Chapter 7

Perhaps the strangest thing about a Paris street fight is that up to the very last moment one sees people running quietly along, utterly unconscious of danger, right between two lines of fire, with loaded mitrailleuses within a hundred yards of them. One minute before the fight I am describing began this morning, an old lady, with a large market basket on her arm, was leisurely walking down the Rue d'Aboukir between the barricades and soldiers mustering quietly at the corner of the Rue Montmartre. She was probably making way to the Halles Centrales close by to get something for breakfast, in happy ignorance of the fact that at that very moment soldiers were firing, as far as we could see, right into it. I found afterwards that the Reds were then in occupation of it, and had loop-holed the Church of St. Eustache, which they held in great force. Shouts of warning from the crowd standing near me at the corner of the Rue Montmartre made her at last quicken her pace, though I doubt whether she quite understood them or knew her danger. I scarcely know whether Paris combatants at this period are considerate enough to wait till the ground is clear of non-combatants, or whether out of politeness each side was waiting for the other to fire first. In any case the regulars did not wait long. A colonel of the Staff, with cane in one hand and in the other a map of Paris, studying, stood at the corner of a side street, gave his men the order to commence instantly. A soldier on each side took a step forward, and exposing himself as little as possible fired up at the barricade. After he had fired he fell back to reload, and another all ready took his place, so that, though there were at first very few men--not more than 20 perhaps--firing was pretty hot. Quick came back the response of the Reds, and whizzing went their bullets down the street, or crashing against projecting corners of the houses, so near one's ears that it was at first hard to keep from dodging, despite one's convictions that only Irish guns shoot round corners. Ricochet balls were not only not more dangerous, but probably were less dangerous, at the corner than farther off. Some stood as near as they could to the soldiers. It would be impossible to do this with the Reds, as they would insist one's taking up a rifle and shooting or being shot; but the Regulars, so far from forcing, would not even allow an amateur to indulge in fancy shooting. But taking hurried shots round a corner at men crouched hundreds of yards off behind well-built barricades is too slow work to be satisfactory, and the officials came and began to show signs of impatience. The leader, from a safe post of observation, was able to take a cool searching view of the situation, and ordered some of his men, whose numbers were gradually increasing as they hurried up the street below, ducking heads and hugging walls, to mount some of the corner houses, while others extemporized a barricade in the street. To mount the houses was easy enough, though the door of one had to be broken in, and presently we heard glass tumbling down as muzzles of rifles were poked through the upper panes, and soon sharp cracks and thick puffs of smoke leaping out showed that the men had settled down to their work. The barricade was a more difficult matter, as it had to be made full in front of the enemy's fire; but it was contrived with wonderful coolness and rapidity, the civilians about eagerly bringing stones. Two or three barrels appeared as if by magic. By pushing the barricade cautiously across the street, by lying down under cover of one bit as they built another, the Regulars soon had cover enough to fire comparatively at ease straight up at the barricade, while their comrades at the windows took it from above in flank. I was sometimes within a few feet of them, and was much struck by their coolness and military common sense, if I may use the expression. They did the work before them in a quiet, business-like way, in what, during the late war, was considered by some the best feature of Prussian fighting, not shirking risk when it was necessary, but, on the other hand, not needlessly exposing themselves for the sake of swagger, especially of the officers. This morning, the officers not being wanted, had the sense to keep quietly out of harm's way and smoke their cigarettes like unconcerned civilians when not giving orders to their men. The Reds, on the other hand, fought capitally, keeping up a brisk and well-directed fire. Yet, strange to say, nobody was wounded; I mean on our side.

MAY 28th.

