Part 27

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

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

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

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

“TO THE PEOPLE OF PARIS, TO THE NATIONAL GUARD.

“CITIZENS,—We have had enough of militaryism; let us have no more stuffs embroidered and gilt at every seam! “Make room for the people, the real combatants, the bare arms! The hour of the revolutionary war has struck! “The people know nothing of scientific manoeuvres, but with a rifle in hand and the pavement beneath their feet, they fear not all the strategists of the monarchical school. “To arms, citizens! To arms! You must conquer, or, as you well know, fall again into the pitiless hands of the _réactionaires_ and clericals of Versailles; those wretches who with intention delivered France up to Prussia, and now make us pay the ransom of their treason! “If you desire the generous blood which you have shed like water during the last six weeks not to have been shed in vain, if you would see liberty and equality established in France, if you would spare your children sufferings and misery such as you have endured, you will rise as one man, and before your formidable bands the enemy who indulges the idea of bringing you again under his yoke, will reap nothing but the harvest of the useless crimes with which he has disgraced himself during the past two months. “Citizens! your representatives will fight and die with you, if fall we must; but, in the name of our glorious France, mother of all the popular revolutions, the permanent source of ideas of justice and unity, which should be and which will be the laws of the world, march to the encounter of the enemy, and let your revolutionary energy prove to him that Paris may he sold, but can never be delivered up or conquered. “The Commune confides in you, and you may trust the Commune! “The civil delegate at the Ministry of War,

“(Signed) “CH. DELESCLUZE.

“Countersigned by the Committee of Public Safety:—Antoine Arnauld, Billioray, E. Eudes, F. Gambon, G. Ranvier.”

Such was the despairing cry of the insurrection at bay.

[102] See Appendix, No. 9.

[103] There are no private undertakers and funeral furnishers in Paris. It is all done by a company, under the supervision of Government, a very large concern, called the _Pompes Funèbres_.

[104] Jules Vallès was one of the most conspicuous among the men of the 18th of March. He had been journalist, working printer, a clerk at the Hôtel de Ville, editor of a newspaper, pamphleteer, and café orator in turn, but always noisy and boastful. André Gill, the caricaturist, once drew him as an undertaker’s dog, dragging a saucepan behind him, and the caricature told Vallès’ story well enough. In face he was ugly, but energetic in expression, almost to ferociousness. He was born at Puy, in 1833, and on leaving the college of Nantes, came to study law in Paris, but politics occupied him chiefly, and he soon got himself shut up in Mazas as a political prisoner. After some time spent in confinement, he obtained his liberty, and published at Nantes, a pamphlet under the title of “Money: by a literary man become a journalist;” and the pamphlet, having gained him some slight popularity, he was engaged, later, on the _Figaro_, to write the reports of the Bourse, and in the meantime he eked out his slender salary by working as a clerk at the Hôtel de Ville. When Ernest Feydeau brought out the _Epoque_, in 1864, Jules Vallès published a few articles in its columns, and a little later became a writer on the _Evénement_, with the magnificent salary of eighteen thousand francs a year. A month afterwards, he was without occupation again, but he soon re-appeared with a new journal of his own, _La Rue, La Sue_, in its turn, however, only lived during a few numbers, and Jules Vallès now took up café politics, and practised table oratory at the _Estaminet de Madrid_, where he fostered and expounded the projects which he has since brought to so fearful a result. In 1869, he became one of the most inveterate speakers at election meetings, and presented himself as a candidate for the Corps Législatif. He was not elected, but the profession of opinions that he then made was certain to obtain him a seat in the Communal Assembly. One of the last articles in the _Cri du People_ of Jules Vallès announced the fatal resolution of defending Paris by all possible means. An article finishing with this prophetic sentence, “M. Thiers, if he is chemist enough will understand us.”

XCI.

