History of the World/History of the World (Bureau Development, Inc.)(1992).BIN/dp/0407/04076.txt

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Title:       Rising Of The Commune
Author:      Hanotaux, Gabriel

Rising Of The Commune

1871

     Immediately following the Franco-Prussian War occurred a crisis in France
that precipitated a new reign of terror.  This was the uprising of the Commune
in Paris against the authority of the Assembly - the legislative body of the
Third Republic.  After the conclusion of a preliminary peace agreement between
Prussia and France (March 2, 1871), Paris was abandoned by nearly all the
ruling and influential men.  Those who remained in the city - Jules Favre,
Ernest Picard, and Jules Ferry - were unpopular and left the direction of
affairs to Generals Vinoy and Paladines.  Paris was filled with unrest and
apprehension.  It was rumored that the Republic was threatened with a coup
d'etat, and Paris with the entrance of the Germans.  The walls of the city
were placarded with calls to resistance.  The actual entry of German troops
(March 1st), in accordance with the preliminaries of peace, was declared by
Thiers to be one of the principal causes of the insurrection.

     The revolutionaries embraced several parties - Blanquists, followers of
Louis Blanqui, traditional insurrectionists; the later Jacobins, violent
partisans of a strong republican government; socialists of various schools;
and the International or workingmen's party.  These were the chief elements
that formed the politico-social body known as the Commune of Paris, which had
its precursor in the revolutionary committee of 1789-1794, also called the
Commune.  The city was full of idle persons, among whom were many of the more
than two hundred fifty thousand soldiers just released from active service; a
great influx came from the provinces; fragments of the army of Garibaldi in
the late war gathered; and below all others was "a nameless collection" of the
criminal population.  Arms were plentifully supplied for the rising, and the
streets were barricaded.  How far the National Guard could be trusted by the
Assembly no man could tell.  It mainly went over to the Commune.

     Such was the condition of Paris after the withdrawal of the German,
troops from the city (March 3d).  At this point begins the narrative of
Hanotaux, the noted French statesman and historian, who has made valuable
additions to our knowledge of these exciting events.

     After the foreign troops left Paris, fifteen days passed away in
alternations of fear and hope.  The question of the government was raised at
Bordeaux, the question of disarmament at Paris.  A conclusion was necessary.
Both sides made their preparations.

     On March 8th Duval, the future general of the Commune, established an
insurrectional section at the Barrier d'Italie, and organized for resistance.
The Central Committee approached the International.  Meanwhile M. Jules Ferry,
Mayor of Paris, was still writing to the Government on March 5th: "The city is
calm; the danger is over.  At the bottom of the situation here, great
weariness, need of resuming the normal life: but no lasting order in Paris
without government or assembly.  The Assembly returning to Paris can
alone-reestablish order, consequently work which Paris so much needs; without
that, nothing possible.  Come back quickly."

     Then came the news relative to the law of debts and the question of
rents, to the transferrence of the Assembly to Versailles; it was affirmed
that a coup d'etat was in preparation.  M. Thiers, head of the Provisional
Government, installed himself, March 15th, at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The moment had come to act.  It was necessary to proceed to disarmament.
Paris could not be left thus, beside herself, rifle in hand.

     The knot was at Belleville and Montmartre.  A council of ministers was
called on the 17th at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.  The subject of
deliberation was the opportuneness of a stroke on the part of authority which
was defined in this formula: "Recover the guns." ^1 M. Thiers says: "The
general opinion was in favor of recovering the guns." He says again: "An
opinion in favor of immediate action was universally pronounced." He says
again: "Many persons, concerning themselves with the financial question, said
that we must after all think of paying the Prussians.  The business men went
about everywhere repeating: 'You will never do anything in the way of
financial operations unless you finish with this pack of rascals, and take the
guns away from them.  That must be done with, and then you can treat of
business.'" And he concludes: "The idea that it was necessary to remove the
guns was dominant, and it was difficult to resist it.  In the situation of
men's minds, with the noises and rumors that circulated in Paris, inaction was
a demonstration of feebleness and impotence."

