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Mr. ARENS: Where did you go? Mr. ROBESON: I went first to England, where I was with the Philadelphia Orchestra, one of two American groups which was invited to England. I did a long concert tour in England and Denmark and Sweden, and I also sang for the Soviet people, one of the finest musical audiences in the world. Will you read what the Porgy and Bess people said? They never heard such applause in their lives. One of the most musical peoples in the world, and the great composers and great musicians, very cultured people, and Tolstoy, and— THE CHAIRMAN: We know all of that. Mr. ROBESON: They have helped our culture and we can learn a lot. Mr. ARENS: Did you go to Paris on that trip? Mr. ROBESON: I went to Paris. Mr. ARENS: And while you were in Paris, did you tell an audience there that the American Negro would never go to war against the Soviet government? Mr. ROBESON: May I say that is slightly out of context? May I explain to you what I did say? I remember the speech very well, and the night before, in London, and do not take the newspaper, take me: I made the speech, gentlemen, Mr. So-and-So. It happened that the night before, in London, before I went to Paris . . . and will you please listen? Mr. ARENS: We are listening. Mr. ROBESON: Two thousand students from various parts of the colonial world, students who since then have become very important in their governments, in places like Indonesia and India, and in many parts of Africa, two thousand students asked me and Mr. [Dr. Y. M.] Dadoo, a leader of the Indian people in South Africa, when we addressed this conference, and remember I was speaking to a peace conference, they asked me and Mr. Dadoo to say there that they were struggling for peace, that they did not want war against anybody. Two thousand students who came from populations that would range to six or seven hundred million people. Mr. KEARNEY4: Do you know anybody who wants war? Mr. ROBESON: They asked me to say in their name that they did not want war. That is what I said. No part of my speech made in Paris says fifteen million American Negroes would do anything. I said it was my feeling that the American people would struggle for peace, and that has since been underscored by the President of these United States. Now, in passing, I said— Mr. KEARNEY: Do you know of any people who want war? Mr. ROBESON: Listen to me. I said it was unthinkable to me that any people would take up arms, in the name of an Eastland, to go against anybody. Gentlemen, I still say that. This United States Government should go down to Mississippi and protect my people. That is what should happen. THE CHAIRMAN: Did you say what was attributed to you? Mr. ROBESON: I did not say it in that context. Mr. ARENS: I lay before you a document containing an article, “I Am Looking for Full Freedom,” by Paul Robeson, in a publication called the Worker, dated July 3, 1949. “At the Paris Conference I said it was unthinkable that the Negro people of America or elsewhere in the world could be drawn into war with the Soviet Union.” Mr. ROBESON: Is that saying the Negro people would do anything? I said it is unthinkable. I did not say that there [in Paris]: I said that in the Worker. Mr. ARENS: “I repeat it with hundredfold emphasis: they will not.” Did you say that? Mr. ROBESON: I did not say that in Paris, I said that in America. And, gentlemen, they have not yet done so, and it is quite clear that no Americans, no people in the world probably, are going to war with the Soviet Union. So I was rather prophetic, was I not? Mr. ARENS: On that trip to Europe, did you go to Stockholm? Mr. ROBESON: I certainly did, and I understand that some people in the American Embassy tried to break up my concert. They were not successful. Mr. ARENS: While you were in Stockholm, did you make a little speech? Mr. ROBESON: I made all kinds of speeches, yes. Mr. ARENS: Let me read you a quotation. Mr. ROBESON: Let me listen. Mr. ARENS: Do so, please. Mr. ROBESON: I am a lawyer. Mr. KEARNEY: It would be a revelation if you would listen to counsel. Mr. ROBESON: In good company, I usually listen, but you know people wander around in such fancy places. Would you please let me read my statement at some point? THE CHAIRMAN: We will consider your statement. Mr. ARENS: “I do not hesitate one second to state clearly and unmistakably: I belong to the American resistance movement which fights against American imperialism, just as the resistance movement fought against Hitler.” Mr. ROBESON: Just like Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman were underground railroaders, and fighting for our freedom, you bet your life. THE CHAIRMAN: I am going to have to insist that you listen to these questions. MR. ROBESON: I am listening. Mr. ARENS: “If the American warmongers fancy that they could win America’s millions of Negroes for a war against those countries (i.e., the Soviet Union and the peoples’ democracies) then they ought to understand that this will never be the case. Why should the Negroes ever fight against the only nations of the world where racial discrimination is prohibited, and where the people can live freely? Never! I can assure you, they will never fight against either the Soviet Union or the peoples’ democracies.” Did you make that statement? Mr. ROBESON: I do not remember that.
But what is perfectly clear today is that nine hundred million other colored people have told you that they will not. Four hundred million in India, and millions everywhere, have told you, precisely, that the colored people are not going to die for anybody: they are going to die for their independence. We are dealing not with fifteen million colored people, we are dealing with hundreds of millions. Mr. KEARNEY: The witness has answered the question and he does not have to make a speech. . . . Mr. ROBESON: In Russia I felt for the first time like a full human being. No color prejudice like in Mississippi, no color prejudice like in Washington. It was the first time I felt like a human being. Where I did not feel the pressure of color as I feel [it] in this Committee today. Mr. SCHERER: Why do you not stay in Russia? Mr. ROBESON: Because my father was a slave, and my people died to build this country, and I am going to stay here, and have a part of it just like you. And no Fascist-minded people will drive me from it. Is that clear? I am for peace with the Soviet Union, and I am for peace with China, and I am not for peace or friendship with the Fascist Franco, and I am not for peace with Fascist Nazi Germans. I am for peace with decent people. Mr. SCHERER: You are here because you are promoting the Communist cause. Mr. ROBESON: I am here because I am opposing the neo-Fascist cause which I see arising in these committees. You are like the Alien [and] Sedition Act, and Jefferson could be sitting here, and Frederick Douglass could be sitting here, and Eugene Debs could be here. . . . . THE CHAIRMAN: Now, what prejudice are you talking about? You were graduated from Rutgers and you were graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. I remember seeing you play football at Lehigh. Mr. ROBESON: We beat Lehigh. THE CHAIRMAN: And we had a lot of trouble with you. Mr. ROBESON: That is right. DeWysocki was playing in my team. THE CHAIRMAN: There was no prejudice against you. Why did you not send your son to Rutgers? Mr. ROBESON: Just a moment. This is something that I challenge very deeply, and very sincerely: that the success of a few Negroes, including myself or Jackie Robinson can make up—and here is a study from Columbia University—for seven hundred dollars a year for thousands of Negro families in the South. My father was a slave, and I have cousins who are sharecroppers, and I do not see my success in terms of myself. That is the reason my own success has not meant what it should mean: I have sacrificed literally hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars for what I believe in. Mr. ARENS: While you were in Moscow, did you make a speech lauding Stalin? Mr. ROBESON: I do not know. Mr. ARENS: Did you say, in effect, that Stalin was a great man, and Stalin had done much for the Russian people, for all of the nations of the world, for all working people of the earth? Did you say something to that effect about Stalin when you were in Moscow? Mr. ROBESON: I cannot remember. Mr. ARENS: Do you have a recollection of praising Stalin? Mr. ROBESON: I said a lot about Soviet people, fighting for the peoples of the earth. Mr. ARENS: Did you praise Stalin? Mr. ROBESON: I do not remember. Mr. ARENS: Have you recently changed your mind about Stalin? Mr. ROBESON: Whatever has happened to Stalin, gentlemen, is a question for the Soviet Union, and I would not argue with a representative of the people who, in building America, wasted sixty to a hundred million lives of my people, black people drawn from Africa on the plantations. You are responsible, and your forebears, for sixty million to one hundred million black people dying in the slave ships and on the plantations, and don’t ask me about anybody, please. Mr. ARENS: I am glad you called our attention to that slave problem. While you were in Soviet Russia, did you ask them there to show you the slave labor camps? THE CHAIRMAN: You have been so greatly interested in slaves, I should think that you would want to see that. Mr. ROBESON: The slaves I see are still in a kind of semiserfdom. I am interested in the place I am, and in the country that can do something about it. As far as I know, about the slave camps, they were Fascist prisoners who had murdered millions of the Jewish people, and who would have wiped out millions of the Negro people, could they have gotten a hold of them. That is all I know about that. Mr. ARENS: Tell us whether or not you have changed your opinion in the recent past about Stalin. Mr. ROBESON: I have told you, mister, that I would not discuss anything with the people who have murdered sixty million of my people, and I will not discuss Stalin with you. Mr. ARENS: You would not, of course, discuss with us the slave labor camps in Soviet Russia. Mr. ROBESON: I will discuss Stalin when I may be among the Russian people some day, singing for them, I will discuss it there. It is their problem. . . . . Mr. ARENS: Now I would invite your attention, if you please, to the Daily Worker of June 29, 1949, with reference to a get-together with you and Ben Davis. Do you know Ben Davis? Mr. ROBESON: One of my dearest friends, one of the finest Americans you can imagine, born of a fine family, who went to Amherst and was a great man. THE CHAIRMAN: The answer is yes? Mr. ROBESON: Nothing could make me prouder than to know him.
THE CHAIRMAN: That answers the question. Mr. ARENS: Did I understand you to laud his patriotism? Mr. ROBESON: I say that he is as patriotic an American as there can be, and you gentlemen belong with the Alien and Sedition Acts, and you are the nonpatriots, and you are the un-Americans, and you ought to be ashamed of yourselves. THE CHAIRMAN: Just a minute, the hearing is now adjourned. Mr. ROBESON: I should think it would be. THE CHAIRMAN: I have endured all of this that I can. Mr. ROBESON: Can I read my statement? THE CHAIRMAN: No, you cannot read it. The meeting is adjourned. Mr. ROBESON: I think it should be, and you should adjourn this forever, that is what I would say. . . . Notes 1. Rep. Francis Eugene Walter (D-PA), Chairman the House Un-American Activities Committee, 1955-1965. 2. Richard Arens—Director of Staff for the House Un-American Activities Committee. 3. Rep. Gordon H. Scherer (R-OH), member of the House Un-American Activities Committee. 4. Rep. Bernard W. Kearney (R-NY), member of the House Un-American Activities Committee. Paul Robeson Archive
Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871 Chapter IX The Commune at Lyons, St. Etienne and Creuzot All parts of France have united and rallied around the Assembly and the government. (Circular from Thiers to the Provinces, evening of the 23rd.) What was the state of the provinces? For some days, without any of the Parisian journals, they lived upon lying despatches of M. Thiers, 103 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 Conservative press — cried, like their fathers who in their time had said, ‘Pitt and Coburg’, when unable to comprehend popular movements, ‘These unknown men can be nothing but Bonapartists.’ 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 Assembly the workmen found themselves watched. The municipal councillors, weak men, some of them, almost to reaction, had lowered the red flag under the pretext that ‘the proud flag of resistance a outrance should not survive the humiliation of France’. The clumsy trick had not deceived the people, who, at the Guilloti�re, mounted guard round their flag. The new prefect, Valentin, an ex-officer as brutal as vulgar, a kind of Cl�ment-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 H�tel-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, H�non, a wooden-headed relic of 1848, opposed all resistance to Versailles. The mayor of the Guilloti�re, Crestin, a known Republican, demanded that they should at least protest. Others wanted the council to extend its prerogatives. H�non threatened to tender his resignation if they went on like that, and proposed they should repair to the prefect, who was then convoking the reactionary battalions. The delegates of the Palais de St. Pierre arrived, and were roughly received by H�non. One deputation succeeded another, always meeting with the same rebuffs. However, during this time the battalions of Brotteaux and La Guilloti�re were preparing, and at eight o'clock a dense mass filled the Place des Terreaux in front of the H�tel-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 H�non, 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 H�tel-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 Communal 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 proclamation could leave no doubt on that head whereupon he was put under arrest. Then they decided on the proclamation 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 neighbouring towns. ‘The Commune’, they said, ‘must demand 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 will be lightened, the public money will no longer be squandered, 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 conspiracy, the only levers by which the lower middle-class might have been roused. So the Commission found itself isolated. It had taken the fort of Charpennes, accumulated cartridges, set the cannons and machine guns round the H�tel-de-Ville;
but the popular battalions, except two or three, had withdrawn without leaving a picket, and the resistance was being organized. General Crouzat at the station picked up all the soldiers, marines, and mobiles dispersed about Lyons. H�non named Bouras 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 Conservative 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 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 H�non. In the evening two delegates of the Central Committee of Paris arrived at the club of the Rue Duguesclin. They were taken to the H�tel-de-Ville, where from the large balcony they harangue 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 but 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 administration 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 declaration of war. The parley had been going on the whole afternoon until late into the evening. Little by little the H�tel-de-Ville grew empty, and the members of the Commission disappeared. At four o'clock in the morning the only two who remained cancelled their powers, [104] dismissed the sentries who guarded the prefect, and left the Hotel-de-Ville. The next day Lyons found her Commune gone. On the same evening, when dying out at Lyons, the revolutionary movement burst forth at St. Etienne Since the 31st October, when they had almost succeeded in officially proclaiming the Commune, the Socialists had not ceased calling 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 Vierge, 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 knew 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 Vierge sent delegates to the H�tel-de-Ville to ask for the Commune. The mayor promised to submit 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, urged 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 took over sentry duty to the cries of ‘Vive la Commune!’ The Central Committee invited the Alliance to join them in taking possession of the H�tel-de-Ville. 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 tranquillity. During these negotiations the people had assembled at the 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 railings at the H�tel-de-Ville. These had been closed by order of the new prefect, M.
These had been closed by order of the new prefect, M. De l'Esp�e, manager of an iron works, who had just then arrived, eager to subdue the disturbers. But the people began pulling down the railings, and it was necessary to let in their delegates. They found the mayor and Morellet, asked for the Commune, and provisionally the convening of a popular 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'Esp�e — the prefecture being contiguous 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 H�tel-de-Ville, and proceeding to the rails, told the demonstrators to reflect. Some ran off in quest of arms, others penetrated into the Salles 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 H�tel-de-Ville. At the same moment M. De l'Esp�e conceived the brilliant idea of beating the rappel, which the people had in vain asked for since midnight. He picked up some National Guards on the side of order, re-entered the now empty H�tel-de-Ville, and promulgated his victory. The municipal council informing him of the morning’s agreement, De l'Esp�e refused to fix the date of the elections. Besides, said he, the general had promised him the aid of the garrison. At eleven o'clock the prefect’s call to arms had reassembled all the popular battalions. Groups formed before the H�tel-de-Ville, crying ‘Vive la Commune!’ De l'Esp�e sent for his troops, consisting of 250 foot-soldiers and two squadrons of hussars, who came up sluggishly. The multitude surrounded 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 H�tel-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 averse to accepting as coadjutors two delegates from each company, but De l'Esp�e formally declared against any concession. At four o'clock a very numerous delegation from the Committee presented itself. The prefect spoke of retrenching and of strengthening the gates for defence; but the firemen raised the butt end of their muskets, opened the passage, and De l'Esp�e 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 square, killing Lyonnet, a working man. A hundred shots answered; the drums beat, the trumpets sounded the charge, and the battalions rushed into the H�tel-de-Ville, while others searched the house whence the attack was supposed to have come. At the noise of the firing the prefect broke off the conference 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 R�publique, 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 reactionary 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 prefect and the procureur’s deputy were left in the large hall in the midst of exasperated men. Many accused De l'Esp�e of having provoked the shooting down 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 Commune, 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'Esp�e offered to sign his resignation, but added that he did so under compulsion. The prisoners were in the charge of two men, Victoire and Fillon, the latter an old exile, quite distracted, who turned now st the crowd, now against the prisoners. At ten o'clock, being d pressed by the throng of people, Fillon, 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'Esp�e fell dead. The deputy, covered by the corpse of Fillon, escaped the discharge.
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 incendiarism, nor theft, nor pillage, as so many are pleased to give out, but the conquest of the franchises and the independence ravished from us by imperial and monarchical legislation; it is the true basis of the Republic.’ This was the whole preamble. In this hive of industry, surrounded by 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. The next day, Sunday, the town, calm and curious, read the proclamation of the Commune, posted up 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 barracks, and said to them, ‘My soldiers won’t fight, but I have a thousand chassepots. If you will make use of them, forward!’ The councillors protested their unfitness for military exploits; but at the same time, as at Lyons, refused to communicate with the H�tel-de-Ville, considering ‘that one can only treat with honest men’. On the 27th the Alliance and L'Eclaireur altogether withdrew, 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 H�tel-de-Ville 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 overwhelmed the Commune with the customary insults, and recounted that cannibals had been seen amongst the murderers of the prefect. [105] L'Eclaireur did not fail to demonstrate that the movement was purely Bonapartist. The working men felt themselves vanquished, and at the solemn funeral of M. De L'Esp�e not loud but deep curses were uttered. At Creuzot, also the proletarians were defeated. Yet the Socialists administered the town from the 4th September, the mayor, Durnay, being a former workman at the iron works. On the 25th, at the news from Lyons, they spoke of proclaiming the Commune. At their review on the 26th the National Guards cried ‘Vive la Commune!’ and the crowd accompanied them to the Place de la Mairie, held by the colonel of cuirassiers, 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 Government, proclaimed the Commune, and the red flag was hoisted. But there, 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. Glossary \| Contents \| next chapter
Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871 Chapter XXXI The Commune’s last stand Major S�goyer was captured by the scoundrels who were defending the Bastille, and, without respect for the laws of war, was immediately shot. (Thiers to the Prefects, 27th May.) The soldiers continuing their nocturnal surprises, got hold of the deserted barricades of the Rue d'Aubervilliers and the Boulevard de la Chapelle. On the side of the Bastille they occupied the barricade of the Rue St. Antoine at the corner of the Rue Castex, the Gare de Lyons, 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 R�unis. In the darkness of the night a Versaillese officer was surprised by our outposts of the Bastille and shot; ‘without respecting 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 Villete the Versaillese, crossing the Rue d'Aubervilliers; turned and occupied the abandoned gasworks; in the centre, they got as far as the Cirque Napol�on; on the right, in the twelfth arrondissement, they invaded the bastions nearest the river without a struggle: One detachment went up the embankment of the Vincennes Railway and occupied the station, while another took possession of the Boulevard Mazas, the Avenue Lacu�e, 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 Boulevard Beaumarchais. The sun did not shine forth. This five days’ cannonade had drawn on the rainfall that usually accompanies great battles. The firing 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 Gare d'Orl�ans 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 Federals hurried thither with their cannon. If they do not hold out, the Bastille will be taken. They did hold out. The Rue d'Aligre and the Avenue Lacu�e vied with each other in devotion. Entrenched in the houses, the Federals fell, but neither yielded nor retreated; and, thanks to their selfsacrifice, 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 pavement as their fathers. Here the conservatives of 1848 gave vent 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, and 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. 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 artilleryman of the army, gone over to the people on the 18th March, was surrounded. ‘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 Milli�re, arrested on the left bank of the Seine, was taken to Cissey’s staff. This Imperialist general, ruined by the vilest debauchery, and who terminated his Ministerial career, by treachery, [194] had made of his headquarters at the Luxembourg one of the slaughter-houses of the left bank. Milli�re’s role 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,[195] has recounted his crime, head erect.[196] Before history we must let him speak. ‘Milli�re was brought in when we were breakfasting with the general at the restaurant De Tournon, near the Luxembourg. We heard a great noise, and went out. I was told, “It is Mili�re.” I took care that the crowd did not take justice into its own hands.