A week has elapsed to-day since the Versailles troops established themselves inside the _enceinte_, and the fighting has been incessant ever since; this is hard work enough for the assailants, who number nearly 150,000 men; but for the soldiers--if soldiers they can be called--of the Commune, the effort has already been almost superhuman. Gradually diminishing in numbers, constantly finding themselves forced upon a smaller area, and, therefore, the target of a more concentrated fire, hemmed in upon all sides, with ammunition and provisions falling short, exposed to a heavy rain, which has been falling incessantly for 48 hours, unable to seek repose in any spot sheltered from the shells of the enemy, which are pouring in unremitting showers upon every corner of their position, the situation of the Insurgents is desperate in the extreme, and it cannot be denied that they are fighting with an energy and a heroism worthy of a better cause. Reports are so varied and contradictory as to the fate of their leaders that even the Generals of the French army do not know positively who is commanding them; but if the prisoners are to be believed, the irrepressible Cluseret has again risen to the surface, and is the heart and soul of the defence. As the position of the Insurgents becomes desperate, it seems to produce a greater ferocity on both sides. The rebels neither ask nor give quarter; they have made up their minds that death, whether as combatants or as prisoners, is their only alternative, and men and women seem to be lashed up to a frenzy which has converted them into a set of wild beasts caught in a trap, and rendering their extermination a necessity. I went yesterday to the Jardin des Plantes, as the entire left bank of the Seine is now in the hands of the Government troops, and found M. Decaisne, the celebrated botanical professor, still safe and sound, after having passed through three days of unparalleled suspense. On Wednesday the _rappel_ had been beaten by the Insurgents, and notice was publicly given that the Panthéon was to be blown up at 2 o'clock. The result was a general "stampede" of the inhabitants in an agony of terror and dismay. For two or three hours women and children came pouring out of the doomed quarter, unable to save any of their property, and not even yet assured that they had escaped the limits of the explosion. At 5 o'clock no explosion had occurred, and the rumour spread that the attempt had failed for want of a sufficient quantity of powder. I told you how the Panthéon was saved; the people went back to their houses, only to witness severe street fighting, the result of which was to drive the Insurgents slowly across the river, where they made a fierce stand at a _tête du pont_ erected at the end of the bridge of Austerlitz. This had only been carried the evening before my visit to it, and bore all the marks of an actual battlefield. Here were eight or ten bodies strewn behind the barricade, with groups of women and young children gathered round inspecting them, and lifting, with a morbid curiosity, the cloths which had been thrown over them to conceal their distorted countenances. These men had been killed in hard fighting, men and accoutrements were strewn thickly around, the houses were smashed and riddled with shot. The barricade, a formidable earthwork and battery, was pounded into a mere heap--everything betokened a bitter struggle; and, indeed, I had already heard from a Staff officer that the Line had lost more heavily at this point than elsewhere. Passing along the side of the canal, we endeavoured to reach the Bastille, but were stopped by a battery which was firing at Père-Lachaise, and which was receiving shells in reply from the cemetery. We therefore retraced our steps past the long gaunt skeleton of the Prefecture of the Police, which was still smoking, and which had contained a body of political prisoners incarcerated by the Insurgents, but released by them in order to work at barricades. This proved their salvation, as they were enabled to effect their escape on the approach of the troops. It is reported, nevertheless, that some still lie buried beneath these smouldering ruins. To the right of the Bastille we could see a heavy volume of smoke rising apparently from a point corresponding to the position of the prison of Mazas. We are still in utter darkness as to the fate of the Archbishop and the clergy in confinement with him, but the tragedy of the Dominicans leaves us little hope. About 20 of these priests were imprisoned on Friday, the 19th, at Fort Bicêtre. On Thursday, when this had to be abandoned, they were hurried away to the Gobelins on the promise of being set at liberty. Instead of this they were driven to work on the barricades, then dragged to a prison in the Avenue d'Italie. At half-past 4 in the afternoon they were visited by a certain M. Cerisier with a company of the 101st battalion of the National Guards, who deliberately loaded in their presence. The outside door of the prison was then thrown open, and they were ordered to leave it one by one. As they marched out singly they were shot successively by order of Cerisier, with the exception of the narrator of the occurrence, and one or two others who were either missed or slightly wounded and escaped. Twelve bodies of these unhappy men have already been recovered.

