metropolis had followed the movement, imitated their
kindred of Paris, M. Thiers could not have opposed to them
a single regiment. In order to subsist, retain the provinces,
and induce them to provide the soldiers and the cannon
that were to reduce Paris, what were the resources of the
chief of the bourgeoisie? A word and a handful of men. The
word was Republic; the men, the recognised chiefs of the
Republican party.
Though the dull rurals barked at the mere name of the
Republic, and refused to insert it in their proclamations, M.
Thiers, more cunning, mouthed it lustily, and distorting the
votes of the Assembly,1 gave it out as the watchword to his
1 On the 23rd, Picard telegraphed to the procureur-general of Aix :
"The Republic was, the day before yesterday, again affirmed in a
proclamation of the Assembly." The very proclamation which the
Assembly had refused to conclude by the cry "Vive la République!"
272 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
underlings.1 Since the first risings all the provincial officials
had the same refrain: "We defend the Republic against the
factions." 2
This was certainly something; but the rural votes, the past
of M. Thiers, clashed with these Republican protestations.
The former heroes of the National Defence were no longer
acceptable as securities even for the provinces. M. Thiers
was well aware of it, and invoked the purest of the
pure—the chevroned returned from exile. Their prestige
was still intact in the eyes of the provincial democrats. M.
Thiers met them in the lobbies, told them they held the fate
of the Republic in their hands, flattered their senile vanity,
and inveigled them so successfully, that, from the 23rd,2
they served him as bottle-holders. When the small middle-
class republicans of the provinces beheld the profound
Louis Blanc, the intelligent Schœlcher, and the most famous
grumblers of the radical vanguard fly to Versailles, and insult
the Central Committee, and, on the other hand, received
neither programme nor able emissaries from Paris, they
turned away, and let the flame enkindled by the workmen
die out.
The cannonading of the 3rd April roused them a little.
On the 5th, the municipal council of Lille, composed of
Republican notabilities, spoke of conciliation, and called
upon M. Thiers to affirm the Republic. That of Lyons
drew up a like address; St. Omer sent delegates to Ver¬
sailles; Troyes declared that it was "heart and soul with
the heroic citizens who fought for their republican convic¬
tions." Mâcon summoned the Government and the As¬
sembly to put an end to this struggle by the recognition
of republican institutions. The Drôme, the Var, Vaucluse,
1 The same day—it was that of the Marseilles insurrection—Dufaure
telegraphed to the same proeureur-general: "Read the name Répub¬
lique Française at the head of all the despatches I send you."
a I have in my possession about twenty proclamations of prefects or
magistrates. They are all on this point identically the same.
* "A great speech of the President of the Council has been applauded
by the Extreme left." The speech of the 21st March against Paris.
Dufaure to the proeureur-general at Aix, 23rd March.
THE EXTREME LEFT BETRAYS PARIS. 275
the Ardèche, the Loire, Savoy, the Hérault, the Gers, and the
Eastern Pyrénées, twenty departments, issued similar ad¬
dresses. The workmen of Rouen declared their adhesion to
the Commune; the workmen of Havre, rebuffed by the bour¬
geois Republicans, constituted an independent group. On
the 16th April, at Grenoble, 600 men, women, and children
went to the station to prevent the departure of the troops
and munitions for Versailles. On the 18th, at Nîmes, the
people, headed by a red flag, marched through the town to
the cry of "Vive la Commune! Vive Paris! Down with Ver¬
sailles!" On the 16th, 17th, 18th, there were disturbances
at Bordeaux. Some police agents were imprisoned, some
officers ill-treated, the infantry barracks pelted with stones,
the people crying, "Vive Paris! Death to the traitors!" The
movement even spread to the agricultural classes. At Sain-
coin in the Cher, at the Charité-sur-Loire, at Pouilly in the
Nièvre, the National Guards in arms carried about the red
flag. Cosne followed on the 18th, Fleury-sur-Loire on the
19th. The red flag was permanently hoisted in the Ariège;
at Foix they stopped the transport of the cannon; at Varilhes
they tried to run the munition trains off the lines. At
Périgueux, the workmen of the railway station seized the
mitrailleuses.
On the 15th April five delegates from the municipal council
of Lyons presented themselves to M. Thiers. He pro¬
tested his devotion to the Republic, swore that the
Assembly should not turn into a Constituent Assembly. If
he chose his functionaries outside the Republicans, it was in
order to treat all parties with consideration in the interest of
the Republic itself. He defended it against the men of the
Hôtel-de-Ville, its worst enemies, said he; the delegates
might assure themselves of this even in Paris, and he was
quite ready to furnish them with safe-conducts. Besides, if
Lyons dared to stir, 30,000 men were ready to quell it.1
1 He confessed his trickery in a speech pronounced at Bordeaux in
1875: "I was enabled with the remains of the defeated army to unite
a military force of 150,000 men; but if this force was sufficient to tear
Paris from the Commune, it could not have kept down the large towns
s
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
This was his typical speech. All the deputations received
the same answer, given with such an air of bonhommie and
such complaisant familiarity as quite to overwhelm the pro¬
vincials.
From the presidency they proceeded to the luminaries of
the Extreme Left, Louis Blanc, Schœlcher, Adam, and other
eminent democrats, who endorsed M. Thiers' words. These
gentlemen, if condescending to admit that the cause of Paris
was not altogether wrong, declared it ill-begun and com¬
promised by a criminal combat. When Paris once disarmed
they would see what could be done. Opportunism is not of
yesterday's growth. It was born1 into the world on the 19th
March, 1871, had Louis Blanc & Co. for godfathers, and was
baptized in the blood of 30,000 Parisians. "With whom
should they treat in Paris?" asked Louis Blanc. "Without
speaking of Bonapartist and Prussian intrigues, the people
who were there striving to seize the government were fanatics,
fools, or rogues." 2 And all the Radicals bridled up: "Should
we not be at Paris if Paris were in the right?" The majority
of France, keenly bent on the maintenance of the Republic, and coming
to ask me with distrust and irritation if it were the monarchy that we
combated for."
1 I should say "resuscitated," if it were not doing these eunuchs too
much honour to compare them to Robespierre, who by their side appears
a hero. But how prevent one's thoughts from wandering to the pontiff
declaring inopportune the Republican outburst of June-July 1791;
inopportune the cries of Paris famished by engrossers; inopportune the
people asking for a single article in their favour in the Constitution
of 1793; inopportune the commissaries, without whom France would
have been dismembered; inopportune the great movement against the
Church; inopportune the Socialists and Jacques Roux, whom he did
to death ; inopportune the popular societies closed by him, and after the
disappearance of which Paris expired ; inopportune Clootz, yearning to
rally round France all the revolutionary forces of the world ; inopportune
Hébert, who, nevertheless, had helped him to stifle the Socialists; in¬
opportune, in fine, all that was not cut out after his own amiable pattern
up to the day when he was himself declared inopportune by the great
bourgeoisie, who found it as easy as opportune to swallow him at a
mouthful as soon as he had purged, bled, muzzled for them the revolu¬
tionary lion.
1 Appendix XIII.
THE EXTREME LEFT BETRAYS PARIS. 275
of the delegates, lawyers, doctors, business men, brought up
in veneration of these shining lights, hearing besides the
young men speaking like the pontiffs, went back to the
provinces, and as the Left preached to them, preached in
turn that it was necessary to abandon the Commune in order
to save the Republic. A few of them had visited Paris; but
seeing the divisions of the Hôtel-de-Ville, often received by
men unable to formulate their ideas, threatened by Félix Pyat
in the Vengeur, they came back convinced that nothing cotild
emerge from this disorder. When they again passed through
Versailles the deputies of the Left triumphed. "Well, what
did we tell you?" Even Martin-Bernard gave his electors the
ass's kick.
At Paris there were people who could not believe in such
barefaced treachery on the part of the Left, and still adjured
them. "What are you about at Versailles when Versailles
is bombarding Paris?" said an address of the end of April.
"What figure can you cut in the midst of these colleagues
who assassinate your electors? If you persist in remaining
amongst the enemies of Paris, at least do not make your¬
selves their accomplices by your silence. What! you allow
M. Thiers to write to the departments, 'The insurgents are
emptying the principal houses of Paris in order to put the
furniture to sale,' and you do not ascend the tribune to protest!
What! the whole Bonapartist and rural press may inundate
the departments with infamous articles, in which they affirm
that at Paris murder, violation, and theft reign supreme, and.,
you are silent! WRat! M. Thiers may assert that his gen¬
darmes do not assassinate the prisoners; you cannot ignore
these atrocious executions, and you are silent! Ascend the
tribune; tell the departments the truth, which the enemies
of the Commune conceal from them. But our enemies, are
they yours also?"
A useless appeal, which the cowardice of the Left knew
how to elude. Louis Blanc, in his Tartuffe style, exclaimed,
"0 civil war! hideous struggle! The cannon thunder! People
are killing each other and dying; and those in the Assembly
who would willingly give their life to see this sanguinary
376 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
problem pacifically resolved are condemned to the torture
of not being able to make an act, utter a cry, speak
a word." Since the birth of the French Assemblies so
ignominious a Left had never been seen. The spectacle
of the prisoners smitten, reviled, spat upon, was unable to
draw a protest from these wretched Parisian deputies. One
only, Tolain, asked for an explanation on the assassination
at the Belle-Epine. Louis Blanc, Schœlcher, Greppo, Adam,
Langlois, Brisson, &c., the Gérontes and the Scapins, sancti¬
moniously contemplated their bombarded electors, and, fully
aware of the facile forgetfulness of Paris, dreamt of their
future re-election.
Their calumnies succeeded in stifling the action but not
the anguish of the provinces. With heart and soul the work¬
men of France were with Paris. The employés at the railway
stations harangued the soldiers on their passage, adjuring
them to raise the butt-ends of their guns; the official placards
were torn during the night; the large centres sent their ad¬
dresses by the hundred; all the Republican papers demanded
peace, sought for some method of conciliation between Paris,
and Versailles.
Paris and Versailles! The agitation becoming chronic, M.
Thiers launched forth Dufaure, the Chapelier of the modern
bourgeoisie, one of the most odious executors of its dirty work.
He enjoined his procureurs to prosecute all the writers
countenancing the Commune, "that dictatorship usurped by
foreigners and tieket-of-leave men, which signalises its reign
by burglary, breaking open private houses in the dead of night
and by force of arms," and to lay hands upon "the conciliators
who entreat the Assembly to hold out its noble hand to the
blood-stained hand of its enemies." Versailles thus hoped to-
strike terror at the moment of the municipal elections, which
took place on the 30th April.
They were everywhere Republican. These provinces, which
had risen against Paris in June, 1848, and in the elections
of 1849, did not send a.hundred volunteers in 1871, and would
only fight the Assembly. At Thiers (Puy-de-Dôme) thfr
people occupied the Hotel-de-Ville, hoisted the red flag, and.
THE EXTREME LEFT BETRAYS PARIS. 277
seized the telegraphs. There occurred disturbances at
Souppe, Nemours, Château-Landau, in the arrondissement
of Fontainebleau. At Dordives (Loiret) the Communards
planted a poplar surmounted by the red flag in front of the
mairie. At Montargies they raised the red flag, placarded the
apneal of the Commune to the rural districts, and forced a
solicitor who had tried to tear down the placard to ask pardon
on his knees. At Coulommiers (Seine-et-Marne) a demonstra¬
tion took place to the cries of "Vive la République! Vive la
Commune!"
Lyons rose in insurrection. Since the 24th March the
tricolor lorded it here, save at the Guillotière,1 where the
people maintained the red one. The Council on its return to
the Hôtel-de-Ville had demanded the recognition of the rights
of Paris, the election of a Constituent Assembly, and named
an officer of francs-tireurs, Bourras, commander of the Na¬
tional Guard. While the Council multiplied its addresses and
its applications to M. Thiers, the National Guard was again
stirring. It presented a programme to the municipal council,
which officially rejected it. The rebuff met by the delegates
sent to Versailles increased the irritation. "When the com¬
munal elections were announced for the 30th April, the
revolutionary element maintained that the municipal law
voted by the Assembly was null and void, because that As¬
sembly had not the rights of a constituent one. Two dele¬
gates from Paris summoned the mayor, Hénon, to postpone
the elections; and one of the actors in the affray of the 28th
September, Gaspard Blanc, reappeared on the scene. The
Radicals, always upon the scent of Bonapartism, have made
much ado about the presence of that personage. However,
at that time he was as yet but a madcap, and only in exile
put on the Imperialist livery. On the 27th, at the Brotteaux,
in a large public meeting, abstention from voting was
decided upon. All the committees of the Guillotiere fol¬
lowed, and in a public sitting of the 29th resolved to op¬
pose the vote.
i The workmen's quarter in Lyons.
278
HISTORY OP THE COMMUNE.
On the 30th, the day of the elections, from six o'clock in
the morning the rappel was beaten at the Guillotière; armed
citizens carried off the ballot-boxes, and posted sentinels at
the entrance of the hall. A proclamation was placarded:
"The city of Lyons can no longer look on while her sister
the heroic city of Paris is being strangled. The Lyonnese
revolutionists have with one accord named a Provisional Com¬
mission. Its members are above all determined, rather than
sustain defeat, to make one heap of ruins of a town cowardly
enough to allow the assassination of Paris and the Republic."
The Place de la Mairie was thronged with an excited crowd;
the mayor, Crestin, and his adjutant, who attempted to inter¬
fere, were not listened to, and a Revolutionary Commission
installed itself in the Mairie.
Bourras sent an order to the commanders of the Guillotière
to unite their battalions. They drew up towards two o'clock
in the Des Brosses court. A great number of guards dis¬
approved the movement, yet no one was willing to he the
soldier of Versailles. The crowd surrounded them, and finally
broke the ranks; about a hundred, led by their captain, went
to the Mairie to hoist their red field-colours. The mayor was
sent for, and the Commission called upon him to join the
movement; but he refused, as he had done on the 22nd March.
Suddenly the cannon thundered.
Hénon and his council, as the month before, would have
liked to temporise; while Valentin and Crouzat dreamt of
Espivent. At five o'clock the 38th of the line debouched by
the bridge of the Guillotière; the crowd penetrated into
the ranks of the soldiers, conjuring them not to fire,
and the officers were constrained to take back their men
to the barracks. During this time the Guillotière was forti¬
fying itself. A large barricade, extending from the store¬
houses of the Nouveau-Monde to the angle of the Mairie,
barred the Grande Rue; another was thrown up at the entrance
of the Rue des Trois Rois; a third on a level with the Rue
de Chabrol.
At half-past six the 38th came out of their barracks, but
THE EXTREME LEFT BETRAYS PARIS. 279
this time watched by a battalion of chasseurs. Valentin,
Crouzat, and the procureur de la république marched at
their head. In front of the mairie the Riot Act was read;
some shots answered it, wounding the prefect. The cavalry
swept the Des Brosses court and the Place de la Mairie,
while two pieces of cannon opened fire on the edifice. Its
doors soon gave way and the occupants abandoned it. The
troops entered after having killed the sentinel, intent upon
mounting guard to the very last. It has been said that five
insurgents, taken by surprise in the interior of the build¬
ing, were killed by a Versaillese officer with shots from his
revolver.
The struggle continued during part of the night in the
neighbouring streets, and the soldiers, deceived by the dark¬
ness, killed about a hundred of their own men. The losses
of the Communards were less great. By three o'clock in the
morning all was over.
At the Croix-Rousse some citizens had invaded the mairie
and scattered the voting-papers; the check of the Guillotière
cut short their resistance.
The Versaillese took advantage of this victory to disarm
the battalions of the Guillotière; but the population refused,,
rallying round the victors. Some monarchists had been elected
during the day, but everybody considering the elections of the
30th null and void, they were obliged to submit to a second
ballot, and not one of them was re-elected. The movement
in favour of Paris continued.
These newly-elected republican councillors might have
effectively counterbalanced the authority of Versailles; the
advanced press encouraged them. The Tribune of Bordeaux
had the honour first to propose a congress of all the towns
of France, for the purpose of terminating the civil war,
assuring the municipal franchises, and consolidating the Re¬
public. The municipal council of Lyons issued an identical
programme, inviting all the municipalities to send delegates
to Lyons. On the 4th May the delegates of the councils of
the principal towns of the Hérault met at Montpellier. The.
280
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
Liberté of the Hérault, in a warm appeal reproduced by fifty
journals, convoked the departmental press to a congress.
A common action was about to take the place of the in¬
coherent agitations of the last few weeks. If the provinces
understood their own strength, the time, their wants—if they
found a group of men equal to the occasion, Versailles, taken
between Paris and the departments, would have been obliged
to capitulate to Republican France. M. Thiers, with a vivid
presentment of the danger, affected the attitude of a
strong Government, and energetically forbade the con¬
gresses. "The Government would betray the Assembly,
France, civilisation," said the Officiel of the 8th May, "if it
allowed the assizes of Communism and of the rebellion to
constitute themselves by the side of the regular power issued
from universal suffrage." Picard, speaking from the tribune
of the instigation of the congress, said, "Never was there a
more criminal attempt than theirs. Outside the Assembly
there exists no right." The procureurs-généraux and the
prefects received the order to prevent all meetings. Some
members of the Ligue des Droits de Paris on their way to
Bordeaux were arrested.
More was not needed to frighten the Radicals. The or¬
ganisers of the congress of Bordeaux held their peace; those
of Lyons wrote a piteous address to Versailles, to the effect
that they had only intended convoking an assembly of the
notables. M. Thiers, having attained his object, disdained
to prosecute them, even allowed the delegates of eighteen
departments to draw up their grievances, and seriously declare
that they "made that one of the two combatants responsible
who should refuse their conditions." And yet they might
feel proud. Their chief had done less. Gambetta had re¬
tired to Spain, to St. Sebastien, and there, mute, without a
sign of sympathy for those who sacrificed themselves for the
Republic, he in a cynical far niente awaited the issue of the
civil war.
Thus the small middle-class of the provinces missed a rare
chance of conquering their liberties, of again taking up their
grand rôle of 1792. It became obvious how much its blood
THE EXTREME LEFT BETRAYS PARIS. 281
and its intelligence had been impoverished by a long political
vassalage and the complete absence of all municipal life.
From the 19th March to the 5th April they had forsaken
the workmen, when by seconding their efforts they might
have saved and continued the Revolution. When at last
they wanted to pronounce, they found themselves alone, the
toy and laughing-stock of their enemies. Such is their history
since Robespierre.
So on the 10th May M. Thiers entirely mastered the
situation. Making use of all arms, of corruption as well as
of patriotism, lying in his telegrams, making his journals lie,
by turns familiar and haughty in his interviews with the
deputations, putting forward now his gendarmes, now the
deputies of the Left, he had succeeded in baffling all attempts
at conciliation. He had just signed the peace of Frankfort,
and, free on this side, rid of the provinces, he remained alone
face to face with Paris.
It was time. Five weeks of siege had exhausted the patience
of the rurals; the suspicions of the first days were reviving;
they fancied that the "petit bourgeois" was procrastinating
in order to spare Paris. The Union des Syndicats had just
published a report of a new interview, in which M. Thiers
had seemed to relax. A deputy of the Right rushed to the
tribune accusing M. Thiers of putting off the entry into Paris.
He answered curtly, "The opening by our army of trenches
only six hundred yards from Paris does not signify that we
do not want to enter there." The following day, 12th May,
the Right returned to the charge. Was it true that M. Thiers
had said to the mayor of Bordeaux, "If the insurgents will
cease hostilities the gates of Paris shall be flung wide open
during a week for all except the assassins of the generals?"
Could it be that the Government intended withdrawing some
Parisians out of the clutches of the Assembly? M. Thiers
inveighed, whined. "You select the day when I am exiled,
on which my house is being pulled down. It is an indignity.
I am obliged to command terrible acts; I command them.
I must have a vote of confidence." At last, nettled out of
282 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
patience, he retorted upon the rural growls with a snarl.
"I tell you that there are among you imprudent men, who
are in too great a hurry. They must have another eight
days. At the end of these eight days there will be no more
danger, and the task will be proportionate to their courage
and to their capacity."
Eight days! Do you hear, members of the Commune?
( 283 )
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE IMPOTENCE OF THE SECOND COMMITTEE OF PUBLIC SAFETY
—EVACUATION OF THE FOET OF VANVES AND OF THE'
VILLAGE OF ISSY—THE MANIFESTO OF THE MINOEITY
THE EXPLOSION IN THE AVENUE KAPP—FALL OF THE
VENDÔME COLUMN.
At the advent of the new Committee on the 10th May our
military situation had not changed within the line from St.
Ouen to Neuilly, where both sides faced each other on the
same level; but it was becoming serious from La Muette. The
powerful battery of Montretout, that of Meudon, of Mont-
Valérien, covered Passy with shells and greatly injured the
ramparts. The Versaillese trenches extended from Boulogne
to the Seine. Their skirmishers were pressing upon the village
of Issy, and occupied the trenches between the fort and that
of Vanves, which they tried to cut off from Montrouge. The
negligence of the defence was still the same. The ramparts
from La Muette to the fort of Yanves were hardly armed;
our gunboats supported almost alone the fire of Meudon,.
Clamart, and Val-Fleury.
The first act of the new Committee was to order the demo¬
lition of M. Thiers' house. This giddy act helped the bom¬
barder to a palace, which the Assembly voted him the day
after. Then the Committee issued its proclamation: "Treason
had slipped into," &c.
Delescluze issued one on his own account. He dragged him¬
self along, panting for breath, and might well say, "If I
consulted only my strength I should have declined this
function. The situation is grave; but when I contemplate
the sublime future in store for our children, even though it
284 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
should not be given us to reap what we have sown, I shall still
enthusiastically hail the revolution of the 18th March."
On entering the Ministry, he found the Central Committee
also elaborating a proclamation. "The Central Committee
declares that it is its duty not to allow this revolution of the
18th March, which it had so well begun, to succumb. It will
unsparingly break down all resistance. It is determined to
make an end of all controversies, put down the malignants,
quell rivalry, ignorance, and incapacity." This was to speak
more authoritatively than the Council, and, above all, to flatter
itself strangely.
From the first night it was necessary to repair a disaster.
The fort of Yanves, upon which all the fires formerly directed
against Issy were now concentrated, had become almost un¬
tenable, and its commander had evacuated it. Wroblewski,
informed of this, took the command from La Céeilia, who had
fallen ill, and in the night of the 10th to the 11th hurried
thither at the head of the 187th and the 105th battalions of
the celebrated 11th legion, which up to the last day did not
eease to supply the defence with men. At four o'clock in the
morning Wroblewski appeared before the glacis where the
Yersaillese were stationed, charged them at the point of the
bayonet, put them to flight, took some prisoners, and recovered
the fort. Once more our brave Federals showed what they
■could do when properly commanded.
During the day the Yersaillese recommenced the bombard¬
ment. They overwhelmed the convent Des Oiseaux and the
whole village of Issy, whose principal street was now one heap
•of ruins, with shells, grenades filled with potassium picrate.
On the night of the 12th to the 13th they surprised the Lycée
of Yanves, and on the 13th they attacked the seminary of
Issy. For five days Brunei exhausted himself in trying to
bring a little order into the defence of this village. Rossel
had sent for this brave member of the Council, whom the
jealousy of coteries kept at a distance, and said to him, "The
situation of Issy is almost lost; will you undertake its de¬
fence?" Brunei devoted himself, threw up barricades, asked
for artillery (there were only four pieces), and new battalions
THE COMMUNE IN PARIS. - 285
to relieve the 2,000 men who had held out for forty-one
days.1 They only sent him two or three hundred men.
He tried to make something of these, and fortified the
seminary, which the Federals, under a hailstorm of shells,
were unable to hold. Brunei organised a second line of
defence in the houses of the village, and in the evening re¬
paired to the War Office, where Delescluze wanted him to
assist at the Council of War.
The first and only Council of War held under the Com¬
mune. Dombrowski, Wroblewski, and La Céeilia were present.
Dombrowski, very enthusiastic, spoke of raising 100,000 men.
Wroblewski, more practical, proposed to concentrate all the
efforts uselessly spent at Neuilly against the trenches of the
south. After a long debate no conclusion was come to. When
Brunei arrived the sitting was already raised; so he was obliged
to go and look for Delescluze at the Hôtel-de-Ville, and then
he retraced his steps to Issy. At the gate of Versailles he?
perceived his battalions on the other side of the rampart.
These, deaf to their chiefs, had evacuated the village and
wanted to re-enter the town. Brunei forbade the lowering
of the drawbridge, and tried to get out by the gates of
Vanves, where they refused to let him pass. He returned
to the War Office, explained the situation, asked for men,
wandered about the whole night looking for some, and
at four o'clock in the morning set out with 150 Federals,
but found the village entirely occupied by the Versaillese.
The officers of Issy were tried by court-martial. Brunei
gave evidence, and complained bitterly of the culpable care¬
lessness which had paralysed the defence. For answer he was
arrested.
He spoke but too truly. The disorder of the War Office
rendered all resistance chimerical. Delescluze had brought
only his devotion. Of a weak character despite his apparent
rigidity, he was at the mercy of the general staff, still directed
by Prodhomme, who, surviving all his chiefs, had succeeded
in making himself thought indispensable. The Central Com-
1 These were what General Appert calls the Brunei brigade, 7882
strong.
286 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
mittee, emboldenéd by the timidity of the Council, in¬
truded everywhere, published decrees, ordered the payment
of expenses without submitting them to the control of
the Military Commission. The members of the Commis¬
sion, men of intelligence, but belonging to the minority,
complained to the Committee of Public Safety, which re¬
placed them by Romanticists. The dispute went on all the
same, and waxed so violent that rumours of a rupture between
the Council and the Central Committee spread amongst the
legions.
The Versaillese, on their part, still pushed on. In the
night of the 13th to the 14th the fort of Vanves, which now
only fired occasional volleys, was quite extinguished, and could
no more be rekindled. The garrison, cut off on all sides,
retired by the quarries of Montrouge, and the Versaillese occu¬
pied what remained of the fort. There was again an ovation
at Versailles.
On the 16th May we had not a single man from the , left
bank to the Petit Vanves, where about 2,000 Federals, under
the command of La Cécilia and Lisbonne, were encamped.
We attempted to retake the village of Issy, but were repulsed.
Henceforth the enemy could continue his approaches and arm
the two bastions of the fort of Issy that faced the town. His
fire, counteracted for a moment by the ramparts, now showed
a marked superiority, and joined the batteries that crushed
the sixteenth arrondissement. This unfortunate quarter was
now taken in enfilade from the front and the flank by nearly
a hundred ordnance pieces. It was indeed time to think
of the defence of the interior. Delescluze extended the
powers of the three generals to the quarters of the town
contiguous to their command; he disbanded the battalion
of the barricades, which had been of no utility whatever; he
confided the works to the military engineers, and made an
appeal to the navvies. But all his decrees remained so much
waste paper or were crossed by others. When the delegate
offered the navvies 3 francs 50 centimes, the Committee of
Public Safety, in the same column of the Officiel, offered them
3 francs 75 centimes.
THE COMMUNE IN PARIS. 287
The Committee of Public Safety contributed to the defence
by a decree obliging all the inhabitants of Paris to provide
themselves with a civil card, whose production might be re¬
quested by any National Guard—as impracticable and un¬
practised a decree as that on the refractory recruits. The
Hôtel-de-Ville awed nobody; behind its big words impotence
made itself felt. On the 12th, some battalions having sur¬
rounded the Bank and wanting to make a search, old Beslay
prevented them doing so, and the terrible dictators of the Com¬
mittee of Public Safety disavowed their own agent. The
public chaffed—a terrible thing! A last blow, and it was all
over with the authority of the Commune; and this blow came
from the minority.
The latter was exasperated at seeing its most capable mem¬
bers expelled from the services—Yermorel from the Com¬
mission of Public Safety, Longuet from the Officiel, Yarlin
from the Commissariat—and was struck with dismay at the
disorder of the War Office. It had the unfortunate idea of
denying its own responsibility, prepared a manifesto, and
brought it to the sitting of the 15th. The majority, fore¬
warned, with the exception of four or five members, kept
away. The minority had their absence verified, and instead
of waiting for the next sitting, sent the declaration to the
papers. "The Commune," it said, "has abdicated its power
into the hands of a dictatorship, to which it has given the
name of Committee of Public Safety. The majority has de¬
clared itself irresponsible by its vote. The minority, on the
contrary, affirms that the Commune owes it to the revolu¬
tionary movement to accept all responsibilities. As to our¬
selves, we claim the right of being alone answerable for
our acts without screening ourselves behind a supreme
, dictatorship. We withdraw to our arrondissements. Con¬
vinced that the question of the war takes the lead of
all other ones, we shall spend the time left us by
our municipal functions in the midst of our brothers of the
National Guard."
A great fault this, and altogether inexcusable. The minor¬
ity had not the right to cry out about a dictatorship, having
288 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
voted, without making any express reserve, for the second
Committee. It had not the right to say that the elected
delegates of the people were encroaching upon its
sovereignty, for this concentration of power was quite
accidental, necessitated by the battle, and leaving the
principle of the people's sovereignty intact under ordinary
circumstances. It would have been more dignified to openly
disavow the acts of the Committee, and then propose some¬
thing better themselves. It would have been logical, since
"the question of the war took the lead of all others," not
to thus morally weaken the defence by deserting the Hôtel-
de-Ville. It was not with a view to retain them in their
arrondissements that the arrondissements had sent delegates
to the Council.
Several members of the minority brought the question
before public meetings, which called on them to return to
their posts. Those of the fourth arrondissement gave an
explanation in the Theâtre-Lyrique, in which they said
"that their guiding principle was that the Commune was to
be only the executive agent of the public will, manifesting
itself continually, and indicating day by day what was to be
done to secure the triumph of the revolution." No doubt
that principle was correct, and the revolution can only be
made safe by the direct legislation of the people. But was
this a time to legislate when the cannon ruled supreme?
And in the midst of the fire, is the "executive agent" to ex¬
pect that the soldier who does battle for him will also bring
him ideas?
The Versaillese journals crowed over this manifesto. Many
of those who had signed it understood their mistake,
and fifteen of them presented themselves at the sitting
of the 17th. The Council had never been so numerous;
the roll-call was answered by sixty-six members. The
Council was first taken up with a proposition prompted by
a traitor. Barrai de Montaut, chief of the staff of the
7th legion, had just published that the Versaillese of Vanves
had shot an ambulancière of the Commune. Urbain,
urged by Montaut, who had managed to gain his friend-
THE COMMUNE IN PARIS. 289
ship, asked that, as reprisal, five hostages should be shot ill
the interior of Paris, and five at the advanced posts. The
Council passed to the order of the day. Immediately after
this incident, a member of the majority interpellated those
of the minority. He demonstrated without any difficulty the
futility of the reasons invoked in their manifesto, and, growing
warm, called his adversaries Girondists. "What! Girondists!"
answered Frankel; "one can see that you go to bed at night
and get up in the morning with the Moniteur of 1793, else
you would know the difference there is between us Socialist
Revolutionists and the Girondists." The discussion became
heated. Vallès, who had signed the manifesto, said, "I have
declared that we must come to an understanding with the
majority; but they must also respect the minority, which is
a force;" and he demanded that all forces should be turned
against the enemy. Citizen Miot answered severely from
the profound depths of his beard. A member of the majority
spoke of conciliation; immediately Félix Pyat, to incense
their ire, asked for the reading of the manifesto. In vain
Vaillant said, with sense and justice, "When our colleagues
come back to us disavowing their programme, we must
not put it under their eyes to engage them to persevere
in their faults," and a conciliatory order of the day was
beaten by that of Miot, drawn up in terms offensive to the
minority.
Suddenly a tremendous explosion interrupted the dis¬
pute. Billioray rushed into the room with the news
that the cartridge factory of the Avenue Rapp had just
blown up.
The whole east of Paris was shaken. A pyramid of flame,
of molten lead, human remains, burning timber and bullets
burst forth from the Champ-de-Mars to an enormous height,
and showered down upon the environs. Four houses fell
in; more than forty persons were wounded, and the catas¬
trophe would have been still more terrible if the firemen
of the Commune had not torn waggons of cartridges and
barrels of gunpowder from the midst of the flames. A
maddened crowd gather, and believe in a crime; a few in-
T
290 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
divi duals were arrested, and an artillerist was taken to the
Ecole Militaire.
Who was the culprit? Nobody knows. Neither the
Council nor the procureur of the Commune examined the
affair. Yet the Committee of Public Safety announced in
a proclamation that it held four of the culprits, and Deles-
cluze that the case was to be sent before the court-martial.
No more was heard about it, although it was as much the
duty as the interest of the Council to throw light upon this
affair. A serious inquest would probably have revealed a
crime. The women, who usually left the factory at seven
o'clock, had been on that day dismissed at six o'clock. It
has been seen that Charpentier asked Corbin for dynamite;
it might have been very useful to the conspirators to spread
panic with one stroke at the War Office, the Ecole Militaire,
the artillery park and the huts of the Champ-de-Mars, which
were always occupied by a few Federals.1 Paris firmly believed
in a plot. The reactionists said, "This is the revenge for the
Vendôme column.
It had been pulled down the evening before with great
ceremony. Its demolition, the idea of which had become
quite current during the first siege,2 was decreed on the 12th
April.3 This inspiration, popular, humane, profound, show¬
ing that a war of classes was to supersede the war of
nations, aimed at the same time a blow at the ephemeral
triumph of the Prussian. The rather expensive preparations,
costing almost 15,000 francs, had been much protracted,
owing to the lukewarmness of the engineer and the con¬
tinual efforts to suborn the workmen. On the 16th May, at
two o'clock, an immense crowd thronged all the neighbour¬
ing streets, rather anxious as to the Tesult of the operation.
1 Appendix XIV.
s During the first siege, the Journal Officiel of the mairie of Paris had
inserted a letter from Courbet demanding the overthrow of the column.
» Thus Courbet was not as yet a member of the Council. Neverthe¬
less he was considered as the principal author of the fall of the column,
and condemned in the costs of its re-erection.
THE COMMUNE IN PARIS.
291
The reactionists foretold all sorts of catastrophes; the engi¬
neer, on the contrary, affirmed that there would be no shock;
that the column would break to pieces during its descent.
He had sawn it horizontally a little above the pedestal; a
slanting groove was to facilitate the fall backwards upon a
vast bed of faggots, sand, and dung, accumulated in the
direction of the Rue de la Paix.
A rope attached to the summit of the column was twisted
round a capstan fixed at the entrance of the street. The
place was crowded with National Guards; the windows, the
roofs were filled with curious spectators. In default of
MM. Jules Simon and Ferry, erewhile warm partisans of
the operation, M. Glais-Bizoin felicitated the new prefect
of police, Ferré, who had just taken the place of Cournet,
and confided to him that for forty years it had been his
ardent desire to see the expiatory monument demolished.
The bands played the "Marseillaise," the capstan turned
about, the pulley broke, and a man was wounded. Already
rumours of treason circulated among the crowd; but a second
pulley was soon supplied. At a quarter past five an officer
appeared on the balustrade for some time, waved a tricolor
flag, then fixed it on the rails. At half-past five the capstan
again turned, and a few minutes after the extremity of
the column slowly displaced itself; the shaft little by little
gave way, then, suddenly reeling to and fro, broke and fell
with a low moan. The head of Bonaparte rolled on the
ground, and his parricidal arm lay detached from the trunk.
An immense acclamation, as that of a people freed from a
yoke, burst forth. The ruins were climbed upon and saluted
by enthusiastic cries, and the red flag floated from the purified
pedestal, which on that day had become the altar of the
human race.
The people wanted to divide among themselves the frag¬
ments of the column, but were prevented by the inopportune
interference of the Council members present. A week
afterwards, the Yersaillese picked them up. One of the first
acts of the victorious bourgeoisie was to again raise this
292 HISTOKY OF THE COMMUNE.
enormous block, the symbol of their sovereignty. To lift
up Caesar on his pedestal they needed a scaffolding of
30,000 corpses. Like the mothers under the First Empire,
may those of our days never look upon this bronze without
weeping.
( 293 )
CHAPTER XXY.
PA EI S OK THE EYE OF HEATH.
The Paris of the Commune has hut three days more to live;
let us engrave upon our memory her luminous physiognomy.
He who has breathed in thy life that fiery fever of con¬
temporaneous history, who has panted on thy boulevards and
wept in thy faubourgs, who has sung to the morns of thy
revolutions and a few weeks after bathed his hands in
powder behind thy barricades, he who can hear from beneath
thy stones the voices of the martyrs of sublime ideas and read
in every one of thy streets a date of human progress,
even he does less justice to thy original grandeur than the
stranger, though a Philistine, who came to glance at thee
during the days of the Commune. The attraction of re¬
bellious Paris was so strong that men hurried thither from
America to behold .this spectacle unprecedented in the world's
history—the greatest town of the European continent in the
hands of the proletarians. Even the pusillanimous were drawn
towards her.
In the first days of May one of our friends arrived—one of
the most timid men of the timid provinces. His kith and kin
had escorted him on his departure, tears in their eyes, as though
he were descending into the infernal regions. He said to us,
"What is true in all the rumours bruited about?" "Well, come
and search all the recesses of the den."
We set out from the Bastille. Street-arabs cry Rochefort's
Mot d'Ordre, the Père Duchêne, Jules Vallès' Cri du Peuple,
Félix Pyat's Vengeur, La Commune, L'Affranchi, Le Pilori
des Mouchards. The Officiel is little asked for; the journalists
of the Council stifle it by their competition. The Cri du Peuple
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
has a circulation of 100,000. It is the earliest out; it rises
with chanticleer. If we have an article by Vallès this morning,
we are in luck; but in his stead, Pierre Denis, with his
autonomy à outrance, makes himself too often heard. Only
buy the Père Duchêne once, though its circulation is more
than 60,000. Take Félix Pyat's article in the Vengeur as
a fine example of literary intoxication. The bourgeoisie has
no better helpmates than these vain and ignorant claptrap-
mongers. Here is the doctrinaire journal La Commune, in
which Millière sometimes writes, and in which Georges
Duchêne takes the young men and the old of the Hôtel-
de-Ville to task with a severity which would better fit
another character than his. Do not forget the Mot d'Ordre,
whatever the romanticists may say. It was one of the first to
support the Revolution of the 18th March, and darted terrible
arrows at the Versaillese.
In the kiosques are the caricatures. Thiers, Picard, and
Jules Favre figure as the Three Graces, clasping each other's
paunches. This fine fish, the maquereau, with the blue-green
scales, who is making up a bed with an imperial crown, is
the Marquis de Gallifet. L'Avenir, the mouthpiece of the
Ligue. Le Siècle, become very hostile since the arrest of
Gustave Chaudey; and La Vérité, the Yankee Portalis's
paper, are piled up, melancholy and intact. Many reactionist
papers have been suppressed by the prefecture, but for all that
are not dead; for a lad, without any mystery about him, offers
them to us.
Read, search, find one appeal to murder, to pillage, a single.
cruel line in all these Communard journals excited by the
battle, and then compare them with the Versaillese papers,
demanding fusillades en masse as soon as the troops shall have
vanquished Paris.
Let us follow those catafalques that are being taken up the
Rue de la Roquette, and enter with them into the Père
Lachaise cemetery. All those who die for Paris are entombed
with obsequies in the great resting-place. The Commune has
claimed the honour of paying for their funerals; its red flag
blazes from the four corners of the hearse, followed by some
THE COMMUNE IN PARIS. 295
comrades of the battalion, while a few passers-by always join
the procession. This is a wife accompanying her dead hus¬
band. A member of the Council follows the coffin; at the
grave he speaks not of regrets, but of hope, of vengeance.
The widow presses her children in her arms, and says to them,
"Remember and cry with me, 'Vive la République! "Vive la
Commune!'"1 -
On retracing our steps, we pass by the mairie of the eleventh
arrondissement. It is hung with black, the mourning of the
last Imperialist plébiscite, of which the people of Paris was
innocent and became the victim. We cross the Place de la
Bastille, gay, animated by the ginger-bread fair. Paris will
yield nothing to the cannon; she has even prolonged the annual
fair for a week. The swings move to and fro, the wheels-of-
fortune turn, booth-keepers cry their sixpenny wares, the
mountebanks allure spectators, and promise half their receipts
to the wounded.
We go down these great boulevards. A crowd pushes against
the Napoleon Circus, where 5,000 people are gathered, filling
it from the area to the ceiling. Small flags, each one bearing
the name of a department, urge the provincials to group
themselves. This meeting has been called by some merchants,
who propose to the citizens of the departments to send dele¬
gates to their respective deputies, in the belief that the
latter may be brought round and peace gained by ex¬
planations. A tall, thin man, with a sad face, asks for
permission to address the people, and gets upon the
platform. It is Millière, whom the crowd cheers. "Peace,"
said he, "we all wish for it, citizens. But who, then,
has commenced the war? Who attacked Paris on the
18th March? M. Thiers. Who attacked her on the
2nd April? M. Thiers. Who has spoken of conciliation,
multiplied attempts at peace? Paris. Who has always
repulsed them? M. Thiers. Conciliation! M. Dufaure
has said, 'Why, insurrection is less criminal.' And that
which neither the Freemasons, nor the leagues, nor the
addresses, nor the municipal councillors of the provinces
1 Funeral of Lieutenant CMtelet, of the 61st.
296 HISTORY OP THE COMMUNE.
could do, you expect to get from a deputation chosen
from amongst the Parisians! See, without knowing it, you
are enervating the defence. No, no more deputations, but
active correspondence with the provinces—there lies
salvation!" "This, then, is that energumen whom we are
so frightened of in the provinces!" exclaimed our friend.
"Yes, and these thousands of men of all conditions, who in
common seek for peace, consult each other, answer courteously,
these are the demented people, the handful of bandits who
hold the capital."
Before the Prince Eugène Barracks we notice the 1,500
soldiers who remained in Paris on the 18th March, and whom
the Commune entertains without asking them for any
service. At the top of the Boulevard Magenta we visit the
numerous skeletons of the St. Laurent Church, arranged
in the same order they were found in, without coffins or
winding-sheets. Are not interments in churches formally
prohibited? Some, however, Notre Dame des Victoires
especially, abound in skeletons. Is it not the duty of the
Commune to expose these illegal proceedings, which are per¬
haps crimes?
On the boulevards, from Bonne-Nouvelle to the Opéra,
we find the same Paris loitering before the shops, sitting
in front of the cafés. Carriages are rare, for the second
siege has cut short the provisions for horses. By the Rue
du 4 Septembre we reach the Stock Exchange, surmounted
by the red flag, and the Bibliothèque Nationale, where
readers are sitting round the long tables. Crossing the
Palais-Royal, whose arcades are always noisy, we come to the
Museum of the Louvre; the rooms, hung with their pictures,
are open to the public. The Versaillese journals none the
less say the Commune is selling the national collections to
foreigners.
We descend the Rue de Rivoli. On the right, in the
Rue Castiglione, a huge barricade obstructs the entrance of
the Place Vendôme. The issue of the Place de la Concorde
is barred by the St. Florentin redoubt, stretching to the
Ministry of Marine on its right, and the garden of the
THE COMMUNE IN PAKIS. 297
Tuileries on its left, with three rather badly directed em¬
brasures eight yards wide. An enormous ditch, laying bare
all the arteries of subterranean life, separates the place from
the redoubt. The workmen are giving it the finishing stroke,
and cover the epaulments with gazon. Many promenaders
look on inquisitively, and more than one brow lowers. A
corridor skilfully constructed conducts us to the Place de la
Concorde. The proud profile of the Strasbourg statue stands
out against the red flags. The Communards, who are accused
of ignoring France, have piously replaced the faded crowns
of the first siege by fresh spring flowers.
We now enter the zone of battle. The avenue of the
Champs-Elysées unrolls its long-deserted line, cut by the
dismal bursting of the shells from Mont-Valérien and
Courbevoie. These reach as far as the Palais de l'Industrie,
whose treasures the employés of the Commune courageously
protect. In the distance rises the mighty bulk of the Arc
de Triomphe. The sightseers of the first days have disap¬
peared, for the Place de l'Etoile has become almost as deadly
as the rampart. The shells break off the bas-reliefs that M.
Jules Simon had caused to be iron-clad against the Prussians.
The main arch is walled up to stop the projectiles that en¬
filaded it. Behind this barricade they are getting ready to
mount some pieces on the platform, which is almost as high
as Mont-Valérien.
By the Faubourg St. Honoré we pass along the Champs-
Elysées. In the right angle comprised between the Avenue
de la Grande Armée, that of the Ternes, the ramparts, and
the Avenue Wagram there is not a house intact. You see
M. Thiers "does not bombard Paris, as the people of the
Commune will not fail to say." Some shreds of a placard
hang from a half-battered wall; it is M. Thiers' speech against
King Bomba, which a group of conciliators have been witty
enough to reproduce. "You know, gentlemen," said he to
the bourgeois of 1848, "what is happening at Palermo. You
all have shaken with horror on hearing that during forty-eight
hours a large town has been bombarded. By whom? Was
it by a foreign enemy exercising the rights of war? No,
298 HISTORY OP THE COMMUNÈ.
gentlemen, it was by its own Government. And why? Be¬
cause that unfortunate town demanded its rights. Well, then,
for the demand of its rights it has got forty-eight hours of
bombardment!" Happy Palermo! Paris already has had forty
days of bombardment.
We have some chance of getting to the Boulevard Péreire
by the left side of the Avenue des Ternes. Prom there to the
Porte-Maillot every spot is beset with danger. Watching for
a momentary lull, we reach the gate, or rather the heap
of ruins that mark its place. The station no longer exists,
the tunnel is filled up, the ramparts are slipping into the
moats. And yet there are human salamanders who dare to
move about amidst these ruins. Facing the gate there are
three pieces commanded by Captain La Marseillaise; on the
right, Captain Rouchat with five pieces; on the left, Captain
Martin with four. Monteret, who commands this post for
the last five weeks, lives with them in this atmosphere of
shells. The Mont-Valérien, Courbevoie, and Bécon have
thrown more than eight hundred of them. Twelve pieces,
are served by ten men, naked to the waist, their body and.
arms blackened with powder, in a stream of perspiration,,
often a match in each hand. The only survivor of the first
set, the sailor Bonaventure, has twenty times seen his
comrades dashed to pieces. And yet they hold out, and
these pieces, continually dismounted, are continually re¬
newed; their artillerists only complain of the want of'
munition, for the waggons no longer dare approach. The
Versaillese have very often attempted, and may attempt,,
surprises. Monteret watches day and night, and he can with¬
out boasting write to the Committee of Public Safety that so-
long as he is there the Versaillese will not enter by the
Porte-Maillot.
Every step towards La Muette is a challenge to deaths
But our friend must witness all the greatness of Paris. On
the ramparts, near the gate of La Muette, an officer is waving
his képi toward the Bois de Boulogne; the balls are whistling
around him. It is Dombrowski, who is amusing himself with.
inveighing against the Versaillese of the trenches. A mem-
THE COMMUNE IN PARIS. 299
ber of the Council who is with him succeeds in making him
forego this musketeer foolhardiness, and the general takes
us to the castle, where he has established one of his head¬
quarters. All the rooms are perforated by shells. Still he
remains there, and makes his men remain. It has been cal¬
culated that his aides-de-camp on an average lived eight days.
At this moment the watch of the Belvedere rushes in with
appalled countenance; a shell has traversed his post. "Stay
there," says Dombrowski to him; "if you are not destined to
die there you have nothing to fear." Such was his courage—
all fatalism. He received no reinforcements despite his
despatches to the War Office; believed the game lost, and
said so but too often.
This is my only reproach, for you do not expect me to
apologise for the Commune's having allowed foreigners to die
for it. Is not this the revolution of all proletarians? Is
it not for the people to at last do justice to that great Polish
race which all French governments have betrayed?
Dombrowski accompanies us across Passy as far as the Seine,
and shows us the almost abandoned ramparts. The shells
crush or mow down all the approaches to the railway; the
large viaduct is giving way at a hundred places; the iron-clad
locomotives have been overthrown. The Versaillese battery
of the Billancourt Isle fires point-blank at our gunboats, and
sinks one, L'Estoc, under our very eyes. A tug arrives in
time, picks up the crew, and ascends the Seine under the fire
that follows it up to the Jena Bridge.
A clear sky, a bright sun, peaceful silence envelop this
stream, this wreck, these scattered shells. Death appears more
cruel amidst the serenity of nature. Let us go and salute our
wounded at Passy. A member of the Council, Lefrançais,
is visiting the ambulance of Dr. Demarquay, whom he ques¬
tions as to the state of the wounded. "I do not share your
opinions," answers the doctor, "and I cannot desire the
triumph of your cause; but I have never seen wounded men
preserve more calm and sang-froid during operations. I
attribute this courage to the energy of their convictions."
We then visit the beds; most of the sick anxiously inquire
300
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
when they will be able to resume their service. A young
fellow of eighteen, whose right hand had just been am¬
putated, holds out the other, exclaiming, "I have still
this one for the service of the Commune!" An officer,
mortally wounded, is told that the Commune has just
handed over his pay to his wife and children. "I had no
right to it," answers he. "These, my friend, these are the
brutish drunkards who, according to Versailles, form the army
of the Commune."
We return by the Champ-de-Mars; its huts are badly
manned. Other cadres, a different discipline would be needed
to retain the battalions there. Before the Ecole, 1500 yards
from the ramparts, and a few steps from the War Office, a
hundred ordnance pieces remain inert, loaded with mud.
Leaving on our right the War Office, that centre of discord,
let us enter the Corps Législatif, transformed into a work¬
shop. Fifteen hundred women are there, sewing the sand
sacks that are to stop up the breaches. A tall and handsome
girl, Marthe, round her waist the red scarf with silver fringe
given her by her comrades, distributes the work. The hours
of labour are shortened by joyous songs. Every evening
the wages are paid, and the women receive the whole sum,
eight centimes a sack, while the former contractors hardly
gave them two.
We now proceed along the quays, lulled in imperturbable
calm. The Academy of Sciences holds its Monday sittings.
It is not the workmen who have said, "The Republic wants
no savants." M. Delaunay is in the chair. M. Elie de
Beaumont looks through the correspondence, and reads a
note from his colleague, M. J. Bertrand, who has fled to
St. Germain. We shall find the report in the Officiel of the
Commune.
We must not leave the left bank without visiting the mili¬
tary prison. Ask the soldiers if they have met with a single
menace, a single insult in Paris; if they are not treated as
comrades, subjected to no exceptional rules, set free when
willing to help their Parisian brothers.
Meanwhile evening has set in. The theatres are opening.
THE COMMUNE IN PARIS., 301
The Lyrique gives a grand performance for the benefit of the
wounded, and the Opéra-Comique is preparing another. The
Opéra promises us a special performance for the following
Monday, when we shall hear Gossec's revolutionary hymn.
The artists of the Gaieté, abandoned by their manager, them¬
selves direct their theatre. The Gymnase, Châtelet, Theatre-
Français, Ambigu-Comique, Délassements, have large audi¬
ences every night. Let us pass to more virile spectacles, such
as Paris has not witnessed since 1793.
Ten churches open, and the Revolution mounts the pulpits.
In the old quarter of the Gravilliers, St. Nicholas des Champs
is filling with the powerful murmur of many voices. A few
gas-burners hardly light up the swarming crowd; and at the
farther end, almost hidden by the shadow of the vaults, hangs
the figure of Christ draped in the popular oriflamme. The
only luminous centre is the reading-desk, facing the pulpit,
hung with red. The organ and the people chant the Mar¬
seillaise. The orator, over-excited by these fantastic sur¬
roundings, launches forth into ecstatic apostrophes, which the
echo repeats like a menace. The people discuss the events of
the day, the means of defence; the members of the Council
are severely censured, and vigorous resolutions are voted to
be presented to the Hôtel-de-Ville the next day. Women
sometimes ask to speak; at the Batignolles they have a club
of their own. No doubt, few precise ideas come forth from
these feverish meetings, but many find there a provision of
energy and of courage.