I was told, “It is Mili�re.” I took care that the crowd did not take justice into its own hands. He did not come into the Luxembourg; he was stopped at the gate. I addressed myself to him, and said, “You are Milli�re?'’ “Yes, but you know 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 recognize you.” ‘I then said to Milli�re 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, to be crushed underfoot. 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 Milli�re, there is nothing else to be done.” ‘The general had ordered that he was to be shot at the Panth�on, 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, “Vive l'humanit�!” He was about to cry something else when he fell dead.’ [197] An officer ascended the steps, approached the corpse, and discharged his chassep�t into the left temple. Milli�re’s head rebounded, and, falling back, burst open, black with powder, seemed to look at the frontispiece of the monument. ‘Vive l'humanit�!’ The word implies two causes. ‘I care as much for the liberty of other people as for that of France,’ said a Federal to a reactionary.[198] 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 surrendered by its commander. The Federals concentrated in the rear along the line of the canal, and barricaded the Rue de Crim�e. 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. Near the church the wagons and horses were noisily put up. The headquarters and different services were established in the Rue Haxo at the Cit� Vincennes, a series of constructions intersected by gardens. The very numerous barricades in the inextricable streets of M�nilmontant were almost all turned against the boulevard. The strategical route, which on this point overlooks the P�re la Chaise, 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 convention previously concluded between Versailles and the Prince of Saxony, the German army since Monday surrounded Paris on the north and east. It had cut off the Railway of the North, manned the canal line from St. Denis, posted sentinels 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 to Montreuil; and during the evening another corps of 5,000 men occupied Vincennes, with eighty artillery pieces. At nine o'clock they surrounded the fort and disarmed the Federals, who wanted to return to Paris. They did still better-trapped the game for Versailles. Already during the siege the Prussians had given an indirect support to the Versaillese army; their cynical collusion with the French conservatives showed itself undisguised during the eight days of May. Of all M. Thiers’ crimes, one of the most odious will certainly be 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, oil 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 Crim�e and the Rotonde. Vinoy continued to ascend the twelfth arrondissement after having left the few thousand men necessary for the perquisitions 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 shelled 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 Tr�ne, which they tried to outflank 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 centralize the artillery of the Commune, for each barricade wanted to possess its gun without caring where it carried. There was no longer authority of any kind. At the headquarters there was a pell-mell of bewildered officers. The march of the enemy was only known by the arrival of the survivors of the battalions. Such was the confusion, that in this place, mortal to traitors, there might be 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 random, 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, Varlin 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 nineteenth arrondissement; help it to repulse the enemy. There lies your safety. Do not wait for Belleville itself to be attacked. Forward then. Vive la R�publique!’ But very few read or obeyed. The shells from Montmartre, which from the day before crushed BelIville and M�nilmontant, the cries, the sight of the wounded, dragging themselves 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 suspicious. 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 augmented the anguish and despair. It was known that the soldiers gave no quarter; that they despatched the wounded, killing even doctors; [199] 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 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 marched on 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, harangued, but did not strike them. At half-past six the cortege reached the Cit� 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 chassep�ts 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, attempting to discuss, to appease the wrath. They were repulsed, menaced, and their notoriety hardly sufficed to save them from death. The chassep�ts 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 exciting 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. The same morning Jecker, the accomplice of Morny, had been shot.
The 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 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 P�re la Chaise 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 Versaillese general was killed in the Rue St. S�bastian; the Place du Trone 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 Faubourg 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 M�nilmontant 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 leader of a barricade claimed the right to stop your passage. The remainder 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, men preceding them with torches, the drums beating. These combatants, who amidst the shells silently interred their comrades, appeared in touching grandeur. They were themselves at the gates of death. In the night the barricades of the Rue d'Allemagne were 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 firing. 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 Tr�ne, 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 certain 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 promised them. At La Villette the soldiers deviated from the line on all sides, passed by the fortifications and attacked the Rues Puebla and De Crim�e. Their left, still engaged in the upper part of the tenth arrondissement, endeavoured to gain possession 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 overwhelmed the Buttes Chaumont with shells. The barricade of the Rue Puebla yielded towards ten o'clock. A sailor 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 M�nadier, steadily held by our tirailleurs. At the Place des F�tes two of our pieces covered the Rue de Crim�e and protected our right flank. At eleven o'clock nine or ten members of the Council met in the Rue Haxo. One of them, Jules Allix, whom his colleagues had been obliged to shut up as mad during the Commune, 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 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.
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 drawbridge was lowered in order to give passage to the fugitives. The crowd dashed out and dispersed in the houses of the Village des Lilas. As some women and children attempted 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 trumpet, dared on his own authority to go and ask the Prussian troops for permission to pass. Useless degradation. The 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 forwarded to the ambassador. Near two o'clock several Versaillese battalions, having swept the strategic route, reached the Rue de Crim�e by the Rue des Lilas and the open grounds of the fortifications, but were stopped in the Rue de Bellevue. From the Place du March� three cannon joined their fire to that of the Place des F�tes in order to protect the Buttes Chaumont. These pieces were the whole day served by only five artillerymen, their arms bare, without witnesses, needing neither a leader nor orders. At five o'clock the cannon of the Buttes were silent, having no more ammunition, and their gunners rejoined the skirmishers of the Rues M�andier, Fessart, and Des Annelets. At five o'clock Ferr� brought up to the Rue Haxo the line soldiers of the Prince Eug�ne 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 for the soldiers, who belonged, 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 F�tes 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 Versaillese had been laying siege to the P�re la Chaise, which enclosed no more than 200 Federals, resolute, but without discipline or foresight. The officers had been unable to make them embattle the walls. Five thousand Versaillese approached the enceinte from all sides, while the artillery of the bastion furrowed the interior. The pieces of the Commune had scarcely any ammunition since the afternoon. At six o'clock the Versailese, not daring, in spite of their numbers, to scale the enceinte, cannonaded the large gate of the cemetery, which soon gave way, notwithstanding the barricade propping it up. 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. 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 Federals part of the eleventh and twentieth arrondissements. The Versaillese camped in the Place des F�tes, 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 M�ricourt, 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 moment 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 cantini�re, delirious, a handkerchief tied round her bleeding brow, swore, called the men together with the cry of a wounded lioness. From between the convulsive hands the guns went off at random. The noise of the wagons, the threats, 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 Pradier barricade is abandoned!’ another, ‘We want men in the Rue Rebeval,’ a third, ‘They are fleeing in the Rue des Pr�s.’ To hear these deathknells there were but a few members of the Council present, among whom were Trinquet, Ferr�, 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 Vinoy 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 ammunition was 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 P�re la Chaise 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 Trois Bornes, Des Trois Couronnes, and the Boulevard de Belleville. Two or three streets of the twentieth arrondissement still struggled ion, among others the Rue Ramponeau. A small phalanx of fifty men, led by Varlin, Ferr�, and Gambon, their red scarfs round their waists, their chassep�ts slung across their shoulders, marched down the Rue des Champs, and from the twentieth arrondissement came out on the boulevard. A gigantic Garibaldian carried an immense red flag in front of them. They entered the eleventh arrondissement. Varlin 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 Versaillese, 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 twothirds 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 overturned and houses without exits. The Versaillese artillery shelled them till the Federals had used up their ammunition. Their last cartridge spent, overwhelmed by shells, they threw themselves upon the muskets bristling around them. By degrees the firing was lulled, all was silent. About ten o'clock the last Federal cannon was discharged in the Rue du Paris, which the Versaillese had taken. The piece, charged with double shot, with a terrible crash exhaled the last sigh of the Paris Commune. The last barricade of the May days was in the Rue Ramponeau. For a quarter of an hour a single Federal defended it. Thrice he broke the staff of the Versaillese 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 Villette three, the Boulevard Voltaire two days and a half. Of the 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, Brunel and Vermorel (who died some days after at Versailles),100 were severely wounded; 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 advance 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, Asni�res, Issy, Vanves, Cachan, have done at the Panth�on and Montmartre? 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-l�gion 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 perfectly secure asylum, but answered that honour forbade his deserting his companions in arms.
He was offered a perfectly 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 free passes, 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, foreseeing a siege, had solicited the assistance of the Prince of Saxony, and the German was on the lookout on behalf of his brother officer .[201] During the negotiations General Vinoy 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-g�n�ral of engineering and artillery, ex-noncommissioned officer, able, energetic, and quite resolved to blow up the place rather than surrender it. The powder-magazine contained 1,000 kilogrammes 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 Versaillese, B — , admitted that he had dispersed the elements of the electric battery by means of which Merlet intended to spring the fort. On Monday towards mid-day the Versaillese 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 Versaillese 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 ditches, a hundred yards from the spot where the Duke of Enghien had fallen, these nine officers formed a line before a firing party. One of them, Colonel Delorme, turned to the Versaillese in command with the words, ‘Feel my pulse; see if I am afraid.’ Glossary \| Contents \| next chapter
Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871 Chapter XXI Paris bombarded: Rossel flees The greatest infamy in living memory is now being enacted. Paris is being bombarded. (Proclamation of the Government of National Defence on the Prussian bombardment.) We have crushed a whole district of Paris. (Thiers to the National Assembly, Session of 5th August, 1871.) 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?[152] The shells of Montretour, which had just unmasked its powerful battery, and the severe attitude of the people, would no doubt have made them unite against the common enemy. He had begun to batter a breach in their ranks. On the 8th May, in the morning, seventy naval guns began to attack the enceinte from the bastion 60 to the Point du Jour. The shells of Clamart already reached the Quai de 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: ‘Parisians, the Government will not bombard Paris, as the men of the Commune will not fail to tell you. It will discharge 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 h im. 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 sittings’[153] 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 Varlin from the commissariat, entirely reorganized by him. They asked whether the Government called itself Central Committee or Commune. F�lix 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 Committee within its functions.’ The friends of Rossel answered, 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 F�lix 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.[154] The discussion then reverted to the Central Committee — were they to dissolve it, arrest its members, or surrender to it the administration of the War Office? The Council, as usual, did not dare to decide, and, after a confused debate, confirmed 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-l�gion, 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 Ministry, 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 organization 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-l�gion disputed the project on the regiments 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 attack by the Clamart station. The chefs-de-l�gion 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 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 later, 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 Committee 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 arrived on horseback, hardly looked at the front lines, and then addressed the chefs-de-l�gion, ‘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 floats from the fort of Issy, abandoned yesterday evening by the garrison,’ and, without apprising the Council or the Committee of Public Safety, gave the order to post up 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 deliberated and resolved upon nothing. The Central Committee 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,[155] and concluded: ‘Thus the nullity of the Committee of Artillery prevented the organization of the artillery; the hesitation of the Central Committee stopped the administration; the paltry pre-occupations of the chefs-de-l�gion paralysed the mobilization of the troops. My predecessor 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 by 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 pretend 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 line of defence? Why has no work been done at Montmartre and the Panth�on? Rossel might perhaps have addressed his reproaches to the Council, but he committed an unpardonable fault in sending his letters to the newspapers. Thus in less than two hours he had disheartened 8,000 combatants, spread panic, stigmatized the brave men of Issy, denounced the weakness of the defence to the enemy, and that at the very moment when the Versaillese were rejoicing over the taking of Issy. There everyone was merry-making. M. Thiers and MacMahon harangued the soldiers, who, singing, brought back 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 sod, 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. Remember this avowal and the sort of men for whom you die, sons of the sod! And at the H�tel-de-Ville 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 proclaimed that the tricolor 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 expectations. It has been an obstacle instead of a stimulus. With what is it occupying itself? With individual appointments instead of general measures. A decree signed Meillet names this citizen himself governor of the fort of Bicetre. We had a man there, a soldier,[156] 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 back 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, increased the disorder, sustained two disasters. Its members lost themselves in details or else did amateur service. One deserted the H�tel-de-Ville to go and shut himself up in a fort; if at least it had been that of Issy or of Vanves! F�lix 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 appoint a civil delegate to the War Office;
to appoint a civil delegate to the War Office; to draw up a proclamation; to meet, save in cases of emergency, only three times a week; to establish the new Committee permanently at the H�tel-de-Ville, while the other members of the Council were to stay regularly in their respective arrondissements. Delescluze 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 F�lix 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 scapegoat 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 military 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 votes, 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 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 F�lix Pyat had induced the Romanticists to look upon their colleagues of the minority as veritable reactionaries. 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 colleagues and surprised them in a neighbouring room deliberating apart. After a violent altercation they all returned 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, Gamlon, 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 F�lix Pyat to his friends on leaving the chair.[157] This honest mandatory, altogether absorbed in the work of ‘doing’ his colleagues, had forgotten to verify the capture of the fort of Issy. And that same evening, twenty-six hours after the evacuation, the H�tel-de-Ville posted up on the doors of the mairies, ‘It is false that the tricolor 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 H�tel-de-Ville the Central Committee had sent for Rossel, reproached him with the poster 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 departure the Committee deliberated at length. Someone 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 office he found the Commission of War, Delescluze, Tridon, Avrial, Johannard, Varlin and Arnold, who had just arrived. Delescluze explained their mission. Rossel listened very calmly;
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 utilize 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 repressions without the assent and support of the Commune.’ He spoke at great length in that clear and nervous style that twice in the Council had won over his most decided adversaries. The Commission, much struck by his arguments, 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 ex-delegate under the guard of Avrial and Johannard, who the next morning conducted him to the H�tel-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. Charles G�rardin, a member of the Council, repaired to the questor’s office. ‘What has the Commune decided?’ said Avrial. ‘Nothing yet,’ answered G�rardin, who nevertheless 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 hurriedly, ‘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 G�rardin had not yet been discharged from his functions — and he proceeded to the Council. When he returned, Rossel and G�rardin 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 desperate proclamation: ‘Treason had slipped into our ranks. The abandonment of the fort of Issy announced in an impious poster 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.’ Glossary \| Contents \| next chapter
Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871 Chapter XXXVI The balance-sheet of bourgeois vengeance The deported men are happier than our soldiers, for our soldiers have fighting to do, while the deportee lives in the midst of the flowers in his garden. (Speech against amnesty by Admiral Fourichon, Navy Minister, session of 17th May, 1876.) It is above all the Republicans who must be adverse to the amnesty. (Victor Lefranc, session of 18th May, 1876.) 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 Republic of 1848 had Nouka-Hiva; the Versaillese Assembly, New Caledonia. It was 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 machine-gun was more honest. Those condemned to transportation were huddled together into four depots, Fort Boyard, St. Martin de R�, Ol�ron, and Qu�lern, 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 !’[256] And then farewell family, country, 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 prison. 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 uncaged 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 black hole 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 black hole; 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 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 Melbourne there were 360 sick of scurvy out of 588 prisoners .[257] They inspired even the rough colonials of Australia with pity. The inhabitants of Melbourne came to succour 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 necessities. The Dana� was the first ship that set sail, on the 3rd May, 1872; the Guerri�re, Garonne, Var, Sibylle, Orne, Calvados, Virginie, etc., followed. By the 1st July, 1875, 3,859 prisoners had landed in New Caledonia. [258] This Caledonian sepulchre has three circles: the peninsula Ducos, 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 transportation — 2,795 men and 13 women; and, quite in the background, worse than death, the penal settlement of the Ile Nou, for 240 galley-slaves. The peninsula Ducos, a narrow neck of land commanded by cannon, with its mouth guarded by soldiers, without a watercourse, without verdure, is traversed by and hills and swampy valleys. For 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 condemned. The first who arrived wandered about in the woods; only very long after did they receive poor tents and hammocks. The natives, incited by the missionaries, 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 k�pis 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. Laborious, active, with that universal aptitude of the Parisian workman, 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 compulsory 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 a hospital, an aqueduct, administrative warehouses 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,[259] 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-people of Noumea. But the colony, stifled by the military regime, 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 Ile des Pins. This was the golden age of the transportation. Towards the middle of 1873 a despatch of the Minister of Marine reached Noumea. Ile Versaillese Government suspended all administrative credits in support of the state works. ‘If one admitted,’ 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 discontinue. 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 .[260] 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 board the F�n�lon 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 Government refused to send them back again. 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[261] 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 discouragement 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 commissar of the court-martial had accused him of but one crime: ‘He was a philanthropic Utopian.’ 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 R�publique! Vive la Commune!” and all was over.’ In November, in the lie 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.[262] These at least have the consolation of suffering with their equals. But the convicts chained in the sink of the scoundrels! ‘I know but one penal colony,’ replied the Republican Minister, Victor Lefranc, to a mother begging for her son. And there is indeed but one penal colony, 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, etc. 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 excluded from these. Another writes: Ile Nou, 15th February. I isolate myself as much as I can, but there are hours when I must be in the compound 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.[263] 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. Berezowski, this unfortunate man, [264] 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 penal colony? 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 penal settlement 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 mankind, 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 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 Marne library), in this filthy penal settlement, exposed to all insults, to all blows; shut up in caves; in the workshops treated as beasts; insulted by our jailers and our comrades of the chain, we must submit 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 very 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 today? It is not known.