[Footnote 1: Many cannon had been removed to these places by the National
Guard and the Commune.  - Ed.]

     The stroke was decided on; it consisted in bringing into the interior of
Paris the guns that were guarded on the heights of Montmartre.  There were at
most twenty thousand troops of the Assembly to execute the plan.

     It was arranged that action should begin at two o'clock in the morning.
M. Thiers was at the Louvre, anxious, with General Vinoy, who answered for
success.  The operation seemed at first to be succeeding.  General Lecomte
occupied the plateau.  The whole hill was surrounded.  But a large number of
teams would have been necessary to operate such a colossal removal before
daybreak.  The teams were not there; the army had no longer any horses.
Several days were necessary to take away all the guns.  Then it was seen that
the operation was badly planned.  However, seventy guns were carried off, and
the remainder were guarded by troops, waiting with grounded arms.

     Little by little the news that the guns were being taken away spread in
Montmartre.  The alarm-bell was rung.  Some shots were fired and roused the
quarter.  The eminence and surrounding regions were astir.  There was a shout
of "Coup d'etat!" The National Guards assembled.  The crowd of women and
children pushed around the soldiers who were guarding the guns.  "Hurrah for
the Line!" they cry on all sides.  "You are our brothers; we do not wish to
fight you." They penetrate into the ranks of the soldiers, offer them drink,
disarm them.  They hold up the stocks of their rifles, disbanding themselves.
General Lecomte was surrounded and taken prisoner, along with his staff.

     M. Thiers returned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.  At the Hotel de
Ville, where the Mayor of Paris, M. Jules Ferry, remained permanently on duty,
they waited for news.  Af first it was good; then it was worse; at half-past
ten the disaster was defined; the head police-office telegraphed: "Very bad
news from Montmartre.  Troops refused to act.  The heights, the guns, and the
prisoners retaken by the insurgents, who do not appear to be coming down.  The
Central Committee should be at the park in the Rue Basfroi!"

     At the Ministry of Foreign Affairs the Government sat in permanence in
the great gallery that looks upon the garden and over the quay.  Men bringing
news come in and go out.  The generals deliberate in a corner.

     The old Marquis de Vogue was among the chance comers.  He pulled out of
his pocket his deputy's scarf of 1848, and he went from one to the other,
bent, his voice broken, saying: "I know how it is done.  You put that round
your body, and you get yourself killed on a barricade."

     General Leflo, Minister of War, who had gone as far as the Place de la
Bastille to get information, returned between twelve and one o'clock.

     It was decided to order the general call to arms to be beaten, to
assemble the battalions of the National Guard, which, it was thought, could be
relied on.  Only six hundred men presented themselves.

     M. Thiers, in a state of great emotion, wished to learn from General
Vinoy what was the exact military situation.

     Already by midday or one o'clock he was beginning to declare that it
would be necessary to resolve to abandon Paris.  In his impatience he went as
far as the Pont de la Concorde to meet the troops, who were retreating in good
order with General Faron at their head.  Toward three o'clock he returned to
the Quai d'Orsay.

     The news in Paris was worse and worse.  The barracks were taken or
evacuated.  However, the Hotel de Ville, relying on the troops of the Lobau
barracks and occupied by Jules Ferry, who refused to abandon it at any price,
still held out.

     M. Thiers had hardly returned to the palace of the Quai d'Orsay when
drums and clarions were heard, and from the windows three battalions were seen
passing; they were the National Guards of the Gros-Caillou, who were going to
join the movement.  In the palace there was only half a battalion of light
infantry.  In spite of the wavering of Jules Favre, Jules Simon, and Ernest
Picard, "whom it was difficult to convince of the necessity for this retreat,"
the Government knew the chief of the executive power could not remain thus
exposed.  For the rest M. Thiers cut the question short.  He decided that he
should leave Paris, and betake himself to Versailles.  It was half-past three
or four o'clock.  "Foreseeing that," says General Vinoy, "I had doubled my
escort.  I had had my carriage prepared, and all was ready.  I said to M.
Thiers: 'Put on your overcoat; the gate of the Bois de Boulogne is guarded;
your escape through it is assured.' I had sent a squadron there. But before
starting he gave me the order to evacuate Paris." M. Thiers, in fact, calling
up, as he has himself said, recollections of February 24, 1848, and of Marshal
Windischgraetz, who after leaving Vienna reentered victoriously some time
afterward, was strengthened in his opinion by the state of disorganization and
demoralization in which he felt the army to be.