It is only nine o'clock, and we may still be in time for the
concert of the Tuileries. At the entrance, citoyennes, ac¬
companied by commissioners, are making a collection for the
widows and orphans of the Commune. The immense rooms
are animated by a decent and gay throng. For the first
time respectably-dressed women are seated on the forms of
the court. Three orchestras are playing in the galleries, but
the soul of the fête is in the Salle des Maréchaux, where'
Mademoiselle Agar recites from "Les Châtiments" in that
same place, where, ten months before, Bonaparte and his
band were enthroned. Mozart, Meyerbeer, Rossini, the great
302 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
works of art have driven away the musical obscenities of the
Empire. From the large central window the harmonious
strains vibrate to the garden; joyous lights shine like stars on
the green-sward, dance among the trees, and colour the play¬
ing fountains. Within the arbours the people are laughing;
but the noble Champs-Elysées, dark and desolate, seem to
protest against these popular masters, whom they have never
acknowledged. Versailles, too, protests by that conflagration
of which a wan reflex lights up the Arc de Triomphe, whose
sombre mass overtowers the civil war.
At eleven o'clock, as the crowd is retiring, we hear a noise
from the side of the chapel. M. Sehœlcher has just been ar¬
rested. He has been taken to the prefecture, where, a few
hours after, the procureur Rigault sets him at liberty.
The boulevards are thronged with the people coming from
the theatres. At the Café-Peters there is a scandalous gather¬
ing of staff-officers and prostitutes. Suddenly a detachment
of National Guards appears and leads them off. We follow
them to the Hôtel-de-Ville, where Ranvier, who is on duty
there, receives them. Short shrift is made: the women
to St. Lazare, the officers, with spades and mattocks, to the
trenches.
One o'clock in the morning. Paris sleeps tranquilly. Such,
my friend, is the Paris of the brigand. You have seen this
Paris thinking, weeping, combating, working, enthusiastic,
fraternal, severe to vice. Her streets free during the day,
are they less safe in the silence of the night? Since Paris
has her own police crime has disappeared.1 Each one is left
to his instincts, and where do you see debauchery victorious?
These Federals, who might draw milliards, live on ridiculous
pay compared with their usual salaries. Do you at last
recognise this Paris, seven times shot down since 1789, and
always ready to rise for the salvation of France? Where is
her programme, say you? Why, seek it before you, and not
at the faltering Hôtel-deVille. These smoking ramparts, these
explosions of heroism, these women, these men of all pro-
4 See the evidence of the chief of police, M. Claude, Enquête sur le 18
Mars, voll. ii. p. 106.
THE COMMUNE IN PARIS. 303
fessions united, all the workmen of the earth applauding our
combat, all monarchs, all the bourgeois coalesced against us,
do they not speak loudly enough our common thought, and
that all of us are fighting for equality, the enfranchisement of
labour, the advent of a social society? "Woe to France if she
does not comprehend! Leave at once; recount what Paris
is. If she dies, what life remains to you? Who, save Paris,
will have strength enough to continue the Revolution? Who
save Paris will stifle the clerical monster? Go, tell the Re¬
publican provinces, "These proletarians fight for you too, who
perhaps may be the exiles of to-morrow." As to that class, the
purveyor of empires, that fancies it can govern by periodical
butcheries, go and tell them, in accents loud enough to drown
their clamours, "The blood of the people will enrich the
revolutionary field. The idea of Paris will arise from her
burning entrails and become an inexorable firebrand with the
sons of the slaughtered."
( 304 )
CHAPTER XXVI.
" La porte de St. Cloud vient de s'abatre. Le général Douai s'y est
précipité."—M. Thiers aux Préfets, le SI Mai.
THE VERSAILLESE ENTER PARIS ON SUNDAY, 2l8T MAY..
AT THREE O'CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON—THE COUNCIL.
OF THE COMMUNE DISSOLVES.
The great attack approached; the Assembly drew up in battle-
array. On the 16th May it refused to recognise the Republic-
as the Government of France, and voted public prayers by
417 voices out of 420. On the 17th the army established
its breach batteries against the gates of La Muette,.
Auteuil, St. Cloud, Point du Jour, Issy. The batteries-
in the rear continued to pound the enceinte of the Point
du Jour and to confound Passy. The pieces of the Château
de Brécon ruined the Montmartre cemetery, and reached as
far as the Place St. Pierre. We had five arrondissements-
under shell.
On the 18th, in the evening, the Versaillese surprised the
Federals of Cachan by approaching them with the cry of
"Vive la Commune!" However, we succeeded in preventing
their movement towards the Hautes-Bruyères. The Dominican,
monks who from their convent gave signals to the enemy were
arrested and taken to the Fort de Bicêtre.
içth.—Despite the Versaillese approaches, our defence did
not become more vigorous. The bastions 72 and 73 threw
a few occasional shells upon the village and the fort of
Issy. From the Point du Jour to the Porte-Maillot we ha A
only the cannon of the Dauphiné gate to answer the hundred
Versaillese pieces and check their works in the Bois de?
THE COMMUNE IN PARIS. 305
Boulogne. A few barricades at the Bineau and AsnièreS
gates and the Boulevard d'Italie, two redoubts at the Place
de la Concorde and Rue Castiglione, a moat in the Rue
Royale and another at the Trocadéro; this was all that the
Council had done in seven weeks for the defence of the in¬
terior. There were no works at the Mont-Parnasse Station,
the Panthéon, the Buttes Montmartre, where two or three
pieces had been fired off on the 14th, only to kill our own
men at Lavallois. At the terrace of the Tuileries about twelve
navvies sadly dug away at a useless fosse. The Committee
of Public Safety could not, they said, find workmen, when
they had 1,500 idlers at the Prince-Eugène Barracks, 100,000
sedentary guards, and millions of francs to hand. An iron
will and firm direction might still have saved everything;
and we were now in the period of coma, of immense
lassitude. The competitions, quarrels, and intrigues had re¬
laxed all energy. The Council occupied itself with details,
with trifles. The Committee of Public Safety multiplied
its romantic proclamations, which moved nobody. The
Central Committee thought only of seizing upon a power it
was unable to wield, and on the 19th announced itself ad¬
ministrator of the War Office. Its members had made so sure
of their sway, that one of them by a decree inserted in the
Officiel ordered all the inhabitants of Paris to "present them¬
selves at their homes within forty-eight hours," on pain of
"having their rent-titles on the grand livre burnt." This was
the pendant of the civic card.
Our best battalions, decimated, abandoned to themselves,
were but wrecks. Since the beginning of April we had lost
4,000 men, killed or wounded, and 3,500 prisoners. There
now remained to us 2,000 men from Asnières to Neuilly, 4,000
perhaps from La Muette to Petit-Vanves. The battalions
designated for the posts of Passy were not there, or stayed
in the houses far from the ramparts; many of their officers
had disappeared. At the bastions 36 to 70, precisely at the
point of attack, there were not twenty artillerists; the sentinels
were absent.
Was it treason? The conspirators boasted a few days after
u
306 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
of having dismantled these ramparts; but the terrible bom¬
bardment would suffice to explain this dereliction. Still there
was a culpable heedlessness. Dombrowski, weary of struggling
against the inertness of the War Office, was discouraged, went
too often to his quarters at the Place Vendôme, while the
Committee of Public Safety, informed of the abandonment
of the ramparts, contented itself with warning the War Office
instead of hurrying to the rescue and taking the situation in
hand.
On Saturday, the 20th May, the breach batteries were un¬
masked; 300 naval guns and siege-pieces blending together
their detonations announced the beginning of the end.
The same day De Beaufond, whom Lasnier's arrest had not
discouraged, sent his habitual emissary to warn the chief of
the Versaillese general staff that the gates of Montrouge,
Vanves, Vaugirard, Point du Jour, and Dauphine were entirely
deserted. Orders for concentrating the troops were im¬
mediately issued. On the 21st the Versaillese found them¬
selves in readiness, as on the 3rd and 12th, but this time
success seemed certain; the gate of St. Cloud was dashed to
pieces.
For several days some members of the Council had pointed
out this breach to the chief of the general staff, Henry Prod-
homme. He answered à la Cluseret that his measures were
taken; that he was even going to throw up a terrible
iron-clad barricade before this gate; but he did not stir.
On the Sunday morning, Lefrançais, traversing the moat
on the ruins of the drawbridge, at about fifteen yards
distance, ran up against the Versaillese trenches. Struck
by the imminence of the peril, he sent Delescluze a note,
which was lost.
At half-past two, under the shade of the Tuileries, a monster
concert was being given for the benefit of the widows and
orphans of the Commune. Thousands of people had come;
the bright spring dresses of the women lit up the green alleys;
people eagerly inhaled the fresh air sent forth from the great
trees. Two hundred yards off, on the Place de la Concorde,
the Versaillese shells burst, uttering their discordant note
THE COMMUNE IN" PARIS. 307
amidst the joyous sounds of the bands and the invigorating
breath of spring.
At the end of the concert a staff officer ascended the plat¬
form of the conductor of the orchestra. "Citizens," said he,
"M. Thiers promised to enter Paris yesterday. M. Thiers has
not entered; he will not enter. I invite you to come here next
Sunday, to the same place, to our second concert for the benefit
of the widows and orphans."
At that very hour, at that very minute, almost within gun¬
shot, the vanguard of the Yersaillese was making its entry
into Paris.
The expected signal had at last been given from the St.
Cloud gate, but did not come from the licensed conspirators.
An amateur spy, Ducatel, was crossing these quarters, when
lie saw everything, gates and ramparts, quite deserted. He
thereupon climbed the bastion 64, waving a white handker¬
chief, and cried to the soldiers of the trenches," "You can
enter; there is no one here." A naval officer came forward,
interrogated Ducatel, crossed over the ruins of the drawbridge,'
and was able to assure himself that the bastions and neigh¬
bouring houses were entirely abandoned. Returning im¬
mediately to the trenches, the officer telegraphed- the news to
the nearest generals. The breach batteries ceased firing, and
the soldiers of the trenches near penetrated by small platoons
into the enceinte. M. Thiers, MacMahon, and Admiral
Pothuan, who were just then at Mont-Valérien, telegraphed
to Versailles to have all the divisions put in motion.
Dombrowski, absent from his headquarters of La Muette
for several hours, arrived at four o'clock. A commander met
Mm, and informed him of the entry of the Versaillese. Dom¬
browski let the officer terminate his report, then, turning to
one of his aides-de-camp, with that coolness that he exaggerated
ill critical circumstances, said, "Send to the Ministry of Marine
for a battery of seven cannon; warn such and such battalions.
I shall take the command myself." He also addressed a
despatch to the Committee of Public Safety and the War
Office, and sent the batallion of volunteers to occupy the gate
of Auteuil.
308 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
At five o'clock, National Guards, without képis, without
arms, uttered a cry of alarm in the streets of Passy; some
officers unsheathing their swords tried to stop them; the
Federals left their houses, some loading their guns, others
maintaining that it was a false alarm. The commander of the
volunteers picked up and led off as many men as he could get
to follow him.
These volunteers were troops inured to fire. Near the rail¬
way station they saw the red-coats, and received them with
a volley. A Versaillese officer on horseback, who hurried up
trying to urge on his men with drawn sabre, fell beneath our
balls, and his soldiers retreated. The Federals established
themselves solidly on the viaduct and at the opening of the
Murat Boulevard, while, at the same time, the quay abreast of
the Jena Bridge was being barricaded.
Dombrowski's despatch had reached the Committee of Pub¬
lic Safety. Billioray, on duty at this moment, at once pro¬
ceeded to the Council. The Assembly was just putting
Çluseret on his trial, and Vermorel was speaking. The ex-
delegate, seated on a chair, listened to the orator with that
vain nonchalance which the naïve took for talent. Billioray,
very pale, entered, and for a moment sat down; then, as
Vermorel went on, cried to him, "Conclude! conclude! I
have to make a communication of the greatest importance to
the Assembly; I demand a secret sitting."
Vermorel: "Let citizen Billioray speak."
Billioray rose and read a paper that trembled slightly in
his hand. "Dombrowski to War and Committee of Public
Safety. The Versaillese have entered by the Porte de St.
Cloud. I take measures to drive them back. If you can send
me reinforcements, I answer for everything."1
There was first a silence of anguish, soon broken by inter¬
pellations. "Some battalions have marched off," answered
Billioray; "the Committee of Public Safety watches."
The discussion was again taken up, and naturally cut short.
1 The original of this document has been lost, but we have been able
to re-establish the text with the evidence of Dombrowski's brother and
of a great number of members of the Council present at this sitting.
THE COMMUEE IE PARIS.
309
The Council acquitted Cluseret; the ridiculous impeachment
brought forward by Miot, made up only of gossip, neglected
the only incriminating fact—the inactivity of Cluseret during
his delegation. They then formed into groups and com¬
mented on the despatch. The confidence of Dombrowski, the
assurance of Billioray, proved quite sufficient to the roman¬
ticists. What with faith in the general, the solidity of the
ramparts, the immortality of the cause; what with the re¬
sponsibility of the Committee of Public Safety, the question
at issue was slurred over; let every one go about in search of
information, and in case of need betake himself to his own
arrondissement.
The time was wasted in small-talk; there were neither
motion nor debate; eight o'clock struck, and the president
raised the sitting. The last sitting of the Council! And there
was no one to demand a permanent committee; no one
to call on his colleague to wait here for news, to summon the
Committee of Public Safety to the bar of the Council. There
was no one to insist that at this critical moment of uncertainty,
when perhaps it might be necessary to improvise a plan of
defence at a moment's notice or take a great resolution in case
of disaster, the post of the guardians of Paris was in the centre,
at the Hôtel-de-Yille, and not in their respective arrondisse¬
ments.
Thus the Council of the Commune disappeared from history
and the Hôtel-de-Yille at the moment of supreme danger,
when the Yersaillese penetrated into Paris.
The same prostration reigned at the War Office, where they
had received the news at five o'clock. The Central Committee
went to DelesclUze, who seemed very calm, and said, what
many indeed believed, that the fight in the streets would be
favourable to the Commune. The commander of the section
of the Point du Jour having just come to report that nothing
serious had happened, the delegate accepted his statements
without corroboration. The chief of the general staff did
not even think it worth while to go and make a personal
recognisance, and towards eight o'clock he had this incredible
despatch placarded: "The observatory of the Arc de Triomphe
310 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
denies the entry of the Versaillese; at least, it sees nothing
that looks like it. The commander (Renaud) of the section
has just left my cabinet, and declares that there has only been
a panic, and that the gate of Auteuil has not been forced;
that if a few Yersaillese have entered, they have been repulsed.
I have sent for eleven battalions of reinforcements, by
as many officers of the general staff, who are not to
leave them till they have led them to the posts which they
are to occupy."
At the same hour M. Thiers telegraphed to his prefects,
"The gate of St. Cloud has fallen under the fire of our
cannon. General Douai has dashed into the town." A two¬
fold lie. The gate of St. Cloud had been wide open for three
days without the Yersaillese daring to pass it, and General
Douai had crept in very modestly, man by man, introduced
by treason.
At night the Ministry seemed to wake up a little. Officers
flocked thither asking for orders. The general staff would
not allow the tocsin to be sounded, on the pretext that the
population must not be alarmed. Some members of the
Council pored over the plan of Paris at last, studying those
strategical points that had been forgotten for six weeks. When
it was necessary at once to find an idea, a method, and give
precise instructions, the delegate shut himself in his cabinet
in order to frame a proclamation.
While in the midst of Paris, confident in her trustees, a
few .men, without soldiers, without information, prepared the
first resistance, the Yersaillese continued to slip in through
the breaches of the ramparts. Wave on wave their flood
grew silent, veiled by the dusk. By degrees they massed
themselves between the railway line and the fortifications.
At eight o'clock they were numerous enough to divide into
two columns, one of which, turning to the left, crowned the
bastions 66 and 67, while the other filed off to the right on
the route to Versailles. The first lodged itself in the centre
of Passy, occupying the St. Périne asylum, the church,
and the place of Auteuil; the other, having swept away
the rudimentary barricade constructed on the quay at the
THE COMMUNE IN PARIS. 311
top of the Rue Guillon, towards one o'clock in the morn¬
ing, by the Rue Raynouard, scaled the Trocadéro, neither
fortified nor manned on this side, and at once took pos¬
session of it.
At the Hôtel-de-Ville the members of the Committee of
Public Safety had at last assembled. Billioray alone had
vanished not to appear again. They knew nothing of the
number and position of the troops, hut knew that under the
cover of night the enemy had entered Passy. Staff officers
sent to the Muette to reconnoitre came back with the most
reassuring news. Thereupon, at eleven o'clock, a member of
the Council, Assi, entered the Rue Beethoven, where the lights
had been put out. Soon his horse refused to advance; it had
slipped down in large pools of blood, and National Guards
seemed to lie asleep along the walls. Suddenly men sprang
forward. They were the Versaillese waiting in ambush; these
sleepers were murdered Federals.
The Versaillese were slaughtering within the walls of Paris,
and Paris knew it not. The night was clear, starlit, mild,
fragrant; the theatres were crowded, the boulevards sparkling
with life and gaiety, the bright cafés swarming with visitors,
and the cannon were everywhere hushed—a silence unknown
for three weeks. If "the finest army that France ever had"
were to push straight on by the quays and boulevards, entirely
free of barricades, with one bound, without firing a shot, it
would crush the Commune of Paris.
The volunteers held out on the railway line till midnight;
then, exhausted, left without any reinforcements, they fell
back upon La Muette. General Clinchant followed them, occu¬
pied the Auteuil gate, passed by that of Passy, and marched
on the headquarters of Dombrowski. Fifty volunteers for
some time still kept up a skirmish in the château, but out¬
flanked on the east, about to be closed in from the Trocadéro,
at half-past one in the morning they beat a retreat on the
Champs-Elysées.
On theleft hank General Cisseyhad the whole evening massed
his forces at about 200 yards from the enceinte. At midnight
his sappers crossed the moat, scaled the ramparts, without even
312
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
falling in with a sentinel, and opened the gates of Sèvres and
Versailles.
At three o'clock in the morning the Versaillese inundated
Paris through the five gaping wounds of the gates of Passy,
Auteuil, St. Cloud, Sèvres, and Versailles. The greater part of
the fifteenth arrondissement was occupied, the Muette taken;
taken all Passy and the heights of the Trocadéro, taken too
the powder-magazine of the Rue Beethoven, immense cata¬
combs running underneath the sixteenth arrondissement,
crammed with 3,000 barrels of powder, millions of cartridges,
thousands of shells. At five o'clock the first Versaillese shell
fell upon the Légion d'Honneur. As on the morning of the
2nd December, Paris was asleep.
( 313 )
CHAPTER XXYII.
"Les généraux qui ont conduit l'entrée à Paris sont de grands hommes
de guerre."—M. Thiers à l'Assemblée Nationale, 22 Mai 1871.
MONDAY 22ND—THE VEBSAILLESE INVADE THE QUABTEES
OE THE EAST—PAEIS BISES.
At two o'clock Dombrowski arrived at the IIôtel-de-Ville,
pale, dejected, Ms chest bruised with stones ploughed up by
shot. He told the Committee of Public Safety of the entry
of the Versaillese, the surprise of Passy, his useless efforts to
rally the men. As he was pressed for news, as they ap¬
peared astonished at such a rapid invasion, so little did the
Committee know of the military situation, Dombrowski, who
misunderstood them, exclaimed, "What! the Committee of
Public Safety takes me for a traitor! My life belongs to the
Commune." His gesture, his voice, testified to his bitter
despair.
The morn was warm and bright, as the day before. The call
to arms, the tocsin, set three or four thousand men on foot,
who hurried towards the Tuileries, the Hôtel-de-Ville, and
the War Office; but hundreds of others at that moment had
abandoned their posts, left Passy, and emptied the fifteenth
arrondissement. The Federals of Petit-Vanves came back to
Paris at five o'clock, and seeing the Trocadéro occupied by
the Versaillese, refused to hold out. On the left bank, at the <
St. Clothilde Square, some officers attempted to stay them,
hut were repulsed by the guards. "It is now a war of barri¬
cades," said they; "every oné to his quarter." At the Légion
d'Honneur they forced their way; the proclamation of Deles-
cluze had released them.
314
HISTORY OP THE COMMUNE.
Thus began that fatal proclamation placarded on all the
walls:—
"Enough of militarism! No more staff-officers with their
gold-embroidered uniforms! Make way for the people, for the
combatants with naked arms! The hour of the revolutionary
war has struck! The people know nothing of learned
manœuvres. But when they have a gun in their hands, pave¬
ment under their feet, they fear not all the strategists of the
monarchical school!"
When the Minister of War thus stigmatises all discipline,
who will henceforth obey? When he repudiates all method,
who will listen to reason? Thus we shall see hundreds of
men refusing to quit the pavement of their street, paying no
heed to the neighboring quarter in agonies, remaining motion¬
less up to the last hour waiting for the army to come and
overwhelm them.
At five o'clock in the morning the official retreat began. The
chief of the general staff, Henri Prodhomme, had the War
Office precipitately evacuated, without carrying off or destroy¬
ing the papers. The next day they fell into the hands of the
Versaillese, and furnished the courts-martial with thousands
of victims.
On leaving the Ministry, Delescluze met Brunei, who, set
at liberty only the evening before, had at once rallied Ms-
legion, and now came to offer his services, for he was one
of those men of convictions too strong to be shaken by
the most cruel injustice. Delescluze gave him the order
to defend the Place de la Concorde. Brunei repaired thither,
and disposed 150 tirailleurs, three pieces of 4 cm., one of
12, two of 7 on the terrace of the Tuileries and by the bank
of the river. He provided the St. Florentin redoubt with
a mitrailleuse and a piece of 4; that of the Rue Royale, at
.the entrance of the Place de la Concorde, with two pieces
of 12.
In front of Brunei, at the Place Beauvan, some men of
the 8th legion made vain efforts to stop the fugitives from
Passy and Auteuil, and then betook themselves to put the
quarter in a fit state of defence. Barricades were thrown
THE BATTLE IN THE STREETS.
315
up in tlie Faubourg St. Honoré as far as the English Embassy,
in the Rue de Suresne and Ville-Levêque; obstacles were
heaped up at the Place St. Augustin, the opening of the
Boulevard Haussmann, and in front of the Boulevard
Malesherbes, when the Versaillese presented themselves.
Early in the morning they had begun their onward march.
At half-past five Douai, Clinchant, and Ladmirault, passing
along the ramparts, debouched on the Avenue de la Grande
Armée. The artillerists of the Porte-Maillot, turning round,
beheld in their rear the Versaillese, their neighbours for
some ten hours. Not a sentinel had denounced them. Mon-
teret filed off his men by the Ternes; then, alone with
a child, charged one of the cannon of the Porte-Maillot, fired
his last round at the enemy, and succeeded in escaping by
the Batignolles.
The column Douai remounted the Avenue as far as the
barricade in front of the Arc de Triomphe, which they took
without a struggle, the Federals hardly having time to carry
off the cannon that were to have surmounted the Arc de
Triomphe. The soldiers marched up the quay, and ventured
on the silent Place de la Concorde; suddenly the terrace of
the Tuileries lighted up; the Versaillese, received with a
point-blank volley, fled as far as the Palais de l'Industrie,
leaving many dead.
On the left the soldiers occupied the abandoned Elysée, and
by the Rues Morny and Abbatucci debouched on the Place
St. Augustin, where the barricades, hardly begun, could not
resist, and towards half-past seven the Versaillese installed
themselves at the Pépinière Barracks. The Federals formed
a second line in the rear, closing the Boulevard Malesherbes
at the top of the Rue Boissy d'Anglas.
On the left of Douai, Clinchant and Ladmirault continued
their movement along the ramparts. The important works
at the gates of Bineau, Courcelles, Asnières, and Clichy, di¬
rected against the fortifications, became useless, and the Ternes
were occupied without striking a blow. At the same time
one of the Clinchant divisions passed by the outer ramparts.
The Federal battalions on duty at Neuilly, Levallois-Perret,
316
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
and St. Ouen were assailed with balls from the rear—(this
was the first intimation they got of the entry of the Yersaillese)
—and many Federals were taken prisoners. Others succeeded
in returning to Paris by the gates of Bineau, Asnières, and
Cliehy, spreading panic and rumours of treason in the seven¬
teenth arrondissement.
The rappel had been beaten all night in the Batignolles,
and had called out the sedentary guards and the youths. A
battalion of engineers rushed forward to encounter Clinchant's
skirmishers, and began firing in front of the Parc Monceaux
and the-Place Wagram, when the National Guards, deceived
by their red trousers, opened a deadly fire upon them. They
retreated and laid bare the Pare, which the Yersaillese occu¬
pied, and then pushed on to the Batignolles. There they were
stopped by barricades rising on all sides; on the left, from the
Place Clichy to the Rue Levis; in the centre, in the Rues
Lebouteux, La Condamine, and Des Dames; on the right, La
Fourche, the rival position of the Place Clichy, had been forti¬
fied, and soon the Batignolles formed a serious outwork for
Montmartre, our principal fortress.
The latter, for seventeen hours,1 had looked silently on
the entry of the troops of Versailles. In the morning the
columns of Douai and Ladmirault, their artillery and their
waggons, had met each other, and become entangled on the
Place du Trocadéro. A few shells from Montmartre2 would
have changed this confusion into a rout, and the least check
met with by the troops on their entry would have been for
Paris a second 18th March; but the cannon of the Buttes re¬
mained mute.
Monstrous negligence, which alone would suffice to con-
1 "Seventeen hours were required to get in 130,000 men and our
numerous artillery."—M. Thiers, Enquête sur le 18 Mars.
s "From this unexpected obstruction there resulted a confusion that
lasted till after the passage of the troops, and might have had serious
consequences. If the insurgents had then opened fire upon the Troca¬
déro, from the batteries of Montmartre, their shells would have harassed
us a great deal. But the cannon of Montmartre still kept silent. It
was only a little after nine o'clock that they commenced firing; the
passage was then already cleared. "— Vinoy, La Commune, p. 130.
THE BATTLE IN THE STREETS. 317
demn the Council, the "War Office, and the delegates of
Montmartre. Eighty-five cannon and about twenty mitrail¬
leuses were lying there, dirty, pell-mell, and no one during
these eight weeks had even thought of cleaning them. Pro¬
jectiles of 7 cm. abounded, hut there were no cartridges. At
the Moulin de la Galette three pieces of 24 cm. alone were
supplied with carriages, but there were neither parapets,
blindages, nor even platforms. At nine o'clock in the
morning they had not yet fired; after the first discharge
the recoil overthrew the carriages, and much time was re¬
quired to set them up again. These three pieces themselves
had very little munition. Of fortifications or earthworks
there were none; merely a few barricades at the foot of
the external boulevards had been begun. At nine o'clock
La Cécilia sent to Montmartre, and found the defence in this
disgraceful state. He immediately addressed despatches to
the Hôtel-de-Ville, conjuring the members of the Council to
come themselves, or at least to send reinforcements of men and
munitions.
A similar thing occurred at the same time on the left
bank at the Ecole Militaire. Face to face with its park of
artillery, the Versaillese since one o'clock in the morning
were manoeuvring on the Trocadéro without a single cannon
shot being fired at them. What, then, was the governor of the
Ecole about?
At daybreak the Langourian brigade attacked the huts
of the Champ-de-Mars. Thé Federals defended themselves
several hours, and were .only dislodged by the shells of the
Trocadéro, which enkindled a conflagration.1 They then
fell back upon the Ecole, and for a long time checking the
effort of the troops, gave the seventeenth arrondissement
time to rise. The quay as far as the Légion d'Honneur,
the Rues de Lille, De l'Université, and the Boulevard St.
Germain up to the Rue Solferino were being barricaded.
Half-a-dozen of the armlet conspirators, led by Durouchoux
1 The first conflagration of the days of May, and the Versaillese
have admitted that they themselves kindled it.—Vinoy, L'Armistice et
la Commune, p. 309.
318 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
and Vrignault, were coming down the Rue du Bac at great
speed, when a member of the Council, Sicard, arrested them
before the Petit St. Thomas. A bullet struck Durouchoux;
his acolytes carried him away, and took advantage of the
occasion not to appear again. The Rue de Beaune, Ver-
neuil, and St. Pères were put in a state of defence, and a
barricade was thrown up in the Rue de Sèvres at the
Abbaye-au-Bois.
On the right Cissey's soldiers descended the Rue de Vau-
girard without hindrance as far as the Avenue du Maine;
another column filed off along the railway, and at half-past
six reached the Mont-Parnasse station. This position, of
supreme importance, had been utterly neglected; about
twenty men defended it, and they were soon short of car¬
tridges, and obliged to retreat to the Rue de Rennes, where,
under the fire of the troops, they constructed a barricade at
the top of the Rue du Vieux Colombier. On his extreme
right Cissey occupied the Vanves gate and lined the whole
railway of the west.
Paris rose to the roar of the cannon and read the proclama¬
tion of Delescluze. The shops were at once shut' up again,
the boulevards remained empty, and Paris, the old insurgent,
resumed her combative physiognomy. Estafets dashed
through the streets, and remainders of battalions came
to the Hôtel-de-Ville, where the Central Committee, the
Committee of Artillery, and all the military services were con¬
centrated.
At nine o'clock twenty members of the Council had as¬
sembled. A miracle! There was Félix Pyat, who had cried
"To arms!" in his paper that very morning. He had put on
his patriarchal air. "Well, my friends," our last hour has
come. Oh, for myself what matters it! My hair is grey, my
career run out. What more glorious end could I hope for
than that of the barricade. But when I see around me so
many in the prime of youth, I tremble for the future of the
Revolution!" Then he demanded that the names of the mem¬
bers present should be entered, in order to mark out distinctly
those true to their duty. He signed his name, and, with tears
THE BATTLE IN THE STREETS. 319
in his eyes, the old comedian trotted off to a hiding-place, sur¬
passing by his last cowardice all his former villainies.
A sterile meeting this, spent in discussing the news of the
day; no impulsion given, no system of defence propounded.
The Federals were left to their own inspirations—left to
look after themselves. During the whole past night neither
Dombrowski, nor the War Office, nor de Hôtel-de-Ville had
thought of the battalions outside the town. Henceforth each
corps had nothing to expect but from its own initiative, from
the resources it might be able to create and the intelligence of
its chiefs.
In default of direction proclamations abounded.
"Let good citizen rise! To the barricades! The enemy is
within our walls. No hesitation. Forward, for the Commune
and for liberty. To arms!"
"Let Paris bristle up with barricades, and from behind these
improvised ramparts still hurl at her enemies her cry of war,
of pride, of defiance, but also of victory; for Paris with her
barricades is inexpugnable."
Great words; nothing but words.
Mid-day.—General Cissey had turned the Ecole Militaire,
and thereby forced its last defenders. The soldiers invaded
the Esplanade des Invalides and entered the Rue Grenelle St.
Germain, when L'Ecole d'Etat-major exploded and put them
to flight. Two of our cannon enfiladed the Rue de l'Univer¬
sité; four gunboats, anchored under the Pont-Royal, opened
fire on the Trocadéro. In the centre, in the eighth arrondisse¬
ment, the Versaillese skirmished. At the Batignolles they did
not advance, but their shells harassed the Rue Lévis. We
also lost many men in the Rue Cardinet, where children were
fighting furiously.
Malon and Jaclard, who directed this part of the defence,
had since morning in vain applied to Montmartre for rein¬
forcements; so towards one o'clock they themselves went in
search of them. Not one of the staff-officers could give them
the slightest information. The Federals were wandering about
the streets or chatting in small groups. Malon wanted to take
them back with him, but they refused, reserving themselves,
320 HISTORY OP THE COMMUNE.
they said, for the defence of their own quarter. The cannon
of the Buttes were mute, being short of cartridges; the Hôtel-
de-Ville had sent only words.
Still there were two generals on the heights, Cluseret and
La Cécilia, the ex-delegate melancholily airing his somnolent
incapacity, while La Cécilia, unknown in this quarter, at once
found himself powerless.
Two o'clock.—The Hôtel-de-Ville had again assumed its
grand aspect of March. On the right the Committee of
Public Safety and on the left the War Office were overrun.
The Central Committee was multiplying its orders and
exclaiming against the incapacity of the members of the
Council, though itself incapable of setting forth a single
precise idea. The Committee of Artillery, more beset than
ever, could not yet make out its cannon, did not know to whom
to give them, and often refused pieces for the most important
positions.
The delegates of the Congress of Lyons, conducted by MM.
Jules Amigues and J. Larroque, came to offer their interven¬
tion, but they had no mandate, and did not even know whether
M. Thiers would admit them. They were received rather
coldly. Besides, many at the Hôtel-de-Ville believed in vic¬
tory, and almost rejoiced at the entry of the Versaillese; for
indeed Paris seemed to be rising.
The barricades increased quickly. That of the Rue de
Rivoli, which was to protect the Hôtel-de-Ville, was erected
at the entrance of the St. Jacques Square, at the corner of
the Rue St. Denis. Fifty workmen did the mason-work, while
swarms of children brought wheelbarrows full of earth from
the square. This work, several yards deep, six yards high,
with fosses, embrasures, an outwork, as solid as the
Florentin redoubt, which had taken weeks to raise, was
finished in a few hours—an example this of what an intelligent
effort at the right time might have done for the defence,
of Paris. In the ninth arrondissement, the Rues Auber,
De la Chaussée d'Antin, De Châteaudun, the cross-roads of
the Faubourg Montmartre, Notre Dame de Lorette, De la
Trinité, and the Rue des Martyrs were being unpaved.
THE BATTLE IN THE STREETS. 321
The large approaches, La Chapelle, Buttes Chaumont, Belle¬
ville, Ménilmontant, the Rue de la Roquette, the Bastille, the
Boulevards "Voltaire and Richard Lenoir, the Place du Chateau
d'Eau, the large boulevards especially from the Porte St.
Denis; and on the left bank the whole length of the Boulevard
St. Michel, the Panthéon, the Rue St. Jacques, the Gobelins,
and the principal avenues of the thirteenth arrondissement
were being barricaded. A great many of these works of defence
were never finished.
While Paris was preparing for the last struggle, Versailles
was wild with joy. The Assembly had met at an early hour,
and M. Thiers would not leave to any of his Ministers
the glory of announcing the first butcheries in Paris. His
appearance on the tribune was hailed by ferocious cheers.
"The cause of justice, order, humanity, and civilisation has
triumphed," screamed the little man. "The generals who
have conducted the entry into Paris are great men of war.
The expiation will be complete. It will take place in the
name of the law, by the law, with the law." The Chamber
understanding this promise of carnage, rose to a man, and
by a unanimous vote, Right, Left, Centre, Clericals, Repub¬
licans, Monarchists, swore that "the Versaillese army and
the chief of the executive power had merited well of the
country." 1
The sitting was at once raised, the deputies rushing off
to the Lanterne de Diogène, Châtillon, and Mont-Valérien,
to all the heights whence they could, as from an immense
Colosseum, observe the butchery of Paris without incurring
the least danger. The population of idlers accompanied them,
and on this route of Versailles deputies, courtesans, women
of the world, journalists, functionaries stung by the same
craving, sometimes crammed into the same carriage, displayed
before the Prussians and France the spectacle of a saturnalia
of the bourgeoisie.
1 No deputy protested either on this day or after, or declared he had
abstained from voting, neither those of the extreme Left nor those of the
extreme Right. They are then, all of them equally answerable for this
vote,
x
322 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
After eight o'clock the army ceased to advance, save in the
eighth arrondissement, where the barricade before the English
Embassy was turned by the gardens. Our line of the Faubourg
St. Germain resisted from the Seine to the Mont-Parnasse
Station, which we were cannonading.
With nightfall the fusillade slackened, but the cannonade
still went on. A red light glared in the Tuileries; the Ministry
of Finance was burning. It had during the whole day received
part of the Versaillese shells, destined for the terrace of the
Tuileries, and the papers piled up in its upper storeys had
taken fire. The firemen of the Commune had at first ex¬
tinguished this conflagration, interfering with the defence of
the St. Florentin redoubt, but it had soon lit up again, and
become unquenchable.
Then began those nights of horror, where, amidst the
roaring of the cannon, by the glimmer of burning houses,
men sought each other in pools of blood. The Paris of the
revolt had at length been roused. Her battalions descended
towards the Hôtel-de-Ville headed by bands and the red flag.
Small in number, a battalion perhaps two hundred strong,
but resolute, these Federals marched on in silence; there were
seen also, muskets on their shoulders, those men, devoted to
the Social Revolution, whom personal jealousy had kept at a
distance. But in this hour none thought of such recrimina¬
tions. Because of the incapacity of the chiefs ought the soldiers
to desert their flag? The Paris of 1871 represented against
Versailles the Social Revolution and the new destinies of the
nation; one must be against or for her despite the faults
committed. Cowards only abstained. All the true revolu¬
tionists rose, even those who had no illusions as to the issue
of the struggle, eager to defy death in the service of their
immortal cause.
Ten o'clock.—We proceeded to the Hôtel-de-Ville. An
irritated group of ' Federals had just arrested Dombrowski.
The general, without any command since morning, had re¬
paired with his officers to the outposts of St. Ouen, and
Relieving his rôle terminated, wanted in the night to ride
through the Prussian ranks and gain the frontier. A com-
THE BATTLE IN THE STREETS.
323
mander, who was afterwards shot as a traitor, had incited his
men against the general under the pretext that he was betray¬
ing them. Led before the Committee of Public Safety, Dom-
browski indignantly exclaimed, "They say I have betrayed!"
The members of the Committee welcomed him affectionately,
and the incident had no further consequences.
Messengers arrived at the War Office from all the points of
the battle. A great number of guards and officers issued
orders and despatches in the midst of a continual bustle.
The inner courts were full of waggons and carriages, the
horses all ready harnessed; munitions were being taken out
or brought in, and not the least sign of discouragement,
or even of anxiety, was visible, but everywhere an almost gay
activity.
The streets and boulevards, with the exception of the in¬
vaded quarters, had been lighted as usual. At the entrance
of the Faubourg Montmartre the light ceased abruptly, giving
it the appearance of an enormous black hole. This obscurity
was guarded by Federal sentinels, uttering every now and then
their cry, "Passez au large!" Beyond this only a menacing
silence. These shadows moving about in the night seemed
to assume gigantic forms; one fancied oneself haunted by a
sinister dream; the bravest were appalled.
There were nights more noisy, more glaring, more grandiose,
when the conflagrations and the cannonade enveloped Paris,
but none of more lugubrious impress. A night of meditation
this, the vigil of battle. We sought each other in the
gloom, spoke low, giving and taking, comfort. At the
cross-roads we consulted each other in order to examine
our positions, and then to work! Now for the spade and
the pavements! Let the earth be heaped up where the
shells may flatten themselves against it; let the mattresses
thrown from the windows shelter the combatants. Hence¬
forth there is to be no more rest; let the stones cemented
with hate press against each other like the shoulders of men
arrayed for the battlefield. The enemy has taken us by sur¬
prise, defenceless. May he to-morrow encounter a Sarragossa
or a Moscow!
324 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
Every passer-by was requisitioned. "Come, citizen, lend
a hand for the Repùblie!" At the Bastille and in the interior
boulevards one met crowds of workers, some digging the earth,
others carrying the paving-stones; children using spades and
mattocks as big as themselves. The women encouraged the
men; the delicate hand of the young girl raised the heavy
pickaxe that fell with a sharp sound, emitting fiery sparks.
It took an hour to seriously break through the soil.
What matter! they will spend their night at it. On the
Tuesday evening, at the intersection of the Square St.
Jacques and the Boulevard Sebastopol, many dames de
la halle worked for a long time, filling earth sacks and wicker
baskets.1
And these were no longer the traditional redoubts two
storeys high. Save four or five in the Rue St. Honoré and
the Rue de Rivoli, the barricades of May consisted of a few
paving-stones hardly a man's height; behind these some¬
times a cannon or a mitrailleuse; and in the midst, wedged
in by two paving-stones, the red flag, the colour of vengeance.
Behind these shreds of ramparts thirty men held regiments
in check.
If this general effort had been directed by the least thought
of combination, if Montmartre and the Panthéon had crossed
their fires, the Versaillese army would have melted away in
Paris; but the Federals, without directions, without military
knowledge, saw no further than just their own quarter, or even
their own streets; so that instead of 200 strategical solidary
barricades, easy to defend with 7,000 or 8,000 men, hundreds
were scattered about which it was impossible to arm sufficiently.
The general mistake was a belief that they would be attacked
1 "At the Place Blanche," wrote Gr. Maroteau in the Salut Public of
the next day, "there was a barricade perfectly constructed and defended
by a battalion of women, about 120. At the moment when I arrived, a
dark form detached itself from the recess of a eourtyard. It was a young
girl with a Phrygian cap on her head, a chassepot in her hand, a car¬
tridge-box by her side. ' Stand, citizen ! no one passes here ! ' I stopped
astonished, showed my safe-conduct, and the citoyenne allowed me to
go to the foot of the barricade."
THE BATTLE IN THE STREETS. 325
from the front; while the Versaillese, thanks to their numbers,
everywhere executed flank movements.
In the evening the Versaillese line extended from the station
of the Batignolles to the extremity of the Railway of the "West
on the left hank, passing by the St. Lazare Station, the
Pépinière Barracks, the English Embassy, the Palais de l'In¬
dustrie, the Corps Législatif, the Rue de Bourgogne, the
Boulevard des Invalides, and the Mont-Parnasse Station. To
face the invader there were but embryo barricades. If with
one effort he were to break through this line still so weak, he
would surprise the centre quite disarmed. But these 130,000
men did not dare to. Soldiers and chiefs were afraid of Paris.
They fancied the streets would open, the houses fall upon
them; as witness the fable of the torpedoes, of the mines under
the sewers, invented later on to justify their indecision.1 On
the Monday evening, masters of several arrondissements, they
still trembled, fearful of some terrible surprise. They needed
all the tranquility of the night to recover from their conquest,
and convince themselves that the Committee of Defence,
despite their boasting, had neither foreseen nor prepared
anything.
1 Appendix XV.
( 326 )
CHAPTEE XXVIII,
TUESDAY 23RD—MONTMARTRE IS TAKEN—THE WHOLESALE
MASSACRES—WE LOSE GROUND—PARIS ON FIRE—THE
LAST NIGHT OF THE HÔTEL-DE-YILLE.
\
The defenders of the barricades slept on their paving-stones.
The hostile outposts were on the watch. At the Batignolles
the Versaillese reconnaissance carried off a sentinel. The
Federal cried out with all his might, "Vive la Commune!"
and his comrades, thus warned, were able to put themselves
on their guard. He was shot there and then. In like manner
fell D'Assas and Barra.
At two o'clock La Cécilia, accompanied by the members of
the Council, Lefrançais, Yermorel, and Johannard, and the
journalists Alphonse Humbert and G. Maroteau, brought up
a reinforcement of 100 men to the Batignolles. To Malon's
reproaches for having left the quarter without succour the
whole day, the General answered, "I am not obeyed."
Three o'clock.—To the barricades! The Commune is not
dead! The fresh morning air bathes the fatigued faces and
revives hope. The enemy's cannonade along the whole line
salutes the break of day. The artillerists of the Commune,
from Mont-Parnasse to the Buttes Montmartre, which seem
awaking, answered as well as they could.
Ladmirault, almost motionless the day before, now launched
his men along the fortifications, taking all the gates from
Heuilly to St. Ouen in the rear. On his right, Clinchant
attacked by the same movement all the barricades of the
Batignolles. The Rue Cardinet yielded first, then the Rues
ISToblet, Truffaut, La Condamine, and the lower Avenue of
Clichy. Suddenly the gate of St. Ouen opened, and the Yer-
THE BATTLE IN" THE STREETS.
327
saillese poured into Paris; it was the Montaudon division,
which since evening had been operating in the exterior. The
Prussians had surrendered the neutral zone, and so, with the
help of Bismarck, Clinchant and Ladmirault were able to take
the Buttes by the two flanks.
Nearly surrounded in the mairie of the seventeenth ar¬
rondissement, Malon ordered the retreat on Montmartre,
whither a detachment of twenty-five women, come to offer their
services under the conduct of the citoyennes Dimitrieff and
Louise Michel, were also sent.
Clinchant, pursuing his route, was arrested by the barricade
of the Place Clichy. To reduce these badly disposed paving-
stones, behind which hardly fifty men were fighting, required
the combined effort of the Versaillese of the Rue de St. Péters-
bourg and their tirailleurs of the Collège Chaptal. The
Federals, having no more shells, charged with stones and
bitumen; their powder exhausted, they fell back upon the
Eue des Carrières, and Ladmirault, master of the St. Ouen
Avenue, turned their barricade by the Montmartre Cemetery.
About twenty guards refused to surrender, and were at once
shot by the Versaillese.
In the rear, the quarter Des Epinettes still held out for a
time; at last all resistance ceased, and about nine o'clock the
entire Batignolles belonged to the army.
The Hôtel-de-Ville knew nothing yet of the progress of
the troops when Vermorel rushed thither in search of muni¬
tions for Montmartre. As he was setting out at the head of
the waggons he met Eerré, and, with the smile familiar to him,
said, "Well, Ferré, the members of the minority fight." -"The
members of the majority will do their duty," answered Ferré.
Generous emulation of these men, who were both devoted to
the people, and who were to die so nobly.
Vermorel could not take his waggons as far as Montmartre,
the Versaillese already investing the heights. Masters of the
Batignolles, they had but to stretch out their hand to seize
upon Montmartre. The Buttes seemed dead; panic had during
the night hurried on its underhand work; the battalions, one
after the other, had grown smaller, vanished. Individuals
328 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
seen later on in the ranks of the army had stirred defections,
spread false news, and every moment arrested civil and
military chiefs, under the pretext that they were betray¬
ing. Only about a hundred men lined the north side
of the hill; a few barricades had been commenced in
the night, but without spirit; the women alone had shown
any ardour.
Cluseret had, according to his usual habit, gone off in a
vapour. Despite his despatches and the promises of the Hôtel-
de-Ville, La Cécilia had received neither reinforcements nor
munitions. At nine o'clock, no longer hearing the cannon
of the Buttes, he hurried up, and found the cannoniers gone.
The runaways from the Batignolles arriving at ten o'clock
only brought in panic. The Versaillese might have presented
themselves; there were not 200 combatants there to receive
them.
MacMahon, however, only dared attempt the assault with
his best troops, so redoubtable was this position, so great the
renown of Montmartre. Two entire army corps assailed it
by the Rues Lepic, Mercadet, and the Chaussée Clignan-
court. From time to time some shots were fired from a few
houses; forthwith frightened columns came to a standstill
and began regular sieges. These 20,000 men, who com¬
pletely surrounded Montmartre, helped by the artillery estab¬
lished on the terre-plein of the enceinte, took three hours to
climb these positions, defended without method by a few dozen
tirailleurs.
At eleven o'clock the cemetery was taken, and shortly after
the troops reached the Château-Rouge. In the environs there
were some fusillades, but the few obstinate men who still
fought were soon killed, or withdrew discouraged at their
isolation. The Versaillese, scrambling up to the Buttes by
all the acclivities that lead to them, at midday installed them¬
selves at the Moulin de la Galette, descended by the Place St.
Pierre to the mairie, and occupied the whole of the eighteenth
arrondissement without any resistance.
Thus without a battle, without an assault, without even a
protestation of despair, was this impregnable fortress aban-
THE BATTLE IF THE STREETS. 329
doned, from which a few hundred resolute men might have
kept the whole Versaillese army in check, and constrained the
Assembly to come to terms.
Hardly arrived at Montmartre, the Versaillese staff offered
a holocaust to the manes of Lecomte and Clément-Thomas.
Forty-two men, three women, and four children were con¬
ducted to No. 6 in the Rue des Rosiers and forced to kneel
hare-headed before the wall, at the foot of which the generals
had been executed on the 18th March; then they were killed.
A woman, who held her child in her arms, refused to kneel
down, and cried to her companions, "Show these wretches
that you know how to die upright."
On the following day these massacres continued. Each
batch of prisoners halted some time before this wall, marked
with bullets, and were then despatched on the slope of the
Buttes that overlooks the St. Denis route.1
The Batignolles and Montmartre witnessed the first whole¬
sale massacres. Every individual wearing a uniform or regula¬
tion boots was shot, as a matter of course, without questions
put, without explanations given. Thus the Versaillese had
been assassinating since the morning in the Square des Batig¬
nolles, Place de l'Hôtel-de-Ville, and at the gate of Clichy.
The Parc Monceaux was their principal slaughter-house in the
seventeenth arrondissement. At Montmartre the centres of
massacre were the Buttes, the Elysée, of which every step was
strewn with corpses, and the exterior boulevards.
A few steps from Montmartre the catastrophe was not
known. At the Place Blanche the women's barricade held
out for several hours against Clinehant's soldiers; they then
retreated towards the Pigale barricade, which fell at about two
o'clock. Its chief was led before a Versaillese chief of bat¬
talion. "Who are you?" asked the officer. "Lévêque, mason,
member of the Central Committee." The Versaillese dis¬
charged his revolver in his face; the soldiers finished him.
On the other bank of the Seine our resistance was more
successful. The Versaillese had been able since morning to
occupy the Babylone Barracks and L'Abbaye-au-Bois, but
1 Appendix XVI.
330
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
Varlin stopped them at the cross-roads of the Croix-Rouge.
This cross-road will remain celebrated in the defence of
Paris. All the streets that open into it had been powerfully
barricaded, and this stronghold was only abandoned when fire
and shells had reduced it to a heap of ruins. On the
banks of the river, the Rues de l'Université, St. Dominique,
St. Germain, and De Grenelle, the 67th, 135th, 138th, and
147th battalions, supported by the enfants perdus and les
tirailleurs, resisted obstinately. In the Rue de Rennes and
on the contiguous boulevards the Versaillese exhausted their
strength. In the Rue Vavin, where Lisbonne conducted the
defence, the resistance was prodigious; for two days this
advanced sentinel kept back the invasion from the Luxem¬
bourg.
We were less secure on our extreme left. The Versaillese
had early in the day invested the Mont-Parnasse Cemetery,
which we held with a handful of men. Near the restaurant
Richefeu, the Federals, allowing the enemy to approach, un¬
masked their mitrailleuses; but in vain, for the Versaillese
were numerous enough to surround the few defenders of the
cemetery on all sides, and soon stormed it. From there,,
passing by the ramparts of the fourteenth arrondissement,
they arrived at the Place St. Pierre. The fortifications of
the Avenue d'Italie and of the Route de Châtillon, long
since carefuly prepared, but always against the ramparts,
were taken in the rear by the Chaussée du Maine, and
the whole defence of the cross-roads of the Quatre-Chemins
was concentrated round the church. From the top of the
steeple about a dozen Federals of Montrouge supported
the barricade that barred two-thirds of the Chaussée du
Maine, held by thirty men for several hours. At last, their
cartridges exhausted, the tricolor flag was hoisted at the
mairie, at the same hour that it floated above the Buttes
Montmartre. Henceforth the route to the Place d'Enfer was
open, and the Versaillese arrived there after having under¬
gone the fire from the Observatoire, where some Federals had
made a stand.