It is not known. Maroteau left in March, 1875. The Commission of Pardons had increased his sentence; commuted Satory to the Ile Nou. At twenty-five years of age he died in the penal colony for two articles, when the jackals of the Versaillese press, whose every line has demanded 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: 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 unable 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, Lecolle, 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 debased. 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. [265] 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 torture of the thumbscrews, which mutilated the hands, is still in use at the penal colony; that four convicts had been shot at 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 penal colony. 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 prohibited; 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 government 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, I centiletre 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 treatment as the men, and they had courageously demanded the right of sharing the common lot of all. Louise Michel and Lemel, whom they had wanted to separate from their comrades, declared that they would kill themselves if the law were 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, De Pritzbuer, terminated the short but brilliant career of Alleyron. Pritzbuer, a renegade of Protestantism turned arrant Jesuit, and sent to New Caldeonia 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 Charri�re, general director of the New Caledonian Penitentiary, who declared the criminals of the penal settlement 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;
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 appointed 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 has 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. 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 infringements 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 November, 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 penal settlement. 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 resources, into a strange country, speaking a foreign language, employees, professors, still more forlorn, have succeeded by dint of energy in gaining a livelihood. The workmen 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 manufactures 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. 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 condemned to death as an incendiary or to hard labour for pillage, is a teacher in a large college or exaniines 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 common 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 forgotten 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 Commune, ‘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 m consequence of maladies contracted during their captivity; thirteen thousand seven hundred condemned, most of them for life; seventy thousand women, children, and old men deprived of their natural supporters or thrown out of Prance; one hundred and eleven thousand victims at least — that is the balance-sheet of bourgeois vengeance for the solitary insurrection of the 18th March. What a lesson of revolutionary vigour given to the working men! The governing classes shoot en masse without taking the trouble to select the hostages.
The governing classes shoot en masse 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 imprisonment, and given full pardon to six hundred persons, condemned 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 watchword, 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 pavingstones 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 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 be 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 discussion and the certainly favourable decision of the two Chambers. A petition, hurriedly organized, 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 jesuitical. The workmen already shot down in June, 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 congratulated Lecomte on the capture of the cannon, M. Cl�menceau. He made a jejune, garbled, timid expos� of the immediate 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 m it a social revolution, where there has really been only a fit of hysterics and an attack of fever.’ M. Floquet, nominated 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 Enquete 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 Commission: ‘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 compared 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 the Commune the rights of citizens.’ The immense majority applauded Dufaure, singing the praises of the courtsmartial, and not a Radical had the courage to protest, to defy the Minister to produce a single document, a single regular judgment.
No, nothing obliges us to give back to the condemned of the Commune the rights of citizens.’ The immense majority applauded Dufaure, singing the praises of the courtsmartial, and not a Radical had the courage to protest, to defy the Minister to produce a single document, a single regular judgment. 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 intransigents 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 rejected 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 December. 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. The organizers of working men’s groups were mercilessly struck when their connection with the Commune could be established. [266] In November, 1876, the courts-martial pronounced sentences of death .[267] This merciless tenacity alarmed public opinion to such an extent that the Radicals were again obliged to bestir themselves 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 reactionaries 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, commuted 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 working men 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, 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 .[268] 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 penal colony, in the Peninsula Ducos, in the Ile des Pins. It belongs to the workmen to do their duty so far as it is possible today. 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. A single paper, 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.
In France all the subscriptions for the families of the condemned of the Commune have not exceeded �8,000. The Irish victims numbered only a few hundreds; those of Versailles must be counted by thousands. Nothing has been done for the transported ‘convicts’. The Greppos, Louis Blancs and Co., who, without mandate, without any surveillance, have arrogated to themselves the right of centralizing 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 transmit 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, working men, 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 everlasting nightmare. Let all workshops every week put something 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 international solidarity and its power by saving those who have fallen for it. Glossary \| Contents
Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871 Chapter XXX The Left bank falls A few thousand men could not indefinitely hold a line of battle several miles long. When night had set in, many Federals abandoned their barricades in order to snatch a little rest. The Versaillese, who were on the look-out, took possession 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 transported to the Ch�teau d'Eau. Brunel and the brave pupilles de la Commune still stood their ground in the Rue Magnan and on the Quai 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 Bastion 81. More than fifty cannon and machine-guns 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, they had roamed about the trenches, the villages, the fields; the Versaillese of Neuilly, of Asni�res, 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. S�rizier commanded, 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 Panth�on, 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 contrary, 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 H�tel-de-Ville and the Panth�on in the power of the troops, their whole efforts concentrated upon the Ch�teau d'Eau, the Bastille, and the Butte aux Cailles. At four o'clock Clinchant resumed his march towards the Ch�teau d'Eau. One column, setting out from the Rue Paradis, went up the Rues du Ch�teau 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 Douay corps on the right supported this movement, and endeavoured to remount the third arrondissement by the Rues Charlot and de Saintonge. Vinoy 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, shelled 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 preservation 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 Bic�tre with his garrison. The fort of Bic�tre did not hold out much longer. The battalions declared that they wanted to return to the town in order to defend their districts, 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 midday. 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 taken by the numerous gardens intersecting this quarter, and the Versaillese succeeded in doing this. They first took possession of the Rue des Cordilli�res St. Marcel, where twenty Federals who refused to surrender were massacred, and then entered the gardens. For three hours a prolonged and obstinate firing enveloped the Butte aux Cailles, battered down by the Versaillese cannon, six times as numerous as Wroblewski’s.
The garrison of Ivry arrived towards one o'clock. On leaving the fort they had let off a mine which sprung two bastions. Soon after the Versaillese penetrated into the abandoned 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. [193] Thence they went to occupy the St. Laurent barricade at the junction of the Boulevard Sebastopol, erected batteries against the Ch�teau d'Eau, and by the Rue des R�collets gained the Quai Valmy. On the night, their advance on to the Boulevard St. Martin was retarded by the Rue de Lanery, against which they fired from the Ambigu-Comique Th�atre. In the third arrondissement they were stopped in the Rue Meslay, Rue Nazareth, Rue du Vert-Bois, Rue Charlot, Rue de Saintonge. The second arrondissement, invaded from all sides, was still disputing its Rue Montorgueuil. 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 overlooks the Bastille. Three o'clock — The Versaillese invaded the thirteenth arrondissement 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 Bic�tre. 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. Since the morning Wroblewski had received the order to fall back upon the eleventh arrondissement. He persisted in holding out, 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 Orleans 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 Ch�teau 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 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 Vincennes in order to regulate the conditions of an armistice. The secretary, introduced to the meeting, renewed this declaration, and the discussion began. Delescluze 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 inspired the Prussian with admiration. No one asked whether this insensate proposition did not hide 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 Delescluze, were charged to accompany the American secretary to Vincennes. At three o'clock they reached the gate of Vincennes, but the commisar of police refused to let them pass. They showed their scarfs, their cards of members of the Council. The commissar insisted upon a safe-conduct from the Commission of Public Safety. While the discussion was going on some Federals came up. ‘Where are you going?’ said they.
‘Where are you going?’ said they. ‘To Vincennes.’ ‘Why?’ ‘On a mission.’ A painful controversy ensued. The Federals thought the members of the Council wanted to abscond, and they were even about to ill-use them, when someone recognized Delescluze. His name saved the others; but the commissar still insisted upon a safe-conduct. One of the delegates ran off to the mairie of the eleventh arrondissement to procure it, but, even on Ferr�’s order, the guards refused to lower the drawbridge. Delescluze addressed them and said that the common weal of all was at stake; but 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 Versaillese. Wounded were’ being brought from the Bastille. Mademoiselle Dimitriev, wounded herself, supported Frankel, wounded at the barricade of the Faubourg St. Antoine. 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 utilize them. The attack was coming nearer and nearer the Ch�teau d'Eau. This square, constructed with the object of checking the faubourgs, and opening into eight large avenues, had not been really fortified. The Versaillese, masters of the Folies-Dramatiques Th�atre and of the Rue du Ch�teau d'Eau, attacked it by skirting the Prince Eug�ne Barracks. House by house they tore the Rue Magnan from the pupilles de la Commune. Brunel, after facing the enemy for four days, fell wounded in the thigh. The pupilles carried him away on a litter across the Place du Ch�teau 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 Versaillese to occupy the whole upper part of the third arrondissement, and to surround the Conservatoire des Arts et M�tiers. After a rather long struggle the Federals abandoned the barricade of the Conservatoire, leaving behind them a loaded machine-gun. A woman also remained. As soon as the soldiers were within range she discharged the machine-gun at them. The barricades of the Boulevards Voltaire and Dejazet’s Theatre had henceforth to sustain the whole fire of the Prince Eug�ne 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, without any stage effects, without a history, which shone forth during these days in a thousand places in Paris! At the Ch�teau d'Eau a young girl of nineteen, rosy and charming, with black, curling hair, dressed as a marine fusilier, 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 k�pi 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 barricade 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 opposite, 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 Ch�teau 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 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 Ch�teau d'Eau. Delescluze wore his ordinary dress, black hat, coat, and trousers, his red scarf, inconspicuous was was his wont, tied round his waist. Without arms, he leant on a cane. Apprehensive of some panic at the Ch�teau d'Eau, we followed the delegate.
Apprehensive of some panic at the Ch�teau d'Eau, we followed the delegate. Some of us stopped at the St. Ambrose 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 Brunel, having too often defied death, had at last fallen at the Ch�teau d'Eau; he was being brought back almost dead; and finally, Vermorel, 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 accompanied 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 Ch�teau 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, ‘No! you are not worthy of defending the Commune!’ Night set in. We returned heart-broken, leaving, abandoned to the outrages of an adversary without respect for death, the body of our friend. He had forewarned no one, not even his most intimate friends. Silent, having for confidant only his severe conscience, Delescluze walked to the barricade as the old Montagnards 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 the men of the people to defend her. It was his recompense to die for her, his hands free, in the open daylight, 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 Minister 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 gunboats 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 shelled Montmartre, when a despatch from the Committee of Public 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 Versaillese formed in front of the Federals a broken line, commencing from the Eastern Railway, passing the Ch�teau d'Eau and the Bastille, and ending at the 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 civilized aspect. Fear, hate, and fiendish brutishness smothered all feelings of humanity. It was a universal ‘furious madness,’ said the Si�cle 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, requesting the honour of presiding at the shootings. 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 administration. Thanks to the brassardiers, the tide of prisoners swelled so that it became necessary to centralize the carnage. The victims were pushed into the mairies, the barracks, the public edifices, where prevotal courts were organized, and shot in troops. When the firingsquad proved insufficient the machine-gun mowed them down.
When the firingsquad proved insufficient the machine-gun 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 fortifications. The column of the Bastille, entirely perforated by the shells, which had set its covering of crowns and flags on fire, blazed like a. gigantic torch. The Boulevard Voltaire was burning on the side of the Ch�teau 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 Voltaire 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 Commune was wanted to support the barricade of the Ch�teau 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 Voltaire up to the St. Ambrose Church. The barricade was deserted. Glossary \| Contents \| next chapter
Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871 Glossary Arrondissements — The 20 administrative districts, each with a mayor, into which Paris was divided. Brassardiers — Arm-band wearers. Cantiniere — Canteen woman attached to each battalion. Catafalques — Decorated coffins used in funeral processions. Chassepots — An early type of rifle. Code Napoleon — The French legal code upholding bourgeois property and rights drawn up under Napoleon I but still the basis of the French legal system. Corps Legislatif — Legislative Assembly. Enceinte — The wall around the old city of Paris. Faubourgs — Suburbs. Feuilles-de-route — Travel document issued to a soldier giving the route to be followed and destination, and used for passing from one army unit to another. Franc-tireurs — Irregular soldiers. Gallicans — The Church faction which wanted the independence of the Church in France and questioned the appointment of bishops. (Cf. Ultramontanes below.) Girondists — The right wing of the Revolution in 1793, opposed by the Jacobins. H�tel-de-Ville — The central town hall of Paris. Lettres de cachet — The famous order by which the monarchs of the old regime could have people imprisoned indefinitely in the Bastille or other prisons. Lev�e en masse — The general mobilisation of the populace for battle. Mairie — Town hall of each arrondissement. Montagnards — A name for the Jacobins — the left wing of the bourgeois revolution — deriving from the high benches they occupied in the revolutionary assembly of 1791-2. Octrois — Local taxes levied at the city limits. Pekin — Term for civilian used by the military. Procureur de la R�publique — Public Prosecutor. Pupilles de la Commune — Orphans — largely of men who had died in the fighting — who were taken care of by the Commune. Rappel — The call to arms. Rurales — Provincials. Sbirri — Police thugs. Sergents-de-ville — Municipal police. Tabellionat — Scriveners (a category of members of the legal profession). Tirailleurs — Riflemen. Turcos — Algerian units of the French army, so called by the Russians in the Crimean War who took them for Turks. Ultra-montanes — Church faction which looked to Rome. Vareuse — Cross-fastening jacket. Contents \| Notes \| Appendix The Civil War in France \| Paris Commune Archive
Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871 Chapter II The coalition opens fire on Paris The Republic was threatened by the Assembly, it was said. Gentlemen, when the insurrection broke out, the Assembly was noted politically by only two acts: nominating the head of the executive power and accepting a republican cabinet. (Speech against amnesty by Larcy of the Centre Left, session of 18th May, 1876.) 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 demonstration 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 demonstrations,’ 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 held a demonstration to save Paris from a catastrophe. It answered the next day: ‘The Committee 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 repels with contempt the calumnies which accuse it of inciting to pillage and civil war.’ The signatures followed.[72] The leaders 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 Barri�re d'Italie, at the Faubourg St. Antoine, at the Buttes Montmartre. Red posters 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 of 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 believed 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 demagogues, but for whom, he said, he would have conquered.[73] 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. 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 rumour 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 rumours [74] despatched four deputies, who were also mayors, to Paris. They arrived on the 5th, and found Paris perfectly calm, even gay.[75] The mayors and adjuncts, assembled by the Minister of the Interior, attested to the tranquillity of the town. But Picard, no doubt in the conspiracy, said, ‘This tranquillity is only apparent. We must act.’ And the ultra-Conservative Vautrain added, ‘We must take the bull by the horns and arrest the Central Committee.' The Right never ceased baiting the bull. Sneers, provocations, insults, were showered upon Paris and her representatives. 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 be 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 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 three days. The Minister Dufaure obstinately refused any concession on this point. Notwithstanding the urgent appeals of Milli�re, 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 dishonoured. Finally, the Right obliged M.
Finally, the Right obliged M. Thiers to declare from the tribune ‘that the Assembly could proceed to its deliberations at Versailles without fearing the paying stones of rioters,’ 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 of her decapitation and the ruinous decrees, Vinoy suppressed six Republican journals, four of which, Le Cri du Peuple, Le Mot d'Ordre, Le P�re Duch�ne, 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, revolutionaries. This Assembly of Bordeaux, the deadly foe of Paris, a stranger to her in sentiment, mind, and language, seemed a Government of foreigners. The commercial quarters as well as the faubourgs rang with a general outcry against it. [76] From this time the last hesitation disappeared. The mayor of Montmartre, Cl�menceau, had been intriguing for several days to effect the surrender of the cannon, and he had even found officers disposed to capitulate; but the battalion 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 Committee from above with the battalion leaders. The Central Committee sent three delegates to this group, where they met with lively opposition. One chief of battalion, Barberet, 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, 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 posters, which bore the names and addresses of all the members of the Committee. The Revolution, bereft of its newspapers spoke now through posters, of the greatest variety of colour and opinion, plastered on all the walls. Flourens and Blanqui, condemned in contumacy, posted up their protestations. Sub-committees were being formed in all the popular arrondissements. That of the thirteenth arrondissement had for its leader 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.[77] All these committees 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 Vinoy, 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 represented, 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. 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 be installed at the H�tel-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 National Guard constituted itself an assurance company against a coup-d'�tat;
The National Guard constituted itself an assurance company against a coup-d'�tat; 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 International convoked the Socialist deputies to ask them what to do. But no attack was planned, nor 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 that 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-de-ville or gendarmes, in all 15,000 men, rather ill-conditioned. Lef� sent him a few thousand men picked up 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 succoured them, the women bringing them soup 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 precipitated the war to give fresh impulse to their jobbery[78] — said to him, ‘You will never be able to carry out financial operations if you don’t make an end of these scoundrels.'[79] All these declared the taking of the cannon would be mere child’s play. They were indeed hardly watched, but because the National Guard 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 Vautrain. The National Guards arrived from all sides and unscrewed the pieces, and the shopkeepers of the Rue des Tournelles commenced unpaving the street. An attack was nonsensical, and it was this that determined Paris remain on the defensive. But M. Thiers saw nothing, neither disaffection of the middle classes nor the deep irritation of 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 Favre and Picard, who, since the failure of the 31st of October, believed the revolutionaries 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 forewarning 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, [80] 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 cannon [81] guarded by all Paris. Glossary \| Contents \| next chapter
Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871 Chapter XX Rossel replaces Cluseret The last act of the second Executive Commission was to name Rossel 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.’ Rossel 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 surrender. ‘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 P�re Duchesne was the real mouthpiece of the workmen. Hardly raised to the Ministry, 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-l�gion 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 municipalities should be charged with concentration of arms, the horses, and prosecution of the refractory, but he made no condition sine qua 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 Panth�on, but 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 C�cilia, 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 lst-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 of the soldiers. During the day the francs-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 C�cilia, 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-l�gion, they resolved to ask the Council for the direction and administration 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-l�gion with their sabres at their sides, went up to the H�tel-de-Ville, where they were received by F�lix 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.’ F�lix 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 Committee 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 Commission of War continued, in spite of all this, to squabble with the Committee. Our men paid dearly for these small office revolutions. Tired out, badly commanded, they were negligent of their watches, and thus exposed to every surprise. The most terrible one took place in the night of the 3rd-4th May at the redoubt of the Moulin Saquet, held by 500 men at that moment.