     He was insistent with General Vinoy to learn what troops there were that
could be counted on.  The General told him there was not one sure except the
Daudel brigade.  M. Thiers repeated again and again: "Send me the Daudel
brigade to Versailles." There was no written order.

     After the departure of M. Thiers, General Leflo, Minister of War,
insisted on the necessity of complete evacuation.  He affirmed that it would
be impossible to hold out anywhere, even at the Trocadero or at Passy.  He
signed the order and accepted all the responsibility.

     Now, the Daudel brigade occupied the forts, including Mont Valerien.
Chance willed it that the two battalions of light infantry which it was
proposed to withdraw from Paris, were on duty at this fort; this for a whole
day was the entire garrison.

     In the night between the Sunday and Monday General Vinoy, toward one in
the morning, wrote a letter to M. Thiers, which Mme. Thiers read to him
without his getting up, and in which he begged for authority to have Mont
Valerien reoccupied.  M. Thiers ended by consenting.  Otherwise this fort,
like those of Issy, Vanves, and Vincennes, would have been in the hands of the
Commune.  Mont Valerien was reoccupied on March 20th in the morning; the
Federates presented themselves there hours afterward and in vain summoned the
commander to surrender.

     Meanwhile in Paris the Central Committee, taken at first by surprise,
ordered the beat to arms.  Montmartre, Belleville, the Buttes Chaumont, were
in full insurrection.  The Pantheon, Vaugirard, the Gobelins, rose to the
voice of Duval.  The battalions of the middle-class quarters did not respond
to the call.  At Montmartre a tragic scene settled the implacable character of
the outbreak. General Lecomte, who had been arrested in the morning, was kept
under surveillance in the house No. 6 of the Rue des Roziers.  Clement Thomas,
a former General of the National Guard, who had very imprudently mixed with
the crowd in civil attire, was arrested and shut up with him. After some hours
of frightful anguish Clement Thomas was seized and shot at close quarters just
as he was going down the staircase; General Lecomte was shot in his turn in
the garden, and, it is said, by his own soldiers.

     In the evening M. Jules Favre hurled at a deputation, consisting of MM.
Sicard, Vautrain, Vacherot, Bonvalet, Meline, Tolain, Milliere, and others,
who tried to intervene in the name of the mayors, the formidable words, "There
is no discussion, no treating with murderers."

     The Central Committee, up to that time wavering, gave orders that Paris
should be invaded and occupied.  At the Hotel de Ville M. Jules Ferry still
held out.  He received repeated orders to evacuate.  At 9.55 p.m. he left the
Hotel de Ville, the last man to do so, carrying away his papers, and taking
the servants with him.  He crossed the centre of Paris, already in the hands
of the insurgents, escorted by the troops of General Derroja, who forced their
way with fixed bayonets.

     So then a new siege of Paris was to begin; the insurrection now became
general, occupying the city and the forts on the south and west; M. Thiers and
the National Assembly at Versailles; both parties under the eye of the German
army, which, in conformity with the terms of the preliminaries, kept all the
forts on the north and east.

     Events hurried on with rigorous logic.  Revolutionary measures
multiplied.  At the outset the Commune made some show of government; it
maintained order in Paris up to a certain point and with some method in its
deliberations.  Something resembling that "gain of reason" attributed to it by
Bismarck can be discovered in it.  But it soon fell into clumsy imitation of
the first revolution.  The decree of hostages copied the list of suspects; the
guillotine was suppressed, and then solemnly burned in front of the statue of
Voltaire, but it was replaced by the rifle.