Behind these lines thus forced other defences were thrown
THE BATTLE IF THE STREETS.
331
up, thanks to the care of Wroblewski. The day before,'
the general, receiving the order to evacuate the forts, had
answered, "Is it treachery or a misunderstanding? I will not
evacuate." Montmartre taken, the general went to Deleseluze,
urging him to transfer the defence to the left bank. The
Seine, the forts, the Panthéon, the Bièvre, formed, in his
opinion, a safe citadel, with the open fields for a retreat; a
very just conception this with regular troops, hut one
cannot at will displace the heart of an insurrection, and the
Federals were more and more bent on remaining in their own
quarters.
Wroblewski returned to his headquarters, assembled the
commanders of the forts, prescribed all the dispositions to he
taken for their defence, and came back to resume the command
of the left bank, given him by earlier decrees. But on sending
orders to the Panthéon, he was answered that Lisbonne com¬
manded there. Wroblewski, undeterred, placed the section
left to him in a state of defence. He installed a battery of
eight pieces and two batteries of four on the Butte-aux-Cailles,
a dominant position between the Panthéon and the forts; he
fortified the Boulevards d'Italie, De l'Hôpital, and De la Gare.
His headquarters were established at the Mairie des Gobelins,
and his reserve at the Place d'Italie, Place Jeanne d'Arc, and
at Bercy.
At the other extremities of Paris the fourteenth and twen¬
tieth arrondissements also prepared their defence. The brave
Passedouet had replaced Du Bisson, who still dared to present
himself as chef-de-legion of La Villette. They barricaded the
Grande Rue de la Chapelle behind the Strasbourg Railway,
the Rues d'Aubervilliers, De Flandre, and the canal, so as
to form five lines of defence, protected on the flank by the
boulevards and the fortifications. Cannon were placed in
the Rue Riquet at the gasworks, while rampart pieces were
carried by the men on to the Buttes Chaumont and others to
the Rue de Puebla. A battery of six was mounted on the
height of the Père Lachaise, covering Paris with its rumbling
reports.
A mute and desolate Paris. As on the day before, the shops
332 HISTORY OP THE COMMUNE.
remained closed, and the streets, bleached by the sun, looked
empty and menacing. Estafets riding at full speed, pieces of
artillery shifted from their places, combatants on the march,;
alone broke this solitude. Cries of "Open the shutters!"
"Draw up the blinds!" alone interrupted this silence. Two
journals, Le Tribun du Peuple and Le Salut Public, were pub¬
lished, notwithstanding the Versaillese shells that were falling
into the printing-office of the Rue Aboukir.
A few men at the Ilotel-de-Ville did their best to attend to
details. One decree authorised the chiefs of barricades to
requisition the necessary implements and victuals; another
condemned every house from which Federals were shot at to
be burned. In the afternoon the Committee of Public Safety
issued an appeal to the soldiers:—
"The people of Paris will never believe that you could
raise your arms against them. When they face you your
hands will recoil from an act that would be a veritable
fratricide.
"Like us, you too are proletarians. That which you did
on the 18th March you will do again. Come to us, brothers,
come to us; our arms are open to receive you."
The Central Committee at the same time placarded a
similar appeal—a puerile but generous illusion; and on this
point the people of Paris entirely agreed with their manda¬
tories. In spite of the frenzy of the Assembly, the fusillade
of the wounded, the treatment inflicted upon the prisoners
for six weeks, the workingmen did not admit that children
of the people could rend the entrails of that Paris who com¬
bated for them.
/ At three o'clock M. Bonvalet and other members of the
Ligue des Droits de Paris presented themselves at the Hôtel-
de-Ville, where some members of the Council and of the
Committee of Public Safety received them. They bewailed
this struggle, proposed to interfere, as they had so success¬
fully done during the siege, and to carry to M. Thiers the
expression of their sorrow; further, they placed themselves
at the disposition of the Hôtel-de-Ville. "Well, then," they
were answered, "shoulder a gun and go to the barricades!"
THE BATTLE IN THE STREETS. 333
Before this direct appeal the League fell back upon the
Central Committee, which had the weakness to listen to
them.
There was no question of negotiating in the midst of the
battle. * The Versaillese, following up their success at Mont¬
martre, were at this moment pushing towards the Boulevard
Ornano and the Northern Railway station. At two o'clock
the barricades of the Chaussée Clignancourt were abandoned,
and in the Rue Myrrha, by the side of Vermorel, Dombrowski
fell mortally wounded. In the morning Delescluze had told
him to try his best in the neighbourhood of Montmartre; and,
without hope, without soldiers, suspected since the entry of
the Versaillese, all Dombrowski could do was to die. He
expired two hours afterwards at the Lariboisière Hospital.
His body was taken to the Hotel-de-Ville, the men of the
barricades presenting arms as he was carried by. His glorious
death had disarmed suspicion.
Clinchant, thenceforth free on his left, proceeded to the
ninth arrondissement. A column marched down the Rues
Fontaine, St. Georges, and Notre Dame de Lorette, and made
a halt at the cross-roads; while another cannonaded the Rollin
Collège before penetrating into the Rue Trudaine, where it
was held in check until the evening.
More in the centre, at the Boulevard Haussman, Douai
pressed close upon the barricade of the Printemps shop, and
with gunshots dislodged the Federals who occupied the Trinité
Church. Five pieces established under the porch of the church
were then directed at the very important barricade that barred
the Chaussée d'Antin at the entrance of the boulevard. A
detachment penetrated into the Rues Châteaudun and La¬
fayette, but at the cross-roads of the Faubourg Montmartre
a barricade, a yard high at the utmost, defended by twenty-five
men, arrested them until night.
Douai's right was still powerless against the Rue Royale.
There for two days Brunei sustained a struggle only equalled
by that of the Butte-aux-Cailles, of the Bastille, and the
Chateau d'Eau. His main barricade, transversely crossing
the street, was overlooked by the neighbouring houses, from
334 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
which the Versaillese decimated the Federals; and Brunei,
impressed with the importance of the post confided to him,
ordered these murderous houses to be burned down. A
Federal obeying him was struck by a ball in the eye, and came
back dying to Brunei's side, saying, "I am paying with my
life for the order you have given me. Vive la Commune!"
All the houses comprised between No. 13 and the Faubourg
St. Honoré were caught in the flames, and the Versaillese,
appalled, run away, some passing over to the Federals.
One of them put on the Parisian uniform and became Brunei's
orderly.
On the right the Boulevard Malesherbes, on the left the
terrace of the Tuileries, which Bergeret occupied since the day
before, seconded Brunei's efforts. The Boulevard Malesherbes,
furrowed by shells, was like a field ploughed up by gigantic
shares. The fire of eighty pieces of artillery at the Quay
d'Orsay, Passy, the Champ-de-Mars, the Barrière de l'Etoile
converged on the terrace of the Tuileries and the barricade
St. Florentine. About a dozen Federal pieces bore up against
this shower. The Place de la Concorde, taken between these
cross-fires, was strewn with fragments of fountains and lamp¬
posts. The statue of Lille was beheaded, that of Strasbourg
pitted by the grape-shot.
On the left bank the Versaillese made their way from house
to house. The inhabitants of the quarter lent their assistance,
and from behind their closed blinds fired on the Federals,
who, indignant, forced and set fire to the treacherous houses.
The Versaillese shells had already begun the conflagration,
and the rest of the quarter was soon in flames. The troops
continued to gain ground, occupied the Ministry of War, the
telegraph office, and reached the Bellechasse Barracks and
the Rue de l'Université. The barricades of the quay and
the Rue du Bac were battered down by the shells; the Federal
battalions, which for two days had held out at the Légion
d'Honneur, had no longer any retreat but the quays. At five
o'clock they evacuated this unclean place after having set it
on fire.
At six o'clock the barricade of the Chaussée d'Antin was
THE BATTLE IN THE STREETS. 335
lost to us; tlie enemy advancing by the side streets had
occupied the Nouvel Opéra, entirely dismantled, and from
the top of the roofs the marine-fusileers commanded the
barricade. Instead of imitating them, of also occupying the
houses, the Federals, there as everywhere else, obstinately kept
behind the barricade.
At eight o'clock the barricade of the Rue Neuve des
Capucines, at the entrance of the. Boulevard, gave way under
the fire of the pieces of 4 cm. established in the Rue
Caumartin. The Versaillese approached the Place Yen-
dôme.
At all points the army had made decided progress. The
Versaillese line, starting from the Northern Railway station,
following the Rues Rochechouart, Cadet, Drouot, whose mairie
was taken, the Boulevard des Italiens, stretched to the Place
Vendôme and the Place de la Concorde, passed along the
Rue du Bac, the Abbaye-au-Bois, and the Boulevard d'Enfer,
ending at the bastion 81. The Place de la Concorde and
the Rue Royale, surrounded on their flanks, stood out
like a promontory in the midst of a tempest. Ladmirault
faced La Villette; on his right Clinchant occupied the
ninth arrondissement; Douai presented himself at the Place
Vendôme; Vinoy supported Cissy operating on the left bank.
At this hour hardly one-half of Paris was still held by the
Federals.
The rest was given over to massacre. They were still
fighting at one end of a street when the conquered part
was already being sacked. Woe to him who possessed arms
or a uniform! Woe to him who betrayed dismay! Woe to
him who was denounced by a political or personal enemy!
He was dragged away. Each corps had its regular executioner,
the provost; but to speed the business there were supple¬
mentary provosts in the streets. The victims were led there—
shot. The blind fury of the soldiers encouraged by the men
of order served their hatred and liquidated their debts. Theft
followed massacre. The shops of the tradesmen who had
supplied the Commune, or whom their rival shopkeepers ac¬
cused, were given over to pillage; the soldiers smashed their
336
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
furniture and carried off the objects of value. Jewels, wine,
liqueurs, provisions, linen, perfumery, disappeared into their
knapsacks.
When M. Thiers was apprised of the fall of Montmartre,
he believed the battle over, and telegraphed to the prefects.
For six weeks he had not ceased to announce that, the ram¬
parts taken, the insurgents would fly; but Paris, contrary to
the habits of the men of Sedan and Metz and of the National
Defence, contested street by street, house by house, and rather
than surrender, burned them.
A blinding glare arose at nightfall. The Tuileries were
burning, so also the Légion d'Honneur, the Conseil d'Etat,
and the Cour des Comptes. Formidable detonations were
heard from the palace of the kings, whose walls were falling,
its vast cupolas giving way. Flames, now slow, now rapid as
darts, flashed from a hundred windows; the red tide of the
Seine reflected the monuments, thus redoubling the conflagra¬
tion. Fanned by an eastern wind, the blazing flames rose up
against Versailles, and cried to the conqueror of Paris that
he will no longer find his place there, and that these mo¬
narchical monuments will not again shelter a monarchy. The
Rue du Bac, the Rue du Lille, La Croix-Rouge, dashed
luminous columns into the air; the Rue Royale to St. Sulpliee
seemed a wall of fire divided by the Seine. Eddies of smoke
clouded all the west of Paris, and the spiral flames shooting
forth from these furnaces emitted showers of sparks that fell
upon the neighbouring quarters.
Eleven o'clock.—We go to the Hôtel-de-Ville. Sentinels
on far advanced posts made it secure against any surprise; at
long intervals a gaslight flickered in the obscurity; at several
barricades there were torches, and even bivouac fires. That
of the St. Jacques Square, opposite the Boulevard Sebasto-
pol, made of large trees, whose branches swung to and
fro in the wind, muttered and fluttered in the redoubtable
gloom.
The façade of the Hôtel-de-Ville was reddened by distant
flames; the statues, which the reflection seemed to move,
gtirred in their niches. The interior courts were filled with
THE BATTLE IN THE STREETS. 337
crowds and tumult. Artillery ammunition waggons, carts,
omnibuses, crammed with munitions, rolled off with a great
noise under the vaults. The fêtes of Baron Haussmann awoke
no such sonorous echoes. Life and death, agony and laughter,
jostled each other on these staircases, on every storey, illumined
by the same dazzling light of the gas.
The lower lobbies were encumbered by National Guards
rolled up in their blankets. The wounded lay groaning on
their reddened mattresses; blood was trickling from the litters
placed along the walls. A commander was brought in who
no longer presented a human aspect; a ball had passed through
his cheek, carried away the lips, broken the teeth. Incapable
of articulating a sound, this brave fellow still waved a red
flag, and summoned those who were resting to replace him
in the combat.
In the notorious chamber of Valentine Haussmann the
corpse of Dombrowski was laid out upon a bed of blue satin.
À single taper threw its lurid light on the heroic soldier.
His face, white as snow, was calm, the nose fine, the
mouth delicate, the small fair beard standing out pointed.
Two aides-de-camp seated in the darkened corners watched
silently, another hurriedly sketched the last traits of his
general.
The double marble staircase was filled with people coming
and going, whom the sentinels could hardly keep away from
the delegate's cabinet. Delescluze signed orders, mute and
wan as a spectre. The anguish of those later days had ab¬
sorbed his last vital powers; his voice was only a death-rattle;
the eye and the heart alone lived still in this moribund athlete.
Two or three officers calmly prepared the orders, stamped
and sent the despatches; many officers and guards sur¬
rounded the table. No speeches, a little conversation, among
the various groups. If hope had waned, resolution had not
grown less.
Who are these officers who have laid aside their uniforms,
these members of the Council, these functionaries who have
shaved their beards? What are they doing here amongst these
brave men? Ranvier, meeting two of Lis colleagues thus dis-
338
HISTORY OP THE COMMUNE.
guised, who during the siege had been among the most be-
plumed, apostrophised them, threatening to shoot them if they
did not at once return to their arrondissements.
A great example would not have been useless. /From hour
to hour all discipline foundered. At that same moment the
Central Committee, which believed itself invested with power
by the abdication of the Council, launched a manifesto,
in which it made conditions: "Dissolution of the Assembly
and of the Commune; the army to leave Paris; the Govern¬
ment to be provisionally confided to the delegates of the large
towns, who will have a Constituent Assembly elected; mutual
amnesty." The ultimatum of a conqueror. This dream was
placarded on a few walls, and threw new disorder into the
resistance. /
Prom time to time some greater clamour arose from the
square. A spy was shot against the barricade of the Victoria
Avenue. Some were audacious enough to penetrate into the
most intimate councils.1 That evening, at the Hdtel-de-Ville,
Bergeret had received the verbal authorisation to fire the
Tuileries, when an individual pretending to be sent by him
asked for this order in writing. He was still speaking when
Bergeret returned. "Who sent you?" said he to the per¬
sonage. "Bergeret." "When did you see him?" "Just here,
a moment ago."
During this evening, Raoul Rigault, taking orders from
himself only, and without consulting any of his colleagues,
repaired to the prison of Ste. Pélagie, and signified to Chaudey
that he was to die. Chaudey protested, said he was a Re¬
publican, and swore that he had not given the order to fire
on the 22nd January. However, he had been at that time
the only authority in the Hôtel-de-Ville. His protestations
were of no avail against Rigault's resolution. Led into the
exercise-ground of Ste. Pélagie, Chaudey was shot, as were
also three gendarmes taken prisoners on the 18th March.
During the first siege he had said to some partisans of the Com¬
mune, "The strongest will shoot the others." He died per¬
haps for those words.
I Appendix XVII.
( 339 )
CHAPTER XXIX.
"Nos Taillants soldats se conduisent de manière à inspirer la plus haute
estime, la plus grande admiration à l'étranger."—Discours de M.
Thiers, à l'Assemblée Nationale le 24 Mai 1871.
WEDNESDAY 24TH—THE MEMBERS OF THE COUNCIL EVACU¬
ATE THE HÔTEL-DE-YILLE—THE PANTHEON IS TAKEN—
THE VERSAILLESE SHOOT THE FEDERALS BY HUNDREDS
—THE FEDERALS SHOOT SIX HOSTAGES—THE NIGHT OF
THE CANNON.
The defenders of the barricades, already without reinforce¬
ments and munitions, were now left even without food, and
altogether thrown on the resources of the neighbourhood.
Many, quite worn out, went in search of some nourish¬
ment; their comrades, not seeing them return, grew desperate,
while the chiefs of the barricades strained themselves to keep
them back.
At nine o'clock Brunei received the order to evacuate the
Eue Eoyale. He went to the Tuileries to tell Bergeret that
he could still hold out, but at midnight the Committee of
Public Safety again sent him a formal order to retreat.
Forced to abandon the post he had so well defended for two
days, the brave commander first removed his wounded and
then his cannon by the Rue St. Florentin. The Federals
followed; when at the top of the Rue Castiglione, they were
assailed by shots.
It was the Versaillese, who, masters of the Rue de la Paix
and the Rue Meuve des Capucines, had invaded the Place
Vendôme, entirely deserted, and by the Hôtel-du-Rhin turned
the barricade of the Rue Castiglione. Brunei's Federals,
abandoning the Rue de Rivoli, forced the rails of the
340
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
garden, went up the quays, and regained the Hôtel-de-
Ville. The enemy did not dare to pursue them, and only
at daybreak occupied the Ministry of Marine, long since
abandoned.
The rest of the night the cannon were silent. The Hôtel-
de-Ville had lost its animation. The Federals slept in the
square; in the bureaux the members of the committees and
the officers snatched a few moments of repose. At three o'clock
a staff officer arrived from Notre Dame, occupied by a detach¬
ment of Federals. He came to tell the Committee of Public
Safety that the Hôtel-Dieu harboured eight hundred sick, who
might suffer from the proximity of the struggle, and the Com¬
mittee commanded the evacuation of the cathedral in order
to save these unfortunate people.
And now the sun rose, eclipsing the glare of the conflagra¬
tions; the day dawned radiant, but with no ray of hope for
the Commune. Paris had no longer a right wing; her centre
was broken; to assume the offensive was impossible. The pro¬
longation of her resistance could now only serve to bear witness
to her faith.
Early in the morning the Versaillese moved on all points.
They pushed towards the Louvre, the Palais-Royal, the Bank,
the Comptoir d'Escompte, the Montholon Square, the Boule¬
vard Ornano, and the line of the Northern Railway. From
four o'clock they cannonaded the Palais-Royal, round which
desperate battles were being fought. By seven o'clock they
were at the Bank and at the Bourse; thence they descended
to St. Eustaehe, where they met an obstinate resistance. Many
children fought with the men; and when the Federals were
outflanked and massacred, these children had the honour not
to be excepted.
On the left bank the troops with difficulty marched up
the quays and all that part of the sixth arrondissement
bordering upon the Seine. In the centre, the barricade of
the Croix-Rouge had been evacuated during the night, like
that of the Rue de Rennes, which thirty men had held
for two days. The Versaillese were then able to enter the
Rues d'Assas and Notre-dame-des-Champs. On the extreme
THE BATTLE IN THE STREETS. 341
right they reached the Yal de Grace, and advanced against the
Panthéon.
At eight o'clock about fifteen members of the Council as¬
sembled at the Hôtel-de-Ville and decided to evacuate it. Two
only protested. The third arrondissement, intersected by
narrow and well-barricaded streets, sheltered the flank of the
Hôtel-de-Ville, which defied every attack from the front and
by the quays. Under such conditions of defence to fall back
was to fly, to strip the Commune of the little prestige still
remaining to it; but no more than the days before were they
able to collect two sound ideas. They feared everything, be¬
cause ignorant of everything. Already the commander of the
Palais Royal had received the order to evacuate that edifice,
after having set it on fire. He had protested, and declared
he could still hold out, but the order was repeated. Such was
the state of bewilderment, that a member proposed a retreat
on Belleville. They might as well abandon the Château d'Eau
and the Bastille at once. As usual, the- time was spent in small-
talk. The governor of the Hôtel-de-Ville went backwards
and forwards impatient.
Suddenly the flames burst forth from the summit of the
belfry; an hour after the Hôtel-de-Ville was but one glow.
The old edifice, witness of so many perjuries, where the
people have so often installed powers that have afterwards
shot them down, now cracked and fell with its true master.
With the noise of the crumbling pavilions, of the toppling
vaults and chimneys, of the dull detonations and the loud
explosions, mingled the sharp reports of the cannon from
the large barricade St. Jacques, that swept the Rue de
Rivoli.
The War Office and all the services moved off to the mairie
of the eleventh arrondissement. Delescluze had protested
against the desertion of the Hôtel-de-Ville, and predicted that
this retreat would discourage many combatants.
The next day they left the Imprimerie Nationale, where
the Officiel of the Commune appeared on the 24th for the
last time. Like an Officiel that respects itself, it was a day
behind time; it contained the proclamations of the day before
342
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
and a few details of the battle, but not beyond the Tuesday
morning.
This flight from the Hôtel-de-Ville, cutting the defence
in two, increased the difficulty of the communications. The
staff officers who had not disappeared reached the new head¬
quarters with great trouble; they were stopped at every
barricade and constrained to carry paving-stones. On pro¬
ducing their despatches pleading urgency, they were an¬
swered, "To-day there are no more epaulettes." The anger
they had inspired for a long time broke out this very
morning. In the Rue Sedaine, near the Place Voltaire, a
young officer of the general staff, the Count de Beaufort, was
recognised by the guards of the 166th battalion, whom
he had threatened some days before at the War Office.
Arrested for having tried to violate the orders of the post,
Beaufort, losing his temper, had flung out a menace to purge
the battalion. Now, the day before, near the Madeleine, the
battalion had lost sixty men, and believed in a revenge on
the part of Beaufort. This officer was arrested and conducted
before a court-martial, which installed itself in a shop of the
Boulevard Yoltaire. Beaufort produced such certificates that
the accusation was abandoned. Nevertheless, the judges
decided that he was to serve in the battalion as a simple
guard. Some of those present objected and named him
captain. He came out triumphant. The crowd, ignorant
of his explanation, grumbled on seeing him free. A guard
rushed at him, and Beaufort was imprudent enough to draw
out his revolver. He was immediately seized and thrown
back into the shop. The chief of the general staff did not
dare to come to the, rescue of his officer. Delescluze hurried
up, asked for a respite, said that Beaufort should be judged;
but the crowd would hear of nothing, and it was necessary
to yield in order to prevent a terrible affray. Beaufort,
conducted to the open space situated behind the mairie,
was shot.
Close by this outburst of fury, at the Père Lachaise,
Dombrowski was receiving the last honours. His corpse
had been transported thither in the night, and during the
THE BATTLE EST THE STREETS.
343
passage to the Bastille a touching scene had taken place.
The Federals of these barricades had stopped the cortège
and placed the corpse at the foot of the July column; some
men, torches in their hands, formed into a circle, and all
the Federals, one after the other, came to place a last kiss
on the brow of the general, while the drums beat a salute.
The body, enveloped in a red flag, was then put into the coffin.
Yermorel, the general's brother, his aides-de-camp, and about
200 guards were standing up bareheaded. "There is he,"
cried Yermorel, "who was accused of treachery! One of the
first, he has given his life for the Commune. And we, what
are we doing here instead of imitating him?" He went on stig¬
matising cowardice and panics. His speech, usually intricate,
now flowed from him, heated by passion, like molten metal.
"Let us swear to leave here only to seek death!" This was
his last word; he was to keep it. The cannon a few steps
off had at intervals covered his voice; few of the men present
but shed tears.
Happy those who may have such funerals! Happy those
buried during the battle saluted by their cannon, wept over
by their friends.
At that same moment the Yersaillese agent who had flat¬
tered himself he could corrupt Dombrowski was being shot.
Towards mid-day the Yersaillese, vigorously pushing their
attack on the left bank, had stormed the Ecole des Beaux-
Arts, the Institute, the Mint, which its director, Camélinat,
left only at the last minute. On the point of being shut up
in the Ile Notre Dame, Ferré had given the order to evacuate
the Prefecture of Police and to destroy it. The 450 prisoners
arrested for slight offences were, however, first set at liberty;
one only, Yaysset, was retained and shot on the Pont-Neuf
before the statue of Henry IV. Just before his death he
uttered these strange words, "You will answer for my death
to the Comte de Fabrice." 1
The Yersaillese, neglecting the Prefecture, entered the Rue
Tarranes and the contiguous streets. They were held in check
for two hours at the barricade of the Place de l'Abbaye,
1 One of the commanders of the German troops.
344 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
which the inhabitants of the quarter helped to outflank.
Eighteen Federals were shot. More to the right the troops
penetrated into the Place St. Sulpiee, where they occupied
the mairie of the sixth arrondissement; thence they entered
the Rue St. Sulpiee on one side, and on the other penetrated
by the Rue de Yaugirard into the garden of the Luxem¬
bourg. After two days of struggle the brave Federals of
the Rue Vavin fell hack, and on their retreat blew up
the powder-magazine of the Luxembourg garden. The
commotion for a moment suspended the combat. The Palace
of the Luxembourg was not defended. Some soldiers crossed
the garden, broke down the rails facing the Rue Soufflot,
traversed the boulevard, and surprised the first barricade in
that street.
Three barricades were raised before the Panthéon; the
first at the entrance of the Rue Soufflot—it had just been
taken; the second in the centre; the third extending from
the mairie of the fifth arrondissement to the Ecole de Droit.
Yarlin and Lisbonne, hardly escaped from the Croix-Rouge,
had hastened up again to face the enemy. Unfortunately the
Federals would listen to no chief, remained on the defensive,
and, instead of attacking the handful of soldiers exposed at
the entrance of the Rue Soufflot, gave the reinforcements time
to arrive.
The hulk of the Versaillese reached the Boulevard St. Michel
by the Rues Racine and De l'Ecole de Médecine, which women
had defended. The St. Michel Bridge ceased firing for want
of munitions, so that the soldiers were able to pass over the
boulevard in a body, and got as far as the Place Maubert,
while at the same time on the right they remounted the Rue
Mouffetard. At four o'clock the height Ste. Geneviève, well-
nigh abandoned, was invaded by all its slopes and its few
defenders dispersed. Thus the Panthéon, like Montmartre,
fell almost without a struggle. As at Montmartre, too, the
massacres commenced immediately. Forty prisoners were shot
one after the other in the Rue St. Jacques, under the eyes
and by the orders of a colonel.
Rigault was killed in this neighbourhood. The soldiers
THE BATTLE IN THE STREETS. 345
iseeing a Federal officer knocking at the door of a house in the
Rue Gay-Lussac fired without hitting him. The door opened
and Rigault went in. The soldiers followed at full speed,
rushed into the house, seized the landlord, who proved his
identity, and hastened to deliver up Rigault. The soldiers
were dragging him to the Luxembourg, when, in the Rue
Royal-Collard, a Versaillese staff colonel met the escort, and
asked the name of the prisoner. Rigault bravely answered,
"Vive la Commune! Down with assassins!" He was im¬
mediately thrown against a wall and shot. May this courageous
end be counted to him!
When the fall of the Panthéon, so valiantly defended -in
June, 1848, became known in the mairie of the eleventh ar¬
rondissement, they at once cried out against traitors; but what
then had the Council and the Committee of Public Safety
done for the defence of this capital post? At the mairie, as
.at the Hôtel-de-Ville, they were deliberating.
At two o'clock the members of the Council, of the Central
Committee, superior officers, and the chiefs of the services
were assembled in the library. Delescluze spoke first, amidst
a profound silence, for the least whisper would have covered
his dying voice. He said all was not lost; that they must
make a great effort, and hold out to the last. Cheers
interrupted him. He called upon each one to state his
•opinion. "I propose," said he, "that the members of the
Commune, engirded with their scarfs, shall make a review of
all the battalions that can be assembled on the Boulevard
Voltaire. We shall then at their head proceed to the points
to be conquered."
The idea appeared grand, and transported those present.
Never since the sitting when he had said that certain delegates
•of the people would know how to die at their post, had Deles-
■cluze so profoundly moved all hearts. The distant fusillade,
the cannon of the Père Lachaise, the confused clamours of the
battalions surrounding the mairie, blended with, and at times
drowned his voice. Behold, in the midst of this defeat, this
old man upright, his eyes luminous, his right hand raised
•defying despair, these armed men fresh from the battle sus-
346
HISTOEY OF THE COMMUNE.
pending their breath to listen to this voice which seemed to
ascend from the tomb. There was no scene more solemn in
the thousand tragedies of that day.
There was a superabundance of most vigorous resolutions.
Open on the table lay a large case of dynamite; an imprudent
gesture might explode the Mairie. They spoke of cutting off
the bridges, of upheaving the sewers. What was the use of
this tall talking? Yery different munitions were needed now.
Where is the engineer-in-chief who had said that at his
bidding an abyss would open and swallow up the enemy?
He is gone. Gone too the chief of the general staff,
Since the execution of Beaufort, he has felt an ill wind
blowing for his epaulettes. More motions were made, and
motions will still be made to the end. The Central Com¬
mittee condescended to declare that it would subordinate
itself to the Committee of Public Safety. It seemed settled
at last that the chief of the 11th legion was to group all the
Federals who had taken refuge in the eleventh arrondissement;
perhaps he might succeed in forming the columns of which
Delescluze had spoken.
The Delegate at War then visited the defences. Solid
preparations were being made at the Bastille. In the Eue
St. Antoine, at the entrance of the place, a barricade pro¬
vided with three pieces of artillery was being finished;
another at the entrance of the faubourg covered the Eues
de Charenton and De la Eouqette; but here, as everywhere
else, the flanks were not guarded. Cartridges, shells, were
piled up along the houses, exposed to all projectiles. The
approaches to the eleventh arrondissement were hastily
armed, and at the intersection of the Boulevards Voltaire
and Bichard-Lenoir a barricade was being thrown up with
casks, pavements, and large bales of paper. This work, in¬
accessible from the front, was also to be turned. Before
it, at the entrance of the Boulevards Voltaire, Place du
Château d'Eau, a wall of pavement two yards high was
raised. Behind this mortal rampart, assisted by two pieces
of cannon, the Federals for twenty-four hours stopped all the
Versaillese columns debouching on the Place du Château
THE BATTLE IN THE STREETS. 347
d'Eau. On the right, the bottom of the Rues Oberkampf,
D'Angoulême, of the Faubourg du Temple, the Rue Fontaine-
au-Roi, and the Avenue des Amandiers were already on the
defensive. Higher up, in the tenth arrondissement, Brunei,
arrived that same morning from the Rue Royale, was again
to the fore, like Lisbonne, like Yarlin, eager for new perils.
A large barricade cut off the intersection of the Boulevards
Magenta and Strasbourg; the Rue du Chateau d'Eau was
barred, and the works of the Porte St. Martin and St. Denis,
at which they had worked day and night, were filling with
combatants.
Towards ten o'clock the Versaillese had been able to gain
possession of the Northern Railway station by turning the
Rue Stephenson and the barricades of the Rue de Dunkerque;
but the Strasbourg Railway, the second line of defence of La
Yillette, withstood their shock, and our artillery harassed them
greatly. On the Buttes Chaumont, Ranvier, who directed the
defence of these quarters, had established three howitzers of
12 cm., two pieces of 7 near the Temple de la Sybille, and
two pieces of 7 on the lower hill, while five cannon
enfiladed the Rue Puebla and protected the Rotonde. At
the Carrières d'Amérique there were two batteries of three
pieces; the pieces of the Père Lachaise fired incessantly at
the invaded quarters, seconded by cannon of large calibre at
the bastion 24.
The ninth arrondissement filled with fusillades. We lost
much ground in the Faubourg Poissonnière. Despite their
success in the Halles, the Versaillese were not able to get
into the third arrondissement, sheltered by the long arm
of the Boulevard Sébastopol, and we commanded the Rue
Turbigo by the Princé Eugène Barracks. The second ar¬
rondissement, almost totally occupied, still held out on the
banks of the Seine; from the Pont-Neuf the barricades of the
Avenue Victoria and Quai de Gèvres resisted till night. Our
gunboats having been abandoned, the enemy seized and re¬
armed them.
The only success of our defence was at the Butte aux Cailles,
where, under the impulsion of Wroblewski, it changed into
348 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
the offensive. During the night the Versaillese had ex¬
amined our positions, and at daybreak they mounted to
the assault. The Federals did not wait for them, and
rushed forward to meet them. Four times the Versaillese
were repulsed,four times they returned; four times they retreat¬
ed, and the soldiers, discouraged, no longer obeyed their officers.
Thus La Villette and the Butte aux Cailles, the two ex¬
tremities of our defence, kept their ground; but what gaps
all along the line! Of Paris, all theirs on Sunday, the Federals
now only possessed the eleventh, twelfth, nineteenth, and
twentieth arrondissements, and a part only of the third, fifth,
and thirteenth.
On that day the massacres took that furious flight which
in a few hours left St. Bartholomew's Day far behind. Till
then only the Federals or the people denounced had been
killed; now the soldiers knew neither friend nor foe. When
the Versaillese fixed his eye upon you, you must die;'when
he searched a house, nothing escaped him. "These are no
longer soldiers accomplishing a duty," said a conservative
journal, La France. And indeed these were hyenas, thirsting
for blood and pillage. In some places it sufficed to have a
watch to be shot. The corpses were searched,1 and the cor¬
respondents of foreign newspapers called those thefts the last
perquisition. And the same day M. Thiers had the effrontery
to tell the Assembly: "Our valiant soldiers conduct them¬
selves in such a manner as to inspire foreign countries with
the highest esteem and admiration."
Then, too, was invented that legend of the petroleuses,
which, born of fear and propagated by the press, cost hundreds
of unfortunate women their lives. The rumour was spread
that furies were throwing burning petroleum into the cellars.
Every woman badly dressed, or carrying a milk-can, a pail,
an empty bottle, was pointed out as a petroleuse, her clothes
torn to tatters, she was pushed against the nearest wall, and
killed with revolver-shots. The monstrously idiotical side of
the legend is that the petroleuses were supposed to operate
in the quarters occupied by the army.
Appendix XVIII. /
THE BATTLE IN THE STREETS. 349
The fugitives from the invaded quarters brought the news
of these massacres to the Mairie of the eleventh arrondisse¬
ment. There, within smaller compass and more menacing,
reigned the same confusion as at the Hôtel-de-Ville. The
narrow courts were full of waggons, cartridges, and powder;,
every step of the principal staircase was occupied by women
sewing sacks for the barricades. In the Salle des Mariages,,
whither Ferré had removed the office of Public Safety, the
delegate, assisted by two secretaries, gave orders, signed free
passes, questioned the people brought to him with the greatest
calm, and pronounced his decisions in a polite, soft, and low
voice. Farther on, in the rooms occupied by the War Office,,
some officers and chiefs of services received and expedited
despatches; some of them, as at the Hôtel-de-Ville, doing
their duty with perfect sangfroid. At this hour certain men
revealed extraordinary strength of character, especially among
the secondary actors of the movement. They felt that all was
lost, that they were about to die, perhaps even at the hands
of their own people, for the fever of suspicion had reached its
utmost degree of paroxysm; yet they remained in the furnace,,
their hearts calm, their minds lucid. Never had a Govern¬
ment, with the exception of that of the National Defence, more
resources, more intelligence, more heroism at its disposal than
the Council of the Commune; never was there one so inferior
to its electors.
At half-past seven a great noise was heard before the prison
of La Roquette, where the day before the three hundred
hostages, detained until then at Mazas, had been transported.
Amidst a crowd of guards, exasperated at the massacres,
stood a delegate of the Public Safety Commission, who
said, "Since they shoot our men, six hostages shall be
executed. Who will form the platoon?" "I! I!" was cried
from all sides. One advanced and said, "I avenge my
father;" another, "I avenge my brother." "As for me,"
said a guard, "they have shot my wife." Each one brought
forward his right to vengeance. Thirty men were chosen and
entered the prison.
The delegate looked over the jail register, pointed out the
350 HISTORY OP THE COMMUNE.
Archbishop Darboy, the President Bon jean, the banker Jecker,
the Jesuits Allard, Clerc, and Ducoudray; at the last moment
Jecker was replaced by the Curé Deguerry.
They were taken to the exercise-ground. Darboy stam¬
mered out, "I am not the enemy of the Commune. I have
done all I could. I have written twice to Versailles." He
recovered a little when he saw death was inevitable. Bonjean
could not keep on his legs. "Who condemns us?" said he.
"The justice of the people." "Oh, this is not the right one,"
replied the president. One of the priests threw himself
against the sentry-box and uncovered his breast. They
were led further on, and, turning a corner, met the
firing-party. Some men apostrophised them; the delegate
at once ordered silence. The hostages placed themselves
against the wall, and the officer of the platoon said to
them, "It is not we whom you must accuse of your death,
but the Versaillese, who are shooting the prisoners." He then
gave the signal and the guns were fired. The hostages fell
back in one line, at an equal distance from each other.
Darboy alone remained standing, wounded in the head, one
hand raised. A second volley laid him by the side of the
others.1
The blind justice of revolutions punishes in the first-comers
the accumulated crimes of their caste.
At eight o'clock the Versaillese closed in upon the barricade
of the Porte St. Martin. Their shells had long since set the
theatre on fire, and the Federals, pressed by this conflagration,
were obliged to fall back.
That night the Versaillese bivouacked in front of the
Strasbourg Railway, the Rue St. Denis, the Hôtel-de-Ville
(occupied towards nine o'clock by Vinoy's troops), the Ecole
Polytechnique, the Madelonnettes, and the Monsouris Park.
They presented a kind of fan, of which the fixed point was
formed by the Pont-au-Change, the right side by the thir-
1 At half-past eight o'clock in the Mairie of the eleventh arrondis¬
sement the delegate Genton made this recital, which we heard, and re¬
produce verbatim.
THE BATTLE IN THE STREETS.
351
teenth arrondissement, the left by the streets of the Faubourg
St. Martin and the Rue de Flandre, the arc by the fortifica¬
tions. The fan was about to close at Belleville, which formed
the centre.
Paris continued to burn furiously. The Porte St. Martin,
the St. Eustache Church, the Rue Royale, the Rue de Rivoli,
the Tuileries, the Palais-Royal, the Hôtel-de-Ville, the
Theatre-Lyrique, the left hank from the Légion d'Honneur
up to the Palais de Justice and the Prefecture de Police,
stood out bright red in the darkness of night. The caprices
of the fire displayed a blazing architecture of arches, cupolas,
spectral edifices. Great volumes of smoke, clouds of sparks
flying into the air, attested formidable explosions; every minute
stars lit up and died out again in the horizon. These were the
cannon of the fort of Bicêtre, of the Père Lachaise, and the
Buttes Chaumont, which fired on the invaded quarters. The
Yersaillese batteries answered from the Panthéon, the Troca-
déro, and Montmartre. Now the reports followed each other
at regular intervals; now there was a continuous thunder
along the whole line. They aimed at random, blindly, madly.
The shells often exploded in the midst of their career;
the whole town was enveloped in a whirl of flame and
smoke.
What men this handful of combatants, who, without chiefs,
without hope, without retreat, disputed their last pavements
as though they implied victory! The hypocritical reaction has
charged them with the crime of incendiarism, as if in war
fire were not a legitimate arm; as if the Yersaillese shells
had not set fire to at least as many edifices as those of the
Federals; as if the private speculation of certain men of
order had not its share in the ruins.1 And that same
bourgeois who spoke of 'Turning everything"2 before the
Prussians, calls , this people scoundrels because they preferred
1 Appendix XIX.
2 "Bum everything! I have heard these words from the most wise,
the most virtuous men."—Jules Favre, Enquête sur le 18 Mars, vol. ii.
p. 42. "Rather Moscow than Sedan," wrote during the first siege one
of these wise and virtuous men—M. Jules Simon.
352 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
to bury themselves in the ruins rather than abandon
their faith, their property, their families, to a coalition of
despots a thousand times more cruel and more lasting than
the foreigner.
At eleven o'clock two officers entered Delescluze's room
and informed him of the execution of the hostages. He
listened to the recital without ceasing to write, and then only
asked, "How did they die?" When the officers were gone,
Delescluze turned to the friend who was working with him,
and, hiding his face in his hands, "What a war!" cried he,
"what a war!" But he knew revolutions too well to lose him¬
self in bootless reflections, and, mastering his emotion, he ex¬
claimed, "We shall know how to die!"
During the whole night despatches succeeded each other
without intermission, all demanding cannon and men under
the threat of abandoning such or such a position.
But where to find cannon? And men began to be as rare
as the bronze.
( 353 )
CHAPTER XXX.
THURSDAY 2ÔTH—THE WHOLE LEFT BANK FALLS INTO THE
HANDS OF THE TROOPS—DELESCLUZE DIES—THE BRAS-
SARDIERS1 STIMULATE THE MASSACRE—THE MEMBERS
OF THE COUNCIL EVACUATE THE MAIRIE OF THE
ELEVENTH ARRONDISSEMENT.
A few thousand men could not indefinitely hold a line of
battle several miles long. When night had set in, many Fed¬
erals abandoned their barricades in order to snatch a little
rest. The Versaillese, who were on the look-out, took pos¬
session of their defences, and the glimmering of dawn saw the
tricolor where on the eve had floated the red flag.
In the darkness the Federals evacuated the greater part of
the tenth arrondissement, whose artillery pieces were trans¬
ported to the Château d'Eau. Brunei and the brave pupilles
de la Commune still stood their ground in the Bue Magnan
and on the Quay Jemappes, the troops holding the top of the
Boulevard Magenta.
On the left bank, the Versaillese erected batteries at the
Place d'Enfer, the Luxembourg, and the bastion 81. More
than fifty cannon and mitrailleuses were levelled at the Butte
aux Cailles; for, despairing of taking it by assault, Cissey
wished to crush it with his artillery. Wroblewski, on his
side, did not remain inactive. Besides the 175th and 176th
battalions, he had under his command the legendary 101st,
which was to the troops of the Commune what the 32nd
brigade had been to the army of Italy. Since the 3rd April
the 101st had not rested. Day and night, their guns hot,
1 Armlet conspirators.
z
354
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
they had roamed about the trenches, the villages, the fields;
the Versaillese of Neuilly, of Asnières, ten times fled before
them. They had taken three cannon from them, which, like
faithful mastiffs, followed them everywhere. All citizens of
the thirteenth arrondissement and the Mouffetard quarter,
undisciplined, undisciplinable, wild, rough, their clothes and
flag torn, obeying only one order, that to march forward,
mutineering when inactive, when hardly out of fire rendering
it necessary to plunge them into it again. Sérizier com¬
manded, or rather accompanied them; for indeed their rage
was their only commander. While at the front they attempted
surprises, seized outposts, kept the soldiers in alarm,
Wroblewski, uncovered on his right since the taking of the
Panthéon, secured his communications with the Seine by a
barricade on the Bridge of Austerlitz, and furnished the Place
Jeanne d'Arc with cannon, in order to check the troops who
might venture along the railway station.
That day M. Thiers dared to telegraph to the provinces that
Marshal MacMahon had just, for the last time, summoned the
Federals to surrender. This was an odious lie added to so
many others. Like Cavaignac in 1848, M. Thiers, on the con¬
trary, wanted to prolong the battle. He knew that his shells
were setting Paris on fire, that the massacre of the prisoners,
of the wounded, would fatally entail that of the hostages.
But what cared he for the fate of a few priests and a few
gendarmes? What cared the bourgeoisie if it triumphed
amidst ruins—if on these ruins it could write, "Paris waged
war with the privileged; Paris is no more!"
The Hôtel-de-Ville and the Panthéon in the power of the
troops, their whole efforts concentrated upon the Château
d'Eau, the Bastille, and the Butte aux Cailles. At four o'clock
Clinchant resumed his march towards the Château d'Eau. One
column, setting out-from the Rue Paradis, went up the Rues
du Château d'Eau and De Bondy; another advanced against
the barricade of the Boulevards Magenta and Strasbourg; while
a third from the Rue des Jeuneurs pushed on between the
boulevards and the Rue Turbigo. The corps Douay on the
right supported this movement, and endeavoured to remount
THE BATTLE IN THE STREETS. 355
the third arrondissement by the Rues Chariot and De
Saintonge. Yinoy advanced towards the Bastille by the small
streets that abut upon the Rue St. Antoine, the quays of the
right and of the left banks. Cissey, with more modest strategy,
cannonaded the Butte aux Cailles, before which his men had
so often turned tail.
Painful scenes were enacted in the forts. Wroblewski, whose
left wing was covered by them, relied for their preservation1
upon the energy of the member of the Council who had
assumed the functions of delegate. The evening before the
commander of Montrouge had abandoned that fort and had
retreated to Bicêtre with his garrison. The fort of Bicêtre
did not hold out much longer. The battalions declared that
they wanted to return to the town in order to defend their
quarters, and the delegate, in spite of his threats, was unable
to retain them; so, after having spiked their guns, the whole
garrison returned to Paris. The Versaillese occupied the two
evacuated forts, and there at once erected batteries against
the fort of Ivry and the Butte aux Cailles.
The general attack on the Butte did not begin till mid¬
day. The Versaillese followed the ramparts as far as the
Avenue d'Italie and the Route de Choisy, with the view of
making sure of the Place d'Italie, which they attacked from
the side of the Gobelins. The Avenues d'Italie and De Choisy
were defended by powerful barricades which they could not
dream of forcing; but that of the Boulevard St. Marcel,
protected on one side by the conflagration of the Gobelins,
could be turned by the numerous gardens intersecting this
quarter, and the Versaillese succeeded in doing this. They
first took possession of the Rue des Cordillières St. Marcel,
where twenty Federals who refused to surrender were mas¬
sacred, and then entered the gardens. For three hours a long
and obstinate fusillade enveloped the Butte aux Cailles, bat¬
tered down by the Versaillese cannon, six times as numerous
as Wroblewski's.
The garrison of Ivry arrived towards one o'clock. On leav¬
ing the fort they had set fire to a mine which sprung two
bastions. Soon after the Versaillese penetrated into the aban-
356 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
doned fort, and then there was no struggle, as M. Thiers tried
to make it appear in one of those bulletins in which he very
cleverly intermingled truth and falsehood.
Towards ten o'clock on the right bank the Versaillese
reached the barricade of the Faubourg St. Denis, near the
St. Lazare prison, outflanked and shot seventeen Federals.1
Thence they went to occupy the St. Laurent barricade at
the junction of the Boulevard Sébastopol, erected batteries
against the Château d'Eau, and by the Rue des Récollets
gained the Quay Valmy. On the night, their debouching
on the Boulevard St. Martin was retarded by the Rue de
Lanery, against which they fired from the Ambigu-Comique
Théâtre. In the third arrondissement they were stopped in
the Rue Meslay, Rue Nazareth, Rue du Yert-Bois, Rue
Chariot, Rue de Saintonge. The second arrondissement, in¬
vaded from all sides, was still disputing its Rue Montor-
gueuil. Nearer the Seine, Vinoy succeeded in entering the
Grenier d'Abondance by circuitous streets, and in order to
dislodge him the Federals set fire to this building, which over¬
looks the Bastille.
Three o'clock.—The Versaillese invaded the thirteenth ar¬
rondissement more and more. Their shells falling upon the
prison of the Avenue d'Italie, the Federals evacuated it, at
the same time taking out the prisoners, amongst whom
were the Dominicans of Arcueil, who had been brought back
to Paris with the garrison of Bicêtre. The sight of these
men, doubly odious, exasperated the combatants, whose guns,
so to say, spontaneously went off, and a dozen of the apostles
of the Inquisition fell under the bullets at the moment they
were running away by the Avenue. All the other prisoners
were respected.
1 Summoned several times to surrender, the Federals answered, "Vive
la Commune!" They were thrown against the wall of the prison and
fell with the same cry, one of them still clasping the red flag of the bar
rieade. Before such faith the Versaillese officer felt a little ashamed.
He turned to the people who had hurried up from the neighbouring
houses, and several times repeated by way of excuse, "It is their fault!
Why did they not surrender!" As though all Federals were not regu¬
larly and mercilessly massacred by them.
THE BATTLE IN THE STREETS. 357
Since the morning Wroblewski had received the order to
fall back upon the eleventh arrondissement. He persisted
in holding ont, and had shifted the centre of his resistance
a little further to the rear, to the Place Jeanne d'Arc.
But the Versaillese, masters of the Avenue des Gobelins,
made their junction with the columns of the Avenues d'Italie
and Choisy in the thirteenth arrondissement. One of their
detachments continuing to file along the rampart, reached
the embankment of the Orleans Railway, and the red-coats
were already showing themselves on the Boulevard St. Marcel.
Wroblewski, almost hemmed in on all sides, was at last forced
to consent to a retreat. Moreover, the subaltern chiefs
had, like their general, received the order to fall back; and
so, protected by the fire of the Austerlitz Bridge, the able
defender of the Butte aux Cailles passed the Seine in good
order with his cannon and a thousand men. A certain
number of Federals, who obstinately remained behind in
the thirteenth arrondissement, were surrounded and taken
prisoners.
The Versaillese did not dare to disturb Wroblewski's retreat,
although they held part of the Boulevard St. Marcel, the Or¬
leans Station, and their gunboats were ascending the Seine.
The latter were delayed for a moment at the entrance of the
St. Martin's Canal, but putting on full steam, they overcame
the obstacle, and in the evening lent assistance in the attack
on the eleventh arrondissement.
The whole left bank now belonged to the enemy; the
Bastille and the Château d'Eau became the centre of the
combat.
In the Boulevard Voltaire might now be seen all the true-
hearted men who had not perished, or whose presence was not
indispensable in their quarters. One of the most active was
Vermorel, who during the whole struggle showed a courage
composed at once of fire and coolness. On horseback, his red
scarf tied round him, he rode from barricade to barricade,
encouraging the men, fetching and bringing reinforcements.
At the Mairie another meeting was held towards twelve o'clock.
Twenty-two members of the Council were present; about ten
358 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
more ,were defending their, arrondissements, the others had
disappeared. Arnold explained that the evening before, the
secretary of Mr. Washburne, the ambassador of the United
States, had come to offer the mediation of the Germans.
The Commune, he said, had now only to send commissaries
to Yineennes in. order to regulate the conditions of an
armistice. The secretary, introduced to the meeting, renewed
this declaration, and the discussion began. Deleseluze
showed great reluctance to accept this plan. What motive
induced the foreigner to intervene? To put an end to the
conflagration and preserve their guarantee, he was answered.
But their guarantee was the Versaillese Government, whose
triumph was no longer doubtful at this moment. Others
gravely asserted that the inveterate defence of Paris had in¬
spired the Prussian with admiration. No one asked whether
this insensate proposition did not Ride some snare; if the
pretended secretary were not a simple spy. They clung like
drowning men to this last chance of salvation. Arnold even
set forth the basis of an armistice similar to that of the Central
Committee. Four of the members present, and amongst them
Deleseluze, were charged to accompany the American secretary
to Vincennes.
At three o'clock they reached the gate of Yineennes, but
the commissary of police refused to let them pass. They
showed their scarfs, their cards of members of the Council.
The commissary insisted upon a safe-conduct from the Com¬
mission of Public Safety. While the discussion was going
on some Federals came up. "Where are you going?" said
they. "To Yineennes." "Why?" "On a mission." A pain¬
ful controversy ensued. The Federals thought the members
of the Council wanted to abscond, and they were even about
to ill-use them, when some one recognised Deleseluze. His
name saved the others; but the commissary still insisted upon
a safe-conduct.
One of the delegates run off to the Mairie of the eleventh
arrondissement to procure it,, but, even on Ferré's order, the'
■ guards refused to lower the drawbridge. Deleseluze addressed
them, said that the common weal of all was at stake; but
THE BATTLE IN THE STREETS. 359
prayers and threats proved alike unable to overcome the idea
of a defection. Delescluze came back shivering all over. For
one moment he had been suspected of cowardice; this was to
him a death-blow.