They were sleeping in their tents, when the Versaillese, 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 pass word. The truth is not known, as incredible fact! — the Council never inquired into the affair. M. Thiers announced this ‘elegant coup-de-main’[147] 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 caf�s 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 renewing the agonies of Math�? 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. [148] The greater part, arriving from Germany in a state of extreme irritation against Paris, [149] said 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 appeared, 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.[150] 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 vanquished 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.[151] On the 4th F�lix 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 interference, which embroiled everything. ‘Under these circumstances I cannot be responsible,’ said he, and demanded the publicity of the sittings, as he had always been received in 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 president. 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, understood that for this struggle without precedent new tactics were wanted, found a field of battle for these improvised soldiers, organized the internal defence and awaited Versailles from the heights of Montmartre, the Trocadero, and Mont-Val�rien. 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, and 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 artillerymen. On the 3rd the Versaillese renewed their summons 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 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 wagons 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 ambulances 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 wagons of seven centimetre shells. 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 corpses two yards deep. 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 machine-guns above the platform to sweep at once the moat and the glacis. 6th. — The battery of Fleury regularly discharges its six rounds on us every five minutes. A cantini�re 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. 7th. — We are receiving as many as ten shells a minute. The ramparts are totally uncovered. All the pieces, save two or three, are dismounted. The Versaillese works almost touch us. There are thirty more dead. We are about to be surrounded. Glossary \| Contents \| next chapter
Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871 Publisher’s Note Eleanor Marx’s translation of Lissagaray’s History was made from a manuscript revised by the author and approved by Karl Marx. Lissagaray himself regarded it as the definitive edition of his work. Editing has therefore been confined to a minimum, though some minor mis-translations from the original French have been corrected and a number of anachronistic terms, generally derived directly from the French, have been revised to make their meaning clearer. Other French terms recurring in the text are expanded in the glossary provided. Lissagaray’s own appendices and notes, which contain valuable documentation of the events described, are reproduced in full. A general index has been added to this edition together with a full index of names enabling the reader to identify the hundreds of protagonists who appear in the book. Lissagaray's own part in the Commune was modest; he followed its course as a jouranlist and a barricade fighter and was, as he tells us,‘neither member, nor officer, nor functionary of the Commune’. New Park Publications Glossary \| Contents \| The Civil War in France \| Paris Commune Archive
Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871 Chapter XXVII The invasion continues The generals who commanded the entry into Paris are great military men.’ (Thiers to the National Assembly 22 May 1871) At two o'clock Dombrowski arrived at the H�tel-de-Ville, pale, dejected, his 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 appeared 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 morning 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 Hotel-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 Trocadero occupied by the Versaillese, refused to hold out. On the left bank, at the St. Clothilde Square, some officers attempted to stop them, but were repulsed by the guards. ‘It is now a war of barricades,’ said they; ‘everyone to his quarter.’ At the L�gion d'Honneur they forced their way; the proclamation of Delescluze had released them. Thus began that fatal proclamation posted up on all the walls: Enough of militarism! No more staff-officers with their gold-embroidered uniforms! Make way for the people, for the combatants bare-armed! The hour of the revolutionary war has struck! The people know nothing of learned manoeuvres. But when they have a gun in their hands, a pavement under their feet, they fear not all the strategists of the monarchical school! When the Minister of War thus stigmatizes 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 neighbouring quarter in agonies, remaining motionless 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 destroying 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 Brunel, who, set at liberty only the evening before, had at once rallied his 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. Brunel repaired thither, and disposed 150 tirailleurs, three pieces of 4 cm., one of 12 and two of 7 on the terrace of, the Tuileries and by the bank of the river. He provided the St. Florentin redoubt with a machine-gun 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 Brunel, 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 up in the Faubourg St. Honor� as far as the English Embassy, in the Rue de Suresne and Ville-Leveque; 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, set foot on the Avenue de la Grande Arm�e. The artillery, men of the Porte-Maillot, turning round, beheld in their rear the Versaillese, their neighbours for some ten hours. Not a sentinel had denounced them. Monteret marched 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 Douai column 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 onto the silent Place de la Concorde; suddenly the terrace of the Tuileries lit up; the Versaillese, received with a pointblank volley, fled as far as the Palais de I'Industrie, leaving many dead. On the left the soldiers occupied the abandoned Elys�e, and by the Rues Morny and Abbatucci emerged on the Place St. Augustin, where the barricades, hardly begun, could not resist, and towards half-past seven the Versaillese installed themselves at the Pepiniere 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, Asnieres and Clichy, directed 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, and St. Ouen were assailed with balls from the rear — (this was the first intimation they got of the entry of the Versaillese) — and many Federals were taken prisoners. Others succeeded in returning to Paris by the gates of Bineau, Asnieres, and Clichy, spreading panic and rumours of treason in the seventeenth 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 Parc, which the Versaillese occupied, 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 L�vis; 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 fortified, and soon the Batignolles formed a serious outwork for Montmartre, our principal fortress. The latter, for seventeen hours,[179] 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 Trocadero. A few shells from Montmartre[180] 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 remained mute. Monstrous negligence, which alone would suffice to condemn the Council, the War Office, and the delegates of Montmartre. Eightyfive cannon and about twenty machine-guns were lying there, dirty, pell-mell, and no one during these eight weeks had even thought Of cleaning them. Projectiles of 7 cm. abounded, but 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 required to set them up again. These three pieces themselves had very little ammunition. 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 C�cilia sent to Montmartre, and found the defence in this disgraceful state. He immediately addressed despatches to the H�tel-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 Trocadero 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. The Federals defended themselves several hours, and were only dislodged by the shells of the Trocadero, which enkindled a conflagration.[181] They then fell back upon the Ecole, and for a long time checking the effort of the troops, gave the seventeenth arrondissment time to rise. The quay as far as the L�gion d'Honneur, the Rues de Lille, De I'Universit�, and the Boulevard St. Germain up to the Rue Solferino were being barricaded. Half-a-dozen of the armlet conspirators, led by Durouchoux and Vrignault, were coming down the Rue du Bac at great speed, when a member of the Council, Siscard, 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, Verneuil, and St. P�res were put in a state of defence, and a barricade was thrown up in the Rue de Sevres at the Abbaye-au-Bois. On the right Cissey’s soldiers descended the Rue de Vaugirard without hindrance as far as the Avenue du Maine; another column filed off along the railway, and at half-past six reached the Montparnasse station. This position, Of supreme importance, had been utterly neglected; about twenty men defended it, and they were soon short of cartridges, 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 proclamation of Delescluze. The shops were at once shut up again, the boulevards remained empty, and Paris, the old insurgent, resumed her combative physiognomy. Despatch riders dashed through the streets, and remainders of battalions came to the H�tel-de-Ville, where the Central Committee, the Committee of Artillery, and all the military services were concentrated. At nine o'clock twenty members of the Council had assembled. A miracle! There was F�Iix 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 members present should be entered, in order to mark out distinctly those true to their duty. He signed his name, and, with tears in his eyes, the old comedian trotted off to a hiding-place, surpassing 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 the Hotel-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 leaders. In default of direction proclamations abounded. ‘Let good citizens rise l 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 cannot be wiped out.’ Great words; nothing but words. Mid-day — General Cissey had turned on the Ecole Militaire, and thereby forced its last defenders. The soldiers invaded the Esplanade des Invalides and entered the Rue Grenelle St. Germain, when the Ecole d'Etat-major exploded and put them to flight. Two of our cannon flanked the Rue de I'Universit�; four gunboats, anchored under the Pont-Royal, opened fire on the Trocadero. In the centre, in the eighth arrondissement, the Versaillese skirmished. At the Batignolles they did not advance, but their shells harassed the Rue L�vis. 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 reinforcements; 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, they said, for the defence of their own quarter. The cannon of the Buttes were mute, being short of cartridges; the Hotel-de-Ville had sent only words. Still there were two generals on the heights, Cluseret and La C�cilia, the ex-delegate melancholily airing his somnolent incapacity, while La C�cilia, unknown in this quarter, at once found himself powerless. Two o'clock — The H�tel-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 no know to whom to give them, and often refused pieces for the most important positions. The delegates of the Congress of Lyons, conducted by Jules Amigues and Larroque, came to offer their intervention, but they had no mandate, and id not even know whether M. Thiers would admit them. They were received rather coldly. Besides, many at the Hotel-de-ViIle believed in victory, 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 Hotel-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 trenches, embrasures and 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 Chauss�e d'Antin, De Ch�teaudun, the cross-roads of the Faubourg Montmartre, Notre Dame de Lorette, De la Trinit�, and the Rue des Martyrs were being unpaved. The broad approaches, La Chapelle, Buttes Chaumont, Belleville, M�ndmontant, the Rue de la Roquette, the Bastile, the Boulevards Voltaire and Richard Lenoir, the Place du Chateau d'Eau, the broad boulevards especially from the Porte St. Denis; and on the left bank the whole length of the Boulevard St. Michel, the Panth�on, the Rue St.
Michel, the Panth�on, 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 civilization has triumphed,’ screamed the little man. ‘The generals who have conducted the entry into Paris are great men of war. The expiation 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, to a man, and by a unanimous vote, Right, Left, Centre, Clericals, Republicans, Monarchists, swore that ‘the Versailles army and chief of the executive power had merited well of the country.’[182] sitting was at once raised, the deputies rushing off to the Lanterne Diog�ne, Ch�tillon, and Mont-Val�rien, 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 Versailles road 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. 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 shooting slackened, but the shelling 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 extinguished 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 Hotel-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 recriminations. 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 revolutionaries 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 Hotel-de-Ville. An irritated group of Federals had just arrested Dombrowski. The general, without any command since morning, had repaired with his officers to the outposts of St. Ouen, and believing his role terminated, wanted in the night to ride through the Prussian ranks and gain the frontier. A commander, who was afterwards shot as a traitor, had incited his men against the general under the pretext that he was betraying them. Led before the Committee of Public Safety, Dombrowski 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 invaded 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 made a more lugubrious impression. A night of meditation this, the vigil of battle. We sought each other in the gloom, spoke softly, 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 — paving-stones! Let the earth be heaped up where the shells may flatten themselves against it; let the mattresses thrown from the windows shelter the combatants. Henceforth there is to be no more rest;
Henceforth 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 surprise, defenceless. May he tomorrow encounter a Saragossa or a Moscow! Every passer-by was requisitioned. ‘Come, citizen, lend a hand for the Republic!’ 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 [market women] worked for a long time, filling earth sacks and wicker baskets.[183] And these were no longer the traditional redoubts two storeys high. Save four or five in the Rue St. Honor� and the Rue de Rivoli, the barricades of May consisted of a few paving-stones hardly a man’s height; behind these sometimes a cannon or a machine-gun; 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 Panth�on 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, solid 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 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 bank, passing by the St. Lazare Station, the P�piniere Barracks, the British Embassy, the Palais de I'Industrie, the Corps L�gislatif, the Rue de Bourgogne, the Boulevard des Invalides, and the Montparnasse 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.[184] On the Monday evening, masters of several arrondissements, they still trembled, fearful of some terrible surprise. They needed all the tranquillity 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. Glossary \| Contents \| next chapter
Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871 Chapter 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-up 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 Rouher-Canrobert. The clubs, playing a great part in the ardent life of Marseilles, were at once thronged. The prudent and methodical Radicals went to the club of the National Guard; the popular elements met at the El Dorado. There they applauded Gaston Cr�mieux, 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. Cr�mieux 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 patronizing Rouher and his Ministers, and boasting of Canrobert’s offer? After a speech of Bouchet, the deputy of the procureur de la R�publique, Gaston Cremieux reconsidered 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 recognize’. 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 expelled the Jesuits. The Rev. Father Tissier, though absent, was still its leader. The moderation of the town he mistook for cowardice. Like M. Thiers on the 17th he believed himself 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 R�publique, 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, [The ‘Syllabus of Modem Errors’ was a papal document condemning all forms of liberalism. The Mixed Commissions were in fact set up in January 1852 after Louis Napoleon’s coup d'etat of the previous December. They consisted of prefects, prosecutors and selected officers to try oppositionists in areas placed under a state of siege. The accused were not allowed witnesses or counsel. 20,000 people were sentenced, and about half of them transported to North Africa and Cayenne.] 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 the priests and reactionaries, and proposed convoking the National Guards to make an armed demonstration in favour of Versailles. He would have asked for more, no doubt, but the garrison was solely composed of remnants of the army of the East and of a few disbanded artillery men. Cosnier, quite led astray, approved of the demonstration, and gave orders to the mayor and to the colonel of the National Guards to prepare 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 Cours St. Louis. At twelve, francs-tireurs , National Guards, soldiers of all arms mingling, gathered in the Cours Belzunce. Soon all the battalions of the Belle-de Mai and of Endourre [106] mustered in full strength, while the battalions of order remained invisible. The municipal council, taking fright, disavowed the demonstration and posted up a Republican address.
The municipal council, taking fright, disavowed the demonstration and posted up 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 Cr�mieux, 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 marched through the Canebi�re and the Rue St. F�rreol drew up before the prefecture. The delegates of the club tried to parley, when a shot was fired, and the crowd, rushing into the prefecture, arrested the prefect, his two secretaries, and General Ollivier. Gaston Cremieux 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. Cr�mieux 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. Cr�mieux, Job, Etienne, a street-porter, Maviel, a shoemaker, Gaillard, a mechanic, and Allerini, who deliberated in the midst of the crowd. Cr�mieux proposed setting 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 resignation. Cosnier, quite out of his latitude, signed what he was asked for. [107] The Commission posted up a proclamation that all the powers were concentrated in its hands, and feeling the necessity of strengthening 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 Fulg�ras. The next day they made a moderate proclamation: ‘Marseilles has wished to prevent the civil war provoked by the circulars of Versailles. Marseilles will support a regularly constituted Republican Government sitting in the capital. The Departmental Commission, formed with the agreement of all Republican groups, will watch over the Republic till a new authority emanating from a regular Government sitting at Paris relieves it.’ The names of the municipal council and of the club reassured the middle-class. The reactionaries 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 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 midnight he sneaked off and rejoined the troops, who, without hindrance from the people, lulled into security by their 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 exultation. 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 Fulg�ras, 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 Cr�mieux, strove to regularise the movement. Having said that the red flag was inopportune, and the detention 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 Cr�mieux’s 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 Vosges and soldiers who were rejoining their depots in Africa were left without bread, without pay, without feuilles-de-routes, and would have remained without refuge if Gaston Cr�mieux and Bouchet had not caused a provisional quarter-master to be named by the council. Thanks to the Commission, those who had shed their blood for France received bread and shelter. Gaston Cremieux 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 mild 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.
No one armed against it, but no one joined it. Almost all the mayors of the department refused to post up its proclamations, and at Arles a demonstration in favour 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 motionless 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 working men’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 revolutionaries 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 K�ratry, the 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 demonstration in order to take possession of the arsenal, when Duportal and the mayor rushed off to the Capitol, the H�tel-de-Ville of Toulouse. The mayor declared that the intended review was not to take place, and Duportal that he would tender his resignation 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, understanding it would no longer do to continue their Platonic role, fled in their turn, and hence Duportal, left alone in this prefecture, shone forth as a great revolutionary, 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. K�ratry, availing himself of his declaration, requested his aid to take possession of the prefecture, and Duportal gave him a rendezvous before the officers of the mobiles and of the National Guard, convoked for the next day, the 24th. K�ratry understood 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 K�ratry. 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 march against it, and that if M. Thiers did not make peace with Paris they would proclaim the Commune. At this name cries burst forth from all corners of the room, ‘Vive la Commune! Vive Paris!’ The officers, growing hot, decreed the arrest of K�ratry, proclaimed the Commune, and summoned Duportal to place himself at their head. He tried to back out, and proposed to act only as the officious prompter of the chiefs of the Commune; but the officers, inveighing against defection, induced him to come out to the square of the prefecture, 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, urges the deputies of Paris to be the intermediaries 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 appointed 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 posting up the manifesto, and neglected the smallest precautions, 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 Republican prefect in the stead of K�ratry and entirely abandoned 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. K�ratry, 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 campaign. ‘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, K�ratry, 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 artillery men to the muskets of the insurgents. The first president of the court and the procureur-general advanced to parley, but obtained nothing. K�ratry read the riot act, his voice being drowned by cries. A single blank-cartridge volley would have scared soldiers and artillery men, 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 K�ratry. The prefecture was taken just as easily, and that same evening K�ratry installed himself there. The members of the Executive Commission the next day published a manifesto of such platitude as to secure them impunity, and one of them got himself named mayor by K�ratry. Thus the generous working men 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 check 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 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, Narbonne 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 he was resolute, offered the direction of the movement to his comrade in exile, Marcou, the recognized 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 H�tel-de-Ville on the evening of the 24th, and arming themselves with the muskets held by the municipality, installed Digeon and his friends. He appeared 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 H�tel-de-Ville; but the people, especially the women, worthy of the Parisian sisters, disarmed the soldiers. A captain and a lieutenant were retained 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 detachment 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 lieutenant, who commanded them to fire, the soldiers surrendered their guns. The same day the delegates from the neighbouring Communes arrived, and Digeon set to work to generalize the movement. He had clearly understood that the departmental insurrections would soon founder if not well combined, and he wanted to hold out a helping hand to the rising of Toulouse and of Marseilles. B�ziers and Cette had already promised him their support, and he was preparing to leave for B�ziers, when, on the 28th, two companies of Turcos arrived, soon followed by other troops sent from Montpellier, Toulouse, and Perpignan. From this moment Digeon was obliged to ,sand on the defensive. He had barricades thrown up, reinforced the posts, and ordered 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. Glossary \| Contents \| next chapter
Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871 Chapter XXIV The new Committee at work 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-Val�rien, 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 Vanves were hardly armed; our gunboats bore almost alone the fire of Meudon, Clamart, and Val-Fleury. The first act of the new Committee was to order the demolition of M. Thiers’ house. This giddy act helped the bombarder to a palace, which the Assembly voted him the day after. Then the Committee issued its proclamation: ‘Treason had slipped into ...’ etc. Delescluze issued one on his own account. He dragged himself 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 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 Vanves, upon which all the fires formerly directed against Issy were now concentrated, had become almost untenable, and its commander had evacuated it. Wroblewski, informed of this, took the command from La C�cilia, 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 cease to supply the defence with men. At four o'clock in the morning Wroblewski appeared before the embankment where the Versaillese 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 Versaillese recommenced the bombardment. They overwhelmed the Des Oiseaux convent and the whole village of Issy, whose principal street was now one heap of ruins, with shells and grenades filled with potassium picrate. On the night of the 12th to the 13th they surprised the Lyc�e of Vanves, 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 defence?’ Brunei devoted himself, threw up barricades, asked for artillery (there were only four pieces), and new battalions to relieve the 2,000 men who had held out for forty-one days.[172] 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 organized a second line of defence in the houses of the village, and in the evening repaired to the War Office, where Delescluze wanted him to attend the Council of War. It was the first and only Council of War held under the Commune. Dombrowski, Wroblewski and La C�cilia 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 H�tel-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. Brunel 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. Brunel gave evidence, and complained bitterly of the culpable carelessness 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.