It is imprudent to go out; the night was almost peaceable, the morning is hideous. The roar of musketry is intense and without interruption. I suppose there must be fighting going on in the Rue du Faubourg Montmartre. I start back, the noise is so fearful. In the Cour Trévise not a person to be seen, the houses are closely shut and barred. On a second floor I hear a great moving of furniture, and hear quite distinctly the sound of sobbing, of female sobbing. I hear that the second floor of the house is inhabited by a member of the Commune and his family. I am about to go up and see if I can be of any help to the women in case of danger, when I see a man precipitately enter the Court. He wears a uniform of lieutenant; I recognise him, it is the porter. He stops, looks around him, and seeing that he is alone, takes his rifle in both hands and throws it with all his strength over the high wall which is on the left hand of the Court. That done, he rushes into the house. There I distinctly hear him say to his wife, “The barricade is taken, give me a _blouse_, they are at Montmartre. We are done for!” I think, the porter must have made a mistake, and that the battery is not taken yet, for I hear the whistling of a shell that, seems to come from Montmartre. The deafening clamour on all sides redoubles, all the separate noises seem to confound themselves in one ceaseless roar, like the working of a million of hammers on a million of anvils. I can scarcely bear it; my hands clutch the door-posts convulsively. I lean out as far as I can, but see nothing but a company of soldiers preceded by two gendarmes, who are entering the Court. They stop before the door of the house. Several of them go in, and then I hear the sound of a door suddenly opened and shut, and heavy steps on the wooden floor. I feel myself trembling; this man they have come to arrest—are they going to shoot him here, in his own apartment, before his wife? Thank God, no! The two gendarmes reappear in the street holding the prisoner between them; his hands are bound; the soldiers surround them, and they are going to march away, when the man, lifting up his arms, cries fiercely, “I have but one regret, that I did not blow up the whole of the quarter.” At this instant the window above is opened, and a woman with grey hair leans out, crying, “Die in peace, I will avenge you!” At these words the soldiers arrest their steps, and the two gendarmes re-enter the house. They are going to take the wife prisoner after having taken the husband. I fall back into a chair horrified; I shut my eyes not to see, and I press my hands on my ears, not to hear the dreadful sound of the musketry, but the horrible shrill noise is triumphant, and I hear it all the same.

XCII.

Oh! those that hear it not, how happy they must be; they will never understand how fearful this continuous, this dreadful noise is, and to feel that each ball is aimed at some breast, and each shell brings ruin in its train. Fear and horror wrings one’s heart and maddens one’s brain. Visions pass before one’s eyes of corpses, of houses crushing sleeping inmates, of men falling and crying out for mercy! and one feels quite strange to go on living among the crowds that die!

I have been out a little while, a ball whistled over my shoulder, and flattened itself against an iron bar on a shop front. I heard a mass of glass shiver into fragments on the pavement. I determined to return home.

On my way back, I had to pass in front of a liqueur shop, the door of which was open, and several men were talking there. I stopped to learn the news. Montmartre is taken; the Federals had not opposed much resistance; but a great deal of firing had gone on in the side streets and lanes. Seven insurgents were surrounded. “Give yourselves up, and your lives will be saved,” cried out the soldiers. They replied, “We are prisoners;” but one of them drew his revolver and shot an officer in the leg. Then the soldiers took the seven men, threw them into a large hole, and shot them from above like so many rabbits. Another man told me that he had seen a child lying dead at the corner of the Rue de Rome. “A pretty little fellow,” he said, “his brains were strewed on the pavement beside him.” A third, that when all the fighting was over at the Place Saint-Pierre a rifle shot was heard, and a captain of Chasseurs fell dead. The major who was there, looked up and saw a man trying to hide himself behind a chimney pot; the soldiers got into the house, seized him on the roof, and brought him down into the Place. What did the insurgent do, but walked up to the major, smiling, and hit him a blow on the cheek. The major set him up against a wall, and blew his brains out with a revolver. Another insurgent who was arrested, made an insulting grimace at the soldiers; they shot him. On the southern sides of Paris, the operations of the army have not been so fortunate as on this. In the Faubourg St. Germain it advances very slowly, if it advance at all. The Federals fight with heroic courage at the Mont-Parnasse Station, the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, and the Croix-Rouge; from the corners of the streets, from the windows, from the balconies proceed shots rarely ineffective. This sort of warfare fatigues the soldiers, particularly as the discipline prevents them from using the same measures. At Saint-Quen, likewise, the march of the troops is stayed; the barricade of the Rue de Clichy holds out, and will hold out some time. In other quarters the advantages gained by the Versaillais are evident. Here and there some small show of resistance is offered, but the insurgents are flying. I cannot tell whether all these floating rumours are true. As I return home, I look round; in the Rue Geoffrey-Marie, near the Faubourg Montmartre, I see a National Guard alone in the middle of the street, nothing to screen him whatsoever; he loads his rifle and fires, loads and fires again; again and again! Thirty-three times! Then the rifle slips to the ground, and the man staggers and falls.

XCIII.

This morning, the 23rd, after a combat of three hours, the barricade of the Place de Clichy has not yet yielded. Yet two battalions of National Guards had, at the beginning of the fight, reversed their arms, and were fraternising with the soldiers on the Place de la Maine, a hundred and fifty yards from the scene of the fray. The cracking of the rifles, the explosion of shells, and the sound of mitrailleuses filled the air. The smell of powder was stifling. Dreadful cries arose from the poor wounded wretches; and the whizzing projectiles from Montmartre rent the air above in their fiery course. “Beneath us,” said an inhabitant of Batignolles who gave me these particulars, “beneath us the city lay like a seething caldron.”