Before the mairie he found a crowd shouting at some flags,
surmounted by eagles, which had just, they-said, been taken
from the Yersaillese. Wounded were being brought from the
Bastille. Mademoiselle Dimitrieff, wounded herself, supported
Frankel, wounded at the barricade of the Faubourg St. An¬
toine. Wroblewski just arriving from the Butte aux Cailles,
Delescluze offered him the command-in-chief. "Have you a
few thousand resolute men?" asked Wroblewski. "A few
hundred at most," answered the delegate. Wroblewski could
not accept any responsibility of command under such unequal
conditions, and continued to fight as a simple soldier. He
was the only general of the Commune who had showed the
qualities of a chef-de-corps. He always asked to have those
battalions sent him which everybody else declined, undertaking
to utilise them.
The attack was coming nearer and nearer the Château
d'Eau. This place, constructed with the object of checking
the faubourgs, and opening into eight large avenues, had not
been really fortified. The Yersaillese, masters of the Folies-
Dramatiques Théâtre and of the Rue du Château d'Eau,
attacked it by turning the Prince Eugène Barracks.
House by house they tore the Rue Magnan from the pupilles
de la Commune. Brunei, after facing the enemy for four days,
fell wounded in the thigh. The pupilles carried him away
on a litter across the Place du Château d'Eau amidst a shower
of bullets.
From the Rue Magnan the Versaillese soon reached the
barracks, and the Federals, too few in number to defend this
vast monument, had to evacuate it.
The fall of this position uncovered the Rue Turbigo, thus
enabling the Yersaillese to occupy the whole upper part of
the third arrondissement, and to surround the Conservatoire
des Arts et Métiers. After a rather long struggle the Federals
abandoned the barricade of the Conservatoire, leaving behind
360 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
them a loaded mitrailleuse. A woman also remained. As soon
as the soldiers were within range she discharged the mitrail¬
leuse at them.
The barricades of the Boulevards Voltaire and Dejazet's
Theatre had henceforth to sustain the whole fire of the Prince
Eugène Barracks, the Boulevard Magenta, the Boulevard St-
Martin, the Rue du Temple, and the Rue Turbigo. Behind
their fragile shelter the Federals gallantly received this
avalanche. How many men have been called heroes who
never showed a hundredth part of this simple courage, with¬
out any stage effects, without a history, which shone forth
during these days in a thousand places in Paris! At the
Chateau d'Eau a young girl of nineteen, rosy and charming,
with black, curling hair, dressed as a marine fusileer, fought
desperately a whole day. At the same place a lieutenant was
killed in front of the barricade; a child of fifteen, Dauteuille,
went to pick up the képi of the dead man in the thick
of the bullets, and brought it back amidst the cheers of his
companions.
For in the battle of the streets, as in the open field, the
children proved themselves as brave as the men. At a barri¬
cade of the Faubourg du Temple the most indefatigable gunner
was a child. The barricade taken, all its defenders were shot,
and the child's turn also came. He asked for three minutes'
respite; "so that he could take his mother, who lived op¬
posite, his silver watch, in order that she might at least not
lose everything." The officer, involuntarily moved, let him
go, not thinking to see him again; but three minutes after
the child cried, "Here I am!" jumped on to the pavement,
and nimbly leant against the wall near the corpses of his
comrades. Paris will never die as long as she brings forth
such people.
The Place du Château d'Eau was ravaged as by a cyclone.
The walls crumbled beneath the shells and bombs; enormous
blocks were thrown up; the lions of the fountains perforated
or overthrown, the basin surmounting it shattered. Fire burst
out from twenty houses. The trees were leafless, and their
broken branches hung like limbs all but parted from the
THE BATTLE IN THE STREETS.
361
main body. The gardens, turned up, sent forth clouds
of dust. The invisible hand of death alighted upon each
, stone.
At a quarter to seven, near the Mairie of the eleventh
. arrondissement, we saw Delescluze, Jourde, and about a
hundred Federals marching in the direction of the Chateau
•d'Eau. Delescluze wore his ordinary dress, black hat, coat,
. and trousers, his red scarf, little conspicuous as was his wont,
tied round his waist. Without arms, he lent on a cane.
Apprehensive of some panic at the Château d'Eau, we fol¬
lowed the delegate. Some of us stopped at the St. Ambroise
1 Church to get arms. We then met a merchant from Alsace,
who, exasperated at those who had betrayed his country, had
been fighting for five days, and had just been severely
wounded; farther on, Lisbonne, who, like Brunei, having too
• often defied death, had at last fallen at the Chateau d'Eau;
he was being brought back almost dead; and finally, Yermorel,
wounded by the side of Lisbonne, whom Theisz and Jaclard
were carrying off on a litter, leaving behind him large drops
• of blood. We thus remained a little behind Delescluze. At
about eighty yards from the barricade the guards who ac¬
companied him kept back, for the projectiles obscured the
• entrance of the boulevard.
Delescluze still walked forward. Behold the scene; we
have witnessed it; let it be engraved in the annals of
history. The sun was setting. The old exile, unmindful
whether he was followed, still advanced at the same pace,
the only living being on the road. Arrived at the barricade,
he bent off to the left and mounted upon the paving-stones.
For the last time his austere face, framed in his white beard,
appeared to us turned towards death. Suddenly Delescluze
• disappeared. He had fallen as if thunderstricken on the Place
du Château d'Eau.
Some men tried to raise him. Three out of four fell dead.
The only thing to be thought of now was the barricade, the
rallying of its few defenders. A member of the Council,
Johannard, almost in the middle of the boulevard, raising
his gun, and weeping with rage, cried to those who hesitated,
362 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
"No! you are not worthy of defending the Commune!" Night
set in. We return'ed heart-broken, leaving, abandoned to the
outrages of an adversary without respect for death, the body
ofourfriend.
He had forewarned no one, not even his most intimate
friends. Silent, having for confidant only his severe con¬
science, Delescluze walked to the barricade as the old Mon¬
tagnards went to the scaffold. An eventful life had exhausted
his strength; he had but a breath left, and he gave it.
The Versaillese have stolen his body, but his memory will
remain enshrined in the heart of the people as long as
France shall be the mother-country of the Revolution. He
lived only for Justice. That was his talent, his science, the
pole-star of his life. He proclaimed her, confessed her,
through thirty years of exile, prisons, insult, disdaining
the persecutions that crushed him. A Jacobin, he fell with
the1 men of the people to defend her. It was his recom-
jpeiise to die for her, his hands free, in the open day¬
light, at his own time, not afflicted by the sight of the
executioner.
Compare the conduct of the Minister of War of the
Commune with the cowardice of the Bonapartist Min¬
ister and generals escaping death by surrendering their
swords.
The whole evening the Versaillese attacked the entrance
of the Boulevard Voltaire, protected by the conflagration of
the two corner houses. On the side of the Bastille they did
not get beyond the Place Royale, but they were breaking into
the twelfth arrondissement. Under the shelter of the wall of
the quay, they had in the course of the day penetrated beneath
the Austerlitz Bridge; in the evening, protected by their gum-
boats and the batteries of the Jardin des Plantes, they pushed
as far as Mazas.
Our right wing held out better. The Versaillese had not
been able to proceed further than the Eastern Railway line.
From afar they attacked the Rue d'Aubervilliers, aided by
the fire of the Rotonde. Ranvier vigorously cannonaded
Montmartre, when a despatch from the Committee of Public-
THE BATTLE IN THE STREETS.
363
Safety informed him that the red flag was floating: "from the
Moulin de la Galette. Ranvier, unable to believe this, refused
to cease firing. ? ; !
In the evening the Yersaillese formed in front of the Fed¬
erals a broken line, commencing from the Eastern Railway,
passing the Château d'Eau and the Bastille, and ending at thé
Lyons Railway. There remained to the Commune but two
.arrondissements intact, the nineteenth and twentieth, and
about half of the eleventh and twelfth.
The Paris of Versailles no longer presented a civilised aspect;
Fear, hate, and fiendish brutishness smothered all feelings of
humanity. It was a universal "furious madness," said the
Siècle of the 26th. "One no longer distinguishes the just from
the unjust, the innocent from the guilty. The life of citizens
weighs no more than a hair. For a cry, for a word, one is
arrested, shot." The ventilators of the cellars were blocked
up by order of the army, which wanted to give credit to
the legend of the petroleuses. The National Guards of order
crept out from their lurking-places, proud of their armlets,
offering their services to the officers, ransacking the houses,
revindicating the honour of presiding at the fusillades. In
the tenth arrondissement the former mayor, Dubail, assisted
by the commander of the 109th battalion, led the soldiers
to hunt those who had formerly been under his administra¬
tion. Thanks to the brassardiers, the tide of prisoners swelled
so that it became necessary to centralise the carnage. The
victims were pushed into the mairies, the barracks, the
public edifices, where prevotal courts were organised, and
shot in troops. When the fusillade proved insufficient
the mitrailleuse mowed them down. All did not die at once,
and in the night there arose from these bleeding heaps ghastly
cries of agony.
The shades of night brought back the spectacle of the
conflagrations. Where the rays of the sun had only shown
sombre clouds, pyramids of fire now appeared. The Grenier
d'Abondance illuminated the Seine far beyond the fortifica¬
tions. The column of the Bastille, entirely perforated by the
shells, which had set its covering of crowns and flags on fire,
364 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
blazed like a gigantic torch. The Boulevard Yoltaire was
burning on the side of the Château d'Eau.
The death of Delescluze had been so simple and so rapid,
that even at the Mairie of the eleventh arrondissement it was
doubted. Towards midnight some members of the Council
agreed to evacuate the Mairie. What ! always fly before powder
and shot! Is the Bastille taken? Does not the Boulevard
Yoltaire still hold out? The whole strategy of the Committee
of Public Safety, its whole plan of battle, was to retreat.
At two o'clock in the morning, when a member of the Com¬
mune was wanted to support the barricade of the Chateau
d'Eau, only Gambon was found, asleep in a corner. An officer
awoke him and begged his pardon. The worthy Republican
answered, "It is as well it should be I as another; I have
lived," and he departed. But the balls already swept the
Boulevard Yoltaire up to the St. Ambroise Church. The
barricade was deserted.
( 365 )
CHAPTEK XXXI.
"Le commandant Ségoyer a été pris par les scélérats gui défendaient la
Bastille, et, sans respect des lois de la guerre, a été immédiatement
fusillé."—M. Thiers aux Préfets, le 27 Mai.
THE RESISTANCE CENTRES IN BELLEVILLE—FRIDAY, FORTY-
EIGHT HOSTAGES ARE SHOT IN THE RUE HAXO—SATUR¬
DAY 27TH, THE WHOLE TWENTIETH ARRONDISSEMENT IS
INVADED THE PÈRE LACHAISE IS TAKEN SUNDAY
28TH, THE BATTLE ENDS AT ELEVEN O'CLOCK IN THE
MORNING—MONDAY 29TH, THE FORT OF VINCENNES IS
SURRENDERED.
The soldiers continuing their nocturnal surprises, got hold
of the deserted barricades of the Eue d'Aubervilliers and the
Boulevard de la- Chapelle. On the side of the Bastille they
occupied the barricade of the Eue St. Antoine at the corner
of the Eue Castex, the station of the Lyons Eailway, and the
Mazas prison; in the third, all the abandoned defences of the
market and of the Square du Temple. They reached the first
houses of the Boulevard Voltaire, and established themselves
at the Magasins Eéunis.
In the darkness of the night a Versaillese officer was sur¬
prised by our outposts of the Bastille and shot; "without re¬
specting the laws of war," said M. Thiers the next day. As
though during the four days that he had been mercilessly
shooting thousands of prisoners, old men, women, and children,.
M. Thiers obeyed any other law than that of the savages.
The attack recommenced at daybreak. At La Villette the
Versaillese, crossing the Eue d'Aubervilliers, turned and
occupied the abandoned gasworks; in the centre, they got
as far as the Cirque Napoleon; on the right, in the twelfth
366 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
arrondissement, they invaded the bastions nearest the river
without a struggle. One detachment went up the embank¬
ment of the Yincennes Railway and occupied the station, while
another took possession of the Boulevard Mazas, the Avenue
Lacuée, and penetrated into the Faubourg St. Antoine. The
Bastille was thus close pressed on its right flank, while the
troops of the Place Royale attacked it on the left by the Boule¬
vard Beaumarchais.
The sun did not shine forth. This five days' cannonade had
drawn on the rainfall that usually accompanies great battles.
The fusillade had lost its sharp, quick voice, but rolled on in
muffled tones. The men, harassed, wet to the skin, hardly
distinguished through the misty veil the point whence the
attack came. The shells of a Versaillese battery established
at the Orleans Railway station disturbed the entrance of the
Faubourg St. Antoine. At seven o'clock the presence of
soldiers at the top of the faubourg was announced. The Fed¬
erals hurried thither with their cannon. If they do not hold
■out, the Bastille will be turned.
They did hold out. The Rue d'Aligre and the Avenue
Lacuée vied with each other in devotion. Intrenched in the
houses, the Federals fell, but neither yielded nor retreated;
and, thanks to their self-sacrifice, the Bastille for six hours
still disputed its shattered barricades and ruined houses. Each
stone had its legend in this estuary of the Revolution.
Here encased in the wall is a bullet launched in 1789
against the fortress. Leaning against the same wall the
sons of the combatants of June fought for the -same pave¬
ment as their fathers. Here the conservatives of 1848 gave
went to their rage; but what was their fury compared with
that of 1871? The house at the corner of the Rue de la
Roquette, the angle of the Rue de Charenton, disappeared
like the scenery of a theatre, and amidst these ruins, under
these burning beams, some men fired their cannon, twenty
times raised up the red flag, as often overthrown by the
Versaillese balls. Powerless as it well knew to triumph over
an entire army, the old glorious place will at least succumb
honourably. *
THE BATTLE IN" THE STREETS. 367
r How many were there at mid-day? Hundreds, since at
night hundreds of corpses lay around the chief barricade. In
the Rue Crozatier they were dead; they were dead too in the
Rue d'Aligre, killed in the struggle or after the combat. And
how they died! In the Rue Crozatier an artillerist of the
army, gone over to the people on the 18th March, was sur¬
rounded. "We are going to shoot you," cried the soldiers.
He, shrugging his shoulders, answered, "We can only die
once!" Farther on an old man was struggling; the officer by
a refinement of cruelty wanted to shoot him upon a heap of
filth. "I fought bravely," said the old man; "I have the right
not to die in the mire."
Indeed they died well everywhere. That same day Millière,
arrested on the left bank of the Seine, was taken to Çissey's
staff. This Imperialist general, ruined by the vilest de¬
bauchery, and who terminated his Ministerial career by
treachery,1 had made of his headquarters at the Luxembourg
one of the slaughter-houses of the left bank. Millière's rôlè
during the Commune had been one of mere conciliation,
and his polemic in the journals entirely one of doctrine,
and of a most elevated character; but the hatred of the
officers for every Socialist, the hatred of Jules Favre, lay in
wait for him. The assassin, the staff-captain Garcin,2 has
recounted his crime, head erect.3 Before history we must let
him speak.
"Millière was brought in when we were breakfasting with
the general at the restaurant De Tournon, near the Luxem¬
bourg. We heard a great noise, and went out. I was told,
'It is Millière.' I took care that the crowd did not take
justice into its own hands. He did not come into, the Luxem¬
bourg; he was stopped at the gate. I addressed myself to
him, and said, 'You are Millière?' 'Yes, but you know
1 Minister of War from 1871, he was in 1876, notwithstanding the'
desperate efforts of MacMahon, expelled from the Ministry, partly be-r
cause of irregularities discovered in his budget, partly for having let his;
mistress, a German, take the plan of one of the new forts round Paris,
which was transmitted to Berlin.
8 Since promoted to a higher grade.
8 Enquête sur le 18 Mars, vol. ii. p. 239.
368 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
that I am a deputy.' 'That may be, but I think you
have lost your character of deputy. Besides, there is a
deputy amongst us, M. de Quinsonnas, who will recognise
you.'
"I then said to Millière that the general's orders were that
he was to be shot. He said to me, 'Why?'
"I answered him, 'I only know your name. I have read
articles by you that have revolted me' (probably the articles
on Jules Favre). 'You are a viper, that one crushes under
one's feet. You detest society.' He stopped, saying, with a
significant air, 'Oh, yes! I indeed hate this society.' 'Well,
it will remove you from its bosom; you are going to be shot.'
'This is summary justice, barbarity, cruelty.' 'And all the
cruelty you have committed, do you take that for nothing?'
At any rate, since you say you are Millière, there is nothing
else to be done.'
"The general had ordered that he was to be shot at the-
Panthéon, on his knees, to ask pardon of society for all the:
ill he had done. He refused to be shot kneeling. I said to
him, 'It is the order; you will be shot on your knees, and not
otherwise.' He played a little comedy, opening his coat, and
baring his breast before the firing party. I said to him, 'You
are acting; you want them to say how you died; die quietly,
that will be the -best.' 'I am free in my own interest and
for the sake of my Cause to do as I like.' 'So be it; kneel
down.' Then he said to me, 'I will only do so if you force
me down by two men.' I had him forced on his knees,
and then his execution was proceeded with. He cried,
Wive l'humanité!' He was about to cry something else when
he fell dead." 1
An officer ascended the steps, approached the corpse,
and discharged his chassepôt into the left temple. Millière's
head rebounded, and, falling back, burst open, black with
powder, seemed to look at the frontispiece of the monu¬
ment. •
"Vive l'humanité!" The word implies two causes. "I care
as much for the liberty of other people as for that of France,"
1 See Appendix XX.
THE BATTLE IE" THE STREETS. 369
said a Federal to a reactionist.1 In 1871, as in 1793, Paris
combats for all the oppressed.
The Bastille succumbed about two o'clock. La Villette
still struggled on. In the morning the barricade at the corner
of the boulevard and of the Rue de Flandre had been sur¬
rendered by its commander. The Federals concentrated in
the rear along the line of the canal, and barricaded the Rue
de Crimée. The Rotonde, destined to support the principal
shock, was reinforced by a barricade on the quay of the
Loire. The 269th, which for two days had withstood the
enemy, recommenced the struggle behind the new positions.
This line from La Villette being of great extent, Ranvier
and Passedouet went to fetch reinforcements in the twentieth
arrondissement, where the remnants of all the battalions took
refuge.
They crowded round the Mairie, that distributed lodgings
and orders for food. Hear the church the waggons and horses
were noisily put up. The headquarters and different services
were established in the Rue Haxo at the Cité Vincennes, a
series of constructions intersected by gardens.
The very numerous barricades in the inextricable streets of
Ménilmontant were almost all turned against the boulevard.
The strategical route, which on this point overlooks the Père
Lachaise, the Buttes Chaumont, and the exterior boulevard,
was not even guarded.
From the heights of the ramparts the Prussians were
discernible in arms. According to the terms of a conven¬
tion previously concluded between Versailles and the Prince
of Saxony, the German army since Monday invested Paris
on the north and east. It had cut off the Railway of the
North, manned the canal line from St. Denis, posted sen¬
tinels from St. Denis to Charenton, erected barricades on all
the routes. From five o'clock in the evening of Thursday
5,000 Bavarians marched down from Fontenay, Nogent, and
Charenton, forming an impenetrable cordon from the Marne
1 Heard and reported by the author of the book Le Fond de la Société
sous la Commune. The author wittily adds, " What the devil was this
imbecile solicitous about ?"
2 a
370 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
to Montreuil; and during the evening another corps of 5,000
men occupied Yincennes, with eighty artillery pieces. At
nine o'clock he invested the fort and disarmed the Federals,
who wanted to return to Paris. He did still better—
trapped the game for Versailles. Already during the siege
the Prussians had given an indirect support to the Ver-
saillese army; their cynical collusion with the French con¬
servatives showed itself undisguised during the eight days
of May. Of all M. Thiers' crimes, one of the most odious
will certainly he his introducing the conquerors of France
into our civil discords, and begging their help in order to
crush Paris.
Towards mid-day fire broke out in the west part of the docks
of La Villette, an immense warehouse of petroleum, essences,
and combustible matters, set alight by the shells from both
sides. This conflagration forced us to leave the barricades of
the Rues de Flandre and Riquet. The Versaillese, attempting
to traverse the canal in boats, were stopped by the barricades
of the Rue de Crimée and the Rotonde.
Yinoy continued to ascend the twelfth arrondissement after
having left the few thousand men necessary for the perquisi¬
tions and executions at the Bastille. The barricade of the
Rue de Reuilly, at the corner of the Faubourg St. Antoine,
held out a few hours against the soldiers who cannonaded it
from the Boulevard Mazas. At the same time the Versaillese,
marching along the Boulevard Mazas and the Rue Picpus,
moved towards the Place du Trône, which they tried to out¬
flank by the ramparts. The artillery prepared and covered
their slightest movement. Generally they charged the pieces
at the corner of the roads they wanted to reduce, advanced
them, fired, and drew them back again under shelter. The
Federals could only reach this invisible enemy from the
heights; but it was impossible to centralise the artillery of the
Commune, for each barricade wanted to possess its gun with¬
out caring where it carried.
There was no longer authority of any kind. At the head¬
quarters a pell-mell of bewildered officers. The march of
the enemy was only known by the arrival of the survivors
THE BATTLE IN THE STREETS. 371
of the battalions. Such was the confusion, that in this place,
mortal to traitors, there might he seen, in a general's uniform,
Du Bisson, turned out of La Villette. The few members of
the Council to be met with in the twentieth arrondissement
wandered about at hazard, absolutely ignored; but they
had not foregone deliberating. On the Friday there were
twelve of them in the Rue Haxo, when the Central Committee
arrived and claimed the dictatorship. It was given them,
in spite of some who protested, Yarlin being added to their
number. The Committee of Public Safety was no longer
heard of.
The only one of its members who played any part was
Ranvier, splendidly energetic in the combats. During these
days he was the soul of La Villette and Belleville, urging on
the men, watching over everything. On the 26th he issued
a proclamation: "Citizens of the twentieth arrondissement!
if we succumb you know what fate is in store for you. To
arms! Be vigilant, above all in the night. I ask you to
execute our orders faithfully. Lend your support to the nine¬
teenth arrondissement; help it to repulse the enemy. There
lies your safety. Do not wait for Belleville itself to be at¬
tacked. Forward then. Vive la Republique!"
But very few read or obeyed. The shells from Montmartre,
which from the day before crushed Belleville and Ménil-
montant, the cries, the sight of the wounded, dragging them¬
selves from house to house in search of succour, the too
evident signs of the approaching end, precipitated the ordinary
phenomena of defeat. The people became fierce and suspi¬
cious. Any individual without a uniform ran the risk of
being shot if he had not a well-known name to recommend
him. The news that came from all points of Paris aug¬
mented the anguish and despair. It was known that the
soldiers gave no quarter; that they despatched the wounded,
killing even doctors;1 that every individual taken in a National
Guard's uniform, shod with regulation boots, or whose clothes
showed traces of stripes recently unstitched, was shot in the
street or in the yard of his house; that the combatants who
1 Appendix XXI.
372 HISTORY OP THE COMMUNE.
surrendered, under the promise of having their lives spared,
were massacred; that thousands of men, women, children,
and aged people were taken to Versailles bareheaded, and
often killed on the way; that it sufficed to be related to a
combatant, or to offer him a refuge in order to share his
fate; the numberless executions of so-called petroleuses were
recounted.
About six o'clock forty-eight gendarmes, ecclesiastics, and
civilians marched up the Rue Haxo between a detachment of
Federals. At first they were supposed to be prisoners recently
taken, and defiled in the midst of perfect silence. But the
rumour spread that they were the hostages of La Roquette,
and that they were being led to death. The crowd grew larger,
followed, apostrophised, but did not strike them. At half-
past six the cortège reached the Cité Vincennes; the gates
closed upon them, and the crowd dispersed in the neighbouring
grounds.
The escort tumultuously pushed the hostages against a
kind of trench at the foot of a wall. The chassepots were
being levelled, when a member of the Council said, "What
are you doing? There is a powder-magazine here; you
will blow us up." He thus hoped to delay the execution.
Others, quite distracted, went from group to group, attempt¬
ing to discuss, to appease the wrath. They were repulsed,
menaced, and their notoriety hardly sufficed to save them
from death.
The chassepots went off on all sides; by degrees the hostages
fell. Outside the crowd applauded. And yet for two days the
soldiers taken prisoners passed through Belleville without ex¬
citing a murmur; but these gendarmes, these spies, these
priests, who for fully twenty years had trampled upon Paris,
represented the Empire, the bourgeoisie, the massacres under
their most hateful forms.
That same morning Jecker, the accomplice of Morny, had
been shot. The Council had not known how to punish him;
the justice of the people alighted upon him. A platoon
of four Federals went to fetch him at La Roquette. He
appeared to resign himself quietly, and even chatted on the
THE BATTLE IN THE STREETS.
373
way. "You are mistaken," said he, "if you think I did a good
piece of business. Those people cheated me." He was
executed in the open grounds adjoining the Père Lachaise
from the side of Charonne.
During this day the troops did not execute any great
movements. The corps Douay and Clinchant were stationed
on the Boulevard Richard-Lenoir. The double barricade in
the rear of Bataclan stopped the invasion of the Boulevard
•Voltaire; a Yersaillese general was killed in the Rue St.
"Sébastian; the Place du Trône still held out by means of the
Philippe-Auguste barricade. The Rotonde and docks of La
Villette also prolonged their resistance. Towards the close
of the day the conflagration spread to the part of the docks
nearest the Mairie.
In the evening, the army hedged in the defence between
the fortifications and a curved line which from the slaughter¬
houses of La Villette extended to the gate of Vincennes,
passing by the St. Martin Canal, the Boulevard Richard-
Lenoir, and the Rue du Eaubourg St. Antoine—Ladmirault
and Vinoy occupying the two extremities, Douay and
Clinchant the centre.
The night of the Friday to Saturday was sombre and feverish
in Ménilmontant and Belleville, ravaged by the shells. At the
turning of each street the sentinels demanded-the watchword
(Bouchotte-Belleville), and often even that did not suffice, and
one had to prove being sent upon an errand. Every chief of
a barricade claimed the right to stop your passage. The re¬
mainder of the battalions continued arriving in disorder, and
encumbered all the houses. The majority finding no shelter,
rested in the open air, amidst the shells, always saluted with
cries of "Vive la Commune!"
In the Grande Rue de Belleville some National Guards
carried coffins on their crossed muskets, some men preceding
them with torches, the drums beating. These combatants,
who amidst the shells silently interred their comrades, ap¬
peared in touching grandeur. They were themselves at the
gates of death.
In the night the barricades of the Rue d'Allemagne were
374
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
abandoned. A thousand men at the utmost had for two days
kept in check Ladmirault's 25,000 soldiers. Almost all these
brave men were sedentary guards and children.
The humid glimmer of the Saturday morning discovered
a sinister prospect. The fog was dense and penetrating, the
soil steeped in moisture. Clouds of white smoke rose slowly
above the rain; it was the fusillade. The Federals shivered
under their drenched cloaks.
Since daybreak barricades of the strategic route, the gates
of Montreuil and Bagnolet, were occupied by the troops, who
without resistance invaded Charonne. At seven o'clock they
established themselves in the Place du Trône, whose defences
had been abandoned. At the entrance of the Boulevard
Voltaire the Versaillese erected a battery of six pieces against
the Mairie of the eleventh arrondissement. Henceforth cer¬
tain of victory, the officers wanted to triumph noisily. This
barricade, against which they fired during the whole day of
the 27th, had but two pieces of the most irregular projection.
Many a Versaillese shell strayed to the legs of the statue of
Voltaire, who, With his sardonic smile, seemed to remind
his bourgeois descendants of the "beau tapage" he had prom¬
ised them.
At La Villette the soldiers deviated from the line on all
sides, passed by the fortifications and attacked the Rues
Puebla and De Crimée. Their left, still engaged in the upper
part of the tenth arrondissement, endeavoured to gain pos¬
session of all its streets leading to the Boulevard de la Villette.
Their batteries of the Rue de Flandre, of the ramparts, and
the Rotonde united their fire to that of Montmartre, and
whelmed the Buttes Chaumont with shells. The barricade
of the Rue Puebla yielded towards ten o'clock. A saîLor who
had remained alone, hidden behind the paving-stones, awaited
the Versaillese, discharged his revolver at them, and then,
hatchet in hand, dashed into the midst of their ranks. The
enemy deployed in all the adjacent streets up to the Rue
Ménadier, steadily held by our tirailleurs. At the Place des
Fêtes two of our pieces enfiladed the Rue de Crimée and pro¬
tected our right flank.
THE BATTLE IN THE STREETS, 375
At eleven o'clock nine or ten members of the Conncil met
in the Rue Haxo. One of them, Jules Allix, whom his col¬
leagues had been obliged to shut up as mad during the Com¬
mune, came up radiant. According to him, all was for the
best; the quarters of the centre were dismantled; they had only
to descend thither. Others thought that by surrendering
themselves to the Prussians, who would deliver them up to
Versailles, they might put an end to the massacres. One or
two members demonstrated the absurdity of this hope, and
that besides the Federals would allow no one to leave Paris.
They were not listened to. A solemn note was being drawn
up, when Ranvier, who wandered about in all corners picking
up men one by one for the defence of the Buttes Chaumont,
broke in upon their deliberations, exclaiming, "Why do you
not go and fight instead of discussing!" They dispersed in
different directions, and this was the last meeting of these men
of everlasting deliberations.
At this moment the Versaillese occupied the bastion 16.
At mid-day the rumour spread that the troops were issuing
by the Rue de Paris and the ramparts. A crowd of men and
women, driven from their houses by the shells, beset the
gate of Romainville, asking with loud cries to be allowed to
flee into the neighbouring fields. At one o'clock the draw¬
bridge was lowered in order to give passage to some Free¬
masons who had been to the German authorities to ask them
whether they would allow free passage to the fugitives. The
erowd dashed out and dispersed in the houses of the Village
des Lilas. Some women and children attempting to push on
further and to cross the barricade thrown up in the middle
of the road, the sergeant of gendarmerie of Romainville threw
himself upon them, crying to the Prussians, "Fire! come,
fire on this canaille!" A Prussian soldier fired, wounding a
woman.
Meanwhile the drawbridge had been raised. About four
o'clock Colonel Parent, on horseback, and preceded by a trum¬
pet, dared on his own authority to go and ask the Prussian
troops for permission to pass. Useless degradation. The
376
HISTORY OP THE COMMUNE.
officer answered that he had no orders, and that he would
refer to St. Denis.
The same day the member of the Council, Arnold, who
still believed in an American intervention, went to take a
letter for Mr. Washburne to the German outposts. He was
conducted from one officer to another, received rather rudely,
and sent back with the promise that his letter would be for¬
warded to the ambassador.
Near two o'clock several Yersaillese battalions, having swept
the strategic route, reached the Rue de Crimée by the
Rue des Lilas and the open grounds of the fortifications,
but were stopped in the Rue de Bellevue. From the Place
du Marché three cannon joined their fire to that of the
Place des Fêtes in order to protect the Buttes Chaumont.
These pieces were the whole day served by only five artillerists,
their arms hare, without witnesses, needing neither chief
nor orders. At five o'clock the cannon of the Buttes
were silent, having no more munitions, and their gunners
rejoined the skirmishers of the Rues Ménadier, Fessart, and
Des Annelets.
At five o'clock Ferré brought up to the Rue Haxo the
line soldiers of the Prince Eugène Barracks, removed since
Wednesday to the prison of La Petite Roquette, which had
just been evacuated, as also the Grande Roquette. The
crowd looked at them, not uttering a single threat, for they
felt no hatred to the soldiers, who belong, like themselves,
to the people. They were quartered in Belleville church.
Their arrival caused a fatal diversion. The people ran up
to see them pass, and the Place des Fêtes was dismantled.
The Versaillese came up, occupied it, and the last defenders
of the Buttes fell back on the Faubourg du Temple and the
Rue de Paris.
While our front was yielding we were attacked from the
rear. Since four o'clock in the afternoon the Yersaillese had
been laying siege to the Père Lachaise, which enclosed no
more than 200 Federals, resolute, but without discipline or
foresight. The officers had been unable to make them em-
THE BATTLE IN THE STREETS. 377
battle the walls. Five thousand Versaillese approached the
■enceinte from all sides, while the artillery of the bastion fur¬
rowed the interior. The pieces of the Commune had scarcely
any munition since the afternoon. At six o'clock the Ver¬
saillese, not daring, in spite of their numbers, to escalade
the enceinte, cannonaded the large gate of the cemetery,
which soon gave way, notwithstanding the barricade propping
it. Then began a desperate struggle. Sheltered behind the
tombs, the Federals disputed their refuge foot by foot; they
closed in with the enemy in frightful hand-to-hand scuffles;
in the vaults they fought with side-arms. The foes rolled
and died in the same grave. The darkness that set in early
•did not end the despair.
On the Saturday evening there only remained to the Fed¬
erals part of the eleventh and twentieth arrondissements.
The Versaillese camped in the Place des Fêtes, Rue Fessart,
Rue Pradier up to Rue Rebeval, where, as on the boulevard,
they were detained. The quadrilateral comprised between
the Rue de Faubourg du Temple, the Rue Folie Méricourt,
the Rue de la Roquette and the exterior boulevard was in
part occupied by the Federals. Douay and Clinchant awaited
on the Boulevard Richard-Lenoir the mpment when Vinoy
and Ladmirault would have carried the heights, and thus
forced the Federals against the guns.
What a night for the few combatants of the last hours! It
rained in torrents. The conflagration of La Villette lit up
this gloom with its blinding glare. The shells continued to
pound Belleville; they even reached as far as Bagnolet and
wounded some Prussian soldiers.
The wounded arrived in large numbers at the Mairie of
the twentieth arrondissement. There were neither doctors,
nor medicines, nor mattresses, nor blankets, and the unhappy
people expired without succour. Some spies, surprised in the
dress of National Guards, were there and then shot in the
court. The Vengeurs de Flourens arrived, headed by their
captain, a fine, handsome young fellow, reeling in his saddle.
The cantinière, delirious, a handkerchief tied round her
bleeding brow, swore, called the men together with the cry
378 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
of a wounded lioness. From between the convulsive hands,
the guns went off at random. The noise of the waggons,,
the threatsj the lamentations, the fusillades, the whizzing
of the shells, mingled in a maddening tumult, and who in
those frightful hours did not feel his reason giving way?
Every moment brought with it a new disaster. One guard
rushed up and said, "The barricade Pradier is abandoned!"
another, "We want men in the Rue Rebeval;" a third,
"They are flying in the Rue des Près." To hear these death-
knells there were but a few members of the Council present,
among whom were Trinquet, Ferré, Varlin, and Ranvier.
Desperate of their powerlessness, broken down by these eight
days, without sleep and without hope, the strongest were lost
in grief.
From four o'clock Yinoy and Ladmirault launched their
troops along the ramparts on the defenceless strategic route,,
and soon effected a junction at the Romainville gate. Towards
five o'clock the troops occupied the barricade of the Rue
Rebeval in the Boulevard de la Villette, and by the Rue
Vincent and the Passage du Renard attacked the barricades of
the Rue de Paris from behind. The Mairie of the twentieth
arrondissement was not taken till eight o'clock. The barricade
of the Rue de Paris at the corner of the boulevard was defended
by the commander of the 191st and five or six guards, who
held out till their munitions were exhausted.
A column set out from the Boulevard Philippe-Auguste,
penetrated into the Roquette towards nine o'clock, and
released the hostages who were there. Masters of the Père
Lachaise from the day before, the Versaillese might at least
from nine o'clock in the evening have penetrated into the
abandoned prison. This delay of twelve hours sufficiently
shows their contempt for the lives of the hostages. Four
of the latter—among whom was the Bishop Surat—who had
made their escape in the afternoon of Saturday, had been
retaken at the neighbouring barricades and shot before the
Petite Roquette.
At nine o'clock the resistance was reduced to the small
square formed by the Rues du Faubourg du Temple, Des
THE BATTLE IN THE STREETS.
379
Trois Bornes, Des Trois Couronnes, and the Boulevard de
Belleville. Two or three streets of the twentieth arrondisse¬
ment still struggled on, among others the Rue Ramponeau.
A small phalanx of fifty men, led by Yarlin, Ferré, and Gam-
bon, their red scarfs round their waists, their chassepots slung
across their shoulders, marched down the Rue des Champs,
and from the twentieth arrondissement debouched on the
boulevard. A gigantic Garibalaian carried an immense red
flag in front of them. They entered the eleventh arrondisse¬
ment. Yarlin and his colleagues were going to defend the
barricade of the Rue du Faubourg du Temple and of the Rue
Fontaine au Roi. From the front it was inaccessible; the
Yersaillese, masters of the St. Louis Hospital, succeeded in
turning it by the Rues St. Maur and Bichat.
At ten o'clock the Federals had almost no cannon left, and
two-thirds of the army hemmed them in. What mattered it?
In the Rue du Faubourg du Temple, Rue Oberkampf, Rue
St. Maur, Rue Parmentier, they still wanted to fight. There
were barricades not to be turned and houses without exits.
The Yersaillese artillery cannonade them till the Federals had
used up their munitions. Their last cartridge spent, whelmed
by shells, they threw themselves upon the muskets bristling
around them.
By degrees the fusillade was lulled, all was silent. About
ten o'clock the last Federal cannon was discharged in the
Rue de Paris, which the Yersaillese had taken. The piece,
charged with double shot, with a terrible crash exhaled the
last sigh of the Commune of Paris.
The last barricade of the days of May was in the Rue
Ramponeau. For a quarter of an hour a single Federal de¬
fended it. Thrice he broke the staff of the Yersaillese flag
hoisted on the barricade of the Rue de Paris. As a reward
for his courage, this last soldier of the Commune succeeded
in escaping.
At eleven o'clock all was over. The Place de la Concorde
had held out two days, the Butte aux Cailles two, La Yillette
three, the Boulevard Yoltaire two days and a half. Of the
380
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
seventy-nine members of the Council filling functions on the
21st of May, one, Delescluze, had died on the barricades;
two, J. Durand and R. Rigault, had been shot; two, Brunei
and Yermorel (who died some days after at Versailles),1 were
wounded severely; three, Oudet, Protot, Frankel, slightly.
The Versaillese had lost few men. We had 3,000 killed or
wounded. The losses of the army in June, 1848, and the
resistance of the insurgents had been relatively more serious.
But the insurgents of June had only to face 30,000 men;
those of May combated against 130,000 soldiers. The struggle
of June lasted only three days; that of the Federals eight
weeks. On the eve of June the revolutionary army was intact;
on the 21st May it was decimated. The most valiant defenders
had fallen at the advanced posts. What might not these 15,000
men, uselessly sacrificed outside the town, have done within
Paris? What might not the brave men of Neuilly, Asnières,
Issy, Vanves, Cachan, have done at the Panthéon and Mont¬
martre?
The occupation of the fort of Vincennes took place on
Monday the 29th. This fort, disarmed in conformity with the
stipulations of the treaty of peace, had been unable to take
any part in the strife. Its garrison consisted of 350 men and
twenty-four officers, commanded by the chef-de-legion Faltot,
a veteran of the wars of Poland and of Garibaldi, one of the
most active men on the 18th March. He was offered a per¬
fectly secure asylum, but answered that honour forbade his
deserting his companions in arms.
On the Saturday a Versaillese staff colonel came to negotiate
a capitulation. Faltot demanded passports in blank, not for
himself, but for some of his officers of foreign nationality,
and on the refusal of the Versaillese, Faltot committed the
fault of applying to the Germans. But MacMahon, in pre¬
vision of a siege, had solicited the assistance of the Prince of
Saxony, and the German was on the lookout on behalf of his
1 The Versaillese calumniators, pursuing him even to his last hour,
spread abroad that he had confessed to a Jesuit, and had disavowed his
writings "in presence of the gendarmes and nuns."
THE BATTLE IN THE STREETS. 381
brother officer.1 During the negotiations General Yinoy had
managed to hold communication with the place, where a few
disreputable individuals offered to reduce the intractable
Federals. Among the latter was Merlet, garde-général of
engineering and artillery, ex-non-commissioned officer, able,
energetic, and quite resolveâ to blow up the place rather than
surrender it. The powder-magazine contained 1,000 kilo¬
grammes of powder and 400,000 cartridges.
On Sunday, at eight o'clock in the morning, a shot sounded
in Merlet's chamber. His room was entered, and he was
found lying on the ground, his head pierced by the ball of
a revolver. The disorder of the room attested a struggle;
and a captain of the 99th, released later on by the Yer-
saillese, B , admitted that he had dispersed the elements.
of the electric pile by means of which Merlet intended to spring
the fort.
On Monday towards mid-day the Yersaillese colonel renewed
the proposal for a surrender. For twenty-four hours the
struggle had been over in Paris. The officers deliberated; it:
was agreed that the gates should be opened, and at three o'clock
the Yersaillese entered. The garrison, having laid down their
arms, had drawn up at the end of the court. Nine officers were
incarcerated apart.
In the night, in the fosses, a hundred yards from the spot
where the Duke of Enghien had fallen, these nine officers
formed in a line before a firing-party. One of them, Colonel
Delorme, turned to the Yersaillese in command with the
words, "Feel my pulse; see if I am afraid."
1 "Marshal MacMahon to General Vinoy, 29th May, 10.5 morn¬
ing.—On our propositions to enter the fort, Prince of Saxony has
given the order to enlarge the blockade, in order to leave the French
authorities free to act as they think fit. He has promised to preserve-
the blockade."—Vinoy, L'Armistice et la Commune, p. 430.
( 382 )
CHAPTER XXXII.
"Nous sommes d'honnêtes gens; c'est par les lois ordinaires que justice
sera faite. Nous n'aurons recours qu'à la loi."—M. Thiers à
l'Assemblée Nationale, 22 Mai 1871.
"Honest, honest Iago I"—Shakespere.
THE VERSAILLESE FURY—THE SLAUGHTER-HOUSES—THE PBE-
VOTAL COURTS—THE DEATH OF VARLIN—THE BURIALS.
Order reigned in Paris. Everywhere ruins, death, sinister
crepitations. The officers walked provokingly about clashing
their sabres; the non-commissioned officers imitated their
arrogance. The soldiers bivouacked in all the large roads.
Some, stupefied by fatigue and carnage, slept on the pavement;
others prepared their soup by the side of the corpses, singing
the songs of their native homes.
The tricolor flag hung from all the windows in order to
prevent house-searches. Guns, cartridge-boxes, uniforms, were
piled up in the gutters of the popular quarters. Before the
doors sat women leaning their heads upon their hands, looking
fixedly before them, waiting for a son or a husband who was
never to return.
In the rich quarters the joy knew no bounds. The run¬
aways of the two sieges, the demonstrators of the Place
Vendôme, many emigrants of Versailles, had again taken
possession of the boulevards. Since the Thursday this
kid-glove populace followed the prisoners, acclaiming the
gendarmes who conducted the convoys,1 applauding at the
1 In the Boulevard des Italiens women kissed the boots of the mounted
■officers who escorted the convoys. A journalist, Francisque Sarcey,
wrote: "With what serene joy the eye rested on the loyal faces of those
brave gendarmes, who marched with a sprightly step by the sides of the
hideous column, forming a martial and severe framework !"
THE FURY OF THE YERSAILLESE. 383
sight of the blood-covered vans.1 The civilians strove to
outdo the military in levity. Such a one, who had ventured
no further than the Café du Helder, recounted the taking
of the Château d'Eau, bragged of having shot his dozen
prisoners. Elegant and joyous women, as in a pleasure trip,
betook themselves to the corpses, and, to enjoy the sight of
the valorous dead, with the ends of sunshades raised their
last coverings.
"Inhabitants of Paris," said MacMahon on the 28th at
mid-day, "Paris is delivered! To-day the struggle is over.
Order, labour, security are about to revive."
"Paris delivered" was parcelled into four commands under
the orders of General Yinoy, Ladmirault, Cissey, Douay, and
once more placed under the régime of the state of siege
raised by the Commune. There was no longer apy govern¬
ment at Paris than the army which massacred Paris. The
passers-by were constrained to demolish the barricades, and
any sign of impatience brought with it an arrest, any im¬
precation death. It was placarded that any one in the pos¬
session of arms would immediately be sent before a court-
martial; that any house from which shots were fired would
be given over to summary execution. All public places were
closed at eleven o'clock. Henceforth officers in uniform alone
could circulate freely. Mounted patrols thronged the streets.
Entrance into the town became difficult, to leave it impossible.
The tradespeople not being allowed to go backwards and for¬
wards, victuals were on the point of failing.
"The struggle over," the army transformed itself into a
vast platoon of executioners. On the Sunday more than 5,000
prisoners taken in the neighbourhood of the Père Lachaise
were led to the prison of La Roquette. A chief of battalion
standing at the entrance surveyed' the prisoners and said,
"To the right," or "To the left." Those to the left were to
be shot. Their pockets emptied, they were drawn up along
a wall and then slaughtered. Opposite the wall two or three
priests bending over their breviaries mumbled the prayers for
the dying.
1 Appendix XXII.
384 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
From the Sunday to the Monday morning in La Roquette
alone more than 1,900 persons were thus murdered.1 Blood
flowed in large pools in the gutters of the prison. The same
slaughter took place at the Ecole Militaire and the Pare-
Monceaux.
These were the butcheries without phrases. At other-
places the prisoners were conducted before the prevotal
courts, with which Paris swarmed since the Monday. These
had not sprung up at hazard, and, as has been believed in
the midst of the fury of the struggle. It was proved before
the courts-martial that the number and seats of these pre¬
votal courts, with their respective jurisdictions, had been ap¬
pointed at Versailles before the entry of the troops.2 One
of the most celebrated was that of the Châtelet Theatre,
where Colonel Vabre officiated. Thousands of prisoners who
were led there were first of all penned in upon the stage
and in the auditorium, under the guns of the soldiers placed
in the boxes; then, little by little, like sheep driven to the
door of the slaughter-house, from wing to wing they were
pushed to the saloon, where, round a large table, officers of
the army and the honest National Guard were seated,3 their
sabre between their legs, a cigar in their mouth. The ex¬
amination lasted a quarter of a minute. "Did you take
arms? Did you serve the Commune? Show your hands."
If the resolute attitude of a prisoner betrayed a combatant,
if his face was unpleasant, without asking for his name, his
profession, without entering any note upon any register, he
was classed. "You?" was said to the next one, and so on
1 Appendix XXIII. 2 Appendix XXIV.
3 Later on all the names will be known. Let us cite from amongst
a hundred. At the Mairie of the fifth arrondissement, the colonel of the
National Guard, Galle; at the seventh, M. Gabriel'Ossude and M, Bla-
mont; at the Collège Bonaparte, M. de Soulanges, chief of the 69th
battalion ; at the Mairie of the ninth arrondissement, M. Charpentier ;
at L'Elysée, M. de St. Geniez, chief of the 3rd battalion ; at the Luxem¬
bourg, MM. Gosselin, Parfait, Daniel ; at the Mairie of the thirteenth
arrondissement, MM. D'Avril, chief of the 4th battalion, Lascol, chief of
the 17th Thierce; at the Châtelet, Vabre in a few hours achieved an
atrocious celebrity.
THE FURY OF THE YERSAILLESE. 385
to the end of the file, without excepting the women, children,
and old men. When by a caprice a prisoner was spared, he
was said to be ordinary, and reserved for Versailles. No one
was liberated.
The classed ones were at once delivered to the executioners,
who led them into the nearest garden or court. From the
Châtelet, for instance, they were taken to the Lebau Barracks.1
There the doors were no sooner closed than the gendarmes
fired, without even grouping their victims before a platoon.
Some, only wounded, ran along by the walls, the gendarmes
chasing and shooting at them till they fell dead. Moreau
of the Central Committee perished in one of these gangs.
Surprised on the Thursday evening in the Rue de Rivoli,
he was conducted to the Châtelet, and shot the next day.
Those condemned in the prevotal court of the Luxembourg
were conducted into the garden and placed against a terrace.
There were so many victims, that the soldiers, tired out, were
obliged to rest their guns actually against the sufferers. The
wall of the terrace was covered with brains; the executioners
waded through pools of blood.
The massacre was thus carried on, methodically organised,
at-the Caserne Dupleix, the Lycée Bonaparte, the Northern
and Eastern Railway Stations, the Jardin des Plantes, in
many mairies and barracks, at the same time as in the abat¬
toirs. Large open vans came to fetch the corpses, and went
to empty them in the square or any open space in the
neighbourhood.
The victims died simply, without fanfaronade.2 Many
crossed their arms before the muskets, and themselves com¬
manded the fire. Women and children followed their hus¬
bands and their fathers, crying to the soldiers, "Shoot us with
them! And they were shot. Women, till then strangers to
the struggle, were seen to come down into the streets, exas¬
perated by these butcheries, strike the officers, and then throw
themselves against a wall waiting for death.3
In June, 1848, Cavaignac had promised pardon, and he
massacred. M. Thiers had sworn by the law, and he gave
1 Appendix XXV. 2 Appendix XXVI. s Appendix XXVTI.
2 B
386 HISTORY OP THE COMMUNE.
the army carte-blanche. The officers returned from Germany
might now glut to their hearts' content their wrath against
that Paris which had insulted them by not capitulating; the
Bonapartists revenge on the Republicans the old hatreds of
the Empire; the boys just fresh from St. Cyr serve their
apprenticeship of insolence upon the pékins. A general
(Cissey most probably) gave the order to shoot M. Cernuschi,
whose crime consisted in having offered 100,000 francs for the
anti-plebiscitary campaign of 1870.1 Any individual of some
popular notoriety was sure to die. Dr. Tony Moilin, who
had played no part during the Commune, but had been
implicated in several political trials during the Empire,
was in a few moments judged and condemned to death;
"not," his judges condescended to tell him, "that he had
committed any act that merited death, but because he was a
chief of the Socialist party, one of those men of whom a
prudent and wise Government must rid itself when it finds
a legitimate occasion." 2 The Radicals of the Chamber, whose
hatred of the Commune had been most clearly demonstrated,
did not dare to set foot in Paris for fear of being included in
the massacres.
The army, having neither police nor precise information,
killed at random. Any passer-by calling a man by a revolu¬
tionary name caused him to be shot by soldiers eager to get
the premium. At Grenelle they shot a pseudo-Billioray,8
notwithstanding his despairing protests; at the Place
Vendôme they shot a pseudo-Brunei in the apartments of
Madame Eould. The Gaulois published the recital by a
military surgeon who knew Vallès, and was present at his
execution;4 an eye-witness declared he had seen Lefrançais
shot on the Thursday in the Rue de la Banque. The real
Billioray was tried in the month of August; Brunei, Vallès,
and Lefrançais succeeded in escaping from Prance. Members
and functionaries of the Commune were thus shot, and often
several times over, in the persons of individuals who resembled
them more or less.
1 Appendix XXVIII.
8 Appendix XXX.
* Appendix XXIX.
4 Appendix XXXI.
THE FURY OF THE VERSAILLESE.
387
Varlin, alas! was not to escape. On Sunday, the 28th May,
he was recognised in the Rue Lafayette, and led, or rather
dragged, to the foot of the Buttes Montmartre before the com¬
manding general. The Versaillese sent him to be shot in. the
Rue des Rosiers. For an hour, a mortal hour, Varlin was
dragged through the streets of Montmartre, his hands tied
behind his back, under a shower of blows and insults. His
young, thoughtful head, that had never harboured other
thoughts than of fraternity, slashed open by the sabres,
was soon but one mass of blood, of mangled flesh, the eye
protruding from the orbit. On reaching the Rue des Rosiers,
he no longer walked; he was carried. They set him down to
shoot him. The wretches dismembered his corpse with blows
of the butt-ends of their muskets.