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 Committee, emboldened by the timidity of the Council, intruded everywhere, published decrees, ordered the payment of expenses without submitting them to the control of the Military Commission. The members of the Commission, men of intelligence, but belonging to the minority, complained to the Committee of Public Safety, which replaced 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 occupied 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 C�cilia 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, attacked 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 Committee of Public Safety contributed to the defence by a decree obliging all the inhabitants of Paris to provide themselves with an identity card, whose production might be requested by a National Guard — as impracticable and unpractised a decree as that on the refractory recruits. The H�tel-de-Ville awed nobody; behind its big words impotence made itself felt. On the 12th, some battalions having surrounded the Bank and wanting to make a search, old Beslay prevented them doing so, and the terrible dictators of the Committee 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 members expelled from the services — Vermorel from the Commission of Public Safety, Longuet from the Officiel, Varlin 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, forewarned, 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 declared itself irresponsible by its vote. The minority, on the contrary, affirms that the Commune owes it to the revolutionary movement to accept all responsibilities. As to ourselves, we claim the right of being alone answerable for our acts without screening ourselves behind a supreme dictatorship. We withdraw to our arrondissements. Convinced that the question of the war takes the lead over all others, 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 minority had not the right to cry out about a dictatorship, having 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 something better themselves. It would have been logical, since ‘the question of the war took the lead over all others,’ not to thus morally weaken the defence by deserting the Hotel-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 The�tre-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 expect 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. Barral de Montaut, chief of the staff of the 7th legion, had just published that the Versaillese of Vanves had shot an ambulance woman of the Commune. Urbain, urged by Montaut, who had managed to gain his friendship, asked that, as reprisal, five hostages should be shot in 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 challenged 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 Revolutionaries and the Girondists.’ The discussion became heated. Vall�s, 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 F�lix 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 dispute. 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 catastrophe would have been still more terrible if the firemen of the Commune had not torn wagons of cartridges and barrels of gunpowder from the midst of the flames. A maddened crowd gathered, and believed in a crime; a few individuals were arrested, and an artilleryman 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 Delescluze 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.[173] Paris firmly believed in a plot. The reactionaries said, ‘This is the revenge for the Vend�me column’. [column erected in 1805 in honour of Napoleon’s victories. Became a symbol of Bonapartism] 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,[174] was decreed on the 12th April.[175] This inspiration, popular, humane, profound, showing 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 continual efforts to suborn the workmen. On the 16th May, at two o'clock, an immense crowd thronged all the neighbouring streets, rather anxious as to the result of the operation. The reactionaries foretold all sorts of catastrophes; the engineer, 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 square was crowded with National Guards; the windows, the roofs were filled with curious spectators. In default of MM. Jules Simon and Ferry, erstwhile warm partisans of the operation, M. Glais-Bizoin congratulated the new prefect of police, Ferre, 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.
Glais-Bizoin congratulated the new prefect of police, Ferre, 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 fragments of the column, but were prevented by the inopportune interference of the Council members present. A week afterwards, the Versaillese picked them up. One of the first acts of the victorious bourgeoisie was to again raise this 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. Glossary \| Contents \| next chapter
Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871 Chapter XI The Council of the Commune wavers The Place de l'H�tel-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, [108] a few Radicals, [109] and about sixty revolutionaries of all sorts. [110] How came these latter to be chosen? All must be told, 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 misconstrue 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, ‘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 negotiating 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 pertinent 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 programme 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 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 demonstration, not the founding 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 International or the working men’s societies. The other delegates of the people were chosen from the 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 competition and rivalry. Thus the precipitation and heedlessness of the revolutionary electors sent up to the H�tel-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 hold sway but for an hour, and woe to them if they are not then ready, armed from head to foot. 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 congratulate the Council. The chairman by seniority, Beslay, a capitalist of a fraternizing turn 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 be driven deeper into the earth. The Republic of 1793 was a soldier, who wanted to centralize all the forces of the nation; the Republic of 1871 is a workman, who above all wants liberty to construct peace. The Commune 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 revolution.’ This was the naive 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, took advantage of this occasion to withdraw, stating that his mandate was purely municipal, that he could not recognize the political character of the Commune; gave in his resignation, and ironically bade farewell to the Council: ‘I leave you my sincere good wishes;
gave in his resignation, and ironically bade farewell to the Council: ‘I leave you my sincere good wishes; may you succeed in your task,’ etc. 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 arrested, others to declare his mandate forfeited. He escaped scot-free because he had said at the Versailles tribune, ‘When you enter the H�tel-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 a very bad effect, violating the best traditions of the great Commune of 1792-93, as it gave the Council the appearance of a conspiracy, and it was found necessary to quash it two weeks after, when the newspapers abounded in fantastic reports, as a natural consequence of the secret sittings. But the publicity never consisted in anything but the insertion of curtailed reports in the Officiel. The Council never admitted the public, whose presence would have prevented many errors. The next day the Council subdivided itself into commissions 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 Lefran�ais, Duval, F�lix Pyat, Bergert, 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 delegates 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 Republic, and now taking them at their word, ought to have declared that the role of the Committee had come to an end. Instead of an authoritative decision in this sense, recriminations were resorted to. A member of the Council recalled the promise of the Central Committee to dissolve after the elections. Unless they aimed at power, there was no necessity for the maintenance of their organization. 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 organization is to break your strength. The Central Committee does not pretend to share in the government. 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 prolonged, and the delegates of the Committee withdrew, no conclusion having been arrived at. Thereupon, without preamble, like a Jack-in-the-box, F�lix Pyat Jumped up and proposed the abolition of the conscription. On the 3rd March he had stolen away from the National Assembly, as he had on the 31st October deserted the H�tel-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. F�lix Pyat waited for the triumph, and on the eve of the elections came to beat the drum 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 H�tel-de-Ville. The hour awaited for twenty years had at last struck; he was about to tread the boards. Amidst the crowd of dramatists, miracle-workers, romanticists, visionaries, and Jacobin relics, trailing since 1830 at the heels of the social revolution, his business had been that of appeals to regicide and revolutionary insurgency, of epistles, allegories, toasts, invocations, evocations, pieces of rhetoric on the events of the day, tinkering with 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 Bonapartist 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 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: ‘Today the decision on house-rents, tomorrow that on the overdue bills, the public services re-established and simplified, and the National Guards reorganized, 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 exemption of rents due between October, 1870, and July, 1871. Versailles had offered only delays; this was contrary to equity. The Council exempted rents for the good reason that property ought to bear its share of the general sacrifices; but it did not exempt a lot of industrialists who had made 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. A commission had certainly been charged to draw up an address, but 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 insurrections 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 H�tel-de-Ville; others wrung their hands, lamenting, ‘Where are we going?’ Some shammed mortal illness: ‘You see 1 am at my last gasp.’ Those who have been most abusive since, then sought for humble evasions. Not one broke boldly. Their resignations, [111] the double elections, left twenty-two seats vacant on the 30th, when the Council verified the credentials. Faithful to the best traditions of the French Republic, 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 3 1 st March, the director of the general post-office, Rampont, belying the word of honour he had given the delegate of the Central Committee, Thiesz, made off after having disorganized 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 organization 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 organize 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 F�lix 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!’ Glossary \| Contents \| next chapter
Marx/Engels Internet Archive The Civil War in France Written: July 1870 - May 1871; First Published: 1871; Source: English Edition of 1871; Transcription/Markup: Zodiac & Brian Baggins; Proofed: and corrected by Matthew Carmody 2009. � Contents Introduction [The Begining of the Franco-Prussian War] [Prussian Occupation of France] [France Capitulates & the Government of Thiers] [Paris Workers’ Revolution & Thiers’ Reactionary Massacres] [The Paris Commune] [The Fall of Paris] Appendix Engels 1891 Postscript News stories describing some of the last massacres Marx’s Letters to Dr. Kugelmann (April, 1871) Franco-Prussian War Timeline of the Civil War History of Paris Commune by Lissagaray, 1876 Picture Gallery; [First and Second Drafts] � Notes on Publication The Civil War in France in mobi eBook format Communards: The Story of the Paris Commune of 1871, As Told by Those Who Fought for It. Revolutionary France \| Letters on France Marx/Engels on France \| Marx/Engels Library �
Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871 Chapter IV The Central Committee calls for elections Our broken hearts appeal to yours. (Mayors and adjuncts of Paris and deputies of the Seine to the National Guard. and all Citizens.) 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 H�tel-de-Ville. With the early morning mists the army, the Government, the Administration had evaporated. From the depths of the Bastille, from the obscure Rue Basfroi, the Central Committee 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 newcomers, without 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 systems, anxious above all to save the Republic. 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 Parisian petty bourgeoisie, much humiliated at the sight of Governmental nominees enthroned at the H�tel-de-Ville for full eighty years. Even the most pacific amongst them were shocked, scandalized by the incessant increase of the budget, the multiplied loans, and the financial swindling of Haussmann. And how they applauded Picard, revindicating 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 realization could alone console Paris for her decentralization. On the other hand, the popular masses, insensible to the bourgeois ideal of a municipal council, were bent on the Commune. They had called for it during the siege as 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 administration of schools and hospitals, justice and police, and 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, deprive the workman even of the right to defend his labour, and this power, which has ordained even the very air to be breathed, always refusing to interfere in capitalist brigandage. After so many failures, they were fully convinced that the actual governmental and legislative regime was from its very nature unable to emancipate 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 representative 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, organizing for the benefit of the few, justice, finance, army, and police, was to be 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; Eduard Moreau, a small commission agent. ‘He was not in favour,’ he said, ‘of sitting at the H�tel-de-Ville , but since they were there, it was necessary at once to regularize 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 referring 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 organized in the first and second arrondissements; 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 clearing of the Ministries was publicly going on; columns of soldiers were still marching off through the gates of the left bank. But the Committee continued signing, neglecting 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 revolutionaries. Some one having spoken of an increase of pay, his colleagues indignantly answered, ‘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 H�tel-de-Ville, and then they adjourned at one o’clock. Outside the joyous clamour 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 H�tel-de-Ville, at the Buttes Montmartre, in all the boulevards, onlookers were thronging. Who then spoke of civil war? Only the Journal Offtciel. 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 C1�ment-Thomas and Lecomte. Who are the members 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 university students, till now the advanced guard of all our revolutions, pronounced against the Committee. For this revolution was made by proletarians. Who were they? What did they want? At two o’clock every one hurried to see the wall-posters 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 organize 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 H�tel-de-Ville.’ Twenty names[90] followed, which, save three or four, Assi, Lullier, and Varlin, were only known through the posters of the last few days. Since the morning of the 10th August, 1792, Paris has not seen in her H�tel-de-Ville such an advent of obscure men. And yet their posters 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 H�tel-de-Ville, bread stuck on the end of their muskets. Fifty ordnance pieces, cannon, and machine-guns drawn up along the fa�ade served as the statuary around the town hall. The court and staircases were encumbered with guards taking their meals, the large Salle du Tr�ne 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 anarchists of the 31st October. From time to time the door, guarded by two sentinels, opened to a member of the Committee who carried orders or made inquiries. The sitting had recommenced. A member asked the Committee to protest against the executions of Cldment-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 elections. “Well, then,’ he was apostrophized, ‘abandon the people in order to gain the bourgeoisie; the people will withdraw, and you will see if it is with the bourgeois that revolutions are made.’[91] The Committee decided that a note should be inserted in the Journal Officiel to re-establish the truth. Eduard Moreau proposed and read the draft of a manifesto, which was adopted. 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.
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 imposing 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 adjuncts and deputies, Socialists like Millière and Malon, flatly declared against the H�tel-de-Ville, appalled at the dangerous initiative of the people. Many too said, ‘Who are these unknown men?’ Even at the Corderie, Internationalists and former members of the Committee of the twenty arrondissements maintained a diffident attitude. However, the meeting decided to send commissioners to the H�tel-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 offences. It held a third sitting at eight o’clock to receive the commissioners. These were the deputies Cl�menceau, Milli�re, Tolain, Cournet, Malon, and Lockroy, the mayors Bonvalet and Mottu, the adjuncts Murat, Jaclard, and L�o Meillet. Cl�menceau, half accomplice, half dupe of M. Thiers’ coup-d’�tat, 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 Committee 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 difficulty — 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 begun the civil war, attacked first? What had the National Guards done but answer a nocturnal aggression, taken back cannon paid for by themselves? What had the Central Committee done but follow the people and occupy the deserted H�tel-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, decapitalized 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 representatives, 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 disarming of our battalions. Yes, our case was one of legitimate defence. If we have bowed our heads under this 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 pretension of dictating her laws — we have too often suffered under hers — but we will not submit to her rural plebiscites. You see it; the question is no longer to know which of our mandate is the most regular. We say to you the revolution is made; but we are not usurper s. 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 cooperation.’ As he spoke of autonomous communes and their federation, ‘Have a care,’ said Milli�re, ‘if you unfurl this flag they will launch all France upon Paris, and I foresee days fatal as those of June [1848]. 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.
Descend from the heights where you have placed yourselves. Victorious today, your insurrection may be vanquished tomorrow. 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! 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 Cl�menceau, ‘what are your claims? Do you confine your mandate to asking the Assembly for a municipal council?’ 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 own leaders and to reorganize 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 territory banned the army.’ Malon: ‘I share your aspirations, but the situation is perilous. It is clear that the Assembly will listen to nothing as long as the Committee occupies the H�tel-de-Ville. If, on the contrary, Paris entrusts herself again to her legal representatives, I believe they could do more than you.’ The discussion was protracted until half-past ten; the Committee 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, Arnold, and Jourde were appointed. There they found the whole staff of Liberalism: deputies, mayors, and adjuncts; Louis Blanc, Schoelcher, 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 Radico-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 anything better than to come to an agreement with the municipalities, if they will proceed with the elections.’ Schoelcher, 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 — 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 H�tel-de-Ville. Will you proceed to make the elections?’ ‘But what is your programme?’ Varlin set it forth . He was attacked from all sides. The four delegates had to face twenty assailants. The great argument 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 unconditionally. 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 H�tel-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 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 themselves behind a mask. For an hour Louis Blanc, Tirard, and Schoelcher overwhelmed the delegates with indignities.
For an hour Louis Blanc, Tirard, and Schoelcher overwhelmed the delegates with indignities. Louis Blanc cried to them, ‘You are insurgents against a most freely elected Assembly. [92] 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 answered the manikin 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 elite of the liberal bourgeoisie, former exiles, publicists, historians of our revolutions, not one indignant voice protested, ‘Let us cease these cruel disputes, this barking at a revolution. Woe to us if we do not recognize the force manifesting itself through unknown men! The Jacobins of 1794 denied it, and they perished; the Montagnards 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 workmen. 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 spokesmen of Paris, we, who are listened to by Republican France, we will mark out a field for common action. You supply the force, the broad 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 H�tel-de-Ville, vigorous newcomers 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 combined attack. Exhausted, worn out — this contest had lasted five hours — he at last gave way, but under protest. On returning to the H�tel-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. Glossary \| Contents \| next chapter
Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871 Chapter XV The Commune’s first combats 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 Trouchu had disdained, [119] firing so lustily and with such correct aim, that on the evening of the 4th the Versaillese were obliged to evacuate the plateau of Chatillon. The trenches that protected the forts were manned. Les Moulineaux, Clamart, Le Val-Fleury resounded with the shooting. To the right we reoccupied Courbevoie, and the bridge of Neuilly was barricaded. Thence we continued to threaten Versailles. Vinoy received the order to take Neuilly. On the morning of the 6th, Mont-Val�rien, recently armed with 24-pounders, opened fire on Courbevoie. After six hours of bombardment 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-Val�rien. For fortyeight days the Commune found men to hold this untenable post. Their courage electrified all. 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 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 Beaujon Hospital, whither the dead had been transported. Many, shot after the combat, bore on their arms the marks left by cords. There were heart-rending scenes. Morthers and wives bending 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, immortelles 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 mutterings 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 Pere la Chaise he advanced to the common grave. Wrinkled, stooping, sustained only by his indomitable faith, this dying man saluted the dead. ‘I will 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 shelled the barricade 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 emerged 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 Dombrowski, 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 itself showed some distrust of the new general. The Commission had to present him to Paris, and, misinformed, invented a legend in his favour.