There is also no doubt that M. Gustave Chaudey, one of the principal editors of the _Siècle_, and a literary man of some eminence and high character, who had incurred the displeasure of the Communists, has been shot by them. On the other side the executions are wholesale. It is estimated that upwards of 2,000 persons have been shot already on the left bank of the Seine alone, evidently a small proportion of the total number. Wherever women and children are to be observed leaning over the parapet of the Seine intently regarding some object below, one may be sure that the attraction is a group of hideously mutilated corpses of men who have been brought down to the river side, and then with their backs to the wall have met their doom. On the sloping roads leading down from the _quai_ to the river may also be seen inequalities where the road has been recently disturbed and where the freshly-turned earth indicates burial-places. Not far from these bodies were lying several dead horses, from which the people were cutting steaks. The inside of the Hôtel de Ville presents a curious scene, the solid masses of stone and lime of which the rubbish is composed having fallen in in the form of a crater, which fills up the whole central place. Under this mound are said to be buried from 200 to 300 Insurgents who were unable to escape at the last moment, and thus fell the victims of the conflagration they had themselves originated. The mutilation of the ornamental work of this magnificent specimen of architecture is simply hideous; there is scarcely a square inch of the _façade_ untouched by shot or shell. Anxious, if possible, to judge of the progress of the attack which was being made on the Insurgent position at Père-Lachaise, I reached the Place Château d'Eau, which had been taken the day before from the Insurgents. I found it, however, impossible to go beyond the angle of the Wall near the Ambigu. Here a small crowd was collected which was dispersed by a shot just as I approached, and the place itself was a solitary desert, for it was swept from the heights of Belleville down the Faubourg du Temple. Passing along the Boulevard Magenta, we obtained from the point where the Rue du Faubourg St. Denis traverses the Rue Lafayette, a view of an Insurgent barricade, on which a red flag was still flying, and which was turned by the troops while we were there. We were looking down the long, straight line of street totally deserted, and in the far distance watching the barricade, beyond which rose the occasional puffs of smoke from a musketry fire, when we suddenly saw the red trousers scampering across in twos and threes, and then in larger numbers, and knew that the barricade had been taken, and that it was safe to come out of our cover and walk on the opposite side of the street. All this time the whistling and bursting of the shell overhead was as incessant and loud as I have ever heard on the field of battle. We were directly in the line of fire between Montmartre and Père la Chaise, although completely protected from it, as everything passed overhead. But the terrific rushing through the air of the projectiles, and the cracking and bursting at each end when they reached their destination, made a music which it requires a Parisian education thoroughly to appreciate. Heavy volumes of smoke rose from the besieged quarter, and the destruction of life and property upon the doomed area which the Insurgents have chosen as their final stronghold must be something appalling. Near the angle of the street at which we stood lay the dead body of a man, covered with a cloth, who had been shot not many hours before in an adjoining Court. It was evident from the looks and tone of the inhabitants of this neighbourhood that their sympathies were strongly with the Communists. They muttered gloomily and savagely to each other, scarcely daring to raise their suspicious glances from the ground, for they knew not which of their neighbours might not have denounced them, and that the day of danger was by no means past. Probably two-thirds of the men now gathered at their shopdoors had fought actively for the Commune. At the Prévôté of the 5th corps I had an interesting instance of the effect of denunciations. While there some men who had been intrusted with the arrest of General Henry returned from their expedition. General Henry, it will be remembered, was one of the earliest leaders of the movement, and I went down to see where he had openly established himself as Commander-in-Chief of the National Guard in the Vaugirard quarter. About the 16th of March, or two days before the Revolution several attempts were made to arrest him but the task was so dangerous that they all failed. Throughout the movement this man has exhibited daring and intelligence, and his capture is much desired. In consequence of the information received his haunt was visited, and the result I saw in the shape of a blue Prussian overcoat stained with blood and perforated with a bullet-hole, a tunic still more bloody and torn, a very jaunty braided jacket quite clean and new, a Prussian undress cap, and a very handsome sword. The proprietor had evidently been wounded, and had succeeded in evading his captors, if still alive, by some secret contrivance, which, however, the honour of the denouncer was pledged to discover; it was evident that he had provided himself with a Prussian uniform, in the hope of passing through the German lines, and the blood on his coat would seem to indicate that he had made the attempt and failed. From this barrack, just prior to my visit, had been removed several wounded children, most of them under eight years old. One of the most horrible features of the war in a thickly-peopled city is to be found in the sufferings which it entails upon the innocent who are thus early familiarized with scenes of blood and violence, and who too often, unfortunately, are themselves the victims of them. The _gamins_ of Paris love to dabble in petroleum and play with lucifer matches, and revel in destruction and conflagration. More daring than their elders, they stick with their mothers to barricades after the father of the family has deemed it prudent to retire, and numerous are the stories of their heroism and courage. Unfortunately, their propensities for arson render them liable to be shot, and it is sad to see how many children are often comprised in a band of prisoners. I went underground to the cells in which the prisoners were confined at the Prévôté, and wandered along narrow, subterranean passages, where the noisome exhalations were almost stifling, into dark cells, where the eye got at last sufficiently accustomed to the light to distinguish the relics left by the prisoners: here a pair of stays of which some female prisoner had divested herself, there a red cockade, all kinds of articles of clothing steeped in slime of indescribable foulness; and cowering at one end of the corridor a dozen prisoners waiting to know their fate. They were more respectable than usual, and not apparently of a very sanguinary type. They were all men. To-day no less than a hundred women were marched down the streets in one gang. The papers are so full of false reports that it is scarcely safe to give news which has not been verified. Thus, unless I had seen the Genius of Liberty on the top of the column in the Place de la Bastille, and visited the Jardin des Plantes, I might have reported the accounts, of which the papers are full, of the destruction of the figure on the Column and of the animals and rare plants in the gardens, which you will be happy to hear are all in a state of perfect health and preservation. I am afraid, however, it is only too true that half the Gobelins are destroyed, and that 67 of the "Frères de la Doctrine Chrétienne" have been shot by their fellow-Christians of the Commune. A friend of mine saw Madame Millière in a prisoners' gang, and we have authentic intelligence to-day that her husband, one of the most pestilent of the apostles of Fraternity and wholesale slaughter, has been executed.