     In default of practical reforms, the crowd was allowed free feeding for
its antireligious violence; suppression of the public worship fund, separation
of the Church from the State, arrest of the Archbishop of Paris, Monseigneur
Darboy, of several members of the clergy, and Protestant congregations.
Liberty of the press was effectively suppressed.  Chaudey, deputy to the mayor
of the First Ward, and a member of the International, was arrested at the
office of the Siecle, of which he was editor.

     Divisions, hatred, rose to fever-point among all these desperate men.
Disorder, indiscipline, were everywhere.  There was no longer any common
understanding even for action, for self-defence.  Rigault, a fellow with an
insolent carriage, was like a madman unchained at the Prefecture of Police. In
the end he was removed from his post; but, imitating Fouquier-Tinville, he got
himself appointed Attorney-General to the Commune.  Violence was only just
arrested in front of the Bank of France, thanks to the energy of M. de Ploeuc,
the relative moderation of the aged Beslay, and the coolness of Jourde,
delegate of finance.  For the rest, the Bank of France was in some sort paying
its ransom by advancing (with the authority of the Government at Versailles)
the money necessary for the pay of "thirty sous."

     Paris at length had opened her eyes.  On April 18th, at the supplementary
elections, in which eleven quarters were to take part, out of 280,000 electors
on the register, only 53,000 took part in the votings; 205,000 abstained -
that is to say, 80 per cent. of the registered electors. Half the vacant seats
were unfilled.  Clement and Courbet belong to this day. Henceforth there was
nothing but the most manifest tyranny in the great city.

     On May 14th Fort Vanves was occupied.  The circle drew closer.
Delescluze, though dying, was everywhere; he tried to rouse the battalions,
whose effectives were diminishing.  On May 16th, at nightfall, the Vendome
column was flung from its pedestal and shattered.  The minority of twenty-two
members separated from the majority.  Soon it joined them again; on May 17th,
at the Hotel de Ville, sixty-six members present still remained at the
roll-call.

     The forts being taken, the walls were on the point of yielding.  It was
necessary to think of the classic strife of insurrection, barricade-fighting.
But the military men of the Commune - Cluseret, Rossel - infatuated with their
ideas of the great war, had made no preparations.  Men felt themselves taken
by surprise.  What was to be done?  Then the idea of destruction, of
annihilation of the town in the last hours of the catastrophe, began to haunt
those fated brains.  Delescluze and his colleagues of the Nineteenth Ward
placarded: "After our barricades, our houses; after our houses, our ruins."
Valles wrote, "If M. Thiers is a chemist, he will understand us."

     An intense horror spread over the town, no longer knowing the nature of
the awakening at hand.  The population, which had let things take their
course, was now reduced to shutting itself up in the houses.  The National
Guards ran hither and thither in the empty streets, with the stocks of their
rifles forcing suspected houses or shops to open.  Some timid efforts were
distinguishable on the part of the National Guards to prepare resistance from
the inside.  M. Thiers received numerous suggestions, proposals of all kinds.
One day a promise was made to deliver one of the gates of Paris to him.  He
spent the night with General Douay in the Bois de Boulogne, waiting for the
signal that never came.  Meanwhile he was informed that he would find a
counter-movement all ready as soon as the troops crossed the lines of defence.
Tricolor sleeve-badges were prepared.  The great mass of the population waited
in a state of terrible anxiety for the entrance of the regular troops.

     The Commune felt that it was surrounded by enemies.  It decided to draw
up lists of suspects.  Amouroux recalled that a law of hostages was in
existence, and cried out, "Let us strike the priests!" Rigault, on the 19th,
inaugurated the sittings of a jury on accusation.  On all sides shooting began
at the moment when the terrible contact was on the point of taking place.

     The works of approach now permitted the bombardment of the gates of La
Muette, Auteuil, Saint-Cloud, Point-du-Jour.  The Federate troops, worn out by
their ceaseless efforts, refused to serve.  The breach was made; the wall,
untenable under the projectiles, was abandoned.  The assault was fixed for the
23d.