The Mount of Martyrs has no more glorious one than Yarlin.
May he too be enshrined in the great heart of the working-
class! Yarlin's whole life was an example. He had quite
alone, by the mere force of his will, educated himself, giving
to study the rare hours left him in the evening after the work¬
shop; learning not with the view to push into the bourgeoisie,
as many others, but to instruct and enfranchise the people.
He was the heart and soul of the workingmen's associations
at the end of the Empire. Indefatigable, modest, speaking
little, always at the right moment, and then enlightening
a confused discussion with a word, he had preserved that
revolutionary instinct which is often blunted in educated
workmen. One of the first on the 18th March, labouring
during the whole Commune, he was at the barricades to the
last. His death is all to the honour of the workmen. It is
to Varlin and to Delescluze that this history should be dedi¬
cated, if there were room in the frontispiece for any other
name than that of Paris.
The Versaillese journalists spat on his corpse; said that
some hundreds of thousands of francs had been found on
him.1 Returned to Paris behind the army, they followed it
1 The journal L'Ariégeois has published the text of the report addressed
to the colonel of the 67th of the line by Lieutenant Sicre, a native of the
department of Ariège, who had taken part in the arrest of Yarlin, and
388
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
like jackals. Those of the demi-monde, above all, were mad
with a sanguinary hysteria. The coalition of the 21st March
was re-made. All uttered one howl against the vanquished
workmen. Far from moderating the massacre, they encouraged
it, published the names, the hiding-places of those who were
to be killed, unflagging in inventions calculated to keep up
the furious terror of the bourgeoisie. After every fusillade
they cried encore.
I quote at hazard, and could quote pages: "We must make
a Communard hunt" (Bien Public). "Not one of the male¬
factors in whose hands Paris has been for two months will
be considered as a political man. They will be treated like
the brigands they are, like the most frightful monsters
ever seen in the history of humanity. Many journals speak
of re-erecting the scaffold destroyed by them, in order not
even to do them the honour of shooting them" (Moniteur
Universel). "Come, honest people, an effort to make an end
of this democratic and international vermin" (Figaro).
"These men, who have killed for the sake of killing and
stealing, are taken, and we should answer, Mercy! These
hideous women, who stabbed the breast of dying officers, are
taken, and we should cry, Mercy!" (Patrie).1
To encourage the hangmen, if that were necessary, the press
threw them crowns.
"What an admirable attitude is that of our officers and
soldiers!" said the Figaro. "It is only to the French soldier
that it is given to recover so quickly and so well." "What an
honour!" cried the Journal des Débats. "Our army has avenged
its disasters by an inestimable victory."
commanded the firing-party. We extract the following passage:—
"Amongst the objects found on him were a pocket-book bearing his
name, a purse containing 284 francs 15 centimes, a penknife, a silver
watch, and a card of the man Tridon."
1 Some foreign journals uttered the same cry. The Naval and Military
Gazette of the 27th May said, "We are deliberately of opinion that hang¬
ing is too good a death for such villains to die, and if medical science
could be advanced by operating upon the living body of the malefactors
who have crucified their country, we at least should find no fault with
the experiment."
THE FURY OF THE VERSAILLESE. 389
Thus the army wreaked on Paris revenge for its defeats.
Paris was an enemy like Prussia, and all the less to be spared
that the army had its prestige to reconquer. To complete the
similitude, after the victory there was a triumph. The Romans
never adjudged it after civil struggles. M. Thiers was not
ashamed, under the eye of the foreigner, before still smoking
Paris, to parade his troops in a grand review. Who then will
dare to blame the Federals for having resisted the army of
Versailles as they would have the Prussians?
And when did foreigners show such fury?1 Death even
seemed to whet their rancour. On Sunday, the 28th, near
the Mairie of the eleventh arrondissement, about fifty
prisoners had just been shot. Urged not by an unworthy
curiosity, but by the earnest desire to know the truth, we
went, at the risk of being recognised, as far as the corpses
lying on the pavement. A woman lay there, her skirts turned
up; from her ripped-up body protruded the entrails, which
a marine-fusileer amused himself by dividing with the end
of his bayonet. The officers, a few steps off, let him do this.
The victors, in order to dishonor these corpses, had placed
inscriptions on their breasts, "assassin," "thief," "drunkard,"
and stuck the necks of bottles into the mouths of some of
them.
How to justify this savagery? The official reports only
mention very few deaths among the Versaillese—877 during
the whole time of the operations, from the 3rd April up to
1 At a wineshop of the Place "Voltaire we met some quite young sol¬
diers on the Sunday morning. They were marine-fusileers of the 1871
class. Their complexion was sallow their movements heavy, their eyes
dull. "And there are many dead?" said we. "Ah!" answered one
of them in a stupefied tone, "we have the order to make no prisoners;
it is the general who told us" (they could not tell us the name of their
general). "If they had not lighted these fires they would not have been
served thus; but as they set on fire, we must kill" (textual). Then he
went on talking to his comrade. " This morning there " (and he pointed
to the barricade of the Mairie), "one came up in a blouse. We led him
off. 'You are not going to shoot me?' said he. 'Oh, I should think
not!' We made him pass in front of us, and then, pan, pan; and didn't
he kick about funnily!"
390
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
the 28th May.1 The Versaillese fury had then no excuse
for these reprisals. When a handful of exasperated men,
to avenge thousands of their brothers, shoot sixty-three
of their most inveterate enemies2 out of nearly 300 whom
they had in their hands, the hypocritical reaction veils its
face and protests in the name of justice. What, then, will
this justice say when those shall be judged who methodically,
without any anxiety as to the issue of the combat, and, above
all, the battle over, shot 20,000 persons, of whom three-
fourths had not taken part in the fight? Still some flashes of
humanity were shown by the soldiers, and some were seen
coming back from the executions their heads bowed down;
hut the officers never slackened for one second in their
ferocity, Even after the Sunday they still slaughtered the
prisoners, shouted "Bravo!" at the executions. The courage
of the victims they called insolence.3 Let them be responsible
before Paris, France, the new generation, for these deeds of
infamy.
At last the smell of the carnage began to choke even the
most frantic. The pest, if not pity, was coming. Myriads of
flesh-flies flew up from the putrefied corpses. The streets were
full of dead birds. The Avenir Libéral, singing the praises
of MacMahon's proclamations, applied the words of Flèehier:
"He hides himself, but his glory finds him out." The glory
1 Sixty-three officers killed and 430 wounded, 794 soldiers dead and
6024 wounded — in all, 877 dead and 6454 wounded. Rapport du
Maréchal MacMahon.
3 This is the exact number of the hostages executed : four at Ste.
Pélagie, six at the Roquette, forty-eight at the Rue Haxo, four at the
Petite Roquette, and the banker Jecker.
8 The Count de Mun said (Enquête sur le 18 Mars, vol. ii. p. 276),
"When they were shot, they all died with a kind of insolence which
cannot be attributed to a moral sentiment " (the sentiment of the execu¬
tioner, Monsieur de Mun, no doubt), "and can only be attributed to the
resolution to come to an end by death rather than live by working." It
is true that MacMahon had said (p. 28), " They seemed to think they
were defending a sacred cause, the independence of Paris. In their in¬
tentions some of them may have been of good faith. " Who is more
odious, he who believes he is killing an "insolent," or he who knows
that he is killing a martyr ?
THE FURY OF THE YERSAILLESE. 391
of the Turenne of 1871 betrayed him even up to the Seine.1
In certain streets the corpses encumbered the pathway, looking
at the passers-by from out of their dead eyes. In the Faubourg
St. Antoine they were to he seen everywhere in heaps, half
white with chloride of lime. At the Polytechnic School they
occupied a space of 100 yards long and three deep. At Passy,
which was not one of the great centres of execution, there
were 1,100 near the Trocadéro. These, covered over by a thin
shroud of earth, also showed their ghastly profiles. "Who
does not recollect," said the Temps, "even though he had
seen it but one moment, the square, no, the charnel of the
Tour St. Jacques? From the midst of this moist soil, recently
turned up by the spade, here and there look out heads, arms,
feet, and hands. The profiles of corpses, dressed in the uni¬
form of National Guards, were seen impressed against the
ground. It was hideous. A decayed, sickening odour arose
from this garden, and occasionally at some places it became
fetid." The rain and heat having precipitated the putrefac¬
tion, the swollen bodies reappeared. The glory of MacMahon
displayed itself too well. The journals were taking fright.
"These wretches," said one of them, "who have done us so
much harm during their lives, must not be allowed to do so
still after their death." And those that had instigated the
massacre cried "Enough !"
"Let us not kill any more," said the Paris Journal of the
2nd June, "even the assassins, even the incendiaries. Let us
not kill any more. It is not their pardon we ask for,
but a respite." "Enough executions, enough blood, enough
victims," said the Nationale of the 1st J une. And the Opinion
Nationale of the same day: "A serious examination of the
accused is imperative. One would like to see only the really
guilty die."
The executions abated, and the sweeping off began. Car¬
riages of all kinds, vans, omnibuses, came to pick up the
1 " On the Seine may be seen a long trail of blood following the course
of the water and passing under the second arch from the side of the
Tuileries. This trail never stopped. "—La Liberté of the S 1st May.
392
HISTORY OP THE COMMUNE.
corpses and traversed the town. Since the great pests of
London and Marseilles, such cart-loads of human flesh had
not been seen. These exhumations proved that a great
number of people had been buried alive. Imperfectly shot,
and thrown with the heaps of dead into the common grave,
they had eaten earth, and showed the contortions of their
violent agony. Certain corpses were taken up in pieces. It
was necessary to shut them as soon as possible into closed
waggons, and to take them with the utmost speed to thé
cemeteries, where immense graves of lime swallowed up these
putrid masses.
The cemeteries of Paris absorbed all they could. The
victims, placed side by side, without any other covering than
their clothes, filled enormous ditches at the Père Lachaise,
Montmartre, Mont-Parnasse, where the people in pious re¬
membrance will annually come as pilgrims. Others, more un¬
fortunate, were carried out of the town. At Charonne, Bag-
nolet, Bicêtre, &c., the trenches dug during the first siege were
utilised. "There nothing is to be feared of the cadaverous
emanations," said La Liberté "an impure blood will water the
soil of the labourer, fecundating it. The deceased delegate at
war will be able to pass a review of his faithful followers at
the hour of midnight; the watchword will be Incendiarism
and assassination." Women by the side of the lugubrious
trench endeavoured to recognise these remains. The police
waited that their grief should betray them, in order to arrest
those "females of insurgents."
The burying of such a large number of corpses soon
became too difficult, and they were burnt in the casemates
of the fortifications; but for want of draught the com¬
bustion was incomplete, and the bodies were reduced to a
pulp. At the Buttes Chaumont the corpses, piled up in
enormous heaps, inundated with petroleum, were burnt in the
open air.
The wholesale massacres lasted up to the first days of
June,1 and the summary executions up to the middle of that
1 Appendix XXXII.
THE FURY OF THE YERSAILLESE.
393
month. For a long time mysterious dramas were enacted
in the Bois de Boulogne.1 Never will the exact number of
the victims of the Bloody Week be known. The chief of
military justice admitted 17,000 shot;2 the municipal
council of Paris paid the expenses of burial of 17,000
corpses; but a great number were killed out of Paris
or burnt. There is no exaggeration in saying 20,000 at
least.
Many battlefields have numbered more dead, but these at
least had fallen in the fury of the combat. The century has
not witnessed such a slaughtering after the battle; there is
nothing to equal it in the history of our civil struggles. St.
Bartholomew's Day, June, 1848, the 2nd December, would
form but an episode of the massacres of May. Even the great
executioners of Rome and modern times pale before the Duke
of Magenta. The hecatombs of the Asiatic victors, the fêtes
of Dahomey alone could give some idea of this butchery of
proletarians.
Such was the repression "by the laws, with the laws."
And during these atrocities of incomparably worse than
Bulgarian type, the bourgeoisie, raising to heaven its bloody
hands, undertook to incite the whole world against this
people, who, after two months of domination and the massacre
of thousands of their own, had shed the blood of sixty-three
prisoners.
1 Appendix XXXIII.
2 This is the figure given by General Appert in the Enquête sur le 18
Mars. MacMahon has said, "When men surrender their arms they
must not be shot ; that was admitted. Unhappily, on certain points,
the instructions I had given were forgotten. I can, however, affirm
that the number of executions has been very restricted." Admire the
logic of this reasoning. No doubt a list has been kept of all, oblivious
as to the victims of the pre votai courts; the "loyal soldier" ignores
them completely.
Some days after the battle the Nationale, a Liberal-conservative paper
said, "In official circles it is estimated that 20,000 is the number of
Federals killed, shot, or dead in consequence of wounds received during
the days of May. We should not have dared to give this figure, which
seems to us considerable, if we had not got this information from officers
who have declared that this estimate is very probably correct. "
394
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
All social powers covered the death-rattle of the victims
by their applause. The priests, those great consecrators of
assassination, celebrated the victory in a solemn service, at
which the entire Assembly assisted. The reign of the Gesu
was about to commence.
( 395 )
CHAPTER XXXIII.
"La cause de la justice,*de l'ordre, de l'humanité, de la civilisation, a.
triomphé."—M. Thiers à l'Assemblée Nationale, 22 Mai 1871.
THE CONVOYS OF PRISONERS—THE ORANGERIE—THE ARRESTS'
—SATORY—THE DENUNCIATORS—THE PRESS—THE LEFT
INSULTS THE VANQUISHED—DEMONSTRATIONS IN
FOREIGN COUNTRIES.
Happy the dead! They had not to mount the Calvary of
the prisoners.
From the wholesale fusillades one may guess the number
of arrests. It was a furious razzia; men, women, children,
Parisians, provincials, foreigners, a crowd of people of all sexes
and all ages, of all parties and all conditions. All the lodgers,
of a house, all the inhabitants of â street, were carried off in
a body. A suspicion, a word, a doubtful attitude were sufficient
to cause one to be seized by the soldiers. From the 21st to the
30th May they thus picked up 40,000 persons.
These prisoners were formed into long chains, sometimes
free, sometimes, as in June, 1848, bound by cords so as to form
only one body. Whoever refused to walk on was pricked with
the bayonet, and, if he resisted, shot on the spot, sometimes
attached to a horse's tail.1 In front of the churches of the
rich quarters the captives were forced to kneel down, bare¬
headed, amidst an infamous mob of lackeys, fashionables, and
prostitutes, crying, "Death! death! Do not go any further;
shoot them here!" At the Champs-Elysées they wanted to
break the files to taste blood.
The prisoners were sent on to Versailles. Gallifet awaited
them at La Muette. In the town he escorted the chains,.
1 Appendix XXXIV.
396
HISTORY OP THE COMMUNE.
halting under the windows of the aristocratic clubs in order
to earn plaudits and hurrahs. At the gates of Paris he
levied his tithe, walked past the ranks, and, with his look of
a famished wolf, "You seem intelligent," said he to some
one; "step out of the ranks." "You have a watch," said
he to another; "you must have been a functionary of the
Commune," and he placed him apart. On the 26th, in one
single convoy, he chose eighty-three men and three women,
made them draw up along the talus of the fortifications and
had them shot.1 Then he said to their comrades, "My name
is Gallifet. Your journals in Paris had sullied me enough.
I take my revenge." On Sunday, the 28th, he said, "Let
those who have white hairs step out from the ranks." One
hundred and eleven captives advanced. "You," continued
Gallifet, "you have seen June, 1848; you are more culpable
than the others," and he had their corpses thrown over into
the fortifications. '
This purgation over, the convoys entered upon the route
to Versailles, pressed between two files of cavalry. It looked
like the population of a city dragged away by fierce hordes.
Lads, grey-bearded men, soldiers, dandies, all and every con¬
dition; the most delicate and the most rude confounded in
the same vortex. Many women, some with manacles on their
hands; such a one with her baby, who pressed its mother's
neck with its frightened little hands; another, her arm
broken, her chemisette stained with blood; another depressed,
clinging to the arm of her more vigorous neighbour;
another in a statuesque attitude, defying pain and in¬
sults; always that woman of the people, who, after having
carried the bread to the trenches and given consolation to
the dying, hopeless—
"Découragée de mettre au jour des malheureux,"
longed for liberating death.
Their attitude, which inspired foreign journals with ad-
1 This fact and the following one are not only attested by the pri¬
soners, but by the journals of order and the correspondents of the con¬
servative foreign newspapers speaking as eye-witnesses. Appendix
XXXV.
THE FURY OF THE YERSAILLESE.
397
miration,1 exasperated the Versaillese ferocity. "In seeing
the convoys of insurgent women," said the Figaro, "one feels
in spite of oneself a kind of pity; hut one is reassured by
thinking that all the brothels of the capital have been thrown
open by the National Guards, who patronised them, and
that the majority of these ladies were inhabitants of these
establishments."
Panting, covered with filth, idiotic with fatigue, hunger,
and thirst, burnt by the sun, the convoys dragged themselves
along for hours in the over-heated dust of the roads, harassed
by the cries, the blows from" the mounted chasseurs. The
Prussians had not thus cruelly treated these soldiers when,
prisoners themselves some months before, they had been led
away from Sedan or Metz. The captives who fell were some¬
times shot, sometimes they were only thrown into the carts
that followed.
At the entry into Versailles the crowd awaited them, always
the élite of French society, deputies, functionaries, priests,
officers, women of all sorts. The fury of the 4th April and
the preceding convoys were as much surpassed as the sea
swells at the equinoctial tide. The Avenues de Paris and
De St. Cloud were lined by savages, who followed the
convoys with vociferations, blows, covered them with filth
and broken pieces of bottle. "One sees," said the Liberal-
Conservative newspaper, the Siècle, of the 30th May, "women,
not prostitutes, but elegant ladies, insult the prisoners
on their passage, and even strike them with their sun¬
shades." Woe to whoever did not insult the vanquished!
Woe to him who allowed a movement of commiseration to
1 "I observed a slender figure walking alone, in the costume of the
National Guard, with long fair hair floating over the shoulders, a bright
blue eye, und a handsome, bold young face, that seemed to know neither
shame nor fear. When the spectators detected at a glance that this
seeming young National Guardsman was a woman, their indignation
found vent in strong language ; but the only response of the victim was
to glare right and left with heightened colour and flashing eyes. If the
French nation were composed only of Frenchwomen, what a terrible
nation it would be!"—The Times, 29th May, 1871.
398
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
■escape him! He was at once seized, led to the post,1 or else
.simply forced into the convoy. Frightful rétrogradation of
human nature, all the more hideous that it contrasted with
the elegance of the costume! Prussian officers came from
"St. Denis once more to see what governing classes they had
had to oppose them.
The first convoys were promenaded about as a spectacle
in the streets of "Versailles; others were stationed for hours
^t the torrid Place d'Armes, a few steps from the large trees,
whose shade was refused them. The prisoners were then
■distributed in four depots, the cellars of the Grandes-Ecuries,
the Orangerie of the castle, the docks of Satory, and the
manèges of the Ecole de St. Cyr. Into these damp, nauseous
-cellars, where light and air only penetrated by some narrow
openings, men, children, of whom some were not more than
ten years old, were crowded without straw during the first
days. When they did get some, it was soon reduced to mere
dung. No water to wash with; no means of changing their
rags, as the relations who brought linen were brutally sent
hack. Twice a day, in a trough, they got a yellowish liquid,
•a porridge. The gendarmes sold tobacco at exorbitant prices,
and confiscated it in order to sell it over again. There were
mo doctors. Gangrene attacked the wounded; ophthalmia
broke out; deliriousness became chronic. In the night
were heard the shrieks of the fever-stricken and the mad.
■Opposite, the gendarmes remained impassive, their guns
loaded.
Even these horrors were outdone by the Fosse-aux-Lions,
a vault without air, absolutely dark, the antechamber of the
tomb, under the large red marble staircase of the terrace.
Whoever was noted as dangerous, or whoever had simply
displeased the corporal, was thrown into it. The most robust
could only bear up against it a few days. On leaving it, giddy,
the mind a blank, dazzled by the broad daylight, they
swooned. Happy he who met the look of his wife. The
wives of the captives pressed against the outer rails of the
1 They treated ill this manner M. Ratisbonne, he who in the Débats
jhad just written, "What an inestimable victory!"
THE FURY OF THE YERSAILLESE. 399
Orangerie, striving to distinguish some one amidst the dimly
seen herd. They tore their hair, implored the gendarmes,
who thrust them back, struck them, called them infamous
names.
The hell of open daylight was the docks of the plateau
of Satory, a vast parallelogram enclosed by walls. The soil is
clayey, and the least rain soaks it. The first arrivals were
placed within the buildings, which could contain about thir¬
teen hundred persons, the others remained outside, bare¬
headed, for their hats had been knocked off at Paris or at
Versailles. The gendarmes were on duty, being more reliable,
more hardened than the soldiers.
On the Thursday evening at eight o'clock a convoy, com¬
posed chiefly of women, arrived at the dock. "Many of
us," one of them has reported to me, the wife of a chef-de-
légion, "had died on the way; we had had nothing since
morning.
"It was still daylight. "We saw a great multitude of pris¬
oners. The women were apart in a hut at the entrance. We
joined them.
"We were told that there was a pond, and, dying of thirst,
we rushed thither. The first who drank uttered a loud cry,
vomited. 'Oh, the wretches! they make us drink the blood
of our own people.' For since evening the wounded went
there to bathe their wounds; hut thirst tormented us so
cruelly, that some had the courage to rinse out their mouths
with this bloody water.
"The hut was already full, and we were made to lie on the
earth in groups of about 20,0. An officer came and said to us,
'Vile creatures! listen to the order I give. Gendarmes, the
first who moves, fire on these !"
"At ten o'clock we heard reports quite near. We jumped
up. 'Lie down, wretches!' cried the gendarmes, taking
aim at us. It was some prisoners being shot a few
steps from us. We thought the balls would pass through
our heads. The gendarmes who had just been shooting
came to relieve our guardians. We remained the whole
night watched by men heated with carnage. They grumbled
400 HISTORY OP THE COMMUNE.
at those who writhed with terror and cold. 'Do not be im¬
patient; your turn is coming.' At daybreak we saw the dead.
The gendarmes said to each other, 'Oh! isn't this a jolly
■vintage?'
"In the evening the prisoners heard a sound of spades and
hammers in the wall of the south. The fusillades, the menaces
had maddened them. They awaited death from all sides and
in every shape; they thought that this time they were going
to be blown up. Holes opened and mitrailleuses appeared,
some of which were discharged." 1
On Friday evening a storm of several hours broke out
above the camp. The prisoners were forced, on pain of
being shot, to lie down all night in the mud. About twenty
died of cold.
The camp of Satory soon became the Longchamp of Ver¬
sailles high life. Captain Aubrey did the honors with the
ladies, the deputies, the literary men, showing them his sub¬
jects grovelling in the mud, devouring a few biscuits, taking
tumblers of water from the pond into which the gendarmes,
stood on no ceremony in easing themselves. Some, going mad,
dashed their heads against the walls; others howled, tearing
their beards and hair. A fetid cloud arose from this living
mass of rags and horrors. "There are," said the Independence
Française, "several thousands of people poisoned with dirt
and vermin spreading infection a kilomètre around. Can¬
non are levelled at these wretches penned up like wild
beasts. The inhabitants of Paris are afraid of the epidemic
1 These facts are borne witness to by several conservative journals,
among others the Siècle. We cite this paper in preference to the
Figarist journals, which might be suspected of having amplified the
glory of the army. "The day before yesterday there has been (at
Satory) an attempt at revolt. The soldiers began by aiming at the
most mutinous ; but as this procedure did not seem sufliciently expe¬
ditious, mitrailleuses were advanced, which fired into the crowd. Order
was re-established, but at what a price!" (Versailles, 27th May).
"Towards four o'clock in the morning a new rising took place amongst
the prisoners of Satory. There were several volleys of mitrailleuses,
and, as you may suppose, the number of dead and wounded must have-
been rather considerable. " (Versailles, May 28).
THE FURY OF THE YERSAILLESE. 401
resulting from the burying of the insurgents killed in the town.
Those whom the Officiel of Paris called the rurals are much
more afraid of the epidemic resulting from the presence of
the live insurgents at Satory."
Those are the honest people of Versailles, who had just
caused the triumph of "the cause of justice, order, humanity,
and civilisation." How good and humane, despite the bom¬
bardment and the sufferings of the siege, those brigands of
Paris had been, above all by the side of these honest people!
Who ever ill-treated a prisoner in the Paris of the Commune?
What woman perished or was insulted? What obscure corner
of the Parisian prisons had hidden a single one of the thousand
tortures which displayed themselves in broad daylight at
Versailles?
From the 24th May to the first days of June the convoys
did not cease flowing into those depths. The arrests went
on in large hauls by day and night. The sergents-de-
ville accompanied the soldiers, and, under the pretext of
perquisitions, forced the locks, appropriating objects of value.
Several officers were in the sequel condemned for the em¬
bezzlement of objects seized.1 They arrested not only the
persons compromised in the late affairs, those who were
denounced by their uniforms, or documents found in the
mairies and at the War Office, but whoever was known for
his republican opinions. They arrested, too, the purveyors
of the Commune, and even the musicians, who had never
crossed the ramparts. The ambulance attendants shared the
same fate. And yet during the siege a delegate of the Com¬
mune, having inspected the ambulances of the press, had said
to the personnel, "I am aware that most of you are the friends
of the Government of Versailles, but I hope you may live
long enough to recognise your mistake. I do not trouble
myself to know whether the lancets at the service of the
wounded are royalist or republican. I see that you do your
task worthily. I thank you for it. I shall report it to the
Commune."
i 5 Among others, one Thieree, lieutenant-eolonel, who had presided at
the executions in the thirteenth arrondissement.
2 c
402
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
Some poor wretches had taken refuge in the Catacombs.
They were hunted by torchlight. The police agents, assisted
by dogs, fired at every suspicious shadow. Battues were or¬
ganised in the forests near Paris. The police watched all
the stations, all the ports of France. Passports had to be
renewed and viséd at Versailles. The masters of boats were
under supervision. On the 26th Jules Favre had solemnly
asked the foreign powers for the extradition of the fugitives,
under the pretext that the battle of the streets was not a
political act.
Extradition flourished at Paris. Fear closed all doors. No
shelter was there for the fugitives. Few friends were left—
no comrades. Everywhere pitiless refusals or denunciations.
Doctors renewed the infamies of 1834, and delivered up the
wounded.1 Every cowardly instinct rose to the surface, and
Paris disclosed sloughs of infamy whose existence she had
not suspected even under the Empire. The honest people,
masters of the streets, had their rivals, their creditors, arrested
as Communards, and formed committees of inquiry in their
arrondissements. The Commune had rejected the denunci¬
ators; the police of order received them with open arms. The
denunciations rose to the fabulous height of 399,823,2 of
which a twentieth at most were signed.
A very considerable part of these denunciations issued from
the press. For several weeks it did not cease stirring the
rage and panic of the bourgeoisie. M. Thiers, re-editing
one of the absurdities of June, 1848, in a bulletin spoke
of "poisonous liquids collected in order to poison the soldiers."
All the inventions of that time were again taken up, ap¬
propriated to the hour, and horribly amplified; chambers in
1 At the Beaujon Hospital there was a wounded Federal whom all
the staff wanted to save. Only one person refused, the doctor Delbeau,
head-surgeon and professor in the faculty of medicine. He sent up the
soldiers of the neighbouring post and had the poor fellow taken away.
Be it said to the honour of the students that they forced him some
months after to suspend his lectures.
a The numbers of the registers where the denunciations were inscribed
enabled the proof of this statistic of infamy, published by the spy
journals of the time, to be ascertained.
THE FURY OF THE YERSAILLESE. 403
the sewers with wires all prepared, 8,000 petroleuses enrolled,
houses marked with a stamp for burning, pumps, injectors,
eggs filled with petroleum, poisoned balls, roasted gendarmes,
hanged sailors, violated women, prostitutes requisitioned,
endless thefts—all was printed, and the gulls believed all.
Some journals had the speciality of false orders for
arson;1 false autographs, of which the originals could
never be produced, but which were to be admitted as
positive evidence by the courts-martial and honest historians.
When it fancied the fury of the bourgeoisie was flagging, the
press fanned it again, each journal outbidding the other in
villainy. "Paris, we know," said the Bien Public, "asks for
nothing better than to go to sleep again; though we should
trouble her, we' will awaken her." And on the 8th June
the Figaro still drew up plans of carnage.2 The revolutionary
writer who will take the pains to collect in a volume extracts
from the reactionary press of May and June, 1871, from the
Parliamentary inquiries, the bourgeois pamphlets, and his¬
tories of the Commune—a mixture as monstrous as that of
the witches' cauldron—will do more for the edification and
the future justice of the people than a whole band of mouthing
agitators.
There were, to French honour, some traits of generosity,
and even heroism, amidst this epidemic of cowardice. Ver-
1 One of these orders, which commanded Milliêre to set fire to the left
bank, was signed Billioray, who had fled on the 21st, and Dombrowski,
already dead at this time.
2 "General Enterprise of Parisian Sweeping.—The repression
must equal the crime. These are the means by which this result will
be arrived at. The members of the Commune, the chiefs of the insur¬
rection, the members of the committees, courts-martial and revolu¬
tionary tribunals, the foreign generals and officers, the deserters, the
assassins of Montmartre, La Roquette, and Mazas, the pétroleurs and
the pétroleuses, the ticket-of-leave men, are to be shot. Martial law must
be applied in all its rigour to the journalists who have placed the torch
and the chassepot in the hands of fanatic imbeciles. A part of these
measures have already been put into practice. Our soldiers have
simplified the work of the courts-martial of Versailles by shooting on
the spot; but it must not be overlooked that a great many culprits
have escaped chastisement. "—Le Figaro of the 8th June.
404 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
morel, wounded, was taken in by the wife of a concierge, who
succeeded for a few hours in passing him off for her son. The
mother of a Versaillese soldier gave several members of the
Council of the Commune an asylum. A great number of in¬
surgents were saved by unknown people; and yet it was during
the first days a matter of death, afterwards of transportation,
to shelter the vanquished. The women once again showed
their great heart.
The average of arrests kept up in June and July to a
hundred a day. At Belleville, Ménilmontant, in the thirteenth
arrondissement, in certain streets, there were only old women
left. The Versaillese, in their lying returns, have admitted
38,568 prisoners,1 amongst whom were 1,058 women and 651
children, of whom forty-seven were thirteen years of age,
twenty-one twelve, four ten, and one seven,2 as though they
had by some secret method counted the herds whom they fed
at the troughs. The number of those arrested very probably
reached 50,000 men.
The errors were numberless. Some women of that beau
monde who went with dilated nostrils to contemplate the
corpses of the Federals were included in the razzias, and led
off to Satory, where, their clothes in rags, devoured by vermin,
they figured very well as the imaginary petroleuses of their
journals.
Thousands of individuals were obliged to hide; thousands
gained the frontier. An idea of the general losses may be
gathered from the fact that at the complementary elections
of July there were 100,000 less electors than in February.3
Parisian industry was crushed by it. Most of the workmen
who gave this branch of manufacture its artistic cachet
perished, were arrested, or emigrated in masses. In the month
of October the municipal council proved in an official report
1 Report of the General Appert, table i. pp. 215, 262.
2 Report of the Captain Guichard, Enquête sur le 18 Mars, vol. iii.
p. 313.
* The Journal des Débats estimated that "the losses by the party of
the insurrection in dead and prisoners reached the figure of 100,000»
individuals."
THE FIJEY OF THE YEESAILLESE. 405
that certain industries were obliged to refuse orders for want
of hands.
The savageness of the searches, the number of the arrests,
joined to the despair of the defeat, tore from this town—
bled to the last drop of blood—some supreme convulsions.
At Belleville, at Montmartre, in the thirteenth arrondisse¬
ment, shots were fired from houses. At the Café du Helder,
in the Eue de Eennes, the Eue de la Paix, Place de la
Madeleine, soldiers and officers fell, struck by invisible
hands; near the Pépinière Barracks a general was shot at.
The Versaillese journals wondered, with naïve impudence,
that popular fury was not calmed, and could not under¬
stand "what reason, even the most futile, of hatred one could
have for soldiers who had the most inoffensive look in the
world" (La Cloche).
The Left followed to the very end the line it had traced
out for itself on the 19th March. Having prevented the
provinces from coming to the rescue of Paris and voted its
thanks to the army, it also joined its maledictions to those
of the rurals. Louis Blanc, who in 1877 was to defend the
red flag, wrote to the Figaro to stigmatise the vanquished,
to bow down before their judges, and declare "the public
indignation legitimate."1 This Extreme Left, which five
1 In the Figaro of the 8th June—the same number which contained
the plan of massacre—might be read, "We have received the following
letter from M. Louis Blanc :—
" 'To Monsieur Philippe Gille.
" 'Sie,—I read in an article signed by you that the honest Republican
party has the right to expect a protestation from me against the abomi¬
nations ' of which Paris has been the theatre and the victim. This
observation surprises me.
" 'What honest man could, without lacking self-respect, believe him¬
self obliged to warn the public that incendiarism, pillage, and assassina¬
tion horrify him ? I esteem myself enough to judge that, on my part,
a declaration is perfectly useless.
"'When, too, public indignation is so legitimate and so great, are
you aware, sir, that in the tribunals the silence of the assistants is
obligatory ; so true is it that the duty of everybody is to remain silent
when the judge is about to speak. Receive, sir, the assurance of my
regard. Louis Blanc."'
406 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
years after grew enthusiastic for the amnesty, would not
hear the death-groans of the 20,000 shot, nor even, though
but a hundred yards from them, the shrieks from the
Orangerie. In June, 1848, the sombre imprecation of
Lammennais fell upon the massacres, and Pierre Leroux
defended the insurgents. The great philosophers of the
Rural Assembly, Catholic or Positivist, were all one against
the workingmen. Gambetta, delighted at being rid of the
Socialists, hurried back from St. Sébastien, and in a solemn
speech at Bordeaux declared that the Government which
had been able to crush Paris "had even by that proved itself
legitimate."
There were some men of courage in the provinces. The
Droits de l'Homme of Montpellier, the Emancipation of
Toulouse, the National du Loiret, and several advanced
journals recounted the assassinations of the conquerors. Most
of these journals were prosecuted and suppressed. Some
movements took place; a commencement of riots at Pamiers
(Ariège) and at Voiron (Isère). At Lyons the army was con¬
fined in its barracks, and the prefect, Valentin, had the town
closed in order to arrest the fugitives of Paris. There were
arrests at Bordeaux.
At Brussels Victor Hugo protested against the declaration
of the Belgian government, which promised to deliver
up the fugitives. Louis Blanc and Schœleher wrote him a
letter full of blame, and his house was stoned by a fashion¬
able mob. Bebel in the German Parliament and Whalley
in the House of Commons denounced the Versaillese fury.
Garcia Lopez said from the tribune of the Cortes, "We ad¬
mire this great revolution, which no one can appreciate
justly to-day."
The workingmen of foreign countries solemnised the
obsequies of their brothers of Paris. At London, Brussels,
Zurich, Geneva, Leipzig, and Berlin, monster meetings pro¬
claimed themselves in accord with the Commune, devoted the
slaughterers to universal execration, and declared accomplices
of these crimes the Governments which had not made any
remonstrances. All the Socialist journals glorified the struggle
THE FURY OF THE VERSAILLESE. 407
of the vanquished. The great voice of the International re¬
counted their effort in an eloquent address,1 and confided their
memory to the workmen of the whole world.
On the triumphal entry of Moltke at the head of the vic¬
torious Prussian army into Berlin, the workmen received them
with hurrahs for the Commune, and at several places the people
were charged by the cavalry.
1 The Civil War in France. Address of the Council of the Inter¬
national Working-Men's Association.
( 408 )
CHAPTER XXXIY.
"La conciliation, c'est l'ange qui plane après l'orage."—Dufcwre à
l'Assemblée Nationale, 86 Avril 1871.
THE PONTOONS — THE FORTS— THE PRISONS — THE PIRST
TRIALS.
The human lakes of Versailles and Satory were soon over¬
flowing. From the first days of June the prisoners were
filed off to the seaports and crowded into cattle-waggons,
the awnings of which, hermetically closed, let in no breath
of air. In a corner was a heap of biscuits; but them¬
selves thrown upon this heap, the prisoners had soon reduced
it to mere crumbs. For twenty-four hours, and some¬
times thirty-two hours, they remained without anything to
drink. They fought in this throng for a little air, a little
room. Some, maddened, flung themselves upon their com¬
rades.1 One day at La Ferté-Bernard cries were uttered in
a waggon. The chief of the escort stopped the convoy; the
sergeants-de-ville discharged their revolvers through the
awning. Silence ensued, and the rolling coffins set out again
at full speed.
From the month of June to the month of September
28,000 prisoners were thus thrown into the harbours, the
forts and the oceanic isles, from Cherbourg to the Gironde.
Twenty-five pontoons took in 20,000, the forts and isles
8,087.
On the pontoons tortures were inflicted by regulation. The
1 These details are extracted from very numerous notes furnished not
only by the prisoners, among others by Elisée Reclus, but by persons
entire strangers to the Commune, municipal councillors of seaport towns,
foreign journalists, &c.
THE PRISONS—THE TRIALS. 409
traditions of June and of December were religiously observed
with the victims of 1871. The prisoners, penned in cages
made of wooden planks and iron bars, received only a dim
light through the nailed down port-holes. Ventilation there
was none. From the first hours the exhalations were unbear¬
able. The sentinels walked up and down in this menagerie
with the order to fire at the slightest alarm. Cannon charged
with grapeshot overlooked the batteries. There were neither
hammocks nor blankets, and for all food some biscuits, bread,
and haricots, but no wine or tobacco. The inhabitants of
Brest and Cherbourg having sent some provisions and little
luxuries, the officers sent them back.
This cruelty relaxed somewhat after a time. The prisoners
received a hammock for every two, some shirts, some blouses,
and now and then some wine. They were allowed to wash, to
come on to the deck to snatch a little fresh air. The sailors
showed some humanity, but the marine-fusileers were always
the same bandits as in the days of May, and the crew was often
obliged to tear the prisoners from them.
The régime of the pontoons varied according to the officers.
At Brest the second officer, commander of the Ville de Lyon,
forbade the insulting of the prisoners; while the master-at-
arms of the Breslau treated them like convicts. At Cherbourg
one of the lieutenants of the Tage, Clémenceau, was ferocious.
The commander of the Bayard turned his vessel into a
diminutive Orangerie. This ship had witnessed the most
abominable acts perhaps that have sullied the history of the
French navy. Absolute silence was the rule on board. As
soon as any one spoke in the cages, the sentry menaced and
several times shot. For a complaint, or mere forgetfulness
of a rule, the prisoners were tied to the bars of their cages
by the ankles and wrists.1
1 General Appert's report is not only silent with regard to these
ignominious proceedings, but lies with a placidity that is frightful. He
says, for instance, " The prisoners of the pontoons were treated like the
sailors, with this difference, that they did no work and got frequent
distributions of wine." Of the cages, the vermin, the blows, not a word.
In the same manner he recounts, in the style of a pretentious quarter-
410
HISTORY OP THE COMMUNE.
The dungeons on shore were as terrible as the pontoons.
At Quélern as many as forty prisoners were shut up in the
same casemate. The lower ones were deadly. The cess¬
pools emptied into them, and in the morning the faecal
matter covered the floor some two inches deep. By the side
of these were salubrious disengaged lodgments, but they would
not remove the prisoners thither. One day M. Jules Simon
came, thought that his former electors were looking but
poorly, and decided that recourse must be taken to severity.
Elisée Reclus had opened a school, and tried to raise out
of their ignorance a hundred and fifty-one prisoners who
could neither read nor write. The Minister of Public Educa¬
tion had the classes stopped, and had the small library, which
the prisoners had got together by making the greatest sacrifices,,
closed.
The prisoners of the forts, like those of the pontoons, were
fed on biscuits and bacon; later on, soup and broth were
added on Sundays; knives and forks were forbidden; it
cost several days' struggle to get spoons. The profit of the
sutler, which, according to the list of charges, ought to be
limited to a tenth, reached as much as five hundred per
cent.
At the Fort Boyard men and women were packed into the
same enclosure, separated only by a screen. The women were
forced to perform their ablutions under the eyes of the senti¬
nels. Sometimes their husbands were in the neighbouring
compartment. "We noticed," wrote a prisoner, "a young and
beautiful woman, twenty years old, who fainted every time
she was forced to undress." 1
According to much evidence which we have received, the
most cruel prison was that of St. Marcouf. The prisoners
remained there for over six months, deprived of air, light,
and tobacco, forbidden to speak, having for their only nourish-
master, the history of the Commune and of the last struggles. It would
be doing him too much honour to point out how his absurd statements-
contradict each other. And yet it is from these official lies that all
bourgeois historians have till to-day compiled their histories.
1 Letter addressed to the Liberté of Brussels.
THE PRISONS—THE TRIALS. 411
ment the crumbs of brown biscuits and rancid fat. All were
attacked with scurvy.
This continual severity got the better of the most robust
constitutions; there were in consequence 2,000 sick in the
hospitals. The official reports admit 1,179 dead out of 33,665
civil prisoners. This figure is evidently below the truth.
During the first days at Versailles a certain number of in¬
dividuals were killed, and others died without being counted.
There were no statistics before the transfer to the pontoons.
There is no exaggeration in saying that 2,000 prisoners died
while in the hands of the Versaillese. A great number perished
afterwards of anasmia, and of maladies contracted during their
captivity.
Some idea of the tortures of the pontoons and the forts,
far from the surveillance of public opinion, may be gathered
from those that were openly displayed at Versailles,1 under
the eyes of the Government, the Chamber, and the Radicals.
Colonel Gaillard, chief of military justice, had said to the
soldiers who guarded the prisoners of the Chantiers, "As soon
as you see any one move, raising their arms, fire; it is I who
give you the order."
At the Grenier d'Abondance of the Western Railway there
were eight hundred women. For weeks and weeks they slept
on straw, were unable to change their linen. At the slightest
noise, a quarrel, the guards threw themselves upon them,
struck them, more especially on the breasts. Charles Mer-
cereau, a former Cent-Garde, the governor of this sink, had
those that displeased him tied down and then beat them
with his cane. He led about over his dominions the ladies of
Versailles, covetous of petroleuses, and before them said to
his victims,' "Come, hussies, cast down your eyes." And indeed
that was the least our Federal women could do before these
honest persons.
1 Besides the 27,837 prisoners officially recognised at the pontoons,
8472 others were admitted as being dispersed at Satory, L'Orangerie,
Les Chautiers, the houses of justice and correction of Rouen-Clermont
and St. Cyr. On the 15th of October there were still 3500 in the prisons
of Versailles.
412 HISTORY OP THE COMMUNE.
Prostitutes, carried off in the razzias, and carefully kept
there in order to spy upon the other prisoners, publicly aban¬
doned themselves to the guardians. The protests of the women
of the Commune were punished by blows with cords. With
a refinement of infamy, the Versaillese wished to bow down
these valiant women to the level of the others. All the pris¬
oners were subjected to inspection.
Dignity and outraged nature revenged themselves by
terrible crises. "Where is my father? Where my husband?
and my son? What! alone, quite alone, and all these
cowards against me! I, the mother, the laborious wife,
subjected to the whip, insult, and sullied by these un¬
clean hands for having defended liberty!" Many went
mad. All passed through their hours of madness. Those
who were pregnant miscarried or brought forth still-horn
children.
The priests were no more wanting in the prisons than at
the fusillades. The chaplain of Richemont said to the pris¬
oners, "I know that I am here in a forest of Bondy,1 but my
duty," &c. On the day of St. Magdalene the Bishop of Algiers,
making a delicate allusion to the saint of the day, said to them,
"That they were all Magdalenes, but not repentant; that
Magdalene had neither burned nor assassinated;" and uttering
other evangelical amenities.
The children were shut up in a part of the women's prison,
and were just as brutally treated. A corporal, the secretary
of Mercereau, kicked open the stomach of a boy; another re¬
ceived the bastinado, and lingered for a long time at the in¬
firmary. The son of Ranvier, twelve years old, was cruelly
beaten for refusing to betray the hiding-place of his father.
All these unfortunate prisoners of the pontoons, the forts,
and the houses of correction were for several months devoured
by vermin before their cases were inquired into. The Versail¬
lese Moloch held more victims than he could digest. After
the first days of June he disgorged 1,090 persons re¬
claimed by the reactionists. But how to draw up indictments
against 36,000 prisoners? It was all very well for Dufaure
1 The former resort of all sorts of criminals.
THE PRISONS—THE TRIALS. 413
to let loose all the police agents of the Empire into the
prisons; in the month of August only 4,000 prisoners had been
interrogated.
Still it was necessary to satiate the rage of the bourgeoisie,
which wanted a sensational trial. A few celebrities who had
escaped the massacre had been taken, some members of the
Council of the Commune, of the Central Committee, Rossel,
Rochefort, &c. M. Thiers and Dufaure got up a grand per¬
formance.
This trial was to be the model one, to serve as a type for
the jurisprudence of the courts-martial, for the prisoners
were to be judged by the same soldiers who had conquered
them. The old procureur and his president applied all
their pettifogging cunning to lowering the debate. They
refused the character of political men to the accused, and
reduced the insurrection to an ordinary crime, thus securing
to themselves the right of cutting short effective defences,
and the advantage of condemnations to the bagnio and
to death, which the hypocritical bourgeoisie pretends to
have abolished in political cases.1 The third court-martial
was carefully selected. The commissary chosen was Gaveau,
a low energumen, who had shown signs of mental alienation,
and had struck the prisoners in the streets of Versailles;
the president, Merlin, a colonel of engineers, one of the
capitulards of Bazaine's army; the rest an assortment of
trusty Bonapartists. Sedan and Metz were going to judge
Paris.
The ceremony commenced on the 7th August, in a large
hall containing two thousand seats. Personages of rank re¬
clined in the red velvet arm-chairs; deputies occupied three
hundred seats; the remainder belonged to the bourgeois of
note, to "honest" families, to the aristocracy of prostitution,
and to the howling press. These talking journalists, these
brilliant dresses, these smiling faces, these toyings with fans,
these gay bouquets, these opera-glasses pointed in all direc-
1 The great political hecatombs have taken place in Prance since the
decree of the Provisional Government of 1848.
414 HISTORY OP THE COMMUNE.
tions, reminded one of the most elegant first-night per¬
formances. The staff officers, in full uniform, smartly con¬
ducted the ladies to their seats, not forgetting to make the
indispensable bow.
All this scum boiled over when the prisoners appeared.
There were seventeen: Ferré, Assi, Jourde, Paschal Grousset,
Régère, Billioray, Courbet, Urbain, Victor Clément, Trinquet,
Champy, Rastoul, Verdure, Decamps, Parent, members of the
Council of the Commune; Ferrat and Lullier, members of the
Central Committee.
Gaveau read the accusation act. This revolution was born
of two plots, that of the revolutionary party and that of the
International; Paris had risen on the 18th March, in answer
to the appeal of a few scoundrels; the Central Committee
had ordered the execution of Lecomte and Clément-Thomas;
the manifestation of the Place Vendôme was an unarmed
manifestation; the head-surgeon of the army had been as¬
sassinated while making a supreme appeal to conciliation; the
Commune had committed thefts of all kinds; the implements
of the nuns of Picpus were transformed into instruments
of orthopedy; the explosion of the Rapp magazines was
the work of the Commune; desirous of kindling violent
hatred of the enemy in the hearts of the Federals, Ferré had
presided at the execution of the hostages of La Roquette,
set fire to the Ministry of Finance, as was proved by the
facsimile of an order written in his hand, "Burn Finances!"
Each one of the members of the Council of the Commune
had to answer for facts relating to his particular functions,
and collectively for all the decrees issued. This indictment,
worthy of a low police agent, communicated beforehand to
M. Thiers, indeed made of the cause a simple affair of robbery
and arson.
It took up a whole sitting. The next day, Ferré, inter¬
rogated the first, refused to answer, and laid his conclusions
upon the table. "The conclusions of the incendiary Ferré
are of no moment!" cried Gaveau, and the witnesses against
him were called. Fourteen out of twenty-four belonged to
THE PRISONS—THE TRIALS. 415
the police; the others were priests or Government em¬
ployés. An expert in handwriting, celebrated at the law-
courts for his blunders, affirmed that the order "Burn
Finances" was certainly in Ferré's hand. In vain the accused
demanded that the signature of this order should be com¬
pared with his, which figured very often in the jail register;
that at least the original should be produced, and not the
facsimile. Gaveau exclaimed indignantly, "Why, this is want
of confidence!"
Thus set to rights from the outset as to the plot and the
character of their judges, the accused might have declined
every debate; they committed the fault of accepting it. If
even they had proudly revindicated their political character!
But it was not so; some even denied it. Almost all, con¬
fining themselves to their personal defence, abandoned the
Revolution of the 18th March, whose mandate they had
solicited or accepted. Their preoccupation for their own
safety betrayed itself by sad defections. But from the very
dock of the accused the voice of the people thus denied
arose avengingly. A workman of that brave Parisian race,
the first in labour, study, and combat, a member of" the
Council of the Commune, intelligent and convinced, modest
in the Council, one of the foremost in the struggle, the shoe¬
maker Trinquet, revindicated the honour of having fulfilled
his mandate to the end. "I was," said he, "sent to the Com¬
mune by my co-citizens; I have paid with my person; I have
been to the barricades, and I regret not having died there; I
should not to-day assist at this sad spectacle of colleagues
who, after having taken their share in the action, will no
longer bear their part of the responsibility. I am an in¬
surgent; I do not deny it."
The examinations were drawn out with fastidious slowness
during seventeen sittings. Always the same public of soldiers,
bourgeois, courtesans, hissing the accused; the same wit¬
nesses, priests, police agents, and functionaries; the same fury
in the accusation, the same cynicism in the tribunal, the
same howling of the press. The massacres had not glutted
this. It yelled at the accused, demanded their death, and
416 HISTORY OP THE COMMUNE.
every day dragged them through the mire of its reports.1
Foreign correspondents were revolted. The Standard, a great
reviler of the Commune, said, "Anything more scandalous
than the tone of the demi-monde press during this trial it is
impossible to imagine." Some of the accused having asked
for the protection of the president, Merlin took up the defence
of the journals.
Then came the prosecutor's address to the court. Gaveau,
to remain true to his instructions, was to demonstrate that
Paris had fought for six weeks in order to enable a few
individuals to steal the remainder of the public chests, to
burn some houses, and to shoot a few gendarmes. This
epauletted limb of the law overthrew as a soldier all the
arguments he built up as a magistrate. "The Commune,"
he said, "had acted as a Government," and five minutes
after he refused the members of the Council of the Commune
the character of political men. Passing in review the dif¬
ferent accused, he said of Ferré, "I should be wasting my
time and yours by discussing the numerous charges weighing
upon him;" of Jourde, "The figures he has given you are
quite imaginary. I shall not trespass upon your time by
discussing them." During the battle in the streets Jourde
had received the order of the Committee of Public Safety
to remit a thousand francs to every member of the Council.
About thirty only had received this sum. Gaveau said,
"They divided millions amongst each other;" and a man
1 Here is a sample, and not one of the most emphatic, "We must
make no mistake," said La Liberté; "we must, above all, not stand on
niceties; this is certainly a band of scoundrels, assassins, thieves, and
incendiaries whom we have before our eyes. To argue from their
situation of accused in order to exact for them the respect and benefit of
the law which supposes them innocent would be a want of faith. No,
no ! a thousand times no ! These are not ordinary accused ; they were
taken, some in the very act, and the others have so surely signed their
culpability by authentic and solemn acts that it suffices to establish their
identity in order to cry with the full and sonorous voice of conviction,
'Yes, yes! they are guilty !'