The Commission had to present him to Paris, and, misinformed, invented a legend in his favour. Dombrowski was not long in making it good. The same day the Federals of Neuilly beheld a young man, of small 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, they saw the cool and, as it were, unconscious courage of the Slav. 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, accompanied by Vermorel, took the Versaillese by surprise at Asni�res, 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 B�con, that commands the road from Asni�res to Courbevoie. Vinoy having tried to retake this post on the night of the 12th-13th, his men were Shamefully 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 Vend�me, at the Central Committee, at the H�tel-de-Ville, of the generalissimo Cluseret. The latter had made his debut 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 insurrections. 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 Chatillon, 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 refractory; 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 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 would be 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 penalties; it organized 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, F�lix Pyat bounded from his chair to demand the abolition of the Vend�me column, while Dombrowski was making desperate appeals for reinforcements. He had hardly 2,500 men to hold Neuilly, Asni�res, 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 B�con 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 survivors fell back upon Asni�res, where panic entered with them. Dombrowski, Okolwitz, 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 Asni�res. 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 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 retreat. 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.
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 Republic, and acknowledgment of the municipal franchises of Paris. The same day, in the Quartier des Ecoles, professors, doctors, lawyers, engineers, and students posted up a manifesto demanding a democratic, lay Republic, an autonomous Commune and the federation of the communes. An analogous group posted up 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 demands 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 Versailles 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, Corbon, Bonvalet, etc., pompously got up the Republican Union League for the Rights of Paris. Now they asked for the recognition of the Republic, the right of Paris to govern herself, and the custody of the town exclusively confided to the National Guard; all that the Commune had wanted all that they had contended against from the 19th to the 25th of March. 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 reproduced 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 jesuitical tone with which he has travestied history, [120] in those longwinded 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 insurrection, 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 disarm; the Assembly cannot disarm. But Paris wants the Republic. 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 communes; Paris will get neither more nor less.’ The delegates read a project of compromise which spoke of a general amnesty 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 tribune, 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 Government must be all the better armed because order is the more difficult to maintain;’ threatened to hand in his resignation, 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 posted up: ‘Let the Government give up assailing the facts accomplished on the 18th March. Let the general re-election of the Commune be proceeded with ... If the Government of Versailles remains deaf to these legitimate demands, let it be well understood that all Paris will rise to defend them.” [121] 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 disarm, save to the assassins of Cl�ment-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 insurgents, and not the resignation of legal power.’ To facilitate this submission, the next day the Officiel of Versailles compared 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 interpellation for a month. The League, thus well whipped, went on the 14th to the Hotel-de-Ville. The Council, foreign to all these negotiations, left them entirely free, and had only forbidden a meeting announced at the Bourse by ill-disguised Tirards. It contented 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. Glossary \| Contents \| next chapter
Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871 Chapter XXXIII The fate of the prisoners The cause of justice, order, humanity and civilization has triumphed. (Thiers to the National Assembly.) Happy the dead! They had not to mount the Calvary of the prisoners. From the wholesale shootings 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 a 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 2 1st 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 . [224] In front of the churches of the rich quarters the captives were forced to kneel down, bareheaded, amidst an infamous mob of lackeys, fashionable folk, and prostitutes, crying, ‘Death! death! Do not go any further; shoot them here!’ At the Champs-Elys�es they wanted to break lines to taste blood. The prisoners were sent on to Versailles. Gallifet awaited them at La Muette. In the town he escorted the chains, 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 eightythree men and three women, made them draw up along the talus of the fortifications and had them shot .[225] 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 lines of cavalry. It looked like the population of a city dragged away by fierce hordes. Lads, grey-bearded men, soldiers, dandies, all and every condition; the most delicate and the most rude confounded in the same vortex. There were many women, some with manacles on their hands; one with her baby, pressing its mother’s neck with its frightened little hands; another, her arm broken, her blouse stained with blood; another depressed, clinging to the arm of her more vigorous neighbour; another in a statuesque attitude, defying pain and insults; always that woman of the people, who, after having carried the bread to the trenches and given consolation to the dying, hopeless — ‘weary of giving birth to unhappy souls’ — longed for liberating death. Their attitude, which inspired foreign journals with admiration,[226] exasperated the Versaillese ferocity. ‘In seeing the convoys of insurgent women,’ said the Figaro ‘one feels in spite of oneself a kind of pity; but one is reassured by thinking that all the brothels of the capital have been thrown open by the National Guards, who patronized 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 sometimes shot, sometimes they were only thrown into the carts that followed. At the entry into Versailles the crowd awaited them, always the �lite 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 Si�cle, of the 30th May, ‘women, not prostitutes, but elegant ladies, insult the prisoners on their passage, and even strike them with their sunshades.’ Woe to whoever did not insult the vanquished! Woe to him who allowed a movement of commiseration to escape him! He was at once seized, led to the post,[227] or else simply forced into the convoy. Frightful retrogression of human nature, all the more hideous in that it contrasted with the elegance of the costume l 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 at 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 riding-school of the Ecole de St.
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 riding-school 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 back. 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 no doctors. Gangrene attacked the wounded; opthalmia broke out; deliriousness became chronic. In the night were heard the shrieks of the feverstricken 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 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 open-air hell 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 thirteen hundred persons, the others remained outside, bareheaded, 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, composed chiefly of women, arrived at the dock. ‘Many of us,’ one of them has reported to me, the wife of a chef-de-l�gion, ‘had died on the way; we had had nothing since morning. ‘It was still daylight. We saw a great multitude of prisoners. 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; but 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 200. 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 carriage. They grumbled at those who writhed with terror and cold. “Do not be impatient; 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 shootings, the menaces had maddened them.
The shootings, 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 machine-guns appeared, some of which were discharged.’[228] 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 Versailles high life. Captain Aubrey did the honours with the ladies, the deputies, the literary men, showing them his subjects grovelling in the mud, devouring a few biscuits, taking tumblers of water from the pond into which the gendarmes stood on no ceremony in relieving 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 Ind�pendence Fran�aise, ‘several thousands of people poisoned with dirt and vermin spreading infection of a kilometre around. Cannon are levelled at these wretches penned up like wild beasts. The inhabitants of Paris are afraid of the epidemic 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 bombardment 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 this abyss. 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 embezzlement of objects seized .[229] 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 Commune, 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 recognize 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.’ 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. Hunts were organized in the forests near Paris. The police watched all the stations, all the ports Of France. Passports had to be renewed and checked 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 .[230] 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 denunciators; the police of order received them with open arms. The denunciations rose to the fabulous height of 399,823, [231] 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, reviving 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, appropriated to the hour, and horribly amplified; chambers in 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;[232] false signatures, 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 of the bourgeoisie was flagging, the press fanned it again, each journal outbidding the other in villainy.
When it fancied the 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.[233] 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 histories 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. Vermorel, 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 insurgents 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, M�nilmontant, in the thirteenth arrondissement, in certain streets, there were only old women left. The Versaillese, in their lying returns, have admitted 38,568 prisoners, [234] 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,[235] 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 by-elections of July there were 100,000 less electors than in February.[236] 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 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 arrondissement, shots were fired from houses. At the Caf� du Helder, in the Rue de Rennes, the Rue de la Paix, Place de la Madeleine, soldiers and officers fell, struck by invisible hands; near the P�pini�re Barracks a general was shot at. The Versaillese journals wondered, with naive impudence, that popular fury was not calmed, and could not understand ‘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 provincials. Louis Blanc, who in 1877 was to defend the red flag, wrote to the Figaro to stigmatize the vanquished, to bow down before their judges, and declare ‘the public indignation legitimate.[237] This Extreme Left. which five years later 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 working men. Gambetta, delighted at being rid of the Socialists, hurried back from St. Sebastien, 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 Montpelier, 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 plate; a commencement of riots at Pamiers (Ari�ge) and at Voiron (Is�re). At Lyons the army was confined 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 Schoelcher wrote him a letter full of blame, and his house was stoned by a fashionable 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 admire this great revolution, which no one can appreciate justly today.’ The working men of foreign countries solemnized the obsequies of their brothers of Paris. At London, Brussels, Zurich, Geneva, Leipzig, and Berlin, monster meetings proclaimed 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 of the vanquished. The great voice of the International recounted their effort in an eloquent address[238] and confided their memory to the workmen of the whole world. On the triumphal entry of Moltke at the head of the victorious Prussian army into Berlin, the workmen received them with hurrahs for the Commune, and at several places the people were charged by the cavalry. Glossary \| Contents \| next chapter
Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871 Chapter XXIII The ‘Lefts’ betray Paris We took Paris with cannons and politics. (Thiers, Inquiry into the 18th of March.) 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 lower 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 leader of the bourgeoisie? A word and a handful of men. The word was Republic; the men, the recognized leaders 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,[164] gave it out as the watchword to his underlings. [165] Since the first risings all the provincial officials had the same refrain: ‘We defend the Republic against the factions.’[166] 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 experienced men 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,[167] they served him as bottle-holders. When the middle-class republicans of the provinces beheld the profound Louis Blanc, the intelligent Schoelcher, 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 shelling 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 Versailles; Troyes declared that it was ‘heart and soul with the heroic citizens who fought for their republican convictions.’ M�con summoned the Government and the Assembly to put an end to this struggle by the recognition of republican institutions. The Dr�me, the Var, Vaucluse, the Ardeche, the Loire, Savoy, the H�rault, the Gers, and the Eastern Pyr�n�es, twenty departments, issued similar addresses. The workmen of Rouen declared their adhesion to the Commune; the workmen of Havre, rebuffed by the bourgeois 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 Nimes, the people, headed by a red flag, marched through the town to the cry of ‘Vive la Commune! Vive Paris! Down with Versailles!’ 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 Saincoin in the Cher, at the Charit�-sur-Loire, at Pouilly in the Nievre, 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 Ariege; at Foix they stopped the transport of the cannon; at Varilhes they tried to run the munition trains off the lines. At P�rigueux, the workmen of the railway station seized the machine-guns. On the 15th April five delegates from the municipal council of Lyons presented themselves to M. Thiers. He protested 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 H�tel-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.[168] This was his typical speech. All the deputations received the same answer, given with such an air of bonhommie and such complacent familiarity as quite to overwhelm the provincials. From the presidency they proceeded to the luminaries of the Extreme Left, Louis Blanc, Schoelcher, Adam, and other eminent democrats, who endorsed M.
From the presidency they proceeded to the luminaries of the Extreme Left, Louis Blanc, Schoelcher, 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 compromised by a criminal combat. When Paris once disarmed they would see what could be done. Opportunism is not of yesterday’s growth. It was born[169] 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.’ [170] And all the Radicals bridled up: ‘Should we not be at Paris if Paris were in the right?’ The majority 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 H�tel-de-Ville, often received by men unable to formulate their ideas, threatened by F�lix Pyat in the Vengeur, they came back convinced that nothing could 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 yourselves 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! What! M. Thiers may assert that his gendarmes do not assassinate the prisoners; you cannot be ignorant of 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 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, Schoelcher, Greppo, Adam, Langlois, Brisson, etc., the G�rontes and the Scapins, sanctimoniously 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 workmen of France were with Paris. The employees at the railway stations harangued the soldiers on their passage, adjuring them to raise the butt-ends of their guns; the official posters were torn down during the night; the large centres sent their addresses 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 [author of a law of 1791 prohibiting strikes] 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 ticket-of-leave men, which signalizes 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-Dome) the people occupied the H�tel-de-Ville, hoisted the red flag, and seized the telegraphs. There occurred disturbances at Souppe, Nemours, Ch�teau-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, put up posters bearing the appeal of the Commune to the rural districts, and forced a solicitor who had tried to tear down the poster to ask pardon on his knees.
At Coulommiers (Seine-et-Marne) a demonstration took place to the cries of ‘Vive la R�publique! Vive la Commune!'’ Lyons rose in insurrection. Since the 24th March the tricolor lorded it here, save at the Guilloti�re,[171] where the people maintained the red one. The Council on its return to the H�tel-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 National 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 communal 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 Assembly had not the rights of a constituent one. Two delegates from Paris summoned the mayor, H�non, 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 Guilloti�re followed, and in a public sitting of the 29th resolved to oppose the vote. On the 30th, the day of the elections, from six o'clock in the morning the rappel was beaten at the Guilloti�re; armed citizens carried off the ballot-boxes, and posted sentinels at the entrance of the hall A proclamation was posted up: ‘The city of Lyons can no longer’,look on while her sister the heroic city of Paris is being strangled. The Lyonnese revolutionaries have with one accord named a Provisional Commission. 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 interfere, were not listened to, and a Revolutionary Commission installed itself in the mairie. Bourras sent an order to the commanders of the Guilloti�re to unite their battalions. They drew up towards two o'clock in the Des Brosses court. A great number of guards disapproved the movement, yet no one was willing to be 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. H�non and his council, as they did the month before, would have liked to temporize; while Valentin and Crouzat dreamt of Espivent. At five o'clock the 38th of the line came out by the bridge of the Guilloti�re; 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 Guilloti�re was fortifying itself. A large barricade, extending from the storehouses 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 this time watched by a battalion of chasseurs. Valentin, Crouzat, and the procureur de la r�publique 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 building, 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 darkness, 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 Guilloti�re cut short their resistance. The Versaillese took advantage of this victory to disarm the battalions of the Guilloti�re; 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 Republic. The municipal council of Lyons issued an identical programme, inviting all the municipalities to send delegates to Lyons.
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 H�rault met at Montpellier. The Libert� of the H�rault, in a warm appeal reproduced by fifty newspapers, convoked the departmental press to a congress. A common action was about to take the place of the incoherent 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 presentiment of the danger, affected the attitude of a strong Government, and energetically forbade the congresses. ‘The Government would betray the Assembly, France, civilization,’ 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 on the instigation of the congress, said, ‘Never was there a more criminal attempt than theirs. Outside the Assembly there exists no right.’ The procureurs-g�n�raux 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 organizers 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 retired 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 [do-nothing] awaited the issue of the civil war. Thus the middle class of the provinces missed a rare chance of conquering their liberties, of again taking up their grand role of 1792. It became obvious how much its blood 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 j us t 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 ‘petty 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 for 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 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? Glossary \| Contents \| next chapter
Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871 Chapter I The Prussians enter Paris Neither the head of the executive power, nor the National Assembly, supporting and strengthening one another, did anything to provoke the Paris insurrection. (Dufaure’s speech against amnesty, session of 18th May, 1876.) The invasion brought back the Chambre introuvable of 1816 [ultra-right wing parliament under the Bourbon restoration in 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 ardent Paris found in the Bordeaux Assembly the Coblentz of the first emigration, but this time invested with the power to glut rancours 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 atheistic, revolutionary Paris, which had so often shaken off their yoke and baffled their schemes. At the first sitting their choler burst out. At the farther end 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 honoured him. His voice drowned in howls. He remained standing, raising his hand, but the insults redoubled. The chastisement, however, was at hand. ‘Rural majority! disgrace of France!’ cried from the gallery, a young vibrating voice, that of Gaston Cr�mieux, 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 railed at the commanding officer. The next day the people returned, forming lines in front of the theatre, and forced the reactionary 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 R�publique! 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 National 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 responsible for the failure of the defence, to explain the significance of the Parisian vote, to unfurl the flag of republican France against the clerico-monarchical coalition. They remained silent, contenting themselves with puerile party meetings, 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 Lefl�, 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, as 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 Bismark 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 endowed the great town with one collective 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 merchant of the third arrondissement, had been held in the Cirque. They had there drawn up a list, decided to meet again to deliberate 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 Vauxhall, Douan� Street. But who then thought of the elections? One single thought prevailed: the union of all Parisian forces against the triumphant rurals.
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, 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 commissar. Who were these men? The agitators, the revolutionaries of La Corderie, the Socialists? No; there was not a known name amongst them. All those elected were men of the middle classes, shopkeepers, employees, strangers to the coteries, till now for the most part strangers even to politics.[64] 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, Cl�ment-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 Vinoy. 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 tempestuous, 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 resource of the working men, and exact at once the arrears of rent 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 these burning questions. Varlin proposed: The National Guard only recognizes the leaders 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 to the entry of the Prussians. The proposition would be submitted by the delegates to their respective companies. And adjourning to the 3rd March, the meeting broke up its sitting and marched en 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 marched past, 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 R�publique! 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 dressed in black suspended a tricolour flag bearing the inscription, ‘The republican women to the martyrs.’ When the pedestal was covered, the crowns and flowers soon wound themselves entirely round the bust, encircling it from top to bottom with yellow and black flowers, red and tricolour oriflammes, symbols of mourning for the past and hope in the future. On the 26th the demonstrations 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 marched past, 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 announced the entry of the German army by the Champs-Elys�es for the next day.