     On the 21st, toward three o'clock in the afternoon, a man appeared upon
the ramparts near the Saint-Cloud gate and waved a white handkerchief.  In
spite of the projectiles, he insisted, he shouted.  Captain Garnier, of the
Engineers, on service in the trenches, drew near.  The man declared that the
gate and the wall were without defenders, and the troops could penetrate into
the town without striking a blow.  He gave his name.  It was Ducatel, a
foreman in the municipal service.

     He was believed and followed; the gate was crossed: the troops of
Versailles entered Paris.  M. Thiers looked on at this unexpected movement
from the top of the battery of Montretout.  At one moment the soldiers were
seen coming out again, and a cry rose around him, "We are repulsed." But
confidence was soon restored.  By the aid of glasses "two long black serpents
were distinguished gliding toward the gate of the Point-du-Jour, through which
they entered." The officers in command, on being informed, stopped the fire
directed upon the ramparts.  The troops slipped inside from one place and
another along the wall, without at first penetrating into the town.

     From this moment there was war in the streets, but a war without method,
without guidance, without a chief, a war without discipline, the struggle of
despair.  Each quarter, each group, fought for itself.  The positions that had
been prepared for the internal defence were guarded or abandoned, as chance
willed.

     In the night between the Sunday and the Monday seventy thousand men under
arms from Versailles had slipped in some way along the fortifications forming
a vast semicircle from La Muette to the Champ-de-Mars, by the Auteuil viaduct.
General Douay had advanced by Auteuil and Passy to the Trocadero. There was
some fear that the ground was mined.  But Ducatel, walking some paces in
advance of the General, declared that there was nothing to fear.

     On Monday, May 22d, in the morning, a proclamation of Delescluze was
posted up announcing the entrance of the men of Versailles.  It was a call to
arms: "Room for the people, for the bare-armed fighting men!  The hour of the
revolutionary war has struck!"

     During this day the Versailles troops occupied Paris as far as the Palais
de I'Industrie, the left bank along the quay, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
the Champ de Mars, the Ecole Militaire, and soon Vaugirard, the Invalides, the
Palais Bourbon, the Montparnasse station; on the right bank the whole region
included between the Saint-Lazare station and the Place Clichy.  One would say
that the end was now possible in a single blow.  M. Thiers telegraphed to the
prefects on May 21st, 6.30 p.m.: "The Saint-Cloud gate has just fallen under
the fire of our guns.  General Douay has hastened to the spot, and is at this
moment entering Paris with his troops.  The corps of Generals Ladmirault and
Clinchant are moving forward to follow him."

     If the Versailles troops had hurried the movement, perhaps they would
have profited by the confusion of the Federates and rapidly taken the whole
town.  But it was desirable to avoid a check at any cost; the explosion of
mines was feared; the advance was surrounded with precautions; it was made
with prudence and often with sapping, suspected houses being searched.

     In the night between Monday and Tuesday the insurgents took fresh
courage.  A burning sun illumined the city.  The alarm-bell sounded: the call
to arms was beaten.  The Federates descended from the suburbs.  All came and,
conscious of great numbers, lent mutual courage.  The barricades were
occupied; fresh ones were thrown up; it is said that there were five hundred
in Paris.  The central quarters formed, as it were, a formidable block, having
as its front the defences formed by the Place de la Concorde, the Rue Royale,
the Boulevard Malesherbes, the Place Clichy, on the right bank; the barricades
of the Rue du Bac, of the Rue Vavin, the Rue de Rennes, the Rue de la
Croix-Rouge, the Rue du Pantheon on the left bank; and as a redout Montmartre,
the Buttes-Chaumont, Pere la Chaise, the Gobelins, the Butte-aux-Cailles.  It
was a fortress inside a fortress.  The real battle was about to open.  The
psychological condition was no longer the same.  On both sides a hideous rage
blinded all these men to the sense of humanity.

     On Tuesday, the 23d, at four o'clock in the morning, the troops that had
bivouacked in the street resumed the attack.  Montmartre was the objective. A
smart fight was expected.  The height was carried about two o'clock, almost
without a blow.  It is said that this formidable operation was rendered easier
by the agency of money.  Dombrowski, beaten at La Muette, fell back. He was
mortally wounded; and he died uttering words that showed his preoccupation -
"And they say that I betrayed them!" His body was carried to the Hotel de
Ville, and laid in Mlle.  Haussmann's bed, and on the following day the
Federates accompanied it with a kind of funeral procession to Pere la Chaise.