The beating of drums and the sharp trumpet-calls mixed in this monstrous din, and were every now and then lost in the tremendous noise of the firing.

About half-past one the sounds grew quieter; the barricade was taken. The insurgents were retreating to La Chapelle and Belleville in disorder; the soldiers of the line rushed like a torrent into the Avenue de Clichy, leaving a tricolour flag hoisted upon the dismantled barricade.

Here and there, in the streets, the struggle had not ceased. In the Rue Blanche a rifle-shot proceeded from a ground-floor; the man was taken and executed outside his own door. The artillery was moving up the Rue Chaptal towards Montmartre and La Chapelle. The day was very hot; pails of water were thrown over the guns to quench their burning thirst. All the young men who were found in the streets were provisionally put under arrest, for they feared everyone, even children, and horrible vengeance and thirst for blood had seized upon all. Suddenly an isolated shot would be heard, followed a minute or two after by five or six others. One knew reprisal had been done.

At about four o’clock in the afternoon, when the quarters of Belleville and Clichy were pretty well cleared of troops, two insurgents were walking, one behind the other, in the Rue Léonie. The one who walked last lifted his rifle and fired carelessly in the direction of the windows; the report sounded very loudly in the silent street, and a pane of glass fell in fragments to the ground. The insurgent who was in front did not even turn his head; these men seem to have become quite reckless and deaf to everything.

What the troops feared the most were the sharp-shooters hidden in the houses, aiming through little holes and cracks; suddenly a snap would be heard, and the officers would lift their glassed to their eyes; more often nothing was to be seen at all, but if the slightest shadow were visible behind a window curtain, the order was, “Search that house!” The executions did not take place in the apartments. Now and then an inhabitant or two were brought down into the street, and those never returned!

XCIV.

It is the middle of the night; and I awake with a terrible start. A bright red light streams through the panes. I throw open the window; the sky to the left is one mass of dark smoke and lurid streaks of light—it is a fire, Paris on fire![105] I dress and go out. At the corner of the Rue de Trévise a sentinel stops me, “You can’t pass.” I am so bewildered that I do not think of noticing whether he is a Federal or a soldier. What am I to do, where am I to go? Although an hour ago balls were whistling around, there are now people at every window. “The Ministère des Finances is on fire! the Rue Royale! the Louvre!” The Louvre! I can scarcely avoid a cry of horror. In a minute the enormity of the disaster has broken upon me. Oh! _chefs-d’oeuvre_ without number! I see you devoured, consumed, reduced to ashes! I see the walls tottering, the canvases fall from the frames and shrivel up; the “Marriage of Canaan” is in flames! Raphael is struggling in the burning furnace! Leonardo da Vinci is no more! This was, indeed, an unexpected calamity! Fortune had reserved this terrible surprise for us! But I will not believe it, these rumours are false, doubtless! How should these people who inhabit this quarter know what I am ignorant of? Yet over our heads the sky is tinged with black and red!

A strange smell fills the air, like that of a monstrous petroleum lamp just lighted. That dreaded word, petroleum, makes me shudder. Once distinctly I hear the sound of a vast body falling heavily. Not to be able to obtain information is terrible; not to know what is going on, while all around seems on fire; the day is beginning to break, the musketry and the cannonading commences afresh, it is a hell, with death for its girdle! In front of me I see the corner of a building lighted up by the fire, on which little spirals of smoke are reflected from the distant conflagration. I rush home, I want to hide myself, to sleep, to forget. When I am in my room, I see through the white curtains of the window a bright light. I tremble and rush to the window! It is the gilt letters of a signboard, on the opposite side of the way, that are darting forth brilliant flashes, borrowed from the distant flames.

NOTES:

[105] The 24th May the COMMITTEE FOR PUBLIC SAFETY issued these cold-blooded decrees:—

“Citizen Millière, at the head of one hundred and fifty fuse-bearers, is to set fire to all houses of suspicious aspect, as well as to the public monuments of the left bank of the Seine. “Citizen Dereure, with one hundred and fifty fuse-bearers, is charged with the 1st and 2nd Arrondissement. “Citizen Billioray, with one hundred men, is charged with the 9th, 10th, and 20th Arrondissements. “Citizen Vésinier, with fifty men, has the Boulevards of the Madeleine and of the Bastille especially entrusted to him. “These Citizens are to come to an understanding with the officers commanding the barricades, for the execution of these orders.

“DELESCLUZE, RÉGÈRE, RANVINE, JOHANNARD, VÉSINIER, BRUNEL, DOMBROWSKI. “Paris, 3 Prairial, year 79.”