The journals announced the entry of the German army by the Champs-Elys�es 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 capitulationists had delivered 12,000 more muskets to the Prussians than were stipulated for.[65] 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?[66] Spontaneously all Paris rose. The bourgeois battalions of Passy, in accord with the municipality, [67] set the example, drawing the pieces of the Ranelagh to the Parc Monceaux. [68] Other battalions came to fetch their cannon in the Park Wagram, wheeling them by the Rues St. Honor� and Rivoli to the Place des Vosges, under the protection of the Bastdle. 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 Ch�teau d'Eau, and the Rue de Rivoli. The prison of St. P�lagie was forced and Brunel set free. At two o'clock in the morning, forty thousand men remounted the Champs-Elys�es, and the Avenue de la Grande Arm�e, 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 Omano. To this feverish but chivalrous outburst Vinoy could only oppose an order of the day stigmatizing it. And this Government that insulted Paris, asked her to immolate herself for France! A proclamation 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-Elys�es 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 Montmartre, who had established a committee of their own in the Rue des Rosiers, would speak only of fighting, showed their mandats imp�ratifs, and recalled the resolution of the Vauxhall. 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 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 Pepini�re 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 Committee of the twenty arrondissements, the International, and the Federation, looked with reserve upon this Central Committee, 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 speakers 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 working men 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 demands 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 men[69] capable of thus pacifying the National Guard were applauded even by the bourgeoisie, who did not seem to wonder at their power. 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 pregnantly announced a town in its agony. Prostitutes who ventured into the quarters of the enemy were publicly whipped. A caf� in the Champs-Elys�es 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 proposition was being signed in the bureaux to fix the seat of the Assembly outside of Paris. The projected law on overdue 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 tom 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 coalition cost us, the price for which Bismarck permitted us the Chambre 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, Vinoy and D'Aurelles, two Bonapartists, at the head of Republican Paris — this was too much. All Paris had the presentiment of a coup-d'�itat. [70] 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 Vauxhall. 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 companies, battalions, legions and of the chefs-de-l�gion.[71] 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. Varlin 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 attempting to decapitalize Paris,’ — a motion unsound in its conception, faultily drawn up, which seemed to isolate Paris from the rest of France — an anti-revolutionist, anti-Parisian idea, cruelly exploited against the Commune. 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 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. Glossary \| Contents \| next chapter
Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871 Chapter XVIII The work of the Commune The insufficiency and the weakness of the Executive Commission became so shocking, that on the 20th the Council decided to replace it by the delegates of the nine commissions, 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 H�tel-de-Ville, to his commission and his mairie? For the Council had charged its members with 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 closely into their doings. Two delegations required only good-will — those of the victualling 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, [131] could not prevent a regular supply of food. All the foremen having remained at their posts, the municipal services 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 delegates save Frankel, a workman, belonged to the lower middle-class. The Commission of Finance centred in Jourde, who, with his inexhaustible garrulity, had eclipsed the too modest Varlin. 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 contributions, 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 Intendance received 1,813,000 francs, all the municipalities together 1,446,000, the Interior 103,000, Marine 29,000, justice 5,500, Commerce 50,000, Education 1,000 only, Exterior 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 employees, and were all carried on with a fourth part of their ordinary numerical strength. The director of the postal department, Theisz, a chaser, found the Service quite disorganized, the divisional offices closed, the stamps hidden away or carried off, the material, seals, the carts, etc. taken away, and the coffers empty. Notices posted up in the hall and courts ordered the employees to proceed to Versailles on pain of dismissal, but Theisz acted with promptitude and energy. When the subordinate employees who had not been forewarned came as usual to organize 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 entrusted to the head-clerks. The divisional offices were opened, and in forty-eight hours the collection and distribution of letters for Paris reorganized. As to the letters destined for the provinces, 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 superior council was instituted, which raised the wages of postmen, sorters, porters and office caretakers, shortened the time of service as supernumeraries, and decided that the ability of the employees should be tested for the future by means of tests and examinations.[132] The Mint, directed by Cam�linat, 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 employees had first parleyed, then made off. Cam�linat, supported by some friends, bravely took this place, had the works continued, and every one contributing his professional experience, improvements in the machinery as well as new methods were introduced. 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, reorganized this administration, which 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-M�nages at Issy had fled, thus reducing many of their pensioners to go out begging. Some employees forced our wounded to wait before the doors of the 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 Commune. This kind-hearted, intellectual man, who was assassinated by a Versaillese officer on the 24th May at the Panth�on, has left a very elaborate report on the suppression of bureaux of charity, which chain the poor to the Government 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 Contributions, entirely re-established by Faillet and Combault; the National Printing Press, which Debock reorganized and administered with remarkable dexterity, [133] and the other departments connected with that of Finance, ordinarily reserved to the great bourgeoisie, were managed with skill and economy — the maximum salary, 6,000 francs, was never reached — by workmen, subordinate employees; and this is not the least of their 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 munitions and victuals, others complaining of not being relieved. They were sent back to the Place Vend�me, maintained in the teeth of common sense, and directed by the rather equivocal colonel, Henri Prudhomme. On the floor below, the Central Committee, installed there by Cluseret, bustled, spent time and breath in endless sittings, found fault with the delegate at war, amused itself with creating new insignia, received 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 creating a central park of artillery, [134] 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 haphazardly. 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, starting jobs everywhere 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 working 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 harmony. 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 assemblage of talkers devoid of all authority. It had, to a great extent, been renewed since the establishment of the Commune, and the much-contested elections to it — for many aspired to the title of member — had given a majority of flighty, heedless men.[135] In its present state this Committee derived its whole importance from the jealousy of the Council. The Committee of Artillery, monopolized by brawlers, would have yielded at once to the slightest pressure. The commissariat 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-and-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 Committee, which left the Ministry to go and sulk in the Rue de l'Entrep�t; a week later he went after the same Committee, reinstating it at the War Office. Vain to shamelessness, [136] he showed sham letters from Todleben proposing plans of defence, 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 recognize that this pithless braggart was only a disappointed officer of the standing army, his airs of an innovator notwithstanding. Many hopes turned to his chief-of-staff, Rossel, a young Radical, twenty-eight years old, self-restrained, puritanical, who was sowing his revolutionary wild oats. A captain of engineers 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 Nevers, 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 became unpopular, and was arrested on the 3rd April. Two members of the Council, Malon and Charles G�rardin, had him 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, appeared to ask it for advice, and sought out the men he thought popular. His coldness, his technical vocabulary, Pis clearness 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 Services to shift for themselves; the only one in some measure organized, 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, reports on the military operations and the moral condition of Paris. This was about all the police the Commune had. The Commission of Public Safety, which should have thrown light upon the most secret recesses, emitted only a fitful glimmering. The Central Committee had appointed Raoul Rigault, a young man of twenty-four, much mixed up in the revolutionary 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, Ferr�, 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. No wonder the mice were soon seen playing round the prefecture of police. Papers suppressed in the morning were on sale in the evening in the streets; the conspirators wormed themselves into all the services without exciting the suspicion of Rigault or his companions. They never discovered 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 Abb� 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,[137] and Jecker, the famous inventor of the expedition to Mexico. [138] This culpable heedlessness, which the people have paid for with their blood, was the salvation of criminals. Some National Guards had brought to light the mysteries of the Picpus convent, discovered three unfortunate women shut up in grated cages, strange instruments,[139] 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 themselves with sending the nuns to St. Lazare.[140] Some inhabitants of the tenth arrondissement had 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 humanitarian idea revealed itself, so thoroughly sound was this popular 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 Chalier and of Chaumette. The prefecture, overrun by denunciations, declared 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 public interest.’ The hostages were allowed to obtain from without 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, Bonjean, and Lagarde, for Blanqui alone. 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.
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 remained at Versailles.[141] The Council did not punish the Archbishop for his want of faith, and a few days after set his sister at liberty. Never even in the days of despair was the 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 notified to the delegate of justice, and that no perquisition should be made without a regular warrant. National Guards, misinformed, having arrested certain individuals reputed suspicious, the Council declared in the Officiel that every arbitrary act would be followed by a dismissal and immediate prosecution. A battalion looking for arms at the gas company’s thought itself authorized to seize the cash-box; the Council at once had the sum returned. The commisar 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 commissar. To prevent all abuse of power, it ordered an inquiry into the state of the prisoners and the motives of their detention, at the same time authorizing 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 policeman of terrorizing Paris, and represented the members of the Council, who refused to endorse the condemnations of the court martial, as assassins. The Figarist 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 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 role 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 everywhere had guns. In the centre, east, west and south, powerful diversions might easily have been made, the stations occupied, 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 exploited by traitors, who pocketed its money and handed over its instructions to Versailles. Well-known Republicans, familiar 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 rousing France to insurrection, only a sum of 100,000 francs was allowed. The delegation put forth only a small number of manifestoes, one a true and eloquent r�sum� of the Parisian revolution, and two addresses to the peasants, one by Madame Andr� L�o, 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 forgot the rest of the world. Throughout all Europe the working-classes eagerly awaited news from Paris, were in their hearts fellow-combatants of the great town, now become their capital, multiplied their meetings, processions, and addresses. Their papers, poor for the most part, courageously 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 defence of the Commune, which allowed its defenders to succumb for want of bread. The delegation, without experience, without resources, could not fight against the astute cleverness of M.
The delegation, without experience, without resources, could 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 almost no real work. Now we come to the delegations of vital importance. Since, by the force of events, the Commune had’ become the champion 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 whole range 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 aristocracy 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, advocates and lawyers, draining national wealth to the amount of many hundreds of millions. It was, above all, for a revolution 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 commercial, misdemeanours as well as crimes; a final tribunal, without any appeal but for informalities, to state how solicitors, registrars, sheriffs, may be rendered useless, and the notaries replaced by simple registration officers. The delegate mostly limited himself to appointing notaries, sheriffs’ officers, and bailiffs, provided with a fixed salary — very useless 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 mysteries 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 random, 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, 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 delegate 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 with organizing 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, Elis�e Reclus and B. Gastineau, were charged with the reorganization of the National Library. They forbade the lending of books, thus putting an end to the scandalous 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 superintendence of the museums. Nothing would be known of the ideas of this revolution on education were it not for a few circulars of the municipalities. 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;
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, to teach them that they must instruct themselves in the interests of all, such are the principles of morality on which 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 exclusively employ the experimental and scientific method, that which always starts from facts, physical, moral, intellectual.’ But these vague formulae 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 revolutionary 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 revision of all direct and indirect taxes, the establishment of statistics of labour.’ It intended 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 stoppages 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 report terminated with these words: ‘It is well understood that the suppression of the pawnshops is to be succeeded by a social organization giving serious guarantees of support to the workmen thrown out of employment. The establishment of the Commune necessitates institutions protecting the workmen from the exploitation of capital.’ The decree that abolished stoppages from salaries and wages put an end to one of the most crying iniquities of the capitalist regime, 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 restitution to the masses, dispossessed for centuries, of the property of their own labour. A commission of inquiry named by the Trade Union 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 progress in machinery brings it nearer. The more the exploitation 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 for 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 for 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 contractor. ‘And the Commune is blind enough to lend itself to such manoeuvres,’ said the report, ‘and at this very moment, when the working man 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 be preference be given to the workmen’s corporations, and the contracting prices fixed by arbitration between the commissariat, the Trade Union Chamber of the corporation, and the delegate for Labour. To overlook the financial administration of all the delegations, 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 for the delegation for Labour, where they did work, the basic delegations were unequal to their task. All committed the same fault. For 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 robbery; 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 H�tel-de-Ville there lay deposited the still unexplored records of the first Revolution, 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 instalments.[142] The delegates 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 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. Glossary \| Contents \| next chapter
Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871 Chapter XXXIV The trials of the Communards Conciliation is the angel descending after the storm. (Dufaure to the National Assembly, 26th April, 1871.) The human lakes of Versailles and Satory were soon overflowing. From the first days of June the prisoners were filed off to the seaports and crowded into cattle-wagons, the awnings of which, hermetically closed, let in no breath of air. In a corner was a heap of biscuits; but themselves thrown upon this heap, the prisoners had soon reduced it to mere crumbs. For twenty-four hours, and sometimes 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 comrades.[239] One day at La Fert�-Bemard cries were uttered in a wagon. 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 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 unbearable. 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 beans, 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 marines were still the same bandits as in the days of May, and the crew was often obliged to tear the prisoners from them. The regime 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, Cl�menceau, 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 anyone 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. [240] The dungeons on shore were as terrible as the pontoons. At Qu�lern as many as forty prisoners were shut up in the same casemate. The lower ones were deadly. The cesspools emptied into them, and in the morning the faecal matter covered the floor some two inches deep. By the side of these was salubrious unoccupied accommodation, 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. Elis�e 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 Education 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 sentinels. 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.’[241] 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 nourishment the crumbs of brown biscuits and rancid fat.
The prisoners remained there for over six months, deprived of air, light, and tobacco, forbidden to speak, having for their only nourishment 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 individuals 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 anaemia, 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,[242] 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 Mercereau, 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 worthy persons. Prostitutes, carried off in the razzias, and carefully kept there in order to spy upon the other prisoners, publicly abandoned 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 prisoners were subjected to inspection. Dignity and outraged nature revenged themselves by terrible cries. ‘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 unclean hands for having defended liberty!’ Many went mad. All passed through their hours of madness. Those who were pregnant miscarried or brought forth still-born children. The priests were no more wanting in the prisons than at the shootings. The chaplain of Richemont said to the prisoners, ‘I know that I am here in a forest of Bondy’[243] but my duty,’ etc. 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 received the bastinado, and lingered for a long time at the infirmary. 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 Versaillese Moloch held more victims than he could digest. After the first days of June he disgorged 1,090 persons reclaimed by the reactionaries. But how to draw up indictments against 36,000 prisoners? It was all very well for Dufaure 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, etc. M. Thiers and Dufaure got up a grand performance. The trial was to be the model 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 penal colony and to death, which the hypocritical bourgeoisie pretends to have abolished in political cases.[244] The third court-martial was carefully selected. The commissar chosen was Gaveau, a base fanatic, who had shown signs of mental derangement and had struck the prisoners in the streets of Versailles; the president, Merlin, a colonel of engineers, one of the capitulationists of Bazaine’s army; the rest an assortment of trusty Bonapartists.
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 reclined in the red velvet arm-chairs; deputies occupied three hundred seats; the remainder belonged to the bourgeois of note, to ‘worthy’ families, to the aristocracy of prostitution, and to the howling press. The talking journalists, the brilliant dresses, the smiling faces, the toyings with fans, the gay bouquets, the opera-glasses pointed in all directions, reminded one of the most elegant first-night performances. The staff officers, in full uniform, smartly conducted the ladies to their seats, not forgetting to make the indispensable bow. All this scum boiled over when the prisoners appeared. There were seventeen: Ferr�, Assi, Jourde, Paschal Grousset, R�gere, Billioray, Courbet, Urbain, Victor Cl�ment, 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 Cl�ment-Thomas; the demonstration of the Place Vend�me was an unarmed demonstration; the head-surgeon of the army had been assassinated 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 orthopaedy; 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, Ferr� 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, Ferr�, interrogated the first, refused to answer, and laid his conclusions upon the table. ‘The conclusions of the incendiary Ferr� are of no moment!’ cried Gaveau, and the witnesses against him were called. Fourteen out of twentyfour belonged to the police; the others were priests or Government employees. An expert in handwriting, celebrated at the lawcourts for his blunders, affirmed that the order ‘Burn Finances’ was certainly in Ferr�’s hand. In vain the accused demanded that the signature of this order should be compared 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 proclaimed their political character! But it was not so; some even denied it. Almost all, confining 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 shoemaker Trinquet, proclaimed the honour of having fulfilled his mandate to the end. ‘I was,’ said he, ‘sent to the Commune 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 today 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 insurgent; 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 witnesses, 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 every day dragged them through the mire of its reports.[245] 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 newspapers. 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 bum some houses, and to shoot a few gendarmes.
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 bum 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 different accused, he said of Ferr�, ‘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 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 newspaper; another of having lived with a mistress. A coarse lansquenet, incapable of understanding that the more he lowered 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 Ferr�’s advocate permission to speak, but Ferr� declared he wished to defend himself, and commenced reading: Ferr�: ‘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? Ferr�: ‘Clung to power, and, though overwhelmed by public contempt, they prepared in the dark a coup-d'�tat; they persisted in refusing Paris the election of her municipal council’ — Gaveau: This is not true. Merlin: What you are saying, Ferr�, is false. Continue, but at the third time I shall stop you. Ferr�: ‘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. Ferr�: ‘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 Ferr� demanded that his client might be allowed to read the last sentences of his declaration, and Merlin gave way.) Ferr�: ‘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: Such manifestoes should be sent to the penal colony. Merlin: All this does not answer to the acts for which you are here. Ferr�: This means that I accept the fate that is in store for me. During this duel between Merlin and Ferr� the hall had remained silent. Ferocious hisses burst forth when Ferr� concluded. 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 Ferr� ‘assassin’. The hisses of the audience answered. The advocate indignantly 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 w ich the advocate spoke. The court takes notice of your conclusions.’ The day before, as a barrister remarked to him, ‘We are all answerable, not to the public opinion of today, but to history, which will judge us;’ Merlin had cynically answered, ‘History! At that epoch we shall no 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, 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, follow up the accusation step by step, oppose to the grotesque theories of conspiracy the eternal provocation of the privileged classes; describe Paris offering herself to the Government of National Defence, betrayed by it, then attacked by Versailles, abandoned; the proletarians reorganizing all the services of this great city, and in a state of war, surrounded by treason, governing for two months without police spies and without executions, remaining poor in sight of the milliards of the bank; if he were to confront the sixty-three hostages with the 20,000 assassinated, unveil the pontoons, the jails, swarming with 40,000 unfortunate beings; 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 appeal, 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 entrusted themselves 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 demonstrators of the Place Vend�me, begged the court not to confound his cause with that of the scoundrel’s near him. There were scandalous pleadings. This debasement disarmed 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 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. Ferr� and Lullier were condemned to death; Trinquet and Urbain to hard labour for life; Assi, Billioray, Champy, Regere, Grousset, Verdure, Ferrat to transportation in a fortress; Courbet to six months’ and Victor Cl�ment to three months’ imprisonment. Decamps and Parent were acquitted. The audience retired much disappointed at having got only two condemnations 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, Vermorel, Tridon, Moreau, and many others, by the attitude of Lullier, Decamps, Victor Cl�ment, or Billioray? And even if the hearing of Ferr� 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 revolutionary; 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 themselves. During the debates, in the lobbies, in the caf�s, 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 L�gion d'Honneur for him. Allured by this success, all the conspirators demanded their aims and their order. The partisans of Beaufond-Lasnier, those of Charpentier-Domalain, fell out, recounted their prowess, each and all swearing that he had betrayed better than his rivals. While society was being avenged at Versailles, the Court of Assizes of Paris avenged the honour of Jules Favre. Immediately after the Commune, the Minister for Foreign Affairs had had M. Laluy� arrested, who was guilty of having communicated to Milli�re 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 committed forgeries, but he pleaded having done so to secure his children a fortune. This touching avowal melted the patres familias of the jury, and Laluy� was condemned to imprisonment for one year. Some months later he died at Sainte P�Iagie. Jules Favre was terribly lucky. In less than six months the firing squad and the dungeon had delivered him of two redoubtable enemies.[246] While the third court-martial was quarrelling with the lawyers, the fourth hurried through its business without more ado. 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 L�gion d'Honneur. This was the trial of the petroleuses. The eight thousand enrolled furies who had been announced by the newspapers 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, R�tiffe, said, ‘I should have looked after a soldier of Versailles as wen as a National Guard.’ ‘Why,’ another was asked, ‘did you remain when all the battalion ran away?’ ‘There were wounded 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 caf�, ‘Death to all these trulls!’ Three barristers out of five had deserted the bar. ‘Where are they?’ said the president. ‘They have asked to be allowed to absent themselves to go to the country,’ answered the commissar. The court charged soldiers with the defence of these poor women. One of them, the Quatermaster Bordelais, made this fine speech: ‘I defer to the wisdom of the tribunal.’ His client, Su�tens, was condemned to death, as were also R�tiffe and Marchais, ‘for having attempted to change the form of the Government;’ the two others to transportation and confinement.