The streets are full of the National Guards of Order, carrying their rifles to the different dépôts to be given up, for the disarmament of the entire National Guard has been determined on, and it is to be hoped that this most useless body in time of foreign invasion and most dangerous one in moments of internal trouble will be extinguished and abolished for ever throughout all the towns of France. Meantime the Boulevards and streets from which the fighting has receded are slowly waking into life, the tricolor waves from the windows in token of loyalty and sympathy with the Government, and at least two cafés are open on the Boulevards, but as yet only here and there the shutters of a shop are lowered.

The roar of the batteries from Montmartre is still continuous, but it is hardly possible that the Insurgents can continue the struggle for 24 hours longer.

Fighting was going on at Belleville about an hour ago, but still there is every reason the believe that the insurrection is virtually over. A great number of prisoners, escorted by cavalry, have just been marched down the Boulevards. They were said to be 5,000, but this is probably an exaggeration. They came from the Buttes Chaumont, where many of them have been kept two days and a half without food. A more villainous collection of faces I never beheld. There were many women, among them some in men's clothes, some as _cantinières_ or _ambulancières_, and very young boys and old men. Nearly 1,500 were Regular soldiers, or at least wore their uniform. Their coats were turned inside out, as a mark of disgrace. As they passed through the crowd lining each side of the Boulevards they were met with cries of "_A mort, crapule, fusillez-les!_" Four women in the Amazon uniform and the Regulars excited special indignation. One prisoner, near the New Opera, refused to march, and was twice stabbed with bayonets. He was then tied to a horse's tail, and afterwards placed on the horse, but he threw himself off, and again refused to march. He was put into a cart and carried off to the nearest place of execution to be shot. Another prisoner, who also refused to march, was dragged by the hands and hair of the head along the road. The crowd called out to the soldiers to shoot him, and declared that but for the presence of the soldiers they would themselves execute summary justice on him. The troops, headed by the Marquis de Galifet, were loudly cheered as they passed.

I went early this morning to Père-Lachaise. Shells were still falling so thickly near the Boulevard du Temple that no one was allowed to pass. I had to go a very roundabout way to get to the Place Bastille, as at numerous barricades everybody who passed was compelled to assist in pulling them down. The barricades were of astonishing strength. Behind the barricade on the Boulevard Mazas lay three bodies of National Guards--apparently shot in its defence. A little lower down on the Boulevard Voltaire lay seven men dead, as if they had there made their last desperate stand. There were some old gray-headed men among them. We were told that their bodies were left there for recognition, and women occasionally came up and claimed them. The Regulars had also suffered severely there, but their dead had been immediately removed. Further on, the stone barricades had been protected by a second line of large sacks stuffed with rags and papers, and piled upon each other. At the corner of Rue Roquette lay over 70 corpses of men, executed for being found with arms in their hands. They lay piled over each other, and the pavement and gutters streamed with blood. The crowd were not allowed to approach them. We entered Père-Lachaise and found it full of troops, chiefly of the Marine Brigade. There is no truth in the stories that the cemetery was defended tomb by tomb. There had been no bayonet or even fusillade fighting there, but the shells had shattered many of the tombs, here and there laying bare the coffins below. The position was so strong that the Marines could account for its abandonment only by the fact that the Insurgents were utterly disorganized for want of leaders. The shelling, however, had been sufficiently vigorous to compel the troops to retire after they took it last night, and to return for reinforcements. They retook the position early this morning. The Insurgents had abandoned a battery of seven guns which commanded the whole position. We could see from it that sharp fighting was still going on at Belleville, probably the last stronghold. As we passed the prison of La Roquette, we heard about ninety rifle-shots and then a mitrailleuse, and were told by the troops that prisoners were being executed. We had great difficulty in passing through the Faubourg St. Antoine, and were stopped by at least five _cordons_ of sentries. They told us that the Insurgents were _en fuite_, that the Quartier was _suspect_, and that, therefore, nobody was allowed to pass. When we got through, many people asked us to put their letters into the post for them, as they were close prisoners. The streets were filled with arms and equipments.

Only a few houses in Belleville still hold out. The Insurgents are surrendering by thousands. The insurrection is considered over.

Most of those who founded the Comité du Salut Public have been taken. The Insurgents are being shot by hundreds. In the Faubourg St. Antoine great numbers of men and women were found carrying petroleum, and at once shot.

The _Moniteur_ says that Félix Pyat and Paschal Grousset left Paris yesterday in a balloon, which passed over Niort towards the sea.

MAY 29th.