     The fighting was terrible in the Faubourg St. Honore, in the Boulevard
Malesherbes, at the Madeleine, in the Rue Royale, on the Terrace of the
Tuileries.  Brunel was in command there; he, too, had come from prison.

     However, this position was turned by the capture of Montmartre.  Brunel,
in obedience to the orders given by Delescluze, began the conflagration by
setting fire to the houses in the Rue Royale, which were close to the
barricades.

     The Tuileries and the Louvre were surrounded.  Bergeret held a council of
war in the great hall of the Tuileries.  He had the rooms soaked with
petroleum, caused barrels of powder to be brought up, and gave the order for
burning the palace.

     On the left bank, the troops that were marching upon the Pantheon were
stopped at the Croix-Rouge, at the Rue de Rennes, at the Bellechasse barracks.
They moved on, however, as far as the quay by the Rue de Legion-d'Honneur.
But before retreating the Federates set fire to the Rue de Lille, the Palais
du Conseil d'Etat, and the Cour des Comptes, to the Palais de la
Legion-d'Honneur, where "General" Eudes, before decamping, did not forget to
deliver his stroke.

     After two hours' fighting, the Federates who had defended the barricade
in the Rue Vavin fell back, but first they blew up the magazine of the
Luxembourg.  The whole of the left bank was shaken as if by an earthquake. At
the town hall of the Eleventh Ward, where Delescluze was dying, he was
speaking in low tones, and his appearance was so heart-breaking that in the
midst of such a day he still appealed to the emotions of those present.  In
accordance with his orders, the defence of the Bastille and the Faubourg
Saint-Antoine was prepared.

     When night came, Brunel abandoned the Rue Royale.  At three o'clock in
the morning Bergeret blew up the Tuileries.  Notre-Dame and the Hotel-Dieu
were saved only by the courage of the staff of the hospital, led by M.
Brouardel.  Everything was burning; explosions were everywhere.  It was a
night of terror.  The Porte Saint-Martin, the church of Saint-Eustache, the
Rue Royale, the Rue de Rivoli, the Tuileries, the Palais-Royale, the Hotel de
Ville, the left bank from the Legion d'Honneur to the Palais de Justice and
the Police Office were immense red braziers, and above all rose lofty blazing
columns.  From outside, all the forts were firing upon Paris.  Inside Paris,
Montmartre, now in the hands of the Versailles troops, was firing upon Pere la
Chaise; the Point-du-Jour upon the Butte-aux-Cailles, which returned the fire.
The gunners were cannonading one another across the town and above the town.
Shells fell in every direction.  All central quarters were a battlefield.  It
was a chaos; bodies and souls in collision over a crumbling world.

     The night was dark, the sky black; a violent wind arose; it came from the
south, and spread the flames, the smoke, the horror of the immense
conflagration in a squall of fire toward the west, toward the enemy, toward
Versailles, and toward those slopes of Saint-Cloud from the heights of which
the members of the Government, the members of the Assembly, came to look on at
a catastrophe in which the city was on the point of sinking.

     M. Thiers had returned to Paris on Monday, the 22d, at three o'clock in
the morning, by the Point-du-Jour gate.  M. Jules Ferry, Mayor of Paris, had
accompanied the first battalion of infantry, which, following the left bank,
had occupied the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, just quitted by M. Pascal
Grousset.  Here was the seat of government; here Marshal MacMahon established
his headquarters.  M. Thiers, however, maintained constant relations with the
National Assembly, which continued to sit at Versailles.

     Prisoners were already coming in.  But the Commune was not yet defeated.
In the city all the furies were unchained.  In the course of a deadly
struggle, in which all minds appeared to lose their balance, the blood frenzy
became universal.  The most hideous rumors spread abroad; the soldiers were
being murdered, were being poisoned; the firemen were putting petroleum in
their engines.  Then it was affirmed that the Commune, in a last convulsion of
its rage, had assassinated the hostages.