"The detained witnesses are, for the most part, sinister bandits, with
atrocious faces, repulsive types, especially the youngest, and whom one
would not like to meet even in broad daylight at the corner of a wood."
THE PRISONS—THE TRIALS. 417
of his sort must have believed this. What sovereign has ever
abandoned power without carrying off millions? He lengthily
accused Grousset of having stolen paper in order to print his
journal; another of having lived with a mistress. A coarse
lansquenet, incapable of understanding that the more he low¬
ered the men the greater he made this Revolution, so vital
despite all defections and incapacities.
The audience emphasised this accusation with frantic
applause. At the conclusion there were calls as in a
theatre. Merlin gave Ferré's advocate permission to speak,
but Ferré declared he wished to defend himself, and com¬
menced reading:—
After the conclusion of the treaty of peace consequent upon
the shameful capitulation of Paris, the Republic was in danger,
the men who had succeeded the Empire fallen in the midst
of mire and blood"
Merlin. Fallen in the midst of mire and blood! Here
I must stop you. Was not your Government in the same
situation?
Ferré. "Clung to power, and, though overwhelmed by
public contempt, they prepared in the dark a coup-d'état;
they persisted in refusing Paris the election of her municipal
council"
Gaveau. This is not true.
Merlin. What you are saying, Ferré, is false. Continue,
but at the third time I shall stop you.
Ferré. "The honest and sincere journals were suppressed,
the best patriots condemned to death"
Gaveau. The prisoner cannot go on reading this. I shall
ask for the application of the law.
Ferré. "The Royalists were preparing for the partition of
France. At last, in the night of the 18th March, they believed
themselves ready, and attempted to disarm the National Guard,
and the wholesale arrest of Republicans"
Merlin. Come, sit down. I allow your advocate to speak.
The advocate of Ferré demanded that his client might be
allowed to read the last sentences of his declaration, and Merlin
gave way.
2d
418
HISTOEY OP THE COMMUNE.
Ferré. "A member of the Commune, I am in the hands of
its victors. They want my head; they may take it. I will
never save my life by cowardice. Free I have lived, so I
will die. I add but one word. Fortune is capricious; I
confide to the future the care of my memory and my
revenge."
Merlin. The memory of an assassin!
Gaveau. It is to the bagnio that such manifestoes should
be sent.
Merlin. All this does not answer to the acts for which
you are here.
Ferré. This means that I accept the fate that is in store
for me.
During this duel between Merlin and Ferré the hall had
remained silent. Ferocious hisses burst forth when Ferré con¬
cluded. The president was obliged to raise the sitting, and
the judges were going out when a barrister demanded that
notice should be taken for the defence that the president
had called Ferré "assassin."
The hisses of the audience answered. The advocate in¬
dignantly turned to the tribunal, to the seats of the press,
to the public. Cries of rage arose from all corners of the
hall, drowning his voice for several minutes. Merlin, who
was radiant, at last obtained silence, and answered cavalierly,
"I acknowledge that I made use of the expression of which
the advocate spoke. The court takes notice of your con¬
clusions."
The day before, as a barrister remarked to him, "We are
all answerable, not to the public opinion of to-day, but to
history, which will judge us;" Merlin had cynically answered,
"History! At that epoch we shall 110 longer be here!" The
French bourgeoisie had found its Jeffries.
Early the next day the hall was crowded. The curiosity
of the public, the anxiety of the judges, were extreme.
Gaveau, in order to accuse his adversaries of all crimes at
once, had for two days talked politics, history, socialism.
It would have sufficed to answer each one of his arguments,
THE PRISONS—THE TRIALS. 419
in order to give the cause that political character which he
denied it, if one of the prisoners were at last to rouse up,
and, less careful of his person than of the Commune, fol¬
low up the accusation step by step, oppose to the grotesque
theories of conspiracy the eternal provocation of the privi¬
leged classes; describe Paris offering herself to the Govern¬
ment of National Defence, betrayed by it, then attacked by
Versailles, abandoned; the proletarians reorganising all the
services of this great city, and in a state of war, sur¬
rounded by treason, governing for two months without
police spies and without executions, remaining poor in sight
of the milliards of the hank; if he were to confront the
sixty-three hostages with the 20,000 assassinated, unveil the
pontoons, the jails, swarming with 40,000 unfortunate be¬
ings; take the world to witness in the name of truth, of
justice, of the future, and make of the accused Commune
the accuser.
The president might have interrupted him, the cries of
the public drowned his revindication, the court after the first
words declared him outlawed. Such a man, reduced to silence,
would, like Danton gagged, find a gesture, a cry, which should
pierce the walls and hurl his anathema at the head of the
tribunal.
The vanquished missed this revenge. Instead of presenting
a collective defence or of maintaining a silence which would
have saved their dignity, the accused intrusted them¬
selves to the barristers. Each one of these gentlemen
stretched a point to save his client even at the expense of
his brother lawyers. One barrister was also the Figaro's
and the confidant of the Empress; another, one of the dem¬
onstrators of the Place Vendôme, begged the court not to
confound his cause with that of the scoundrel's near him.
There were scandalous pleadings. This debasement dis¬
armed neither the tribunal nor the public. Every moment
Gaveau bounded out of his arm-chair. "You are an insolent
fellow," said he to a lawyer. "If there is anything absurd
here, it is you." The audience applauded, ever ready to
pounce upon the prisoners. On the 31st August its fury
420
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
rose to such a pitch that Merlin threatened to have the court
cleared.
On the 2nd September the court feigned to deliberate
the whole day. At nine o'clock in the evening it returned
to the sitting, and Merlin read the judgment. Ferré and
Lullier were condemned to death; Trinquet and Urbain to
hard labour for life; Assi, Billioray, Champy, Regère, Grous-
set, Verdure, Ferrat to transportation in a fortress; Courbet
to six months' and Victor Clément to three months' imprison¬
ment. Decamps and Parent were acquitted. The audience
retired much disappointed at having got only two condemna¬
tions to death.
As a fact, this judicial performance had proved nothing.
Could the Revolution of the 18th March be appreciated from
the conduct of secondary actors, and Delescluze, Varlin, Ver-
morel, Tridon, Moreau, and many others, by the attitude of
Lullier, Decamps, Victor Clément, or Billioray? And even
if the bearing of Ferré and Trinquet had not proved that
there had been men in the Council of the Commune, what
then did the defection of the majority show if not that this
movement was the work of all, not of a few great minds; that
in this crisis the people only had been great, they only revolu¬
tionary; that the Revolution was to be found in the people, not
in the Government of the Commune?
The bourgeoisie, on the contrary, had displayed all its
hideousness. The audience, the tribunal, had been on the
same level. Some witnesses had manifestly perjured them¬
selves. During the debates, in the lobbies, in the cafés, all
the ragamuffins who had endeavoured to dupe the Commune
impudently ascribed to themselves the success of the army.
The Figaro, having opened a subscription for Ducatel, had
picked up 100,000 francs and an order of the Légion d'Hon¬
neur for him. Allured by this success, all the conspirators
demanded their alms and their order. The partisans of Beau-
fond-Lasnier, those of Charpentier-Domalain, fell out, re¬
counted their prowess, each and all swearing that he had be¬
trayed better than his rivals.
While society was being avenged at Versailles, the Court
THE PRISONS—THE TRIALS.
421
of Assizes of Paris avenged the honour of Jules Favre. Im¬
mediately after the Commune, the Minister for Foreign Affairs
had had M. Laluyé arrested, who was guilty of having com¬
municated to Millière the documents published in the Vengeur.
The honest Minister, not having succeeded in getting his
enemy shot as a Communard, summoned him before the
assizes for libel. Here the former member of the Government
of National Defence, the former Minister of Foreign Affairs,
the deputy of Paris, publicly confessed that he had com¬
mitted forgeries, but he pleaded having done so to secure his
children a fortune. This touching avowal melted the patres
familias of the jury, and Laluyé was condemned to imprison¬
ment for one year. Some months after he died at Ste.
Pélagie. Jules Favre was terribly lucky. In less than six
months the fusillade and the dungeon had delivered him of
two redoubtable enemies.1
While the third court-martial was quarrelling with the
lawyers, the fourth hurried through its business without
phrases. On the 16th August, almost immediately after its
opening, it had already pronounced two sentences of death.
If the one court had its Jeffries, the other had its Trestaillon
in Colonel Boisdenemetz, a kind of wild boar, a drunkard,
seeing all red, a wit at times, and correspondent of the Figaro.
On the 4th September some women were brought before him,
accused of setting fire to the Légion d'Honneur. This was
the trial of the petroleuses. The eight thousand enrolled
furies who had been announced by the journals of order were
reduced to the number of five. The cross-examination proved
that the so-called petroleuses were only admirably kind-
hearted ambulance nurses. One of them, Rétiffe, said, "I
should have looked after a soldier of Versailles as well as a
National Guard." "Why," another was asked, "did you re¬
main when all the battalion ran away?" "There were wounded
1 Family and morality were triumphing along the whole line. Some
days after the fall of the Commune, the first president of the Court of
Cassation, the official go-between of the amours of Napoleon III.,
solemnly reoecupied, before all the courts united, his seat, whence the
hypocritical prudery of the men of the 4th September had expelled him.
422 HISTORY OP THE COMMUNE.
and dying," answered she simply. The witnesses for the
prosecution themselves declared that they had not seen any
of them kindle fire; but their fate was decided beforehand.
Between two sittings Boisdenemetz cried in a café, "Death
to all these trulls!"
Three barristers out of five had deserted the bar. "Where
are they?" said the president. "They have asked to he
allowed to absent themselves to go to the country," answered
the commissary. The court charged soldiers with the defence
of these poor women. One of them, the Quartermaster
Bordelais, made this fine speech: "I defer to the wisdom of
the tribunal."
His client, Suétens, was condemned to death, as were also
Rétiffe and Marchais, "for having attempted to change the
form of the Government;" the two others to transportation
and confinement. One of the condemned, turning to the officer
who read the sentence, cried to him in a heartrending voice,
"And who will feed my child?"
Thy child! See, he is here!
Some days after, before this same Boisdenemetz, fifteen
children of Paris appeared; the eldest was sixteen years old,
the youngest, so small that he could hardly be seen in the
dock of prisoners, was eleven. They wore blue blouses and
military képis.
"Druet," said the soldier, "what did your father do?"
"He was a mechanic."
"Why did you not work like him?"
"Because there was no work for me."
"Bouverat, why did you join the Pupilles de la Commune?"
"To get something to eat."
"You have been arrested for vagrancy?"
"Yes, twice; the second time for stealing a pair of stockings."
"Cagnoncle, you were Enfant de la Commune?"
"Yes, sir."
"Why did you leave your family?"
"Because they had no bread."
"Did you discharge many shots?"
"About fifty."
THE PRISONS—THE TRIALS. 423
"Lescot, why did you leave your mother?"
"Because she could not keep me."
"How many children were there of you?"
"Three."
"You have been wounded?"
"Yes, by a ball in the head."
"Leberg, you have been with a master, and you were sur¬
prised taking the cash-box. How much did you take?"
"Ten sous."
"Did not that money burn your hands?"
And you, red-handed man! these words, do they not burn
your lips? Sinister fools! who do not understand that before
these children, thrown into the streets without education,
without hope, through the necessity you have made for them,
the culprit is you, lace-bedecked soldier, you, the public
minister of a society in which children twelve years old, capable
and willing to work, are forced to steal in order to get a pair
of stockings, and have no other alternative than to fall beneath
bullets or die of hunger!
( 424 )
CHAPTER XXXY.
"A Versailles, tous les moyens ont été employés pour assurer l'instruction
la plus sérieuse, la plus attentive, la plus complète de tous les procès
qui ont été jugés Je tiens donc que les jugements qui ont été
rendus ne sont pas seulement en droit, d'après toutes nos lois, inatta¬
quables, mais que, pour la conscience la plus scrupuleuse, ils sont
des jugements qui ont dit la vérité.—('Très bien! très bien!')"—Le
Garde des Sceaux Dufaure, Discours contre VAmnistie, Séance du
18 Mai 1876.
"Les conseils de guerre ont jugé, je l'admets, pour le mieux."—Attain-
Targé, député Gambettiste, Séance du 19 Mai 1876.
THE COURTS-MARTIAL—THE EXECUTIONS—BALANCE-SHEET
OE THE CONDEMNATIONS.
Twenty-six courts-martial, twenty-six judicial mitrailleuses,
were at work at Versailles, Mont-Valérien, Paris, Vincennes,
St. Cloud, Sèvres, St. Germain, Rambouillet, as far as Chartres.
In the composition of these tribunals not only all semblance
of justice, but even all military rules had been despised. The
Assembly had not even troubled itself to define their preroga¬
tives. And these officers, hot from the struggle, and for whom
every resistance, even the most legitimate, is a crime, had
been let loose upon their overwhelmed enemies without any
other jurisprudence than their fancy, without any other
rein than their humanity, without any other instruction
than their commission. With such janissaries and a penal
code comprising everything in its elastic obscurity, there was
no need for exceptional laws in order to attaint all Paris.
Soon one saw the most extravagant theories invented and
propagated in these judicial dens. Thus, being at the place
of the crime constituted legal complicity; with these magis¬
trates this was a dogma.
Instead of removing the courts-martial into the ports, the
THE PRISONS—THE EXECUTIONS. 425
prisoners were forced to again undergo the painful journey
from the sea to Versailles. Some, like Elisée Reclus, had
thus to pass through fourteen prisons. From the pontoons
they were conducted to the railway station on foot, their
hands manacled; but at Brest, when they passed through
the streets showing their chains, the passers-by uncovered
before them.
With the exception of a few prisoners of note, whose trials
I shall briefly recount, the bulk of the prisoners were thrust
before the tribunals after an examination which did not even
always make sure of their identity. Too poor to get a de¬
fender, these unfortunate people, without guides, without wit¬
nesses for the defence—those whom they called did not dare
to come for fear of being arrested—only appeared and dis¬
appeared before the tribunal. The accusation, the examina¬
tion, the sentence were shuffled through in a few minutes.
"You fought at Issy, at Neuilly? Sentenced to transporta¬
tion." "What! for life? And my wife, my children?" To
another: "You served in the battalions of the Commune?"
"And who would have fed my family when the work¬
shop and factory were closed?" Again sentenced to trans¬
portation. "And you? Guilty of an illegal arrest. To the
bagnio." On the 14th October, in less than two months, the
first and second courts had pronounced more than six hundred
.sentences.
Would that I could recount the martyrology of the thou¬
sands who defiled thus in sombre lines, National Guards,
women, children, old men, ambulance attendants, doctors,
functionaries, of this decimated town! It is you whom I
should honour, you above all, you, the nameless, to whom I
should give the first place, as you took it in the work at the
barricades, where you obscurely did your duty. The true
•drama of the courts-martial was not in those solemn sittings
in which the accused, the tribunal, the barristers prepared
for public performance, but in those halls which only saw
the unhappy ones, ignored by the whole world, face to face
with a tribunal as inexorable as the chassepot. How many of
(these humble defenders of the Commune held up their heads
426 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
more proudly than the chiefs, and whose heroism no one will"
tell! When the insolence, the insults, the grotesque arguments
of the conspicuous judges are known, it may be guessed with
what ignominy the unknown accused were overwhelmed in
the shade of these new prevotal courts. Who will avenge
these hecatombs of unknown men, executed in silence, like
the last combatants of the Père Lachaise in the darkness of
the night?
The journals have left no trace of their trials; but, in default
of the names of the victims, I can scatter those of some judges,
to the four winds of history.
Formerly, in the days of honour of the French army, in
1795, after Quiberon, it was necessary to threaten the
officers of the Republic with death in order to form the
courts-martial that were to judge the Vendéens. And yet
those vanquished had, under the cannon, with English arms,
attacked their country in the rear, while the coalesced Powers,
struck her in front. In 1871 the accomplices of Bazaine
solicited the honour of judging the vanquished of that Paris
which had been the bulwark of national honour. Through
long months 1,509 officers of this degraded army, that has
not an hour too much for its rehabilitation and for study,
14 generals, 266 colonels and lieutenant-colonels, and 284
commanders, were dubbed judges and commissaries. How
select amongst this pick of bestiality? When I mention a
few presidents at hazard—Merlin, Boisdenemetz, Jobey, Dela-
porte, Dulac, Barthel, Donnât, Aubert—I shall be wronging
a hundred others.
Merlin and Boisdenemetz are known. Colonel Delaporte
was of the Gallifet species. Old, used up, valetudinarian, he
only revived after a sentence of death. It is he who pro¬
nounced the greatest number, aided by the clerk of the court,
Duplan, who prepared the sentences beforehand, and after¬
wards committed the most impudent forgeries in the minutes.
Jobey had, it was said, lost a son in the struggle with the Com¬
mune, and now he avenged himself. His small wrinkled eye
watched for the anguish in the face of the unfortunate he-
condemned. Every appeal to good sense was to him an insult..
THE PRISONS—THE EXECUTIONS. 427
"He would have been happy," said he, "to stew the lawyers
together with the culprits."
And yet how few lawyers did their duty! Many had de¬
clared that one could not decently assist such prisoners. Others
wanted to be requisitioned. With four- or five exceptions,1
these unworthy defenders banqueted with the officers. Bar¬
risters and commissaries communicated to each other their
means of attack or defence; the officers announced the verdicts
beforehand. The advocate Riché boasted of having drawn up
the accusation act against Rossel. The advocates officially
designated did not answer the call.
These ignorant judges, making a parade of violence, in¬
sulting the prisoners, witnesses, and lawyers, were worthily
seconded by the commissaries. One of them, Grimai, sold
to the demi-monde journals the papers of the celebrated
prisoners.2 Gaveau, a savage simpleton, without a shadow
of talent, died some months after in a madhouse. Bour-
boulon, eager for display, aimed at oratorical effects.
Barthélémy, a beer-drinker, fair and fat, made puns while
asking for the heads of the accused. Charrière, at fifty
years of age still captain, a kind of wild-cat, an imbecile,
and a pretentious liar, said that he had "made a vow
of cruelty to Ctesar." Jouesne, notorious in the army
for his stupidity, made up for it by his stubborn animosity.
Not much was needed in such courts. The most implacable,
on the whole, were the third, fourth, and sixth courts, and
the thirteenth at St. Cloud, which publicly boasted of ac¬
quitting nobody.
So much for the judges and the justice which the bourgeoisie
gave those proletarians they had not shot down. I should
like to be able to follow up step by step their swash-buckling
1 Let us cite Dupont de Bussac, and above all Léon Bigot, who de¬
fended Maroteau, Lisbonne, and a great numoer of obscure prisoners.
For a year he gave them his time, his labour, his money, publishing
memoirs, exhausting himself in applications. He died in harness,
falling, struck by apoplexy, even at the bar. The friends of the Com¬
mune will not forget this noble devotion.
2 He was condemned in 1876 to five years' imprisonment for em¬
bezzlement.
428 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
jurisprudence, take the trials one by one, show the laws
violated, the most elementary rules of procedure despised,
the documents falsified, the evidence distorted, the prisoners
condemned to hard labour and to death without what would
have been the ghost of a proof with a serious jury; the
cynicism of the prevotal courts of the Restoration and of
the Mixed Commissions of December ingrafted on the
brutality of the soldier who revenges his caste. Such a work
would require long technical labour.1 I shall only indicate
the principal lines. Besides, are not these judgments already
judged?
In 1871 the Versaillese Government demanded of Switzer¬
land the extradition of the governor of the Ecole Militaire,
in 1876 that of the delegate Frankel from Hungary, both con¬
demned to death for assassination and incendiarism. They
were at once arrested. Liberal Switzerland and rural Hungary,
considering the acts of the Commune as common crimes, were
ready to deliver up the prisoners if Versailles furnished the
legal proof required by treaties of extradition that they had
committed the acts for which they had been condemned. The
Versaillese Government only produced the sentences of the
courts-martial, and could not add the least "trace of proof
or any precise evidence establishing culpability." 2 The pris¬
oners had to be released.
On the 8th September Rossel appeared before the third
court. His defence consisted in saying that he had served
the Commune in the hope that the insurrection would re-
1 III the law-schools is there no one to undertake it? What finer
cause to begin with for a young man ? What noble occasion to efface
the great wrongs of the schools during the Commune, to bring nearer
the proletarian this part of our youth, which is drifting further from
them every day ?
2 "To this demand of (the communication of judicial evidence," said
the tribunal of Buda-Pesth in its judgment, " the French Government
has answered by purely and simply transmitting the sentence of the
court-martial. In this sentence there exists no trace of proof, nor any
precise evidence establishing culpability. Considering that this ver¬
dict is totally destitute of evidence and legal proofs, and that it indicates
no means of procuring them, this tribunal exonerates Frankel from the
charges brought against him."
THE PRISONS—THE EXECUTIONS. 429
commence the war against the Prussians. Merlin treated the
prisoner with the greatest consideration, who in turn testified
the most profound respect for the army. But an example
was needed for romantic soldiers, and Rossel was condemned
to death.
On the 21st Rochefort was sentenced to transportation
in a fortress. The Bonapartists of the court especially had
their eye on the author of the Lanterne. Merlin had defended
Pierre Bonaparte. Gaveau accused the prisoner of having
outraged the person of the Emperor. Trochu, whom Roche-
fort had called as a witness for the defence, answered the man
who during the siege had for him sacrificed his popularity, by
an insulting letter.
Revolutionary journalism had the honour of counting some
victims in its ranks. Young Maroteau, for two articles—two
only—in the Salut Public was condemned to death; Alphonse
Humbert, for three or four articles in the Père Duchesne, to
hard labour for life.
Other journalists were condemned to transportation. What
was their crime? Having defended the Commune. Yet the
Commune had contented itself with suppressing the journals
that defended Versailles. In point of fact, the courts-martial
were charged to exterminate the revolutionary party.
Fear of the future rendered them implacable. After the
numberless assassinatioA in the Rue des Rosiers, they too
wanted to offer a holocaust to the manes of Lecomte and
Clément-Thomas. The real executioners were not to be
found. The explosion of fury which cost the two generals
their lives had been spontaneous, sudden as that which in
1789 killed Flesselles, Foulon, and Berthier. The actors of
the drama were legion, and with it all traces of them were
lost. The military judges selected the accused at random,
as their colleagues had on the Buttes Montmartre shot
the first-comers.
"Simon Mayer," said the report, "tried to the last moment
to defend the prisoners, and Kazdansky did his best to op¬
pose the carrying out of the threats of death. The crowd
insulted him and tore off his gold lace." Herpin-Lacroix
430 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
had made desperate efforts; Lagrange, who had refused to
form the firing-party, felt so secure in his innocence that he
had come to give himself up to the judges of his own free
will. The report made the principal accused of him, along
with Simon Mayer, Kazdansky, Herpin-Laeroix, and a sergeant
of the line, Yerdagnier, who on the 18th March had raised the
butt-end of his gun.
The trial was conducted by Colonel Aubert, a sneering
melodramatic bigot. Despite his efforts and those of the
commissary, not the slightest proof could be brought forward
against the prisoners. Even the officers of the army, com¬
panions of General Lecomte, gave evidence in their favour.
"Simon Mayer did all that was possible to save us," said the
Commander Poussargue. This officer had heard a voice cry,
"Do not kill even traitors without judgment; form a court-
martial;" textually the words of Herpin-Laeroix. Of all the
accused, he only recognised Mayer. Another officer gave sim¬
ilar evidence. Verdagnier proved that at the time of the
executions he had been at the huts of Courcelles. The accusa¬
tion denied all, but without being able to produce a single
witness. Ribemont proved that he had withstood the assailants
in the room of the Rue des Rosiers. Masselot had against him
nothing but the evidence of some hostile women, pretending
that he had boasted of having shot at the generals. Captain
Beugnot, aide-de-camp of the Minister, and present at the
execution, affirmed, on the contrary, that the generals had
been surrounded by the soldiers; M. de Maillefu, that the
front of the platoon was composed of nine soldiers, whose
regiments he named.
There were not even false official witnesses, as in the trial
of the members of the Commune; and yet the accusation,
far from letting them escape its clutches, was most im¬
placable with regard to these very men who had risked their
lives to save the generals. The commissary threatened to
arrest a witness who warmly gave evidence in favour of a
prisoner. After several sittings they discovered that they
were judging one individual for another. The president
ordered the press to hush up the incident. Each sitting,
THE PRISONS—THE EXECUTIONS. 431
each new evidence, cleared the prisoners and made a con¬
demnation more impossible. Yet on the 18th November
Verdagnier, Mayer, Herpin-Lacroix, Masselot, Leblond, and
Aldenhoff were condemned to death; the others to penalties
varying from hard labour to imprisonment. One of those
condemned to death, Leblond, was only fifteen and a half
years old.
This satisfaction given the army, the courts, as good
courtiers, avenged the offences against M. Thiers. The
functionary Fontaine, charged by the Commune with the
demolition of the hotel of him who had demolished hundreds
of houses, appeared before the fifth court-martial, which did
its utmost to make him appear a thief. Every one knew
that M. Thiers' furniture and silver plate had been sent to
the Garde-Meuble, the objects of art to the museums, the
hooks to the public libraries, the linen to the ambulances, and
that after the entry of the troops the little man had regained
possession of most of these objects. Some having perished in
the conflagration of the Tuileries, the report accused Fontaine
of having abstracted them, although only two valueless medals
had been found in his house. To this accusation, from which
he believed himself secured by a long life of probity and
honour, Fontaine could only reply with tears. The Figarists
laughed at it a good deal, and he was condemned to twenty
years' hard labor.
On the 28th November the Assembly recommenced its
fusillade. M. Thiers, cleverly throwing upon the representa¬
tives the right of commuting the penalties, had a Commission
of Pardons named by the Chamber. It was composed of fifteen
members, purveyors of the Mixed Commission of 1852, great
proprietors, inveterate Royalists.1. One of them, the Marquis
de Quinsonnas, had during the battle in the streets super¬
intended the executions at the Luxembourg. The president,
1 Here are their names, which truly belong to the history of the
people:—Martel, president; Piou, vice-president; the Count Octave de
Bastard, Felix Voisin, secretaries; Batbie, the Count de Maillé, the
Count Duchâtel, Peltereau-Villeneuve, François Sacaze, Tailhaud, the
Marquis de Quinsonnaz, Bigot, Merveilleux-Duvignan, Paris, Corne.
432 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
Martel, was an old satyr, who sold his pardons to pretty
solicitresses.
The first cases which they took up were those of Rossel
and Ferré. The Liberal press pleaded warmly for the young
officer. In his restless mind, without unsound political
opinions, who had so cavalierly turned his back upon
the Commune, the bourgeoisie soon recognised one of her
prodigal children. He had besides made an amende
honorable. The press published his memoirs, in which he
reviled the Commune and the Federals. Day by day they
recounted the life of the prisoner, his sublime colloquies
with a Protestant clergyman, his heart-rending interviews
with his family. Of Ferré not a word, except to say he was
"hideous." His mother had died mad; his brother was shut
up as mad in the dungeons of Versailles; his father was a
prisoner in the citadel of Fouras; his sister, a young girl of
nineteen, silent, resigned, stoical, spent her days and nights
in order to earn the twenty francs that she every week sent
her brother. She had refused the aid of her friends, un¬
willing to share with any one the honour of accomplishing
her pious duty. Indeed, one can imagine nothing more
"hideous!"
For twelve weeks death remained suspended above the
heads of the condemned. At last, on the 28th November,
at six o'clock in the morning, they were told that they must
die. Ferré jumped out of bed without showing the slightest
emotion, declined the visit of the chaplain, wrote to ask the
military tribunals for the release of his father, and to his
sister that she should have him buried so that his friends
would be able to find him again. Rossel, rather surprised at
first, afterwards conversed with his clergyman. He wrote a
letter demanding that his death should not be avenged—a
very useless precaution—and addressed a few thanks to Jesus
Christ. For comrade in death they had a sergeant of the 45th
line, Bourgeois, who had gone over to the Commune, and who
showed the same calm as Ferré. Rossel was indignant when
they put on the handcuffs; Ferré and Bourgeois disdained
to protest.
THE PRISONS—THE EXECUTIONS. 433
The day was hardly dawning; it was bitterly cold. Be¬
fore the Butte of Satory 5,000 men under arms surrounded
three white stakes, each one guarded by twelve execu¬
tioners. Colonel Merlin commanded, thus uniting the three
functions of conqueror, judge, and hangman. Some curious
lookers-on, officers and journalists, composed the whole
public.
At seven o'clock the carts of the condemned appeared;
the drums beat a salute, the trumpets sounded. The prisoners
descended, escorted by gendarmes. Rossel, on passing be¬
fore a group of officers, saluted them. The brave Bourgeois,
looking on at the whole drama with an indifferent air, leant
against the middle stake. Ferré came last, dressed in black
and smoking a cigar, not a muscle of his face moving. With
a firm and even step he walked up and leant against the
third stake.
Rossel, attended by his lawyer and his clergyman, asked
to be allowed to command the fire. Merlin refused. Rossel
wished to shake hands with him, in order to do homage to
his sentence. This was refused. During these negotiations
Ferré and Bourgeois remained motionless, silent. In order
to put a stop to Rossel's effusions an officer was obliged to
tell him that he was prolonging the torture of the two others.
At last they blindfolded him. Ferré pushed back the
bandage, and, fixing his eyeglass, looked the soldiers straight
in the face.
The sentence read, the adjutants lowered their sabres, the
guns were discharged. Rossel and Bourgeois fell back. Ferré
remained standing; he was only hit in the side. He was again
fired at and fell. A soldier placing his chassepot at his ear blew
out his brains.
On a gesture of Merlin a flourish of trumpets burst forth,
and, emulating the customs of the cannibals, the troops
defiled in triumph before the corpses. What cries of
horror the bourgeoisie would have uttered if before the
executed hostages the Federals had paraded to the sound
of music!
The bodies of Rossel and Ferré were claimed by their
2 E
434 HISTORY OP THE COMMUNE.
families; that of Bourgeois disappeared in the common grave
of the St. Louis Cemetery. The people will not disassociate
his memory from that of Ferré, for they both died with the
same courage for the cause they had served with the same
devotion.
The Liberal press reserved its tears for Rossel. Some
courageous provincial papers did honour to all the victims,
and devoted to the hatred of France the Commission of Par¬
dons—"the Commission of Assassins," as a deputy, Ordinaire
junior, said in the Assembly. Prosecuted before .juries, all
these journals were acquitted.
Two days after the execution of Satory, the Commission of
Pardons ordered Gaston Crémieux to be killed. Six months
had elapsed since his condemnation, and this long delay seemed
to make the murder impossible. But the rural Commission
wanted to avenge his famous speech of Bordeaux. On the
30th November, at seven o'clock in the morning, Gaston
Crémieux was led to the Prado, a large plain bordering the
sea. He said to his guardians, "I will show how a Republican
should die." He was placed against the same stake where a
month before the soldier Paquis had been shot for going over
to the insurrection.
Gaston Crémieux wished to have his eyes unbandaged and
to command the fire. They consented. Then addressing
himself to the soldiers, "Aim at the chest; do not touch my
head. Fire! Vive la Répub ..." The last word was cut
short by death. As at Satory, the dance of the soldiers round
the corpse followed.
The death of this young enthusiast made a deep impression
in the town. Registers placed at the door of his house filled
in a few hours with thousands of signatures. The revolution¬
ists of Marseilles will not forget his children.
The same day the sixth court avenged the death of Chaudey.
This had been ordered and superintended by Raoul Rigault
alone. The men who formed the platoon were abroad. Préau
de Yédel, the principal accused, then imprisoned in Ste.
Pélagie for a common offence, had only held the lantern.
But the jurisprudence of the officers attributed to simple agents
THE PRISONS—THE EXECUTIONS. 435
the same responsibility as to the chiefs. Préau de Yédel was
condemned to death.
On the 4th December, in the hall of the third court, a kind
of phantom, pale-faced and sympathetic, appeared. It was
Lisbonne, who for six months had dragged about his
wounds of the Chateau d'Eau. The same before the court-
martial as during the Commune and at Buzenval, this bravest
ôf the brave gloried in having fought, and only denied the
accusations of pillage. Othér judges would have been .proud
to spare such an enemy; the Versaillese condemned him to
death.
Some days after, this same court-martial heard a woman's
voice. "I will not defend myself; I will not be defended,"
cried Louise Michel. "I belong entirely to the social revolu¬
tion, and I declare that I accept the responsibility of all
my acts. I accept it entirely and without reserve. You accuse
me of having participated in the execution of the generals.
To this I answer, yes. If I had been at Montmartre, when
they wished to fire on the people, I should not have hesitated
to order fire myself on those who gave such commands. As
to the conflagrations of Paris, yes, I did participate in
them. I wanted to oppose a barrier of flames to the invaders
of Versailles. I have no accomplices; I acted on my own
account."
The Commissary Dailly demanded the penalty of death.
Louise Michel. What I ask of you, you who style your¬
selves a court-martial, who proclaim yourselves my judges,
who do not hide yourselves like the Commission of Pardons,
is the field of Satory, where our brothers have already fallen.
I must be cut off from society; you have been told to do so.
Well, the Commissary of the Republic is right. Since it seems
that every heart which beats for liberty has only right to
a little lead, I too demand my part. If you let me live, I
shall not cease to cry vengeance, and I shall denounce to the
vengeance of my brothers the assassins of the Commission of
Pardons.
The President. I cannot allow you to go on.
436
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
Louise Michel. I have done. If you are not cowards,
kill me.
They had not the courage to kill her at one blow. She was
condemned to transportation to a fortress.
Louise Michel did not stand alone in her courageous atti¬
tude. Many others, amongst whom must be mentioned
Lcmel and Augustine Chiffon, showed the Versaillese what
terrible women these Parisians are, even vanquished, even in
chains.
The affair of the executions of La Roquette came on at
the beginning of 1872. There, as in the Clément-Thomas
and Chaudey trials, they had none of the real actors except
Genton, who had carried the order. Almost all the witnesses,
former hostages, gave evidence with the rage natural to people
who have trembled. The accusation, refusing to believe in
an outburst of fury, had built up a ridiculous scaffolding of
a court-martial discussing and ordering the death of the pris¬
oners. It asserted that one of the accused had commanded
the fire, and he was about to be condemned, in spite of the
solemn protests of Genton, when the real chief of the firing-
party, who had just been discovered dying in a prison, was
brought in. Genton was condemned to death. His advocate
had odiously slandered him, then fled, and the court refused
to allow him a second defender.
The most important affair which followed was that of the
Dominicans of Arcueil. No execution had been less premedi¬
tated. These monks had fallen in crossing the Avenue d'Italie,
shot down by the men of the 101st. The report accused
Sérizier, who at that moment was not even in the Avenue.
The only witness called against him said, "I do not affirm
anything myself; I have heard it said." But we know what
close bonds unite army and clergy. Sérizier was condemned
to death, as was also one of his lieutenants, Bouin, against
whom not a single witness could be brought forward. The
court took advantage of the occasion to pronounce sentences
of death against Wroblewski, who at that time had been at
the Butte-aux-Cailles, and against Frankel, who had been
fighting at the Bastille.
THE PRISONS—THE EXECUTIONS. 437
On the 12th March the affair of the Rue Haxo came on
before the sixth court, still presided over by Delaporte. The
executioners of the hostages had been no more discoverable
than those of the Rue des Rosiers. The indictment fell back
upon the director of the prison, François, who for a long time
had disputed the surrender of his prisoners, and upon twenty-
two persons denounced by gossip contradicted at the trial.
Not one of the witnesses recognised the accused. Delaporte
multiplied his menaces with such a cynicism that the Com¬
missary Rustaud, who had, however, given proofs of his ani¬
mosity in the preceding trials, could not refrain from exclaim¬
ing, "But do you want to condemn them all?" He was the
next day replaced by the idiot Charrière. In spite of all this,
the indictment frittered away from hour to hour before the dis¬
avowals of the witnesses. Still not one of the prisoners escaped.
Seven were condemned to death, nine to hard labour, and the
others to transportation.
The Commission of Pardons awaited, chassepot in hand,
the prey given up to them by the courts-martial. On the
22d of February, 1872, it shot three of the so-called murderers
of Clément-Thomas and Lecomte, even those whose innocence
had most clearly come out in the trial—Herpin-Lacroix,
Lagrange, and Yerdagner. Upright at the stake of the 28th
November, they cried "Vive la Commune!" and died, their
faces radiant. On the 19th March Préau de Yédel was
executed. On the 30th April it was Genton's turn. The
wounds which he had received in May had reopened, and he
dragged himself to the Butte on his crutches. Arrived at the
stake, he threw them from him, cried "Vive la Commune!"
and fell under the fire. On the 25th May the three stakes
were again occupied by Sérizier, Bouin, and Boudin, the latter
condemned as chief of the platoon which in front of the
Tuileries had executed a Versaillese who attempted to prevent
the erection of the barricades of the Rue Richelieu. They
said to the soldiers of the platoon, "We are children of the
people, and you are too. We shall show you that the children
of Paris know how to die." And they, also, fell, crying "Vive
la Commune!"
438 HISTORY OP THE COMMUNE.
These men who went to the grave so courageously, who
with a gesture defied the musket, who, dying, cried that their
cause died not, these ringing voices, these steadfast looks,
disconcerted the soldiers profoundly. The muskets trembled,
and almost within point-blank range they rarely killed at the
first discharge. So at the next execution, the 6th July, the
Commander Colin, who presided at these fusillades, ordered
the eyes of the victims bandaged. There were two of them—
Baudoin, accused of setting fire to the St. Eloi Chinch, and of
killing an individual who had fired at the Federals; and
Rouilhac, an insurgent who had shot at a bourgeois who was
potting Federals. Both pushed hack the sergeants who came
to blindfold them. Colin gave the order to tie them to the
stake. Three times Baudoin tore asunder the cords; Rouilhac
struggled desperately. The priest who came to assist the
soldiers received some blows in the chest. At last, over¬
whelmed, they cried, "We die for the good cause." They were
mangled by the balls. After the march past, an officer of
a psychological turn of mind, moving with the tip of his boot
the brains that trickled down, remarked to a colleague, "It is
with this that they thought."
In June, 1872, all the celebrated cases being disposed of,
military justice avenged the death of a Federal, Captain Beau¬
fort. There is but one explanation for this strange fact, which
is that Beaufort belonged to the Versaillese. We have received
important evidence on this head.1 At all events, if Delescluze
or Yarlin had been shot by the Federals, Versailles would not
have avenged their death.
Three of those accused out of four were present, Desehamps,
Denivelle, and Madame Lachaise, the celebrated cantinière
of the 66th. She had followed Beaufort before the council
held at the Boulevard Voltaire, and, having heard explanations,
had done her best to protect him. The indictment none the
less made of her the principal instigator of his death. On
the written evidence of a witness who was not to be found,
and who had never been confronted with her, the commissary
accused Madame Lachaise of having profaned Beaufort's
1 Appendix XXXVII.
THE PRISONS—THE EXECUTIONS. 439
corpse. At this abominable accusation this noble woman burst
into tears. She, as well as Denivelle and Desehamps, were
condemned to death.
The obscene imagination of soldiers with Algerian habits
taxed itself to pollute the accused. Colonel Dulac, judging
an intimate friend of Rigault's, pretended that their friendship
had been of an infamous character. Despite the indignant
protests of the prisoner, the wretched officer persisted.
The bourgeois press, far from stigmatising, applauded.
Without truce, without lassitude, since the opening of the
courts-martial it accompanied all the trials with the same
chorus of imprecations and the same slanders. Some persons
having protested against these executions so long after the
battle, Francisque Sarcey wrote, "The axe ought to be riveted
to the hand of the executioner."
Till then the Commission of Pardons had only killed three
at a time. On the 24th of July it slaughtered four—François,
the director of La Roquette, Aubry, Dalivoust, and De St.
Omer, condemned for the affair of the Rue Haxo. De St. Omer
was more than suspected, and in the prison his comrades kept
aloof from him. Before the muskets they cried "Vive la Com¬
mune!" He answered, "Down with it!"
On the 18th September, Lolive (accused of having partici¬
pated in the execution of the Archbishop), Denivelle, and
Deschamps were executed. These last cried, "Long live the
Universal and Social Republic! Down with the cowards!"
On the 22nd January, 1873, nineteen months after the battle
in the streets, the Commission of Pardons tied three more
victims to its stakes—Philippe, member of the Council of
the Commune, guilty of having energetically defended
Bercy; Benot, who set fire to the Tuileries; and Decamps, con¬
demned for the conflagration of the Rue de Lille, although
they had not been able to bring forward any evidence what¬
ever against him. "I die innocent," cried he. "Down with
Thiers!" Philippe and Benot: "Long live the Social Re¬
public! Vive la Commune!" They fell, not having belied
the courage of the soldiers of the Revolution of the 18th
March.
440 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
This was the last execution at Satory. The blood of twenty-
five victims had reddened the stakes of the Commission of
Pardons. In 1875 it had a young soldier shot at Vincennes,
accused of the death of the detective Yizentini, thrown into
% 7
the Seine by hundreds of hands at the manifestation of the
Bastille.1
The movements of the provinces were judged by courts-
martial or assize courts, according to the department being
or not being in a state of siege. Everywhere the issue of
the Parisian struggle had been waited for. Immediately after
the defeat of Paris the reaction ran riot. Espivent's courts-
martial initiated these trials. He had his Gaveau in Com¬
mander Villeneuve, one of the bombarders of the 4th
April, his Merlin, and his Boidenemetz in the colonels
Thomassin and Douat. On the 12th June Gaston Crémieux,
Etienne, Pélissier, Roux, Bouchet, and all those who could
be connected with the movement of the 23rd March appeared
before the soldiers. The pretentious blockheadedness of
Villeneuve served as type of the military prosecutor's
addresses with which France was inundated. Crémieux,
Etienne, Pélissier, and Roux were condemned to death.
This was not enough for the jesuitical bourgeois reaction.
Espivent had declared through the Court of Cassation that
the department of the Bouches-du-Rhône was in a state of
siege since the 9th August, 1870, in virtue of a decree
by the Empress, which had neither been published in the
bulletin of laws, nor been sanctioned by the Senate, nor.
even promulgated. Provided with this arm, he persecuted
all marked out by the hand of the Congregation. The
municipal councillor, David Bosc, ex-delegate to the Com¬
mission, a millionaire shipowner, accused of having stolen
a silver watch from a police agent, was only acquitted by a
1 According to reactionary journals this agent had been first bound
to a board, an odious invention, which nothing that came out during
the trial could justify. Yizentini, seized in a spontaneous outburst of
fury and thrown immediately into the Seine, might even have been
saved, if a board to which he clung had not in tipping over struck him
on the head.
THE PRISONS—THE EXECUTIONS. 441
small majority of voices. The next day the colonel-president
was replaced by the lieutenant-colonel of the 4th Chasseurs,
Donnât, half-mad with absinthe-drinking. A workingman,
aged seventy-five, was condemned to ten years' hard labour
and twenty years' deprivation of civil and political rights
for having on the 4th September arrested for half an
hour a police agent who had sent him to Cayenne in 1852.
A crazy old woman, purveyor of the Jesuits, arrested for
a few moments on the 4th September, accused the former
commander of the Civil Guard of her arrest. Her accusa¬
tion was contradicted by herself and quite overthrown
by alibis and numberless proofs. The ex-commander was
condemned to five years' of prison and ten years' privation
of civil rights. One of the soldier-judges, coming out after
committing this crime, said, "One must have very profound
political convictions to condemn in similar affairs." With
these cynical collaborators Espivent could satisfy all his
hatred. He asked the courts of Versailles to deliver up to
him the member of the Council of the Commune, Amourox,
delegate for a time at Marseilles. "I am prosecuting him for
tampering with soldiers," wrote Espivent, "a crime punished
by death; and I am persuaded that this punishment will be
applied to him."
The court-martial of Lyons was not very inferior. Forty-
four persons were prosecuted for the movement of the
22nd March, and thirty-two condemned to penalties varying
from transportation to imprisonment. The insurrection of
the 30th April furnished seventy prisoners, taken at hazard
at Lyons, as was the custom at Versailles. The mayor of
the Guillotière, Crestin, called as witness, did not recognise
amongst them any of those he had seen on that day in his
mairie. Presidents of the courts, the Colonels Marion and
Rébillot.
At Limoges, Dubois and Roubeyrol, democrats esteemed by
the whole town, were condemned in default to death, as the
principal actors in the movement of the 4th April; two were
condemned to twenty years' imprisonment for having boasted
442 HISTORY OP THE COMMUNE.
of knowing who had shot at Colonel Billet. Another got ten
years for having distributed munitions.
The verdicts of the jury varied. That of the Basses-Pyré¬
nées on the 8th August acquitted Duportal and the four
or five persons accused of the movement of Toulouse. The
same acquittal took place at Rhodez, where Digeon and the
accused of Narbonne appeared after a preliminary imprison¬
ment of eight months. A sympathetic public filled the hall
and the approaches of the tribunal and cheered the accused
at their departure. The energetic attitude of Digeon once
more showed the strong cast of his character.
The jury of Riom condemned for the affairs of St. Etienne
twenty-one prisoners, among whom was Amouroux, who had
only sent two delegates. A young workingman, Caton, distin¬
guished himself by his intelligence and firmness.
The jury of Orléans was severe upon the accused of Mon-
targis, all of whom they condemned to prison, and atrocious
to those of Cosnes and Newry-sur-Loire, where there had been
no resistance. There were twenty-three altogether, of whom
three were women. Their whole crime had been carrying
about a red flag and crying "Vive Paris! Down with Ver¬
sailles!" Malardier, a former representative of the people,
who only arrived on the eve of the manifestation, and who
had taken no part in it, was condemned to fifteen years' im¬
prisonment. None of the accused was spared. The proprietors
of the Loiret avenged the fright of their fellow-proprietors of
the Nièvre.
The movements of Coulommiers, Nîmes, Dordives, and
Voiron gave rise to some convictions.
In the month of June, 1872, the greater part of the work
of repression was done. Of the prisoners, men,
women, and children, without counting the 5,000 military
prisoners, to whom the Versaillese have confessed, 1,179,
said they, had died in their prisons; 22,326 had been
liberated after long winter months in the pontoons, the forts,
and the prisons; 10,488 brought before the courts-martial,
1 Report of General Appert.
THE PRISONS—THE EXECUTIONS. 443
who had condemned 8,525 of them. The persecutions did
not cease. On the advent of MacMahon, the 24th May,
1873, there set in a recrudescence. On the 1st January,
1875, the general résumé of Versaillese justice gave 10,137
condemnations pronounced in presence of the accused, and
3,313 in default. The sentences passed were distributed
thus:—
Condemnations to death
270
of whom
8
women.
Hard labour
410
»
29
tt
Transportation in a fortress
3989
it
20
tt
Simple transportation .
3507
tt
16
women
child.
Detention ;
1269
tt
8
women.
Confinement
64
ft
10
tt
Hard labour at public works
29
Imprisonment from three
months and upwards
432
Imprisonment from three
months to one year
1622
tt
50
women
child.
Imprisonment for more than
one year ....
1344
it
15
women
Banishment ....
Surveillance of the police .
Fines
Children under sixteen sent
to houses of correction
322
117
children.
1 woman.
56
Total
13,440 of whom 157 were women and
62 children.
This résumé contained neither the sentences pronounced
by the courts-martial beyond the jurisdiction of Versailles nor
those of the courts of assizes. We must therefore add 15 con¬
demnations to death, 22 to hard labour, 28 to transportation
in a fortress, 29 to simple transportation, 74 to detention, 13
to confinement, and a certain number to imprisonment. The
total figure of the condemned of Paris and the provinces
i Report of General Appert.
444
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
exceeds 13,700, among whom were 170 women and 62
children.
Three-fourths of the 10,000 condemned while present—
7,418 out of 10,137—were simple guards or non-commissioned
officers, 1,942 subaltern officers. There were only 225 superior
officers, 29 members of the Council of the Commune, 49 of the
Central Committee. Despite their savage jurisprudence, the
inquiries, and the false witnesses, the courts-martial had been
unable to bring forward against nine-tenths of the condemned
—9,285—any other crime than the bearing of arms or the
exercise of public functions. Of the 766 condemned for so-
called common crimes, 276 were for simple arrests, 171 for
the battle in the streets, 132 for crimes classed as "others"
by the report, all evidently for acts of war.1 Notwithstand¬
ing the great number of ticket-of-leave men designedly in¬
cluded in these prosecutions, nearly three-fourths of the
condemned—7,119—had no judiciary antecedents; 524 had
incurred condemnation for misdemeanor against public order
(political or simple police cases); 2,381 for crimes or mis¬
demeanours, which the report took care not to specify. Finally,
this insurrection, provoked and conducted by the foreigner
according to the bourgeois press, furnished in all but 396 pris¬
oners of foreign origin.
This is the balance-sheet of 1874. The following years
added new condemnations. The number of the courts was
reduced, but their institution was maintained and the prosecu¬
tions are going on. Even now, six years after the defeat, the
arrests and convictions have not ceased.
1 Thus the seizures made during the house-searches, in virtue of regular
mandates, were classed among the acts of theft with violence, pillage, &c.,
as though these acts had had any personal motive. Now it is necessary
to point out that no one gave evidence of theft against the prisoners
before the courts-martial ; no one could say that the conflagrations had
been taken advantage of for pillage.
( 445 )
CHAPTER XXXVI.
"Les déportés sont plus heureux que nos soldats, car nos soldats ont des
factions à faire . . . tandis que le déporté vit au milieu des fleurs de
son jardin."—Discours de V Amiral Fourichon, Ministre de la Marine,
contre l'Amnistie, Séance du 17 Mai 1876.
"Ce sont surtout les républicains qui ne doivent pas vouloir l'amnistie."
— Victor Lefranc, Séance du 18 Mai 1876.
NEW CALEDONIA—EXILE—BALANCE-SHEET OE BOURGEOIS
VENGEANCE—THE LIBERAL CHAMBER AND THE AMNESTY.
Two days' journey from France there is a colony eager for
hands, rich enough to enrich thousands of families. After
every victory over Parisian workmen the bourgeoisie has
always preferred throwing its victims to the antipodes to
fecundating Algeria with them. The Eepublic of 1848 had
Nouka-IIiva; the Versaillese Assembly, New Caledonia. It is
to this rock, six thousand leagues from their native land, that
it decided to transport those condemned for life. "The Council
of the Government," said the reporter on the law, "gives the
transported a family and a home." The mitrailleuse was
more honest.
Those condemned to transportation were huddled together
into four depots, Fort Boyard, St. Martin de Ré, Oléron, and
Quélern, where for long months they languished between
despair and hope, which never abandon political victims. One
day, when they believed themselves almost forgotten, a brutal
call resounded. To the surgery! A doctor looked at them,
questioned them, did not listen to their answers, and said,
"Fit for departure!"1 And then farewell family, country,
1 "We all recollect one of our comrades, Corcelles, who had con¬
tracted pulmonary phthisis of the gravest form. He could scarcely keep
himself on his legs when crawling before the Commission. To the
446 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
society, human life, en route for the sepulchre of the antipodes.
And happy he who was condemned to transportation only.
He could for a last time press a friendly hand, see tears in
kindly eyes, give a last kiss. But the galley-slave of the
Commune will only see the taskmaster. At the call of the
whistle he must undress, be searched, then have the livery
of the voyage thrown him, and, without a farewell, ascend
the floating bagnio.