One of them, the Quatermaster Bordelais, made this fine speech: ‘I defer to the wisdom of the tribunal.’ His client, Su�tens, was condemned to death, as were also R�tiffe 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 k�pis. ‘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.’ ‘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 surprised 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! Glossary \| Contents \| next chapter
MIA > Archive > Bax E. Belfort Bax Lissagary’s History of the Commune [1] (4 December 1886) History of the Commune, Commonweal, 4th Dec 1886, p.283 (review). Transcribed by Ted Crawford Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive. This important work has at last appeared in English, and we do not hesitate to say that it ought to be in the hands of every Socialist. The history of the Commune, as presented in the generally unbiased narrative of Lissagaray, bears a profound moral with it. It is the story of the struggle of noble enthusiasm, genuine disinterestedness and devotion, and, in the ordinary sense great opportunities with foolish vanity, personal squabbles, inefficiency of organisation, and pedantry, resulting in the ascendancy of the latter, and consequent general collapse. The Versaillaise entered upon a victory already prepared for them. And it will be so again in the next great popular movement, should due subordination of function and organisation not be able to keep the whip hand of mere confusion, cliquishness and faddism. But the moral to be drawn is of more immediate application than to the next popular rising. To compare small matters with great, there are Socialist organisatians (save the mark!) in existence to day which are literally qualifying for disaster when the time comes. We see precisely the same elements at work in them which caused the fall of the Commune with the horrors of the “bloody week.” Again and again as he reads the story of the tragedy of ’71, the friend of the Cause feels inclined to wring his hands over the opportunities lost. Lost because everything was in confusion, nearly everybody was wanting to do everybody else’s work, and consequently doing no work at all, and in many cases doubtless with the best intentions. Even at the supreme hour, when the Versaillese were actually inside Paris, there was a chance of rolling back the invasion by means of a cross fire between Montmartre and the Pantheon, had these portions been properly fortified and garrisoned; but there was no one there. Again, when the Commune was in death throes, street after street was sacrificed because officers and others carrying important messages were stopped and forced to assist in the ordinary work of barricade making the last defences being thus literally immolated before a false and idiotic notion of equality. We wish that every true Socialist at heart whose head is led astray by disintegrative tendencies would read, mark, learn and inwardly digest the important lessons of this volume. The cause was wrecked in 1871, in great part at least, not because of spies or traitors, for there were marvellously few of those who took any prominent part in the movement who can fairly be accused of sinister motives, or of attempts to make personal gain out of it but because of well-meaning conceited, faddy, cantankerous persons, who wasted time in long winded speeches about personal matters, etc., and who would neither do any work themselves nor let any one else do it. Other follies there were of course, although they were doubtless partly caused by the above, such as making decrees and not getting them respected. The case of the hostages was one of the most fatal of these. Had the archbishop been shot on the first corroboration of the fact that Federal prisoners were being butchered at Versailles, the butcheries might have been checked. As it was, he was reserved only to be shot after there was no good to be got by shooting him at all, save to give the civilised world an opportunity of displaying its capacities in shamming horror. The translation of the book, we should say, is excellent. E.B. Bax Note 1. This book was, of course, translated by Eleanor Marx. Top of the page Last updated on 26.3.2004
Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871 Chapter XXII Conspiracies against the Commune The Commune had given rise to the various trades of the plotmonger, the betrayer of gates, the conspiracy-broker. Vulgar sharpers, Jonathan Wilds [character in a novel by Henry Fielding] 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 carelessness 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 witness 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 surrender 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 organisation 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 H�tel-de-Ville, the Place Vend�me, and the commissariat, with a few thousand volunteers, whom he professed to have at hand. He entered into partnership with Charpentier. 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 artillery men 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 Mere 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 disorganize 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 Schoelcher’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 condemned as a swindler, Barral de Montaut, who boldly presented himself at the War Office, and, thanks to his aplomb, got himself named chief of the seventh legion; the Abb� Cellini, chaplain of one knows not what fleet, patronized 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 H�tel-deVille. They wanted to overthrow the Commune, but betray it, oh! no, by no means! One Briere St.-Lagier framed comprehensive reports on all these knights, and M. Thiers’ secretary, Troncin-Dumersan, condemned three years after as swindler, travelled backwards 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 back of the other. Thence continual collisions. The ragamuffins mutually denounced each other. Briere de St.-Lagier wrote: ‘I beg M. le Ministre de I'Int�rieur to have M. Le Mere 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 Briere de St.-Lagier. They often meet at Peter’s, and instead of occupying themselves with the great cause of the deliverance, imitate Pantaguruel. [pleasure-loving character in a book by Rabelais] They pass for Orleanists.’[158] The most venturesome of these enterprisers, Beaufond, managed to enter into relations with the general staff of Colonel Henri Prodhomme, with the Ecole Militaire, commanded by Vonot, 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, Captain 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.’ Now they had recourse to direct subornation; now acting the part of fervent Communards, they knew how to draw out information;
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, service chiefs, fond of assuming consequential airs, discussed the most delicate matters in the caf�s of the boulevards, full of spies.[159] Cournet, who had succeeded Rigault at the prefecture of police, despite the gravity of his deportment, did not better the service of general security. Lullier, twice arrested, each time escaping, openly spoke in the caf�s of sweeping away the Commune. Troncin-Dumersan, known for twenty years as the police agent of the Ministry of the Interior, freely walked along the boulevards, passing his retainers in full view. The contractors charged with the fortification of Montmartre every day found new pretexts to defer the opening of the works; the Br�a Church remained intact; the undertaker of the demolition of the expiatory monument managed to put it off till the entry of the troops. Chance 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 Dombrowski. 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 communication with an aide-de-camp of Dombrowski’s named Hutzinger, afterwards employed by the Versaillese police as spy amongst the exiles in London. Vaysset told him that Versailles would give Dombrowski a million if the general surrendered 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 Dombrowski to follow up the negotiation.[160] Hutzinger accompanied Vaysset to Versailles, saw Saisset, who offered to surrender himself as hostage in guarantee of the execution of the promises made to Dombrowski. The admiral was even, on a certain night, to repair secretly to the Place Vend�me, and the Committee of Public Safety, forewarned, was preparing to arrest him, when Barth�lemy St. Hilaire dissuaded Saisset from this new blunder. 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 Dauphine 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 triumphal entry.[161] During the night of the 3rd May the whole active army and part of the reserve were set on foot, and General Thiers went to sleep at Sevres. 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 W�ry, 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 returned to their cantonments. Two days after, Laporte was arrested and set free again, much too soon. Beaufond, taking up the bailiffs plan, guaranteed the surrender of the gates of Auteuil and Dauphine for the night of the 12th to the 13th May. M. Thiers, again caught, forwarded all the scaling gear, and several detachments were directed towards the Point du Jour, while the army held itself in readiness to follow. But at the last moment the profound combinations of the conspirators were foiled,[162] and, as on the 3rd, the army had to turn tail. This attempt was known to 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 H�tel-de-Ville. Inquiries made at the woman Legros’ put them on the traces of Beaufond and his accomplices. Beaufond and Laroque managed to hide; Troncin-Dumersan packed off to Versailles. Charpentier thus remained master of the field. Corbin urged him to organize his men by tens and hundreds, and traced him out a whole plan by which to get possession of the H�tel-de-Ville immediately after the entry of the troops. Charpentier, always imperturbable, diverted him day by day by news of fresh conquests, spoke of 20,000 recruits, asked for dynamite to blow up the houses,[163] and in true Pantagruelic style gobbled up the considerable sums made over to him by Durouchoux. After all, the whole gang of conspirators did not succeed in surrendering one single gate, but they lent considerable aid in disorganizing the services.
After all, the whole gang of conspirators did not succeed in surrendering one single gate, but they lent considerable aid in disorganizing the services. Still great care should be taken in availing oneself of their reports, often inflated with imaginary successes to justify the disbursement of the hundreds of thousands of francs that they pocketed. Glossary \| Contents \| next chapter
Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871 Chapter XXIX On the barricades Our valiant soldiers conduct themselves in such a manner as to inspire foreign countries with the highest esteem and admiration. (Thiers’ speech to the National Assembly, 24th May, 1871.) The defenders of the barricades, already without reinforcements 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 nourishment; their comrades, not seeing them return, grew desperate, while the leaders of the barricades strained themselves to keep them back. At nine o'clock Brunel received the order to evacuate the Rue Royale. 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 Neuve des Capucines, had invaded the Place Vend�me, entirely deserted, and by the H�tel-du-Rhin turned the barricade of the Rue Castiglione. Brunel’s Federals, abandoning the Rue de Rivoli, forced the rails of the garden, went up the quays, and regained the H�tel-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 H�tel-de-Ville had lost its animation. The Federals slept in the square; in the offices 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 detachment of Federals. He came to tell the Committee of Public Safety that the H�tel-Dieu harboured eight hundred sick, who might suffer from the proximity of the struggle, and the Committee commanded the evacuation of the cathedral in order to save these unfortunate people. And now the sun rose, eclipsing the glare of the conflagrations; 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 prolongation 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 Boulevard 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. Eustache, 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 right they reached the Val de Grace, and advanced against the Panth�on. At eight o'clock about fifteen members of the Council assembled at the H�tel-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 H�tel-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, because 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 Ch�teau d'Eau and the Bastille at once. As usual, the time was spent in small-talk. The governor of the H�tel-de-Ville went backwards and forwards impatient. Suddenly the flames burst forth from the summit of the belfry; an hour after the H�tel-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 St. Jacques barricade, 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 H�tel-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.
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 and a few details of the battle, but not beyond the Tuesday morning. This flight from the H�tel-de-Ville, cutting the defence in two, increased the difficulty of the communications. The staff officers who had not disappeared reached the new headquarters with great trouble; they were stopped at every barricade and constrained to carry paving-stones. On producing their despatches pleading urgency, they were answered, ‘Today 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 recognized 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 Voltaire. 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 not hear of it, and it was necessary to yield in order to prevent a terrible affray. Beaufort was conducted to the open space situated behind the mairie and shot. Close by this outburst of fury at the P�re la Chaise, Dombrowski was receiving the last honours. His corpse had been transported thither in the night, and during the passage to the Bastille a touching scene had taken place. The Federals of these barricades had stopped the cortege 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. Vermorel, the general’s brother, his aides-de-camp, and about 200 guards were standing up bareheaded. ‘There is he,’ cried Vermorel, ‘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 stigmatizing 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 Versaillese agent who had flattered himself he could corrupt Dombrowski was being shot. Towards mid-day the Versaillese, vigorously pushing their attack on the left bank had stormed the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, the Institute, the Mint, which its director, Cam�linat, left only at the last minute. On the point of being shut up in the Ile Notre Dame, Ferr� 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, Vaysset, 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.’ [187] The Versaillese, 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, which the inhabitants of the quarter helped to outflank. Eighteen Federals were shot. More to the right the troops penetrated into the Place St. Sulpice, where they occupied the mairie of the sixth arrondissement; thence they entered the Rue St. Sulpice on one side, and on the other penetrated by the Rue de Vaugirard into the garden of the Luxembourg. After two days of struggle the brave Federals of the Rue Vavin fell back, and on their retreat blew up the powder-magazine of the Luxembourg garden. The commotion for a moment suspended the combat. The Palace of 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 Panth�on; the first at the entrance of the Rue Soufflot — it had just been taken; the second in the centre;
the second in the centre; the third extending from the mairie of the fifth arrondissement to the Ecole de Droit. Varlin 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 bulk of the Versaillese reached the Boulevard St. Michel by the Rues Racine and De l'Ecole de M�decine, which women had defended. The St. Michel Bridge ceased firing for want of ammunition, 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 of Sainte Genevieve, well-nigh abandoned, was invaded by all its slopes and its few defenders dispersed. Thus the Panth�on, 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 of and by the orders of a colonel. Rigault was killed in this neighbourhood. The soldiers, seeing 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 immediately thrown against a wall and shot. May this courageous end be counted to him! When the fall of the Panth�on, so valiantly defended in June, 1848, became known in the mairie of the eleventh arrondissement, 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 H�tel-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 Delescluze so profoundly moved all hearts. The distant firing, the cannon of the P�re la Chaise, 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 suspending 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? Very 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 Committee 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 for War then visited the defences. Solid preparations were being made at the Bastille. In the Rue St. Antoine, at the entrance of the square, a barricade provided with three pieces of artillery was being finished; another at the entrance of the faubourg covered the Rues de Charenton and de la Rouquette; but here, as everywhere else, the flanks were not guarded. Cartridges and shells were piled up along the houses, exposed to all projectiles.
Cartridges and 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 Richard-Lenoir a barricade was being thrown up with casks, paving stones, and large bales of paper. This work, inaccessible from the front, was also to be turned. Before it, at the entrance of the Boulevards Voltaire, Place du Ch�teau d'Eau, a wall of paving-stones 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 setting foot on the Place du Ch�teau d'Eau. On the right, the bottom of the Rues Oberkampf, d'Angouleme and du Faubourg du Temple, the Rue Fontaine-au-Roi, and the Avenue des Amandiers were already on the defensive. Higher up, in the tenth arrondissement, Brunel, arrived that same morning from the Rue Royale, was again to the fore, like Lisbonne, like Varlin, eager for new perils. A large barricade cut off the intersection of the Boulevards Magenta and Strasbourg; the Rue du Ch�teau 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 Villette, 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 12cm., two pieces of 7 near the Temple de la Sybille, and two pieces of 7 on the lower hill, while five cannon flanked the Rue Puebla and protected the Rotonde. At the Carri�res d'Am�rique there were two batteries of three pieces; the pieces of the P�re la Chaise fired incessantly at the invaded quarters, seconded by cannon of large calibre at bastion 24. The ninth arrondissement filled with the sound of firing. We lost much ground in the Faubourg Poissinni�re. 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 Sebastopol, and we commanded the Rue Turbigo by the Prince Eug�ne Barracks. The second arrondissement, 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 Gevres 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 the offensive. During the night the Versaillese had examined 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 retreated, and the soldiers, discouraged, no longer obeyed their officers. Thus La Villette and the Butte aux Cailles, the two extremities 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, [188] and the correspondents 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 themselves 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 who was 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 idiotic side of the legend is that the petroleuses were supposed to operate in the quarters occupied by the army. The fugitives from the invaded quarters brought the news of these massacres to the mairie of the eleventh arrondissement. There, within smaller compass and more menacing, reigned the same confusion as at the H�tel-de-Ville. The narrow courts were full of wagons, cartridges, and powder; every step of the principal staircase was occupied by women sewing sacks for the barricades. In the Salle des Mariages, whither Ferr� 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 H�tel-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 Government, 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 Archbishop Darboy, the President Bonjean, the banker Jecker, the Jesuits Allard, Clerc, and Ducoudray; at the last moment Jecker was replaced by the Cur� Deguerry. They were taken to the exercise-ground. Darboy stammered 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.’ ‘0h, 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 harangued 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. [189] 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 H�tel-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 thirteenth arrondissement, the left by the streets of the Fauborg St. Martin and the Rue de Flandre, the arc by the fortifications. 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-Royale, the H�tel-de-Ville, the Theatre-Lyrique, the left bank from the L�gion 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 Bic�tre, of the P�re la Chaise, and the Buttes Chaumont, which fired on the invaded quarters. The Versaillese batteries answered from the Panth�on, the Trocad�ro, 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 leaders 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 Versaillese 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. [190] And that same bourgeois who spoke of ‘burning everything[191] before the Prussians, calls this people scoundrels because they preferred 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.
[190] And that same bourgeois who spoke of ‘burning everything[191] before the Prussians, calls this people scoundrels because they preferred 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 himself in bootless reflections, and, mastering his emotion, he 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. Glossary \| Contents \| next chapter
Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871 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 introduction. Who made the Revolution of the 18th March? What part was taken by the Central Committee? What was the Commune? 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 therewith sensational stories, is as criminal as the geographer who would draw up false charts for navigators. London, November 1877 Glossary \| Contents \| The Civil War in France \| Paris Commune Archive

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