The transport ship was a moving pontoon. Large cages
built on the gun-deck shut in the prisoners. In the night
these became centres of infection. In the daytime, the un¬
caged people had but one-half hour to come up on the deck
and breathe a little fresh air. Around the cages the jailers
stood grumbling, punishing with the blackhole the slightest
infringement of the rules. Some unhappy beings made the
whole voyage at the bottom of the hold, sometimes almost
naked, for having refused to comply with a caprice. The
women, like the men, were sent to the blackhole; the nuns
who watched them were worse than the jailers. For five
months they had to live in this promiscuous fashion in the
cage, in the filth of their neighbours, fed upon biscuits
President's usual question he answered by a pitiful smile only, and
while one of the younger members of the Commission, moved probably
to pity at the sight of the Walking corpse, bent himself towards the ear
of the old surgeon, doubtless with the view of begging a respite, the
latter retorted, loud enough to be heard by the patient and several
other prisoners, 'Bah! the sharks will want something to eat.' And
the sharks did have something to eat ; less than three weeks after we
were out at sea our friend Corcelles was dead, and we committed his
remains to the last common reservoir." "We must give the name of this
friend of sharks; his name is Dr. Chanal. " Out of the four thousand
condemned who passed in file before him, ten cases of exemption are
not known. And perhaps the motives which dictated this may be
better judged when the following facts are known. M. Edmond Adam,
deputy of the Seine, having come to the Ile de Ré in order to visit
M. H. Roehefort, who was shut up there, had a young woman present
herself at his hotel, who proposed to him, for the modest sum of 1000
francs, to procure from the chief-surgeon a respite for his friend on his
departure. She had but one word to say, remarked she, and the old man
was under her orders. "—Account by two escaped prisoners fvom New Cale¬
donia, Paschal Grousset and Jourde, published by the Times,27th June 187A
NEW CALEDONIA—THE LIBERAL CHAMBER. 447
often musty, on bacon, on almost salt water; now burnt
by the tropics, now frozen by the cold of the South,
or by the spray dashing over the gun-deck. And what
spectres arrived! When the Orne dropped anchor off Mel¬
bourne there were 360 sick of scurvy out of 588 pris¬
oners.1 They inspired even the rough colonials of Australia
with pity. The inhabitants of Melbourne came to suc¬
cour them, collecting in a few hours 40,000 francs. The
commander of the Orne refused to transmit the sum to the
prisoners, even in the shape of clothes, tools, and simple
necessaries.
The Dana'è was the first ship that set sail, on the 3rd May,
1872; the Guerrière, Garonne, Var, Sibylle, Orne, Calvados,
Virginie, &c., followed. By the 1st July, 1875, 3,859 prisoners
had landed in Hew Caledonia.2
This Caledonian sepulchre has three circles: the peninsula
Dueos, not far from Noumea, the capital of New Caledonia,
for those condemned to transportation in a fortress—805 men
and 6 women; the Ile des Pins, thirty miles south-east of the
principal island, for those condemned to simple transporta¬
tion—2,795 men and 13 women; and, quite in the back¬
ground, worse than death, the bagnio of the lie Nou, for 240
galley-slaves.
The peninsula Dueos, a narrow neck of land commanded
by cannon, with its mouth guarded by soldiers, without
a watercourse, without verdure, is traversed by arid hills
and swampy valleys. Eor all shelter the condemned found
a few dilapidated hovels; for all furniture, a saucepan and
a hammock. The Ile des Pins, a tableland, its centre
perfectly desolate, is bounded by fertile plains, but in the
hands of the Marist monks, who exploit the labour of the
natives. Nothing was prepared for the reception of the
1 The Australian and English journals having revealed these suffer¬
ings, the Yersaillese Government answered in its journal: "The news
of the convict ship the Orne., transmitted through the English press, is in¬
exact in all points. Far from counting 420 cases of scurvy, this vessel
had hardly 360 cases. "
5 Report of the Commission of Pardons, presented in January 1876,
by MM. Martel and F. Voisin.
448
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
condemned. The first who arrived wandered about in
the woods; only very long after did they receive bad
tents and hammocks. The natives, incited by the mission¬
aries, fled from them, or sold them provisions at enormous,
prices.
The administration was to have provided the indispensable
clothing. None of the prescribed rules was observed. The
képis and boots were soon worn out, and the immense majority
of the condemned having no means whatever, had to bear the
sun and the rainy season bare-headed and bare-footed. They
had neither tobacco nor soap; there was no brandy to mix with
the brackish water.
The prisoners did not lose heart at this beginning. Labori¬
ous, active, with that universal aptitude of the Parisian work¬
man, they felt themselves equal to overcoming the first
difficulties. The reporter on the law had extolled the
thousand revenues of New Caledonia—fisheries, cattle-
breeding, the working of mines—and represented this com¬
pulsory emigration as the founding of a new French Empire
in the Pacific. The condemned hoped to make themselves
a home in this far-off land. These proletarians were free of
the false dignity affected by the proscribed bourgeois; far
from refusing work, they sought for it. In the Ile des Pins
there were an hospital, an aqueduct, administrative ware¬
houses to be finished, a large road to be constructed; 2,000
condemned presented themselves; 800 only were employed,
and their wages never exceeded 85 centimes a day. Some
of those rebuffed by the Administration then demanded
concessions of territory; they were granted a few yards of
land,1 and at exorbitant prices some seeds and tools. With
the greatest efforts they could hardly make the soil yield a
few vegetables. The others, who possessed nothing, applied
to private industry, offering their services to the trades-
1 In the Ile des Pins, 900 condemned received between them all 500
hectares (about 100 acres). "We have been mistaken as to the resources
offered by the Ile des Pins," philosophically remarked the Minister
of Marine in 1876. "I said so three years ago," answered M. Georges
Périn.
NEW CALEDONIA—THE LIBEEAL CHAMBEE. 449
people of Noumea. But the colony, stifled by the military
régime, hampered by bureaucratic officials, and of very limited
resources besides, could only furnish work to about 500 at the
most. Moreover, many of them who had undertaken farming
were obliged to give it up very soon and return to the lie
des Pins.
This was the golden age of the transportation. Towards
the middle of 1873 a despatch of the Minister of Marine
reached Noumea. The Versaillese Government suspended all
administrative credits in support of the state works. "If one ad¬
mitted," said he, "the right to labour of the convict, one would
soon see the renewal of the scandalous example of the national
workshops of 1848." Perfectly logical this. Versailles owes
no means of labour to those it has deprived of their
liberty to labour. So the workshops were closed. The woods
of the Ile des Pins offered valuable supplies to the cabinet¬
makers, and some of the condemned manufactured furniture
much in request at Noumea. They were ordered to discon¬
tinue. And on the 13th December the Minister of Marine
dared to pronounce from the tribune that the majority of the
condemned refused every kind of work.1
At the very moment that the Administration thus curtailed
the life of the transported, it summoned their wives to the
Ministry of Marine, where the most charming picture of New
Caledonia was exhibited to them. They were to find there,
on their arrival, a house, a piece of land, seeds, and tools.
Most of them, suspecting some snare, refused to set out unless
invited by their husbands. Sixty-nine, however, were inveigled,
and embarked on hoard the Fénélon, with women sent forth by
the Public Assistance Office as helpmates for the colonials.
These unfortunate wives of the convicts, on landing, found
only the despair and misery of their husbands. The Govern¬
ment refused to send them back again.
1 "Admiral Ribourt, in his Inquiry, declares that during the year
1873 the engineering department had paid the condemned in the pen¬
insula 110,525 francs. We must then leave ofE saying that the con¬
victs won't work. "—Speech of M. Georges Pêrin in f amour of an amnesty,
Sitting of the 17th May 1876.
450 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
Thus there are thousands of men accustomed to work, to
activity of mind, penned up, idle and miserable, some in
the narrow peninsula, others in the Ile des Pins, without
clothes, ill-fed, under orders executed by brutes,1 revolver in
hand, hardly in connection with the world, save for a few
rare letters, and these are even delayed for three weeks at
Noumea. In the beginning endless reveries, then discourage¬
ment and sombre despair; cases of madness occurred, at
last death. The first one set free was the teacher Verdure,
member of the Council of the Commune. The commissary
of the court-martial had accused him of but one crime.
"He was a philanthropic Utopist." He wanted to open
a school in the peninsula; permission was refused him.
Useless, far from his wife and daughter, he languished
and died. One morning in 1873 the jailers and the priests
saw in the winding pathway that leads to the cemetery a
coffin covered with flowers carried by some of the condemned.
Behind them walked 800 friends in a deep silence. "The
coffin," one of them has told us, "was lowered into the
grave. A friend spoke a few words of farewell; each one
threw in his little red flower, cried, 'Vive la République!
Vive la Commune!5 and all was over." In November, in
the Ile des Pins, Albert Grandier, one of the staff of the
Rappel, died. His heart had remained in France, with a
sister whom he adored. Every day he went to the sea-shore
to wait for her; so he became mad. The Administration
refused to admit him into an asylum. He escaped from
the friends who guarded him, and one morning was found
dead of cold in the swamps, not far from the road that leads
to the sea.2
These at least have the consolation of suffering with their
1 An overlooker of the first class had been condemned for an attempt
to murder; another, decorated with the cross of the Legion d'Honneur,
sentenced to seven years' hard labour for. attempting to murder his wife.
Many of them were every day condemned for drunkenness.
2 Details taken from the very correct and by no means exaggerated
relation which Paschal Grousset and Jourde published in the Times
after their escape. It has since been republished as a pamphlet.
NEW CALEDONIA—THE LIBERAL CHAMBER. 451
equals. But the convicts chained in the sink of the scoundrels!
"I know but one bagnio," replied the Republican Minister,
Victor Lefranc, to a mother begging for her son. And there
is indeed but one bagnio, where heroes like Trinquet and
Lisbonne, men all compact of devotion and probity like
Fontaine, Roques, the mayor of Puteaux (so many names
press forward that I am ashamed to mention a few), journalists
of high character like Brissac and Humbert, some whose sole
crime was to have carried out a warrant of arrest, have been
chained for five years to assassins and thieves, enduring their
insults, and bound at night to the same camp-bed. The
Versaillese want more than the body; they must attaint the
rebellious mind, surround it with an atmosphere of stench
and vice, in order to make it fail and founder. The "felons"
of the Commune, assimilated to criminals, subjected to the
same labour, to the same rule of the stick and whip, are
beset by the special hatred of the jailers, who incite the
convicts against them. From time to time a letter escapes,
and even reaches us. Thus writes a member of the Council
of the Commune, a man of thirty-three, at one time in robust
health:—
"St. Louis.
"... The work of the camp is considered the most severe.
It includes the digging up of stones, earthworks, &c.
It is only interrupted on the Sunday morning for the
religious service. For nourishment we have coffee without
sugar at five o'clock in the morning, 700 grammes of bread,
and 100 grammes of beans; in the evening a small piece
of beef; and, finally, 69 centilitres of wine a week. When
I am able to buy a quarter of a pound of bread, my health
leaves less to be desired. Already several of ours are no
more. Many are attacked with anaemia. Fifteen out of sixty
in St. Louis are at the hospital. All this would be nothing
if there were not that commingling with men of infamous
passions. There are fifty of us in one compartment. As to
the employments, shops, and offices, the Communards are ex¬
cluded from these."
452
HISTORY OF THE OOMMUNE.
Another writes:
"Ile Nou, 15th February.
"I isolate myself as much as I can, but there are hours
when I must be in the bagnio on pain of death. There are
hours when I must defend my rations from the voracity of
my companions, when I must submit to the familiarity of a
Mano or of a Lathauer.1 This is horrible, and I blush with
shame when I think that I have become almost insensible to
all this infamy. These wretches are cowards, and are not
the least of our tormentors. It is enough to drive one mad,
and I believe that many amongst us will become so. Bere-
zowski, this unfortunate man,2 who has suffered so much
for eight years, is almost demented, and it is painful to
look upon him. It is terrible, and I dare not think of
this. How many months, years, are we still to pass in this
bagnio? I tremble at the thought. Despite all, believe that
I shall not allow myself to be crushed; my conscience
is tranquil, and I am strong. My health alone could betray
me and be vanquished, but of myself I am sure, and shall
never swerve."
A third:—
"I have suffered much; the bagnio of Toulon, the chains,
the convicts' dress, and, what is still worse, the ignoble contact
of the criminals—all this I have had to bear with. I have, it
is true, one consolation for so much suffering—my tranquil
conscience, the love of my old parents, and the esteem of men
such as you. . . . How many times have I been discouraged!
What despair, what doubts have seized me! I believed in man¬
kind, and all my illusions have been lost one by one; a great
change has come over me, and I have almost failed to resist
so many disillusions."
Yet another:—
"I do not deceive myself; these years are entirely lost for
1 Two notorious murderers.
5 The Pole condemned for having in Paris shot at the Czar.
NEW CALEDONIA—THE LIBERAL CHAMBER. 453
me; not only is my health undermined, but I feel myself
getting lower every day. This life is really too hard to bear,
without books (save those of the Mame library), in this filthy
bagnio, exposed to all insults, to all blows; shut up in
grated eaves; in the workshops treated as beasts; insulted
by our jailers and our comrades of the chain, we must sub¬
mit to it all without a murmur, the slightest infringement
entailing terrible punishment—the cell, quarter ration of
bread, irons, thumbscrews, the lash. It is ignominious, and
I shudder at the thought of it. Many of our comrades are
in double chains in the correction platoon, subjected to
the hardest labour, dying of hunger, driven on with blows
of a cane, often with revolver-shots, unable to communicate
with us, who cannot even pass them a mouthful of bread.
It is terrible, and I am afraid all this will not end véry
soon. But protestations will be made; we shall not be
abandoned; it would be horrible if we were left here. I
am unable to work, so I am right in saying that these years
are completely lost, and this drives me to despair; yet I was
willing to learn; but what is to be done without books and
without a guide? We are almost without news. Still we know
that the Republic is affirming itself from day to day; our hope
is there, but I dare not believe it; we have had so many
deceptions."
How many live to-day? It is not known. Maroteau left
in March, 1875. The Commission of Pardons had aggravated
his sentence; commuted Satory to the lie Nou. At twenty-
five years of age he died in the bagnio for two articles, when
the jackals of the Versaillese press, whose every line has de¬
manded and obtained carnage, sway our Paris. To the last
moment his courage did not forsake him. "It is not a great
affair to die," said he to the friends who surrounded his
deathbed; "but I should have preferred the stake of Satory
to this filthy pallet. My friends, think of me! What will
become of my mother?"
Hear this knell tolled by one of the convicts:—
454 HISTORY OP THE COMMUNE.
"Ile Nou (Limekiln Works), 18th April.
"I cannot help saying that many friends are dying, and that
this month five have succumbed."
"15th May.
"Old Audant, one of the transported of the 2nd December,
has been for ever released from his chain. He was sickly,
old (fifty-nine), and our labour had overcome him. One
day, tired out, attacked by acute bronchitis, he was un¬
able to get up; still he was obliged to recommence his
work. Two days after he asked for the visit of the doctor.
He got the dungeon. Five days after he died in the
hospital; and a few days later on, another, Gobert, followed
him to the tomb."
"Canala, 25th December.
"... Add to that the death of old and good friends.
After Maroteau, Morten, Mars, Leeolle, whom we buried a
month ago."
They die, but none have faltered. The political convicts
are men; they succeed in remaining in the pitch without
being defiled. It is the general inspector Raboul who has
allowed this avowal to escape him. What is the Christian
martyr's vaunted heroism of an hour in comparison with these
men, who each day, in the indefatigable, merciless clutches
of the jailers, maintain unbent their revolutionary faith and
their dignity?
And do we even know all their sufferings? Chance alone
has raised a corner of the veil. On the 19th March, 1874,
Rochefort, Jourde, Paschal Grousset, and three others,
condemned to transportation, succeeded in escaping on board
an Australian ship.1 They landed safely in Australia, and
the information they brought with them has thrown a little
light upon the den. It was then we learnt that the convicts
of the Commune had suffered additional tortures; that the
1 One of them has given a complete account of their escape, together
with some interesting details on New Caledonia : " Un Voyage de Cir¬
cumnavigation," by À. Baillêre.
NEW CALEDONIA—THE LIBERAL CHAMBER. 455
torture of the thumbscrews, which mutilated the hands, is
still in use at the bagnio; that four convicts had been shot
in the Ile des Pins for a simple assault, which would have
been punished by a few months' imprisonment by ordinary
tribunals; that the severity and insults of the jailers
seemed intended to cause a rising, which would permit
of all those condemned to transportation being sent to the
bagnio. The convicts had to pay dearly for these revelations.
The Versaillese Government immediately sent out the Rear-
Admiral Ribourt, and the torture-screw was turned more
tightly than ever. Those who had obtained permission to
sojourn in the principal island were again shut up in the
peninsula Ducos or the Ile des Pins; fishing was interdicted;
every sealed letter confiscated; the right to fetch wood in
the forest for cooking food suppressed. The jailers redoubled
their brutality, fired at the convicts who went beyond
bounds, or who had not returned to their huts at the
regulation hour. Some merchants of Noumea, accused of
having facilitated the escape of Rochefort and his friends,
were expelled from the isle.
Ribourt had brought the dismissal of the governor, La
Richerie, former governor of Cayenne, who by dint of rapine
had made a great fortune in New Caledonia. Of course
it was not for his dishonesty, but for the escape of the
19th March that he was punished. The provisional govern¬
ment was confided to Colonel Alleyron, who had become
famous by the massacres of May. Alleyron decreed that
every prisoner was to give the State half-a-day's labour,
on pain of receiving only the strictly indispensable food,
700 grammes of bread, 1 centilitre of oil, and 60 grammes of
dried vegetables. As the prisoners protested, he began by
applying the decree to fifty-seven persons, of whom four were
women.
For the women were subjected to the same rigorous treat¬
ment as the men, and they had courageously revindicated the
right of sharing the common lot of all. Louise Michel and
Lemel, whom they had wanted to separate from their com¬
rades, declared that they would kill themselves if the law were
456
HISTORY OP THE COMMUNE.
violated. Insulted by the jailers, abused sometimes in the
order of the day of the commander of the peninsula, scarcely
provided with dresses, more than once they had been obliged
to put on men's clothes.
The arrival at the beginning of 1876 of the new
governor, He Pritzbuer, terminated the short but brilliant
career of Alleyron. Pritzbuer, a renegade of Protestantism
turned arrant Jesuit, and sent to New Caledonia through
the Jesuitical tendencies of the Ministry, found ways and
means with his mawkish airs to even aggravate the misery
of the convicts. He was guided in this task by Colonel
Charrière, general director of the New Caledonian Peniten¬
tiary, who declared the criminals of the bagnio much more
honourable than the political convicts. Pritzbuer renewed
the order of his predecessor, adding that those of the convicts
who in one year should not have been able to create
for themselves sufficient resources would no longer receive
full rations; and, finally, that the Administration intended
exonerating itself at the end of a certain time of all
expenses with regard to the convicts. An agent was ap¬
pointed to act as intermediary between them and the
traders of Noumea. But all the decrees in the world
cannot extend the commerce or industry of a country
without natural resources. It had been said, been proved
a hundred times, that New Caledonia has no employment
for these thousands of men, who would prosper in a vital
and flourishing colony. Those few who could be employed
have proved their intelligence, and have carried off several
medals or been honourably mentioned at the exhibition of
Noumea. The less favoured—hundreds of them—suffer
under the blow of the decree of 1875. In reality, the immense
majority of those condemned to transportation are now
subjected to hard labour. The regulations put into force
since the escape of Rochefort have never been mitigated.
The wives, the mothers of the convicts, are only allowed to
communicate with them at rare intervals, and under the
eye of the jailers. More than one has been expelled from
the colony.
NEW CALEDONIA—THE LIBERAL CHAMBER. 457
Despite so many efforts to break them, the honour of the
majority of the prisoners has not yielded; far more, it is
an example to others. Although the courts-martial have
mixed up with the condemned of the Commune a bad element,
totally foreign to this revolution, common misdemeanours are
very rare. Their condemnation for political misdemeanour,
the contact with the best workmen, has even re-made the
conscience of many men with but sorry antecedents. The
majority of the condemned are punished only for infringe¬
ments of the rules or for attempts to escape; attempts almost
always condemned to failure beforehand. How fly without
money and without confederates? There have been but
fifteen successful escapes. Towards the middle of March,
1875, twenty prisoners of the Ile des Pins, amongst whom
were the member of the Council of the Commune, Rastoul,
fled in a bark which they had secretly constructed. Their
fate has never been known, but a few days after their flight
the wreck of a craft was found amongst the reefs. In No¬
vember, 1876, Trinquet and some of his comrades managed
to abscond in a steamboat. They were pursued, overtaken.
Two threw themselves into the sea to escape their pursuers.
One died; the other, Trinquet, was restored to life and the
bagnio.
Before such abysses of misery the exiles must not speak
of their sufferings, but they may say in a word that they
have not sullied the honour of the Cause. Thousands of
workmen, with their families, thrown helpless, without re¬
sources, into a strange country, speaking a foreign lan¬
guage, employées, professors, still more forlorn, have suc¬
ceeded by dint of energy in gaining a livelihood. The work¬
men of the Commune of Paris have won an honourable
place in the workshops of foreign countries. They have
even, especially in Belgium, rendered prosperous industries
till then languishing; they have imparted to certain manu¬
factures the secret of Parisian taste. The proscription of the
Communards, like that of the Protestants formerly, has
thrown across the frontiers a part of the national wealth.
458 HISTOEY OP THE COMMUNE.
The exiles of the so-called liberal professions, often more
unfortunate than the workmen, have not shown less
courage. Some fill posts of confidence; one perhaps con¬
demned to death as an incendiary or to hard labour for
pillage, is a teacher in a large college or examines the
candidates for Government schools. Despite the difficulty
at the commencement, sickness, slackness of work, not one-
exile has given way, and not a single condemnation before
the police court has occurred. Not a single woman has fallen.
Yet it is the women who bear the greater share of the com¬
mon misery. Amongst these thousands of exiles there have
been discovered but two or three spies; and there was only
one, Landeck, to get up a journal of denunciations more vile
than the Figaro. Justice was soon done, for no proscription
has been more careful of its dignity. One ex-member of the
Council of the Commune had to defend himself before
the refugees for having received money from the deputies of
the Extreme Left. Never was the commemorative meeting
of the 18th March better attended than that of 1876 during
the debate on the amnesty, for one and all would have
blushed to hide their colours at such a moment. No doubt,
like any other proscription, that of 1871 has its groups and
its animosities, but all these opinions disappear behind the
red flag escorting the coffin of a comrade. No doubt
there have been virulent manifestoes, which, however, only
affect their authors. Finally, these exiles have not forgot¬
ten their brothers of New Caledonia, and they have opened
a permanent subscription for them, which has its centre in
London. Poor help, no doubt; but this mite from the
exiles goes and says to the unfortunate convict of the Com¬
mune, "Courage, brother! thy comrades do not forget thee;,
they honour thee." It is the hand of the wounded held out
to the dying.
Twenty-five thousand men, women, and children killed
during the battle or after; three thousand at least dead in
the prisons, the pontoons, the forts, or in consequence of
maladies contracted during their captivity; thirteen thousand
NEW CALEDONIA—THE LIBERAL CHAMBER. 459
seven hundred condemned, most of them for life; seventy
thousand women, children, and old men deprived of their
natural supporters or thrown out of France; one hundred
and eleven thousand victims at least;—that is the balance-
sheet of the bourgeois vengeance for the solitary insurrection
of the 18th March.
What a lesson of revolutionary vigour given to the work-
ingmen! The governing classes shoot in the lump without
taking the trouble to select the hostages. Their vengeance
lasts not an hour; neither years nor victims appease it;
they make of it an administrative function, methodical and
continuous.
For four years the Rural Assembly allowed the courts-
martial to work, and the Liberal element, which so many
elections had sent up in great force, at once followed
the track of the Rurals. One or two motions for amnesty
were burked by the previous question. In the month of
January, 1876, when the Rural Assembly broke up, it
had removed a few convicts from one part of New
Caledonia to another, shortened a few terms of imprison¬
ment, and given full pardon to six hundred persons, con¬
demned to the lightest penalties. The Caledonian reservoir
remained intact.
But at the general elections the people did not forget the
vanquished. In all the large towns Amnesty was the watch¬
word; it was inscribed at the head of all the democratic
programmes; at all the public meetings the question was
put to the candidates. The Radicals, tears in their eyes
and their hands on their fraternal hearts, pledged themselves
to ask for a free and complete amnesty; even the Liberals
promised "to wipe out the last traces of our civil discords,"
as the bourgeoisie is wont to say when it condescends to
have the paving-stones cleaned which itself has reddened with
blood.
The elections of February, 1876, were Republican. The
famous Gambettist layers had come to the surface. A crowd
of lawyers, Liberal landlords, had carried away the provinces
in the name of liberty, reforms, appeasement. The Minister
460 HISTORY OP THE COMMUNE.
of the reaction, Buffet, was beaten along the whole line, even
in Rural corners. The Radical papers declared the democratic
Republic once for all founded; and one of these in its
enthusiasm cried, "May we he cursed if we do not close the
era of revolutions!"
The hopes for amnesty became now a certainty. No doubt
this was the boon by which the reparative Chamber would
signalise its joyous advent. A convoy of convicts was about
to set sail for New Caledonia. Victor Hugo summoned the
President, MacMahon, to adjourn the departure until the dis¬
cussion and the certainly favourable decision of the two Cham¬
bers. A petition, hurriedly organised, in a few days had over
a hundred thousand signatures. Soon the question of the
amnesty effaced all others, and the Ministry insisted upon an
immediate discussion.
Five propositions had been laid on the table. One only
demanded the full and complete amnesty. The others
excepted the crimes qualified as common crimes, and
amongst which were classed newspaper articles. The
Chamber appointed a commission to draw up a report.
Seven commissioners out of ten declared against all the
propositions.
The new layers were manifesting themselves. It was always
this same middle-class, bare of ideas and courage, hard to the
people, timid before Caesar, pettifogging and jesuitieal. The
workmen already shot down in J une, 1848, by an Assembly of
Republicans were to see in 1876 a Republican Assembly rivet
the chain forged by the Rurals.
The motion for a full and complete amnesty was supported
by those same Radicals who had combated the Commune or
abetted M. Thiers. They were now the democratic lions of
a Paris without a Socialist press, without popular tribunes,
without a history of the Commune, watched by the courts-
martial, always on the look-out for more victims, bereft of
all revolutionary electors. In this town which he had helped
to bleed, there were arrondissements which disputed the
honour of electing Louis Blanc. The deputy of Montmartre
was the same man who, on the 18th March, had con-
NEW CALEDONIA—THE LIBERAL CHAMBER. 461
gratulated Lecomte oil the capture of the cannon, M.
Clémenceau.
He made a jejune, garbled, timid exposé of the im¬
mediate causes of the 18th March, but took good care not
to touch upon the veritable causes. Other Radicals, in order
to make the vanquished more interesting, strove to lower
them. "You are absolutely mistaken as to the character of
this revolution," said M, Lockroy very grandly. "You see
in it a social revolution, where there has really been only a
fit of hysterics and an attack of fever." M. Floquet, nom¬
inated in the most revolutionary arrondissement, the one in
which Delescluze had fallen, called the movement "detestable."
M. Marcou wisely declared that the Commune was "an
anachronism."
No one even in the Extreme Left dared courageously to tell
the country the truth. "Yes, they were right to cling to their
arms, these Parisians, who remembered June and December;
yes, they were right to maintain that the monarchists were
plotting for a revolution; yes, they were right to struggle to
the death against the advent of the priest." No one dared
to speak of the massacres, to call the Government to account
for the bloodshed. They were even less outspoken than the
Enquête Parlementaire. It is evident from this weak and
superficial discussion that they only wanted to redeem their
word given to their electors.
To advocates who stooped so low the answer was easy enough.
As M. Thiers and Jules Favre had done on the 21st March,
1871, the Minister Dufaure pertinently set forth the true
question at issue. "No, gentlemen," said he, "this was not a
communal movement; this was in its ideas, its thoughts, and
even in its acts, the most Radical revolution which has ever
been undertaken in the world." And the reporter of the Com¬
mission: "There have been hours in our contemporary history
when amnesty may have been a necessity, but the insurrection
of the 18th March cannot from any point of view be.com¬
pared with our civil wars. I see a formidable insurrection,
a criminal insurrection, an insurrection against all society.
No, nothing obliges us to give back to the condemned of
462 HISTORY OP THE COMMUNE.
the Commune the rights of citizens." The immense majority
applauded Dufaure, singing the praises of the courts-martial,
and not a Radical had the courage to protest, to defy the
Minister to produce a single document, a single regular judg¬
ment. It would be easy to retort to this Extreme Left:
"Silence, pharisees, who allow the people to be massacred
and then come supplicating for them; mute or hostile
during the battle, grandiloquent after their defeat." Admiral
Fourichon denied that the convicts of the Commune are put
on the same footing as the others; denied their ill-treatment;
said the convicts lived in a very garden of flowers. Some in¬
transigeants having stated that "The torture has been re¬
established," this delicious answer was vouchsafed them, "It
is we whom you put to the torture."
On the 18th May, 1876, 396 noes against 50 ayes rejected
the full and complete amnesty. Gambetta did not vote. The
next day they discussed one proposition of amnesty, which
excluded those condemned for acts qualified as common
crimes by the courts-martial. The Commission again re¬
jected this motion, saying that it must be left to the mercy
of the Government, which had promised a considerable
number of pardons. The Radicals discussed a little to save
appearances. M. Floquet said, "It is not on a question
of generosity and mercy that we should ever doubt of the
intentions of the Government;" and the proposition was
thrown over.
Two days after, in the Senate, Victor Hugo asked for the
amnesty in a speech in which he drew a comparison between
the defenders of the Commune and the men of the 2nd Decem¬
ber. His proposition was not even discussed.
Two months after, MacMahon completed this hypocritical
comedy by writing to the Minister-at-War, "Henceforth no
more prosecutions are to take place unless commanded by
the unanimous sentiment of honest people." The honest
officers understood. The condemnations continued. Some
persons condemned by default, who had ventured to return
to France on the strength of the hopes of the first days, had
been captured; the sentences against them were confirmed.
NEW CALEDONIA—THE LIBERAL CHAMBER. 463
The organisers of workingmen's groups were mercilessly struck
when their connection with the Commune could be estab¬
lished.1 In November, 1876, the courts-martial pronounced
sentences of death.2
This merciless tenacity alarmed public opinion to such an
extent that the Radicals were again obliged to bestir them¬
selves a little. Towards the end of 1876 they demanded that
the Chamber should put a stop to the prosecutions, or at least
limit them. An illusory law was voted; the Senate threw it
out; our Liberals reckoned upon that.
The mercy of MacMahon was on a par with the rest. The
day after the rejection of the motion for an amnesty, Dufaure
had installed a consulting Commission of Pardons, composed
of functionaries and reactionists carefully culled by himself.
The penitentiary establishments in France then contained
1,600 persons condemned for participation in the Commune,
and the number of the transports rose to about 4,400. The
new Commission continued the system of the former one, com¬
muted some penalties, granted pardons of a few weeks or a
few months, even liberated two or three condemned who were
dead. A year after its institution it had recalled from New
Caledonia a hundred at the utmost of the least interesting of
the prisoners.
Thus the Liberal Chamber continued the vengeance of the
Rural Assembly; thus the bourgeois Republic appeared to
the workingmen as hostile to their rights, more implacable
perhaps than the Monarchists, justifying the remark of one
of M. Thiers' Ministers, "It is above all the Republicans
who must be adverse to the amnesty." Once again there
was justified the instinct of the people on the 18th March,
1 On the 22nd December 1876, Baron, ex-delegate of the accountants
of Paris to the Workmen's Congress, was summoned before the third
court-martial, which accused him of having been one of the secretaries
of the delegation of war during the Commune. Baron was condemned
to transportation in a fortress. During the examination the president
said, "The Court will take notice that the accused still has the same
sentiments as those which animated him in 1871, for in 1876 we have
seen that he took part in the Workmen's Congress."
3 Appendix XXXVIII.
464 HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
when they perceived in the conservative republic held out to
them by M. Thiers an anonymous oppression worse than the
Imperialist yoke.
At the present time, six years after the massacres, near
fifteen thousand men, women, and children are maintained
in New Caledonia or in exile.1
What hope remains? None. The bourgeoisie has been too
much frightened. The cries for amnesty, the blazoned-forth
elections, will not disquiet the conservative republicans or
monarchists. All the apparent concessions will only be so
many snares. The most valiant, the most devoted, will die in
the bagnio, in the Peninsula Ducos, in the Ile des Pins.
It belongs to the workmen to do their duty so far as it is
possible to-day.
The Irish, after the Fenian insurrection, opened hundreds
of public subscriptions for the benefit of the victims. Near
£1,200 were devoted to their defence before the tribunals.
The three men hanged at Manchester received on the morning
of their death the formal promise that their families should
want for nothing. This promise was kept. The parents of
the one, the wife of the other, were provided for, the children
were educated, dowered. In Ireland alone the donations
for the families exceeded £5,000. When the partial amnesty
was granted, all Irish people rushed forward to help the
amnestied. The single journal, the Irishman, in a few weeks
received £1,000, for the most part in penny and sixpenny
subscriptions. In one single donation the Irish of America
sent them £4,000, and the poorest of the poor Irish, the
emigrants of New Zealand, over £240. And this was not the
outburst of one day. In 1874 the Political Prisoners' Family
Fund still received £425. The total of the subscriptions
exceed £10,000. Finally, in 1876, a few Fenians chartered
a vessel and carried off some of their comrades still retained,
in Australia.
1 Even in the month of April 1877 another ship, having 506 con¬
demned to transportation, has been despatched from Prance to New
Caledonia.
NEW CALEDONIA—THE LIBERAL CHAMBER. 465
In France all the subscriptions for the families of the con¬
demned of the Commune have not exceeded £8,000. The
Irish victims numbered only a few hundreds; those of Ver¬
sailles must be counted by thousands.
Nothing has been done for the transported "convicts." The
Greppos, Louis Blancs & Co., who, without mandate, without
any surveillance, have arrogated to themselves the right of
centralising the subscriptions, of distributing them at pleasure,
have thus formed themselves a retinue out of the families of
those whom they had betrayed. They have refused to trans¬
mit anything to the convicts, that is to say, to the most
necessitous, who, six thousand leagues from France, pine away
without resources and with no possibility of work.
Do you understand, workingmen, you who are free? You
now know what the whole situation is and what the men are.
Remember the vanquished not for a day, but at all hours.
Women, you whose devotion sustains and elevates their
courage, let the agony of the prisoners haunt you like an ever¬
lasting nightmare. Let all workshops every week put some¬
thing aside from their wages. Let the subscriptions no longer
be sent to the Versaillese committee, but made over to loyal
hands. Let the Socialist party attest its principles of inter¬
national solidarity and its power by saving those who have
fallen for it. ,
APPENDIX.
I.—(Page 29.)
The Central Committee found in the bureau of the War-
Office, and the Officiel of the Commune published on the 25th
April, the following letter from the supreme commander of
the artillery of the army to General Suzanne:—
"Paris, 12th December 1870.
"My dear Suzanne—I have not found among the young
auxiliaries your protégé Hetzel, but only a M. Hessel. Is it
he who is meant?
"Tell me frankly what you desire, and I will do it. I will
attach him to my staff, where he will be bored, having nothing
to do, or else I will send him to Mont Valérien, where he will
run less risk than at Paris (this for the parents), and where he
will have the air of firing the cannons into the air, according
to Noël's method.
"Unbutton—your mouth, of course.—Yours,
Guiod"
The Noël mentioned at that time commanded Mont
Valérien.
II.—(Page 83.
The rôle of the Central Committe during the day of the
18th March.
"I would remind you that the members of the Committee
had separated at about half-past three in the morning of the
17th to the 18th. Before raising the sitting it had been
decided that the meeting of the following day should take
place at eleven o'clock in the evening, at a school requisitioned
for the purpose in the Rue Basfroi.
"Despite the lateness of the hour, nothing had transpired
as to the movements which the Government had decided upon,
and the Committee having only just constituted itself for the
examination of its powers and the distribution of. the com¬
missions, had received no information which might have led it
to suppose the imminence of the peril. Its military com¬
mission had not yet begun to work; it had taken possession
468
APPENDIX.
of the documents, notes, and minutes of the former one, and
that was all.
"You know how Paris woke up on the morning of the 18th.
The members of the Committee heard of the events of the
night through public rumours and the official placards. For
my own part, aroused at about eight o'clock, I hurried on my
clothes, and repaired to the Eue Basfroi, crossing the Place
de la Bastille, occupied by the Guard of Paris. I had hardly
entered the Eue de la Eoquette when I saw that the people
were beginning to organise the defence. A barricade was being
commenced at the corner of the Eue Neuve de Lappe. A little -
higher up I was refused passage, in spite of the declaration
which I made of my quality of member of the Central Com¬
mittee. I was obliged to go up the Eue de Charonne, the
faubourg, and come back in the direction of the Eue St. Ber¬
nard. No work was going on as yet in the Eue du Faubourg
St. Antoine, but the excitement there was great. At last,
towards half-past ten o'clock, I reached the Eue Basfroi, which
was barricaded at both outlets, with the exception of an open¬
ing reserved for the cannon drawn up in the open grounds
of this street, which were taken away one by one to the differ¬
ent barricades in course of erection.
"I succeeded, not without difficulty,* in getting into a school¬
room, where some of my colleagues were gathered. Citizens
Assi, Prudhomme, Eousseau, Gouhier, Lavalette, Geresme,
Bouit, and Fougeret were there. Just as I entered, a staff sub¬
lieutenant, arrested in the Eue St. Maur, was being led'in. He
was examined. Next a gendarme was brought, but the only
papers found in his possession were placards transmitted to
one of the mairies. X. looked after this business, and had
organised a sort of prison in the courtyard. I also saw defiling
about fifteen individuals, military and civil, arrested by the
people. In the meantime I learnt that Bergeret had been sent
to take the command of Montmartre, where he had been named
chef-de-légion the day before. Varlin, who came immediately
after me, had set out again in order to organise the defence
of the Batignolles. Arnold also put in his appearance for a
moment, and then went to place himself at the head of hie
battalion. The Committee had added Citizens Audoyneau,
Ferrat and Billioray to its numbers.
"At midday the course events would take was still waited
for, and nothing was decided upon. I begged some of my
colleagues to leave X. to his useless interrogations, and to
come and to deliberate in another room, the one we occupied
having by degrees been invaded by persons strangers to th&
APPENDIX.
469
Committee.' As soon as we were installed, we asked for some
citizens willing to serve as our general staff, and to inform us
as to the situation in the different quarters. A great number
presented themselves. We sent them in all directions, to tell
pur colleagues to hurry on as much as possible the construction
of the barricades, to muster the National Guard, to take the
command of it, and to specify the points whither we were to
forward our communications.
"Of our messengers only four returned. He whom we had
sent to the twentieth arrondissement informed us that the
rallying point was in the Eue de Paris and at Menilmontant,
in front of the new mairie. Yarlin had great trouble in group¬
ing the National Guards of the Batignolles. One staff had
mustered forces at the Place du Trone, and had repaired to the
Neuilly Barracks, hut the soldiers had closed the gates, and
assumed a menacing attitude. Brunei, together with Lis¬
bonne, was preparing to threaten the barracks of the Chateau
d'Eau.
"Other accounts apprised us that the orders of the Com¬
mittee were being waited for. Duval had established himself
at the Panthéon, and waited. Ealtot sent us a note in these
words: 'I have five or six battalions in the Eue de Sèvres; what
am I to do ?' Pindy had taken possession of the Mairie of the
third arrondissement, and was mustering the battalions de¬
voted to the Committee. As soon as we had got this intelli¬
gence some dispositions for the attack were taken.
"While these resolutions were being discussed Lullier had
come to place himself at the disposal of the Committee. The
Committee had given him no formal order, and confined itself
to telling him that all forces available for the taking of the
Hotel-de-Ville were being mustered.
"In order to assure the transmission of the orders, each one
of the members then present—others had come up, but I could
not say who—undertook to carry them to a designated point.
So at three o'clock the Committee broke up, leaving Assi and
two other members as a permanent sub-committee at the Eue
Basfroi."—Extract from an account addressed to the author
by a member of the Central Committee.
III.—(Page 160.)
Here is a letter from one of them, later a most violent enemy
of this Eevolution, M. Meline, general secretary of the Ministry
of Justice, written on the 30th March, to the president of the
Council of the Commune:
470
APPENDIX.
"Ville be Paris {First Arrondissement, Mairie of the Louvre).
"Citizen President—I no longer possess sufficient physical
strength after prolonged fatigues to combat in the midst of our
Assembly, which is destined to discuss so many grave questions.
I beg you then to accept my resignation, and my sincere hopes
that the Assembly may consolidate the Republic.—Receive,
Citizen President, the expression of my fraternal sentiments,
"Jules Melihe.
" SOth March 1871."
IV.—(Page 207.)
Here is a letter addressed to the Delegate at War:—
"Citizen—Excuse my addressing you these lines, and be so
kind as to take into consideration the request which I address
to you.
"I have three sons in the ranks of the National Guard—
the eldest in the 197th battalion, the second in the 126th, and
the third in the 97th. As to myself, I am in the 177th.
"However, there yet remains to me one son, who is the
youngest. He will soon be sixteen years old, and desires with
all his heart to be enrolled in no matter what battalion; for
he has sworn to his brothers and to me that he will take arms
to sustain our young Republic against the hangmen of Ver¬
sailles.
"We have all agreed, and we have sworn an oath to revenge
him who should fall under the fratricidal balls of our enemies.
"Citizen, take then the last of my sons. I offer him with
all my heart to the Republican fatherland. Do with him as
you wish, place him in a battalion of your choice, and you
will make me a thousand times happy.—Accept, citizen, my
fraternal salutation, Auguste Joulon,
" Guard of the 177th Battalion.
"18 Avenue d'Italie, Paris,
12th May 1871."
V.—(Page 209.)
Instances of their courage abound in the journals of the
time. One quotation taken at hazard from La Commune of
the 12th April:—
"On Thursday, the 6th, at the moment when the 26th bat¬
talion of St. Ouen defended the barricade of the cross-roads,
a child, V. Thiebault, fourteen years old, ran up amidst the
balls in order to give the defenders something to drink. The
shells having forced the Federals to fall back, they were about
APPENDIX.
471
to sacrifice the victuals of the battalion, when the child, in
spite of the shells, sprang towards a barrel of wine, which he
staved in, crying, 'At any rate they shall not drink our wine."
At the same instant, seizing the rifle of a Federal who had just
fallen, he charged it, took aim, and killed an officer of
gendarmes. Then perceiving a waggon with two horses har¬
nessed to it, whose driver had just been wounded, he mounted
the horses and saved the waggon.—Eugène Léon Vanvière,
thirteen and a half years old, contrived to save the guns at the
outpost of the Porte-Meillot, in spite of his wound."
VI.—(Page 217.)
The prefect of police, Valentin, sent the following circular
to the commissaries of the different railway stations:—
"Versailles, 26th April 1871.
"The chief of the executive power has just decided that,
dating from to-day, all victualling trains and all supplies of
provisions directed to Paris shall be stopped.
"I beg you to take all measures you may deem needful for
the execution of this decree at once. You are to examine with
the most vigilant attention all the railway trains, all the car¬
riages destined for Paris, and you will send back to the pur¬
veyors all the provisions you may discover.
"You will for this purpose concert with . . . &c.
"The delegate to the functions of prefect of police.
"Valentin."
VII.—(Page 219.)
". . . Accompanied by Frankel and one of my brothers, I
proceeded to the General Post-Office, which was still occupied
by the National Guards of order. I was immediately received
by M. Eampont, surrounded by the Board of Administration.
M. Eampont at first declared that he did not recognise the
authority of the Central Committee, which had appointed me;
but I think this was a merely formal precaution, for he began
to parley immediately. I told him that the Government of
the 4th September, which had named him, was also born of
a revolutionary movement, and that notwithstanding this he
had accepted his post. During this discussion he told us that
he was a Mutualist-Socialist, a partisan of Proudhon's ideas,
and consequently hostile to Communistic ideas, which had just
triumphed with the Eevolution of the 18th March. I an¬
swered that the Eevolution of the 18th March was not the
triumph of a Socialist school, but the prelude of a social trans-
m
APPENDIX,
formation fettered by no particular school, and that I myself
belonged to the mutualist school. After a long conversation,
in which he declared himself ready to acknowledge the author¬
ity of the Commune, which was to be named in two or three
days, he proposed to me to submit .the following undertaking
to the Central Committee. Till the day when the Commune
should have decided, he engaged to remain at the head of the
Post-Office; he accepted the control of two delegates of the
Committee. I communicated this proposal to Vaillant and
A. Arnaud (who had made over to me my nomination), in
order that they might inform the Committee. I waited in
vain for an answer.
"The Commune met. The second day, perhaps, I broached
the question of the Post-Office. It was to be comprised in the
order of the day, but always in the confused way which one
finds in the order of these debates, when, on the 30th March,
a workman came to apprise Pindy that the administration of
the Post-Office was deserting. The Commune immediately
voted my nomination, and gave me the order to have the
office occupied. Chardon set out at the head of a battalion,
accompanied by Vermorel and myself. It was seven or eight
o'clock in the evening. The work was done, and only a small
number of employés remained. Some gave us a sympathetic
welcome, others seemed indifferent. Chardon left a guard,
and I spent the night alone in the office.
"'The next day, at three o'clock in the morning, I walked
through the rooms and courts where the employés were arriv¬
ing for the first delivery. A manuscript placard, posted in all
the rooms and courts, ordered the employés to abandon their
services, and repair to Versailles, under pain of dismissal. I
tore down these placards and exhorted the men to remain true
to their posts. There was at first some indecision, then a few
made up their minds to rally round me.
"At eight o'clock other employés came; at nine o'clock still
more. They formed groups in the large court, talked, dis¬
cussed, some beat a retreat, and their example was about to be
followed.
"I had the doors closed, and militarily occupied by guards;
and I went from group to group, discussing, menacing. At
last I gave the order to each one to return to his respective
bureau. Thereupon a precious auxiliary came up, Citizen
A , an employé at the Post-Office, a Socialist, for whom
I had a letter from a friend. There was a momentary hesita¬
tion. The father of a family, much respected, sure of an early
^promotion, he was about to risk an advantageous place. But
APPENDIX.
473
Aîs hesitation lasted only a few seconds. "He promised me his*
assistance, and he gave it me faithfully up to the last day. He-
brought me into relation with Citizen B -, who soon became
my second. Both of them furnished me with information of
the greatest utility concerning this department, of which I
■did not know the most simple details.
"All the chiefs of bureaux had abandoned their posts; so,
too, had the second head-clerks, save one, who immediately
had himself put on the sick-list. A—— and B got to¬
gether some friends, head-clerks, who for a long time had done
all the work of the chiefs of the bureaux. Citizen C was
placed at the head of the postal service for Paris.
"All the divisional bureaux, save two, had been closed and
abandoned. The stock had been carried off, the cash-box
emptied, as was proved by the minutes drawn up by a com¬
missary of the Commune, with the assistance of several well-
known people of the quarter, amongst whom was M. Brelay,
since named deputy of Paris. Postage stamps were wanting.
'The carts had set off for Versailles.
"A., B., and some others of an indefatigable zeal, had the
'divisional bureaux opened by locksmiths in the presence of
the commissaries of the quarter, and installed well-meaning
citizens, whose apprenticeship they superintended. But there
was a stoppage of two days in the delivery of letters, which
gave rise to public grumbling, and I was obliged to explain the
facts in a placard. At the end of forty-eight hours A. and B.
had reorganised the collection and delivery of letters.
• "All the citizens whose services had been accepted as auxili¬
aries received provisionally, till their capacities could be judged
of, a salary of five francs a day.
"By chance we found some postage-stamps of ten centimes
at the bottom of a chest. Camélinat, appointed the director
of the Mint, sent for the plates and the stock, and forthwith
began manufacturing stamps.
: "During the first days bundles of letters from Paris destined
for the provinces were taken in by the receiving officer of
Sceaux, who no doubt was without precise instructions; then
the blockade was completed. The sending of letters to the
provinces became the object of a daily struggle. Secret agents
went to throw them into the boxes of the offices for ten miles
round. The letters of Paris for Paris alone were stamped with
date-marks. Those sent to the provinces by our smugglers
only had the postage-stamp, which did not permit of their
being distinguished from the others. When Versailles found
out the manoeuvre, it changed the dotting of the stamps. We
474
APPENDIX.
were quits at Paris by sending off the letters of importance
without prepayment, and procuring stamps from the bureaux
of Versailles.
"If the bureaux for the letters to be sent out of Paris could
still work, those for the collection of the letters from abroad
were at a stand-still. The letters from the provinces accumu¬
lated at Versailles. Some men of business set up agencies,
where, for a very high fee, the letters which they went to fetch
at Versailles might be obtained. These people exploited the
population, but we could not supersede them, and we were
obliged to shut our eyes. We contented ourselves with re¬
ducing the profits somewhat, by deducting from each letter
the postage of Paris for Paris, without their being able on that
account to raise the sum fixed by their advertisements.
. "The efforts of Versailles to disorganise the reconstituted
postal services were several times baffled, thanks to the vigilance'
of our two inspectors. However, we could not prevent the
success of all their attempts at subornation.
"From the first days of April we instituted a council at the
post-office, composed of the delegate, his secretary, the general
secretary, all the heads of services, two inspectors, and two head
postmen. The postmen, gardiens de bureaux, and sorters had
their wages raised, very little, alas! for our receipts, consider¬
ably reduced, did not allow us to be very liberal.
"We decided upon the suppression, if not absolute, at least
partial, of the time for serving as supernumerary, which was
reduced to the strictly necessary time. The aptness of the
workmen had henceforth to be proved by tests and examina¬
tions, as also the quantity and quality of their labour."—Ex¬
tract from an account addressed to the author by Theisz.
VIII.—(Page 220.)
The limits of this Appendix oblige me to make a résumé of
the extremely interesting accounts by Faillet and Louis Debock
on the direct taxes and the National Printing Office:—
"In the evening of the 24th March Faillet and Combault (of'
the International) presented themselves at the administration
of the direct taxes. On the written declaration that he yielded
to menaces, the director handed them over the keys. Citizen
X., who was thoroughly acquainted with the administrative-
movement, placed himself very promptly at their disposal.
"The original register and other materials for the collection
of taxes had disappeared. It was decided that the taxes should
be gathered according to the list of 1869. The personnel of"
APPENDIX.
475
the forty collectorships, the valuers, the employés, to make
up the list, had fled. The collectors were replaced by forty
citizens, some workingmen belonging to the International, the
others clerks of commercial houses or government offices.
Some of the old officials who had riot withdrawn were retained,
hut under the superintendence of a safe man. The presence
of Citizen X. decided a great number of employés to come and
work under the new directors.
"The service of the direct taxes was composed—for the in¬
terior, of a director, a general administrator, a general secre¬
tary, two sub-secretaries, one chief of the bureaux of taxes
and lists, a head accountant, five other accountants, and two
inspectors of the collecting offices; for the exterior, of forty
tax-gatherers, each one assisted by two or three clerks, a bearer
of summonses, and an agent with his accountants at the bonded
warehouse for wine.
"Once or twice a week the director made a round in all the
collector's offices, which the inspectors visited every day. Each
tax-gatherer brought the cashier of the direction the receipts
of the day before. The cashier every evening laid the returns
before the administration, and made over to the Central Pay-
Ofliee of the Finance Department all that was not needed for
the general expenses of the service.
"The service ceased on the Saturday evening, 25th May.
A hundred clerks, not thinking their whole duty to the Com¬
mune done, formed a corps of scouts, whose post was established
in the presbytery of the Temple des Billettes."
"On the 18th March, at five o'clock in the evening, Pindy
and Louis Debock presented themselves with a battalion at the
National Printing-Office, and established themselves there.
The director Hauréau came down, tried to negotiate, and then
went up again to his apartments. During the evening Debock
went to ask him for the list of workmen. Hauréau took ad¬
vantage of the occasion to protest his republicanism, said he
was a former editor of the National, a friend of Marrast, Arago,
&c., and that the movement of the 18th March had no raison
d'être whatever. A few days were allowed him for removing.
"The whole personnel was maintained, with the exception of
the director, the sub-director, the overseer, and the chief of
the works, Felix Derenémesnil, who was cordially detested for
his brutality and injustice. These spread abroad that the
Central Committee had no money, and that the workmen
would not be paid. Debock answered by an order of the day
placarded in the workshops, guaranteeing the wages in the
name of the Central Committee.
476
APPENDIX.
"At the énâ of March, on the injunction of Versailles, all
the employés and heads of the services, with very few excep¬
tions, abandoned the printing-office after having received their
salaries. The new director took advantage of this to have the
new foremen of the workshops appointed by the workmen
themselves. The places of managers of the printing-press were
put up for competition. As the administration of the Rue
Pagevin threw obstacles into the way of placarding the decrees
and proclamations, Debock advised the workmen bill-stickers
to associate themselves. They did so; their wages increased by
25 per cent., and the printing-office saved 200 francs a day.
"The bulk of the salaries was greatly reduced; that of the
lower clerks and workmen increased. On the 18th March a
fortnight's salary was due to the workingmen and women, and
a week's to the employés. The Commune discharged these
arrears. Versailles, victorious, refused to pay the few days'
wages due to the workmen. Yet the Versailles administration
found the stock intact and in perfect order.
"The budget of monthly expenses before the 18th March
rose to 120,000 francs, of which 28,000 were absorbed by the
salaries of the functionaries, employés, &e. After this date
the expenses did not reach 20,000 francs a week, the expenses
of placarding included.
"After the Commune the Union Républicaine announced
in the journals that it had saved the Archives and the National
Printing-Office from the flames. This was a lie, as proved by
the order sent on the 24th May to the Archives at the request
of Debock.
"Order.—The Archives not to be burnt.—The Colonel com¬
manding the Hôtel-de-Ville, Pindy.
"As to the printing-office, it was occupied by Debock up to
the invasion of the quarter. In the night of the 24th he sent
to ask the Committee of Public Safety for the documents,
papers, and articles necessary for the composition of the
Journal Officiel. The next day, having received no answer, and
the Versaillese pressing forward, he repaired to Belleville,
where the three proclamations or placards which appeared on
the following days were printed by his order."
IX.—(Page 241.)
"Certainly the Communal principle must have been very
strong in itself to have held sixty days against such fools."—
Behind the Scenes at the Commune, "Fraser's Magasine,"
December, 1872.
APPENDIX.
477
"To conquer was so easy and simple, that it needed' the
double dose of vanity and ignorance with which the feeble
brains of the majority of the Commune were stuffed to baulk
the people of its victory."—The Paris Commune of 1871,
"Fraser's Magazine," March, 1873.
"Hé (Delescluze) had only once dared to attack me to my
face, but it resulted in so much discomfiture to himself, and he
came out of the affair so crestfallen, that for the future he con¬
fined himself to plotting against us behind my back, while to
my face he was as civil as possible."—Behind the Scenes at the
Commune, "Fraser's Magazine," December, 1872.
X.—(Page 250.)
At the trial of the members of the Commune, the advocate
of Assi read a letter which the prisoners in Germany had sent
his client:—
"Citizen Assi—So you no longer think, with the Central
Committee of the crapulous, that we are tired of your farces
and evolutions without an aim and without limits ... Woe
to you, sink of the people! All possible reverses will accumu¬
late upon you, and give you, as the whole result of your acts
deprived of common-sense and capacity, the hatred of the pris¬
oners confined in Germany, and the severe punishment which
the admired representatives of all France will mercilessly in¬
flict upon you. Once over the frontier, the last of the prisoners
will go and plunge into the heart of the guilty the poniard
which is to give back security to the legal government. Be
prepared for the sentence which all the prisoners in Germany
have in store for you. . . . Death to the insurgents! Death
to the infernal Committee! Tremble, brigands!
"Seen and approved by all the prisoners of Magdebourg,
Erfurt, Coblentz, Mayence, Berlin," &c.
The signatures follow.
XI.—(Page 267.)
One of Laroque's reports concluded thus:
"I send you the names of the friends of order and of the
agents who have rendered the greatest service. Jules Masse,
P. Yerdier, Sigismond, Galle, Tar jest, Honobede, Toussaint,
Arthur Sellion, Jullia Francisque Baltead, E. Philips, Salo-
whieht, Maniel, Dolsand (42d battalion), Rollin, Yerox (sem¬
inarist), D'Anthome, Sommé, Cremonaty, Tascher de la
Pagerie, Josephine Legros, Jupiter (police agent), the manager
of the Café de Suéde, the proprietor of the Café de Madrid,
478
APPENDIX.
Lucia, Hermance, Amélie, little Celestine of the Café des
Princes, Camille and Laura (Café Peters), Madame du Valdy
(Faubourg St. Germain), Leynhass (brewer).
XII.—(Page 268.)
This is what had passed between the Committee of Publie
Safety and Dombrowski:—
"The latter came to us one evening and informed us that
through the instrumentality of one of his officers (Hutzinger),
Versailles had made overtures to him, and asked him to appoint
a rendezvous. He demanded of us whether something could
not be got out of this for the Commune. We resolved to let
him try the interview on condition that he should tell us all
that passed. That evening we charged somebody to follow
and arrest him if he yielded. From this time Dombrowski was
closely watched—it is thanks to this surveillance that he was
not carried off by the Versaillese who made use of a woman
to allure him to the neighbourhood of the Luxembourg—and
I declare we learnt nothing that was of a nature to weaken our
confidence in him.
"He came the next day, and told us that a million was
offered him on condition that he would betray one of the gates.
He gave us the names of those he had seen; amongst others,
there was a confectioner of the Place de la Bourse, the address
of the suborners (8 Bue de la Michaudière) and announced
another rendezvous for the next day. ... He explained to
us how he would entice a few thousand Versaillese into Paris
to make them prisoners. Pyat and I opposed this attempt. He
did not insist, but demanded that the next day 20,000 men
and some howitzers should be provided for him. He had de¬
cided on attracting the Versaillese troops by a surprise within
reach of the fortifications. ... Of the 20,000 men, 3,000
or 4,000 only could be mustered, and instead of 500 artillerists,
there came only fifty."—Extract from an account addressed
to the author by a member of the Committee of Public Safety.
XIII.—(Page 274.)
Here is an extract from the report addressed to the Municipal
Council of Toulouse by the delegates sent to Versailles to M.
Thiers and the deputies of the Extreme Left to inquire into the
situation:—
"We went then for information to the members of the
Extreme Left; Martin Bernard, the companion and friend of
Barbès, Louis Blanc, Schœlcher, &c.
APPENDIX.
479
r "M. Louis Blanc gave us the most precise information. It
is useless, said he to us, to again attempt conciliation; there is
too much animosity on both sides. Besides, with whom could
one treat in Paris? These different and hostile forces dispute
for power.
"First there is the Commune, the result of an election at
which only a small number of electors took part, composed
chiefly of unknown men, of doubtful capacities, and some times
even of doubtful honour.
"In the second place, a Committee of Public Safety named
by the Commune, but soon coming to a violent rupture with
it because it wanted to direct dictatorially.
"In the third place, the Central Committee, formed during
the siege, and principally composed of agents of the Interna¬
tional, solely occupied with cosmopolitan interests, and caring
very little for Parisian or French interests; it is this Central
Committee which disposes of the cannon and the munitions,
in one word, of almost all the material forces.
"To all this must be added the Bonapartist and Prussian
influences, whose more or less apparent action it is easy to trace
in all three powers.1
"The, Parisian insurrection," continued M. Louis Blanc, "is
legitimate in its motives and in its first aim—the revindication
of the municipal franchise of Paris. But the intervention of
the Central Committee and the pretension manifested of
governing all the other Communes of the Republic, have quite
altered its character. Finally, the insurrection in the presence
of the Prussian army, ready to enter Paris if the Commune is
victorious, is altogether condemnable, and must be condemned
by every true Republican. This is why the mayors of Paris,
the Left of the Assembly, and the Extreme Left, have not
hesitated to protest against an insurrection which the presence
of the Prussian army and other circumstances might render
criminal.
"M. Martin Bernard held the same language, and spoke
almost in the same terms. Tf Barbès still lived,' cried he, 'his.
1 Thiers and Jules Favre themselves have calumniated Paris less than
Louis Blanc. The first says in the Enquête, sur le 18 Mars, vol. ii. p. 15 : "It
is not true, as has teen asserted, that I had great difficulties with the Prus¬
sian Government concerning the Commune, or that it had any predilection
for the latter." Jules Favre, vol. ii. p. 49; "1 have seen nothing that could
authorise me to accuse either the Bonapartists or Prussia. General Trochu
has been mistaken. I have seen nothing that could authorise me to accuse
the Bonapartists of having fomented the 18th March. After the insurrec¬
tion of the 18th March, I spent my time in refusing the offers which were
made me by the Prussians to assist in the overthrow of the Commune." 1
480
APPENDIX.
heart 'would have béen rent, and he too would have condemned
this fatal insurrection.' ,
"All the other persons whom we have been able to see—
MM. Henri Martin, Barthélémy St. Hilaire, Humbert, Victor
Lefranc, &c., have spoken to us in the same way, and this
Unanimity could not but make a deep impression upon us."
XIV.—(Page 290.)
This is the textual copy of a report addressed to the Ver-
saillese general staff:—
"The mot d'ordre has been tampered with on the 17th, 18th,
and 19th.
"We had that of Versailles (General Douai's corps).
"There has been an explosion at the Rapp powder magazine;
as I have already reported to you. There were some dead, and
many wounded.
"A commissary of police of the Commission of Safety has
made about forty arrests. Those made on account of the ex¬
plosion are estimated to be about 125.
"Sergeant Toussaint (3rd battery, 2nd squadron) has been
arrested by the Commune. It is said that this brave officer is
shot.
"The sick, according to our information, had been taken
away either the day before or on the morning of the day of the
catastrophe to the Hôtel des Invalides. The work-women, and
hot the men, were sent home earlier that day.
"The official of the Audit Office of the Hospital du Gros-
Caillou, M. Bernard, has behaved very well.
"I recommend to the good-will of M. le Ministre, MM. Jan¬
vier, Bertalon (?), Mauduit, Morelli, and Sigismond, men en¬
joying an excellent reputation.
"They desire the cross or an important collectorship.
"Signal services have been rendered by Madame Brosset,
and by Mademoiselle Gigaud. It is at the latter's house that
I hid for eight days when Rigault's people were searching
for me.
"This woman is very devoted; she lives in the Quartier du
Gros Caillou, Rue Dominique St. Germain. She is the daughter
of an ex-officer. She would be glad to have a tobacconist's
shop."—Report of Commander Jerriait, Ex-Chief of Squadron.
XV.—(Page 325.)
This fact was categorically deposed to by M. E. Belgrand,
Director of the Service of Public Roads, before the Commission
of Inquiry into the 18th March (vol. iii., p. 352-353).
APPENDIX.
48Ï
"The insurgents attempted nothing with the sewers. In
short, I may affirm that from the 18th March up to the entry
of the troops into Paris there was no attempt at all as to the
sewers; that no chambers had been established there; that no
incendiary or explosive matters had been introduced, nor wires
destined to set fire to mines or to incendiary matters."
XVI.—(Page 329.)
The Bien Public, M. Thiers' organ, directed by Vrignault,
published in its number of the 23rd June, 1871:—
"All Paris has preserved the souvenir of that terrible can¬
nonade directed from Montmartre during the last three days
of the civil war against the Buttes Chaumont, Belleville, and
the Père Lachaise. Here are some very correct details of what
was happening then at the summit of the Butte, behind the
batteries at No. 6 Rue des Rosiers.
"There had been installed in this house, so sadly celebrated,
a provostship, presided over by a captain of Chasseurs. As the
inhabitants of the quarter rivalled each other in zeal in de¬
nouncing the insurgents, the arrests were numerous. As the
prisoners arrived they were questioned.
"They were forced to kneel down, bare-headed, in silence,
before the wall at the foot of which the unfortunate Generals
Lecomte and Clément-Thomas had been assassinated. They
remained thus a few hours, till others came to take their place.
Soon, to lessen what might be cruel in this amende honorable,
the prisoners were allowed to sit down in the shade, but always
opposite the wall, the aspect of which prepared them for death,
and shortly after the principal culprits amongst them were
shot.
"They were taken a few steps from there to the slope of the
hill, at the spot where during the siege a battery overlooked the
St. Denis route. It is there too that Varlin was conducted,
whom they had great trouble in protecting from the violence
of the crowd. Varlin had confessed his name, and made no
efforts to escape the fate that awaited him; he died game.
V. B."
XVII.—(Page 338.)
The day before, at five o'clock, at the moment when the bag¬
gage of the War Office arrived at the Hôtel-de-Ville, in the
Avenue Victoria, two guards, carrying a chest, were assailed
with a hatchet, by an individual dressed in a blouse and wear¬
ing a cap. One of the Federals fell dead. The assassin, im-
482
APPENDIX.
mediately seized hold of, cried, 'You are done for! you are done
for! Give me back my hatchet and I shall recommence.' On
this madman the commissary of police of the Hôtel-de-Ville
found papers and the livret, proving that he had served in the
sergents-de-ville.
During the evening of Tuesday, an individual, wearing the
uniform of an officer of a free corps, came to ask for orders at
the Hôtel-de-Ville. A commandant of the same corps entered
the hall and saw this officer, and not recognising him, asked his
name. The latter grew confused: 'But no, you are not one of
my men,' said the commandant. The individual was arrested,
and found to be the bearer of Versaillese instructions and
orders.
Treason assumed all shapes. The same morning at Belle¬
ville, Place des Fêtes, Banvier and Frankel heard a drummer
reading the Federal Guards the order not to leave their arron¬
dissements. Ranvier, interrogating the drummer, learned that
the order emanated from General du Bisson.
XVIII.—(Page 348.)
"Colonel Gaillard, chief of the military prisons, interrogated
by the Commission d'Enquête as to the objects of value found on
the insurgents, answered: 'I can give you no information on
this head. There were valuables which have not been sent to
Versailles. A few days ago I saw a minister of Denmark. He
came to inquire what had become of a sum of 100,000 francs
seized on one of his compatriots who had been shot near the
Hôtel-de-Ville. His minister told me he had been unable to
obtain any information. Many things happened in Paris of
which we know nothing.' "—Enquête sur le 18 Mars, Colonel
Gaillard, v. 2, p. 246.
XIX.—(Page 351.)
Shall we ever know of all the spurious speculators, the com¬
mercial men with no resources left, the men at the brink of
bankruptcy, who made use of the conflagrations in order to
quit scores? How many cried 'Death!' who had themselves
just set the petroleum on fire.
On the 10th March, 1877, the assize court of the Seine sen¬
tenced to ten years' hard labour a ruined Bonapartist, Prieur de
la Comble, found guilty of having set fire to his house, with the
object of getting a heavy premium from the companies where
he was insured. He had prepared his crime with the greatest
sang froid, painted the walls, saturated the hangings with
petroleum, made sure of nine different centres of fire. His
APPENDIX.
483
father, a former mayor of the first arrondissement, had failed
to the amount of 1,800,000 francs, and at the end of the
Empire there had been proceedings of bankruptcy instituted
against him. Now, on the 24th May, 1871, the house of the
accused in the Eue du Louvre, that of his father in the Rue de
Rivoli, that of the assignee of the failure in the Boulevard
Sebastopol, were consumed, and owing to these triple confla¬
grations the account-books and vouchers disappeared. This
fact was only mentioned before the assize court, and the presi¬
dent confined himself to saying that it was odd. He took good
care not to interrogate Prieur; and one knows that the presi¬
dents of assize courts are not usually chary of sifting the ante¬
cedents of the accused.
The motive of this extraordinary reticence is that no blame
was to be thrown upon the army and the courts-martial, which
had shot or condemned some petroleuses for the burning of
these very houses set on fire by Prieur de la Comble.
XX.—(Page 368.)
"... A picket of soldiers debouched from the Rue de Vau-
girard on our left. They marched in two ranks. In the midst
of them was Millière.
"He was dressed exactly as I had seen him some months
before at Bordeaux on the tribune of the Assembly and in the
Republican Circle—black trousers, dark-blue overcoat,, tight
and buttoned up, a high black hat.
"The picket stopped before the door of the Luxembourg.
One of the soldiers, who held his rifle by the end of the barrel,
cried, 'It is I who took him! it is I who am entitled to shoot
him!' There were about a hundred persons there of both sexes
and of all ages. Many cried, 'Death to him! shoot him!'
"A National Guard, wearing a tricolor armlet, seized hold of
Millière by the wrist, led him into the corner on the right, and
placed him against the wall, then he retired. . . . Millière un¬
covered himself, placed his hat on the pedestal of the column,
crossed his arms on his breast, and calm and cool looked at the
troops. He waited.
"Round us the soldiers were being questioned. 'Who is it?'
one of them was asked, and I heard him answer, 'It is Mayer.'
"A priest came out of the Luxembourg; he wore a straight-
cut cassock and a high hat. Advancing towards Millière, he
spoke a few words to him and pointed to heaven.
"Without ostentation, but with a very firm and calm atti¬
tude, Millière appeared to thank him, and shook his head in
sign of refusal. The priest retired.
484
APPENDIX.
"Two officers came out from the palace and addressed them¬
selves to the prisoner. One of them, whom the first seemed to
guide, spoke to him for a minute or two. We heard the sound
of voices without understanding the words exchanged, then I
heard this command: 'To the Panthéon!'
"The picket re-formed round Millière, who put on his hat,
and the cortège remounted the Eue de Yaugirard in the direc¬
tion of the Panthéon.
"We reached the rails at the same time as the picket. The
door opened and shut upon them. Placing my feet on the stone
balustrade, I passed my two arms round the top of the bars;
my head overlooked them, for these railings are low. By my
side a soldier, the sentry of the interior, answered some prosti¬
tutes who were questioning him; his elbow, leaning against the
rails, touched mine.
"The picket of the troop had stopped and almost leant
against the closed door. Millière was led between the two
columns of the centre. Arrived at the spot where he was to die,
and after having ascended the last step of the stairs, he ex¬
changed a few words with the officer. Searching in the pocket
of his overcoat, which he had just unbuttoned, he took out an
object, which I believed to be a letter, and handed it over to
him, as also a watch and a locket. The officer took them, then
seized hold of Millière and placed him in such a manner that
he should be shot from behind. The latter turned round with
a brusque movement, and, his arms crossed, faced the troop.
This is the only movement of indignation or of anger that I
saw him make.
"Some more words were exchanged; Millière seemed to be
refusing to obey an order. The officer came down. The instant
after, a soldier seized him who was to be shot by the shoulder
and forced him to bend his knee upon the flagstone.
"Half the rifles of the platoon only were levelled at him; the
others remained in the arms of the soldiers. During this time,
believing his last moment come, Millière three times uttered
the cry, 'Vive la République!'
"The officer approaching the picket of the troop, ordered the
rifles, which had been too hurriedly lowered, to be raised again,
and then he pointed out with his sword how the order to fire
would be given.
"'Vive le peuple! Vive l'humanité' cried Millière.
"The soldier on sentry, whose elbow touched my arm, an¬
swered the last words by these: 'On va t'en foutre de l'huma¬
nité!' I had hardly heard them when Millière fell as if thun¬
der-stricken.
APPENDIX,
485
"A military man, whom I believe to have been a non-com¬
missioned officer, went up the steps, approached the corpse,
lowered his rifle, and fired point-blank near the left temple.
The explosion was so violent that the head of Millière bounded,
and appeared as if twisted back. The rain for three-quarters
of an hour had beaten against his face; the cloud of powder
fixed itself there.
"Lying on his side, his hands joined, his clothes open and
thrown into disorder by the fall, his head blackened, as if
burst open, seeming to look at the frontispiece of the monu¬
ment, his corpse was something terrible "—The death
of Millière recounted by M. Louis Mie, Conseiller-Général of the
Dordogne, Municipal Counciller of Perigeux, deputy of Bor¬
deaux to the Chamber.
Madame Millière having instituted judiciary proceedings
against Staff-Captain Garcin, the murderer of her husband, the
trial was cut short by the following letter:—
"Versailles, SOth June 1873.
"Captain Garcin of the General Staff attached to the 2d
corps, has during the second siege of Paris only executed the
orders given him by his superiors. He can thus in no way be
made responsible for deeds which were the result of these
orders. The responsibility rests exclusively upon those who
have given the orders.
"The Minister at War,
"De Cissey."
XXI.—(Page 371.)
To the number of the innocent victims of our civil discords
we have the sorrow to add the name of a young man, twenty-
seven years old, M. Paneau, a doctor of medicine.
"Dr. Faneau had worked from the beginning of the war in
the International ambulances. During the whole siege of
Paris he did not cease tending the wounded with zealous de¬
votion.
"After the revolution of the 18th March he remained in
Paris, and resumed his service in the ambulances.
"On the 25th May he was on duty at the Grand Séminaire de
St. Sulpice, where the Federals had established an ambulance.
"When the army had taken possession of the cross-roads of
the Croix Rouge, it advanced as far as the Place.
"A company of line soldiers came up to the door of the semi¬
nary, where floated the flag of Geneva.
486
APPENDIX.
"The officer who commanded asked to speak to the chief of
the ambulance. Dr. Faneau, who filled this function, pre¬
sented himself.
" 'Are there any Federals here?' the officer asked him.
" 'I have only wounded,' answered M. Faneau, 'they are
Federals, hut they have been in my ambulance foY several days.'
"At the moment when he was concluding these words, a shot
was fired from one of the windows of the first storey, and
struck a soldier.
"This shot was discharged by one of the wounded Federals,
who had dragged himself from his bed to the window.1
"Immediately the officer, exasperated, threw himself upon
Dr. Faneau, crying to him, 'You lie, you have set a snare for
us; you are the friend of these rascals; you are going to be
shot.'
"Dr. Faneau understood that it would be in vain to attempt
to justify himself; also, he offered no resistance to the firing-
party.
"Some minutes after the unfortunate young man fell, struck
by ten bullets.
"We knew Dr. Faneau, and we can affirm that, far from
sympathising with the members of the Commune, he deplored
their fatal errors, and waited with impatience for the re-estab-
ishment of order.—Le Siècle.
XXII.—(Page 383.)
In the National of the 29th May appeared the following:—
" Paris, 28th May 1871.
"Sir,—Last Friday, at the time when corpses were being
picked up in the Boulevard St. Michel, some individuals of
nineteen to twenty-five years old, dressed as well-to-do people,
were seated with gay women inside, and at the doors of certain
cafés of this boulevard, indulging with these in scandalous
merrymaking.—Accept, Monsieur le rédacteur, &c.,
"55 Boulevard d'Enfer." Duhamel.
The facts mentioned above were repeated every day.
The Journal de Paris, a Versaillese journal suppressed by
the Commune, wrote:—
"The manner in which the population of Paris manifested
its satisfaction yesterday was rather more than frivolous, and
we fear it will grow worse as time progresses. Paris has now a
fête-day appearance, which is sadly out of place; and unless we
1 The Siècle, in search of attenuating circumstances for the army, had
invented this more than phantasmagorial incident.
APPENDIX.
487
are to be called the Parisians of the decline, this sort of thing
must come to an end." Then he quoted the passage from
Tacitus: "Yet on the morrow of that horrible struggle, even
before it was completely over, Rome, degraded and corrupt,
began once more to wallow in the voluptuous slough which was
destroying its body and polluting its soul—alibi proelia et vul-
nera, alibi balnea popinaeque—'here fights and wounds, there
baths and restaurants.' "
XXIII.—(Page 384.)
The Versaillese journals confessed to 1600 prisoners buried
in the Père Lachaise. The Opinion Nationale of the 10th June
said:—1
"We do not wish to leave the Père Lachaise without saluting
with a look of Christian compassion these deep trenches, where
lie entombed pell-mell the insurgents taken under arms, and
those who would not surrender.
"They have expiated their criminal folly by an act of sum¬
mary justice. May God pity and have mercy upon them!
"Let us rectify, in passing, the exaggerated rumours which
have been spread on the subject of the executions at the Père
Lachaise and in the environs.
"It appears from certain information—we might almost ven¬
ture to say official statements—that there have only been
buried in that cemetry, shot or killed fighting, sixteen hundred-
men in all"
But the following account of the executions of La Roquette
has been given me by an eye-witness, who barely escaped
death:—
"I had returned to my house on the Saturday evening. Sun¬
day morning, on crossing the Boulevard du Prince Eugène, I
was taken in a razzia. We were conducted to La Roquette. A
chief of battalion was standing at the entrance. He surveyed
us; then, with a nod of the head, said, 'To the right,' or 'To
the left.' I was sent to the left. 'Your affair is settled,' the
soldiers said to us; 'you are going to be shot, canailles!' We
were ordered to throw away our matches if we had any about
us, and then the signal was given to march on.
"I was the last of the file, and by the side of the sergeant
who conducted us. He looked at me. 'Who are you?' he
asked me. 'A professor. I was taken this morning as I came
out of my house.' No doubt my accent, the elegance of my
clothes, struck him, for he added, 'Have you any papers?'
Tfes.' 'Come!' and he took me back before the chief of
battalion. 'Commander,' said he, 'there is. a mistake. This
488
APPENDIX.
young man has his papers.' 'All right,' answered the officer,
without looking at me, 'to the right.'
"The sergeant led me off. As we went along, he explained
to me that the prisoners, taken to the left were shot. We had
already got to a door on the right, when a soldier ran after us:
'Sergeant, the commandant says you are to take back this man
to the left.'
"Fatigue, despair at the defeat, the enervation caused by so
much anguish, deprived me of all strength to dispute my life.
'Well, shoot me,' said I to the sergeant, 'for you it will be but a
crime the more! only return these papers to my family,' and I
turned to the left.
"I already perceived a long file of men drawn up against a
wall, others lying on the ground. Opposite them three priests
read in their breviaries the prayers of the dying. A few steps
more and I was dead, when suddenly I was seized hold of by
the arm. It was my sergeant. He took me back by force to the
officer. 'Commandant,' said he, 'we cannot shoot this man.
He has his papers!' 'Let me see,' said the officer. I handed
over my pocket-book, which contained a card as employé at the
Ministry of Commerce during the first siege. 'To the right,'
said the commandant.
"There were soon more than 3,000 prisoners on the right.
All Sunday and part of the night detonations resounded by the
side of us. On Monday morning a platoon came in. 'Fifty
men,' said the sergeant. We thought we were going to be shot
by parties, and no one stirred. The soldiers took the first fifty
they came across. I was of the number. We were taken to the
famous left side.
"On a space which seemed to us endless we saw heaps of
corpses. 'Pick up all this rubbish,' said the sergeants to us,
'and put them into these carts.' We raised up these corpses
covered with blood and mud. The soldiers made frightful
jokes; 'See what grimaces they cut,' and with their heels
crushed some face. It seemed to me that some were still living.
We told the soldiers so, but they answered, 'Come, come! get
on!' Certainly some died under the earth. We put 1,907
corpses into these carts."
The Liberté of the 4th June said:—
"The governor of La Roquette during the Commune, and
his acolytes, were shot on the very scene of their exploits.
"For the other National Guards arrested in this neighbour¬
hood, and whose number exceeded 4,000, a provisional court-
martial was installed in the Roquette itself. A commissary of
police and police agents of safety were charged with the first
APPENDIX.
489
examination. Those appointed to be shot were sent into the
interior; they were killed from behind while they were walking
along, and their bodies were thrown on to the nearest heap.
All these monsters had the faces of bandits; the exceptions
were to be regretted."
XXIV.—(Page 884.)
"At the time of the trial of the members of the Conncil of
the Commune before the third court-martial sitting at Ver¬
sailles, a certain M. Gabriel Ossude came to give evidence as
witness against Jourde, in whose arrest he was concerned, he
said, in his quality of provost of the seventh arrondissement,
and as Colonel Merlin, president of the court, seemed aston¬
ished that such a function should have devolved upon a
civilian, M. Ossude entered into very precise explanations,
which I remember perfectly.
"He declared that towards the end of the Commune the pre-
votal courts had been instituted by the Government of Ver¬
sailles in view of the early entry of the troops into Paris; that
the number and the seats of the exceptional tribunals had been
arranged beforehand, as well as the topographical limits of
their jurisdictions; that he (M. Gabriel Ossude) had received
his nomination from the hands of M. Thiers, although he held
no rank in the army, but as captain of the seventeenth battalion
of the National Guard."—Letter of Ulysse Parent, Rappel,
March 19, 1877.
XXV.—(Page 385.)
"Near the Ecole Militaire the scene is at this moment very
affecting; prisoners are continually being led there, and their
trial is terminated beforehand. It consists only in detonations."
—Siècle, 28th May.
"The courts-martial functioned in Paris with unheard-of
activity at several special points. At the Lobau Barracks, at
the Ecole Militaire, the fusillade is permanently heard. It is
the settling of accounts with those wretches who openly took
part in the struggle."—Liberté, 30th May.
"Since morning (Sunday, 28th May) a strong cordon is being
formed round the theatre (Châtelet), where a court-martial is
permanently established. From time to time one sees a band
of fifteen to twenty individuals coming out, composed of
National Guards, civilians, women and children fifteen to six¬
teen years old.
"These individuals are condemned to death. They march
two and two, escorted by a platoon of chasseurs, who lead and
490
APPENDIX.
bring up the procession. This cortège goes up the Quai de
Gèvres and enters the Republican Barracks in the Place Lobau.
A minute after one hears from within the fire of platoons and
successive musketry discharges; it is the sentence of the court-,
martial which has just been executed.
"The detachment of chasseurs returns to the Châtelet to
fetch other prisoners. The crowd seems deeply impressed 011
hearing the noise of the fusillades."—Journal des Débats, 30th
May, 1871.
XXVI.—(Page 385.)
A journal of the Belgian bourgeoisie, the Etoile, one of the
most violent against the Commune, allowed this avowal to-
escape it:—
"The majority have met death like the Arabs after battle,,
with indifference, with contempt, without hatred, without
anger, without insult to their executioners.
"All the soldiers who took part in these executions, and
whom I have questioned, have been unanimous in their ac¬
counts.
"One of them said to me, 'We shot about forty of these-
canailles at Passy. They all died like soldiers. Some crossed
their arms, and stood head erect. Others opened their tunica
and cried to us 'Fire! we are not afraid of death.'
"Not one of those whom we have shot trembled. I especially
remember an artillerist, who by himself did us more harm than
a whole battalion. He was alone serving a piece of cannon.
During three-quarters of an hour he peppered us with grape
shot, and he killed and wounded not a few of my comrades.
At last he was overwhelmed. We had turned his barricade.
"I still see him. He was a strongly-built man. He was
bathed in perspiration from the service he had done during
three-quarters of an hour. 'Your turn now,' said he to us. 'I
have merited shooting, but I shall die game.'
"Another soldier of General Clinchant's corps told me how
his company had led to the ramparts eighty-four insurgents
taken bearing arms.
"They all placed themselves in a line, he said to me, as if
they were going to exercise. Not one faltered. One of them
who had a handsome face, wore trousers in fine cloth tucked
into his boots, and a Zouave's belt round his waist, said to us
calmly, 'Try to aim at my chest; be careful not to touch my
head.' We all fired, but the poor fellow had half of his head
carried away."
A functionary of Versailles made me the following recital:—
APPENDIX.
491
"During the day, Sunday, I made an excursion to Paris. I
went by the Théâtre du Châtelet towards the smoking ruins of
the Hôtel-de-Ville, when I was surrounded and carried along
by the stream of a crowd which was following a convoy of
prisoners.
"I found among them the same men whom I had seen in the
battalions of the siege of Paris. Almost all seemed to me to be
working-men.
"Their faces betrayed neither despair nor despondency nor
emotion. They walked on with a firm, resolute step, and they
seemed to me so indifferent to their fate that I thought they
expected to be released. I was entirely mistaken. These men
had been taken in the morning at Menilmontant, and knew
whither they were being led. Arrived at the Lobau Barracks,
the cavalry officers who preceded the escort had a semicircle
formed, and prevented the curious from advancing."
XXVII.—(Page 385.)
One of the most ignoble barkers of Versailles, Francisque
Sarcey, wrote in the Gaulois of the 13th June:—
"Men who are quite cool, of whose judgment and word I
cannot doubt, have spoken to, me with an astonishment
mingled with horror of the scenes they had seen, seen with
their own eyes, and which rendered me rather meditative.
"Young women, pretty of face, and dressed in silk dresses,
came down into the street, and a revolver in their hands, fired
at random, and then said with proud mien, elevated voice, eyes
full of hatred, 'Shoot me at once!' One of them, who had been
taken in a house whence they had fired from the windows, was
about to be bound in order to be taken to Versailles and judged
there.
"'Come,' said she, 'save me the trouble of the journey!'
And placing herself against a wall, her arms spread open, her
breast bare, she seemed to solicit—to provoke death.
"All those who have been seen executed thus summarily by
furious soldiers have died, insults on their tongues, with a
laugh of contempt, like martyrs, who in sacrificing themselves
accomplish a great duty."
XXVIII.—(Page 386.)
At the time of an action entered against M. Raspail, His, in
1876, for his pamphlet in favour of an amnesty, the following
letter, addressed to him by M. Hervey de Saisy, senator, was
read in court:—
492
APPENDIX.
"I cannot, for motives of discretion bearing on divers per¬
sons, repeat in this letter the recital which I made you vivâ voce
on the occasion of which you remind me. However, I wish to
answer your courteous appeal by repeating here the words
which served as a reason for the iniquitous order by which the
life of M. Cernuschi was menaced, during the day on which'
the troops took possession of the prison of Ste. Pélagie and the
Jardin des Plantes.
"These are the words pronounced by the general of division
who gave the order of summary execution. Learning that Cer¬
nuschi had repaired to the prison, at the door of which I saw
his carriage, he said to some one, whom I cannot mention, 'Ah!
it is Cernuschi, the man of the 100,000 francs of the plébiscite.
Eeturn to the prison, and let him be shot within five minutes.'
"Five minutes represented the time that would be required
by the bearer of the order in going to the prison from the
Cèdre du Jussieu, whence the general watched the phases of
the combat.
"At first I did not understand this strange phrase, but some
moments after I remembered that it was the expression of a
political vengeance which was about to be exercised against M.
Cernuschi for having offered 100,000 francs for the propa¬
ganda which the Opposition was to make during the final
plébiscite of the Empire.
"Profoundly indignant at what I had just heard, I was for¬
tunate enough to bring about a fortuitous incident to which
the already condemned victim owed his salvation.
"Such are the details I am able to furnish you with.
"Hervé de Saisy."
XXIX.—(Page 386.)
"Some journals of Paris," wrote the Echo de la Dordogne, on
the 19th June, 1871, "have repeated that Tony Moilin had
been condemned and shot for having been taken arms in hand
on the 27th May. This report is incorrect.
"One single fact was Tony Moilin reproached with: that of
having on the 18th March taken possession of the mairie of his
arrondissement, and having thus had a share in giving the
signal for the insurrection. He was shown a kind of dismissal
given by him on that day to M. Hérisson, the mayor whom he
had replaced. No witness was heard.
- "Moilin admitted the fact; then he added that he had exer¬
cised the function of mayor during hardly two days; that at the
end of this time, little in accord with the men of the Commune,
APPENDIX.
493
He had voluntarily ceased to appear at the mairie, where he
had been immediately replaced.
"The court-martial asked Moilin to account for his time and
his acts since the day of the entry of the army of Versailles
into Paris. He answered that, known for a long time, especi¬
ally through the Blois trial and by his writings, as one of the
chiefs of the Socialist party, having to answer for taking pos¬
session of the mairie of the eighth arrondissement on the 18th
March, fearing a too summary justice and the fury of the first
moments, he had sought and found shelter at a friend's, and
that, from the Monday morning till the Saturday night; . . .
that on the Saturday evening, the 27th March, this friend had
asked his guest to leave his retreat, and that on leaving this in¬
hospitable house, discouraged, not seeking any longer to defend
his liberty, nor even his life, he had returned to his home,
where, on the denunciation of his porter and his neighbours,
he had been almost directly afterwards arrested and taken be¬
fore the court-martial at the Luxembourg.
"To this recital was confined the defence of Tony Moilin,
who was immediately condemned to death. The court-martial
condescended to tell him that the fact of the mairie, the only one
he could be reproached with, had in itself not much importance,
and did not merit death, but that he was one of the chiefs of the
Socialist party, dangerous through his talents, his character, and
his influence over the masses; one of those men, in shorty of whom
a prudent and wise Government must rid itself when it finds a
legitimate occasion to do so.
"Tony Moilin could only be satisfied with the urbanity (sic)
of the members of the court. Without any difficulty a respite
of twelve hours was granted him in order that he might make
his testament, write a few words of farewell to his father, and
finally give his name to the woman who had, during the Blois
trial and since, shown him the greatest devotion. These duties
fulfilled, on the 28th May, in the morning, Tony Moilin was
led into the garden a few steps from the palace and shot. His
body, which his widow claimed, the surrender of which had
been at first promised, was refused her."
XXX.—(Page 386.)
This assassination also stands to the debit account of G-arcin.
Let us again allow him to speak.
"Billioray at first attempted to deny his identity. He
wanted to rush upon a soldier; he was a man of athletic
strength. ... He defended himself, he foamed with rage.
494
APPENDIX.
There was hardly time to interrogate him. He began some tale
about money, whose place of concealment he could indicate.
He spoke of 150,000 francs; then he interrupted himself, in
order to say to me, 'I see you are going to have me shot. It is
useless for me to say any more.' I said to him, 'You persist?'
'Yes.' He was shot."—Enquête sur le 18 Mars, vol. ii. p. 234.
XXXI.—(Page 386.)
"The event took place on Thursday, 25th May, at a few
minutes past six in the evening, in the small Rue des Prêtres-
Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois. Vallès was coming out of the
Théâtre du Châtelet, led off by the firing-party charged to
shoot him. He wore a black coat, and light trousers of a
yellowish shade. He wore no hat; and his beard, which he had
shaved but lately, was very short, and already getting grey.
"On entering the lane where the ominous sentence was to be
carried out, the sentiment of self-preservation gave him back
the energy which seemed to have abandoned him. He wanted
to fly; but, held back by the soldiers, he got into a horrible fury,
crying 'Murder!' writhing, seizing his executioners by the
throat, biting them, offering, in one word, a desperate resist¬
ance.
"The soldiers were beginning to be embarrassed and a little
moved at this horrible struggle, when one of them passing be¬
hind gave him such a furious blow in the loins with the butt-
end of his gun that the unfortunate man fell with a low groan.
"No doubt the spinal column was broken. They then fired
some shots with their revolvers straight into his body, and
pierced him with bayonet thrusts. As he was still breathing,
one of the executioners approached and discharged his chasse-
pot into his ear. Part of the skull burst open; his body was
abandoned in the gutter till some one came to pick it up.
"It is then that the spectators of this scene approached, and
despite the wounds that disfigured him, were able to establish
his identity."—Account by a Military Surgeon published in the
Gaulois.
APPENDIX.
495
XXXII.—(Page 392.)
The Radical of the 30th May, 1872, published the following
letter from an employé at St. Thomas d'Acquin, who during
the Commune had rendered the Versaillese the service of pre¬
venting the firing of the cannons of 8 c.m. breechloaders:—
"To Monsieur le Comte Daru, President of the Committee of In¬
quiry into the Insurrection of the 18th March, Versailles.
"Monsieur le President,—I have just read in a book, which
is entitled Enquête Parlementaire sur l'Insurrection du 18 Mars,
under the head, Evidence of witnesses, the following evidence
by the Staff-Captain Garcin:—
" 'All those who were arrested under arms were shot during
the first moments, that is to say, during the combat. But
when we were masters of the left bank there were no more
executions.'
" In the report of Marshal MacMahon on the operations of
the army of Versailles against insurgent Paris, I find the fol¬
lowing declaration:—
" 'In the evening of the 25th May the whole left bank was
in our power, as also the bridges of the Seine.'
"The evidence of Captain Garcin is unfortunately contrary
to the truth. Four days after the 25th May my son and
fourteen other unhappy victims were killed at the Dupleix
Barracks, situated on the left bank, near the Ecole Militaire.
"On the 31st August I addressed the Minister of Justice a
complaint on this subject, of which I send you a correct copy.
After having related the facts with regard to my son, I de¬
manded that the law should search for and punish the culprits.
"Up to the present time the law has remained deaf to my
claims, notwithstanding the publicity I have given this com¬
plaint, in order to prove the disappearance of my child.
"If it were true, as Captain Garcin declares, that orders had
been given by the general commander-in-chief of the troops of
the left bank to put an end to these executions after the even¬
ing of the 25th May; if again it were true that Marshal Mac¬
Mahon had by his despatch of the 28th May given the order to
suspend all executions, as the Colonel presiding over the court-
martial at the trial of the members of the Commune declared—
the officer of the gendarmerie, named Roneol, who ordered the
massacres at the Dupleix Barracks, and his accomplices should
have been prosecuted for having, in contempt of the orders of
the chief of the army, had unfortunate people killed who had
taken no part in the combat.
496
APPENDIX.
"Thus, horrible fact, in the morning of the 29th May, while
I was giving up the cannon at St. Thomas d'Acquin, which my
son and I had sworn on our honour to preserve for the state,
and for which we had risked our lives, my son was being mas¬
sacred at the end of a stable by those who ought to have pro¬
tected him.
"In consequence of these facts, which I have just made pub¬
lic, I beg Monsieur le Président to be so obliging as to have the
evidence of Captain Garcin rectified, which is on this point of
the executions entirely contrary to truth.—I have the honour,.
Monsieur le Président, &c.,
(Signed) <(G. Latjdet."
"The correct copy of this was addressed in a registered letter
of the 28th March, 1872, under the number 158, to M. le Comte
Daru, who has acknowledged the receipt of it.
"G. Laudet."
" Paris, 23rd May 1872. "
XXXIII.—(Page 393.)
"It is in the Bois de Boulogne that those condemned to
death by the court-martial will for the future be executed.
Whenever the number of the condemned shall exceed ten men
the execution platoons will be replaced by a mitrailleuse."—
Paris Journal, 9th June.
"All circulation is forbidden in the Bois de Boulogne.
"One is forbidden to enter there, unless accompanied by a
platoon of soldiers, and still more forbidden to come outv
again."—Paris Journal, 15th June.
XXXIV.—(Page 395.)
"One man, a swarthy, burly fellow, with a shock head of
black hair, sat down at the corner of the Rue de la Paix and
declined to go any further, shaking his fist at the people and
grinding his teeth. After several attempts at coercive mea¬
sures, one of the soldiers lost all patience, and drove his bay¬
onet twice into his body, telling him to get up and walk on like
the rest. As might have been expected, this method was not
successful, and so he was seized and placed on a horse, from
which he speedily threw himself, and was then tied to its tail,
and dragged along the ground after the manner of Brunhilda.
He soon became faint from loss of blood, and having thus been
reduced to a quiescent state, was bundled into an ambulance
APPENDIX.
497
waggon, and carried off amid the shouts and execrations of the
populace."—Times, May 31 st.
"Another prisoner, who had also refused to march, was
dragged by the hands and hair of the head along the road."—
Times, May 30th.
"Near the Parc Monceaux a husband and wife were seized,
and ordered to march forward towards the Place Vendôme, a
distance of a mile and a half. They were both of them invalids
and unable to walk so far. The woman sat down on the kerb¬
stone, and declined to move a step in spite of her husband's
entreaties that she would try. She persisted in her refusal,
and they both knelt down together, begging the gendarmes
who accompanied them to shoot them at once if shot they were
to be. Twenty revolvers were fired, but they still breathed, and
it was only at the second discharge that they finally sank down
dead. The gendarmes then rode away, leaving the bodies as
they had fallen."—Times, May 29th.
XXXV.—(Page 396.)
The conservative paper, the Tricolore, said on the 31st
May:—
"Sunday morning, the 24th, out of more than two thousand
Federals, one hundred and eleven of them have been shot in
the ditches of Passy, and that under circumstances which show
that the victory [the conclusion of this nonsensical phrase
must be given in the original] était entrée dans toute la maturité
de la situation.
" 'Let those who have white hairs step out from the ranks!'
said General Gallifet, who presided at the execution, and the
number of grey-headed Federals amounted to one hundred and
eleven!
"For these the aggravating circumstance was having been
contemporaries of June, 1848.
"There is here a new retro-syncopante theory which might
take us a long way back."
The Liberté of Brussels published the following declaration,
signed by eye-witnesses, of the facts which had occurred at La
Muette on the 26th May, 1871:—
"On the 26th of last May we formed part of the column of
prisoners who had left the Boulevard Malesherbes at eight
o'clock in the morning in the direction of Versailles. We
stopped at the Château of La Muette, where General Gallifet,
after having dismounted from his horse, passed into our ranks,
2 i
498
APPENDIX.
and then making a choice, he pointed out to the troops eighty-
three men and three women. They were taken away along the
talus of the fortifications and shot before us. After thig ex¬
ploit the General said to us: 'My name is Gallifet. Your
journals in Paris have sullied me enough. I take my revenge.'
" Thence we were directed to Versailles, where during the
journey we were again obliged to assist at frightful executions
of two women and three men, who, falling down exhausted and
being unable to keep up with the column, were killed with
bayonet-thrusts by the sergents de ville forming our escort."
The names followed, with the professions and addresses of
the signers, to the number of eleven.
"The column of prisoners halted in the Avenue Uhrich and
was drawn up four or five deep on the footway facing to the
road. General the Marquis de Gallifet and his staff, who had
preceded us there, dismounted, and commenced an inspection
from the left of the line and near where I was. Walking down
slowly, and eyeing the ranks as if at an inspection, the General
stopped here and there, tapping a man on the shoulder or
beckoning him out of the rear-ranks. In most cases, without
further parley, the individual thus selected was marched out
into the centre of the road, where a small supplementary
column was thus soon formed. . . . They evidently knew too
well that their last hour had come, and it was fearfully inter¬
esting to see their different demeanours. One, already
wounded, his shirt soaked with blood, sat down in the road
and howled with anguish; . . . others wept in silence; two
soldiers, presumed deserters, pale but collected, appealed to
all the other prisoners as to whether they had ever seen them
amongst their ranks; some smiled defiantly. ... It was an
awful thing to see one man thus picking out a batch of his
fellow-creatures to be put to a violent death in a few minutes
without further trial. ... A few paces from where I stood,
a mounted officer pointed out to General Gallifet a man and
woman for some particular offence. The woman, rushing out
of the ranks, threw herself on her knees and with outstretched
arms implored mercy, and protested her innnoeence in passion¬
ate terms. The General waited for a pause, and then, with
most impassable face and unmoved demeanour, said: 'Madame,
I have visited every theatre in Paris; your acting will have no
effect on me' (ce n'est pas la peine de jouer la comédie). . . .
I followed the General closely down the line, still a prisoner,
but honoured with a special escort of two chasseurs-à-cheval,
and endeavoured to arrive at what guided him in his selections.
APPENDIX.
499
The result of my observations was that it was not a good thing
on that day to be noticeably taller, dirtier, cleaner, older, or
uglier than one's neighbour. One individual in particular
struck me as probably owing his speedy release from the ills
of this world to his having a broken nose on what might have
been otherwise an ordinary face, and being unable from his
height to conceal it. Over a hundred being thus chosen, a
firing party told off, and the column resumed its marching,
leaving them behind. In a few minutes afterwards, a dropping
fire in our rear commenced and continued for over a quarter
of an hour. It was the execution of these summarily convicted
wretches."—The Daily News, June 8, 1871.
"Yesterday (Sunday, 28th), about one o'clock, General Gal-
lifet appeared at the head of a column of 6,000 prisoners. . . .
Upon their haggard countenances and in their downcast eyes
there was no ray of hope to be seen. They were evidently
prepared for the worst fate, and dragged listlessly along, as
though it were not worth while to walk to Versailles to be shot
when an immediate execution might save them the trouble.
M. de Gallifet seemed to be of the same opinion, and a little
beyond the Arc-de-Triomphe he halted the column, selected
eighty-two, and had them shot there and then. A little after
this a band of twenty Pompiers were marched into the Pare
Monceaux and executed."—The Times, May 31, 1871.
XXXVI.—(Page 438.)
Here is a copy of a letter addressed to the Versaillese general
staff, and probably still in its possession, and bearing the num¬
ber 28 ibis:—
"To the Chief of the General Staff.
"General—I have been mistaken for a M. de Beaufond, and
this annoys me all the more, that negligences committed by
him are imputed to me.
"I have certainly not wasted my time during this period of
fifteen days. I have organised quite a legion of combatants.
Their order is to run away on the approach of the troops, and
thus to throw the ranks of the Federals into disorder.
"The means indicated by the Committee of A seems
to be practicable. I will make use of it. With only one
h undred drunkards one can do many a thing."
XXXVII.—(Page 444.)
This, according to the, of course, very approximate report
500
APPENDIX.
of General Appert, is the contingent furnished by the different
professions:—528 jewellers, 124 pasteboard makers, 210 hat¬
ters, 328 carpenters, 1,065 clerks, 1,491 shoemakers, 206 dress¬
makers, 172 gilders, 636 cabinetmakers, 1,598 commercial em¬
ployés, 98 instrument makers, 227 tin-workers, 224 founders,
182 engravers, 179 watchmakers, 819 compositors, 159 stained
paper printers, 106 teachers, 2,901 day labourers, 2,293 brick¬
layers, 1,659 joiners, 193 lace-makers, 863 house-painters,
106 bookbinders, 283 sculptors, 2,664 locksmiths and mechani¬
cians, 681 tailors, 347 tanners, 157 moulders, 766 stone-cutters.
XXXVIII.—(Page 463.)
Notably in the affair of the spy of the Hautes-Bruyères, for
which several persons had already been condemned. This spy
—a young man of twenty, and not a child, as the reactionists
have stated—had attracted the shells of the enemy to the Fed¬
eral positions. Brought before a court-martial, composed of
La Cécilia, commander of the army corps, of Johannard, dele¬
gate of the Commune, and of all the chiefs of battalions, he
admitted having taken the Versaillese the plan of the Federal
positions, and having received twenty francs as reward. He
was unanimously condemned to death. At the moment of the
execution, Johannard and Grandier, La Céeilia's aide-de-camp,
explained to the condemned man that he would be pardoned
if he would reveal the name of his accomplice, an inhabitant
of Montrouge. He replied, "You are brigands. Je vous
emm . . ." This fact, odiously travestied, has furnished
Victor Hugo, very ill informed as to this civil war, with a verse
for his "Année Terrible," as unjust to Johannard as to Sérizier,
one of the men shot at Satory. The great poet owes himself
a disclaimer.
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