     In fact, on Wednesday, the 24th, in one quarter, police agents,
prisoners, were shot in cold blood at Sainte-Pelagie by order of the pretended
revolutionary tribunal presided over by Raoul Rigault.  At La Roquette, in the
night between the 24th and 25th, on the written order of Ferre, transmitted by
Genton, a magistrate of the Commune, a squad commanded by a Federate captain,
Verig, massacred Georges Darboy, Archbishop of Paris, Abbe Deguerry, Fathers
Clerc, Ducoudray, and Allard, and M. Bonjean.  Death was everywhere.  On both
sides henceforth the word of command was to be, "No quarter." On the same day,
at ten o'clock in the morning, fifteen members of the Commune met at the Hotel
de Ville and determined to burn it down.  The fire was started in the roof,
and soon the ancient municipal building was in flames.

     On the 25th, Thursday, the new line of defence was at the bridge of
Austerlitz, resting on Mazas.  Another siege began and a second assault had to
be made.  The troops were exhausted.  But the last combatants were resolved to
perish.  Women and children were on the barricades and delivered fire.  A
strange frenzy excited these brave but feeble beings, and they continued to
struggle after the men had left the barricades.  At Mazas the civil prisoners
revolted.  At the Avenue d'Italie the Dominicans of Arcueil and their servants
were killed by National Guards of the 101st Federate battalion, commanded by
Serizier.

     Meanwhile the bridge of Austerlitz was carried.  The Butte-aux-Cailles,
where Wroblewski resisted with energy, was occupied.  The whole left bank was
taken as far as the Orleans station.  Fighting was still going on at the
Chateau-d'Eau and the Bastille.  The Place de la Bastille was turned by way of
the Vincennes railway.  All the survivors of the struggle, the desperates, met
at the town hall of the Eleventh Ward, on the Boulevard Voltaire, around
Delescluze, who was still obeyed; Vermorel on horseback, wearing the red
scarf, was visiting the barricades, encouraging the men, seeking and bringing
in reenforcements.  At midday twenty-two members of the Commune and the
Central Committee met, and Arnold informed them of the proposal of Mr.
Washburne, Minister of the United States, suggesting the mediation of the
Germans.  Delescluze lent himself to this negotiation; he wished to make for
the Vincennes gate, but he was repulsed by the Federates, who accused him of
desertion.  He came back, returned to the town hall, and wrote a letter of
farewell to his sister.

     Toward seven o'clock in the evening Delescluze set out, accompanied by
Jourde and about fifty Federates, marching in the direction of the Place du
Chateau-d'Eau.  Delescluze was dressed correctly - silk hat, light overcoat,
black frock-coat and trousers; red scarf round the waist, as he used to wear
it; he was distinguished by his neat civilian costume from his company with
their tattered uniforms.  He had no arms, and supported himself on a walking-
stick.  He met Lisbonne, wounded, who was being carried in a litter, then
Vermoral, wounded to death, held up by Chieze and Ayrial.  Delescluze spoke to
him and left him.  The sun was setting behind the square.  Delescluze, without
looking to see whether he was being followed, went on at the same pace, the
only living being on the pavement of the Boulevard Voltaire.  He had only a
breath left, his steps dragged.  Arriving at the barricade he turned to the
left and climbed the paving-stones.  His face was seen to appear with its
short white beard, then his tall figure.  Suddenly he disappeared.  He had
just fallen, stricken to death.

     In the night, while the centre of Paris was one immense furnace, the
conflagration reached the quarters that were still being defended.  Fire at
the Chateau-d'Eau, fire at the Boulevard Voltaire, fire at the Grenier
d'Abondance.  The Seine, whose waters were already dyed with blood, rolled
through Paris like a bed of fire; straws from the granary, papers from all the
different records, made a rain of sparks; the air was scorching.

     From Thursday, the 25th, there was a multiplication of executions.  At
the Saint-Sulpice Seminary an ambulance full of Federates, under the direction
of Doctor Faneau, were slaughtered; it is said that some combatants had taken
refuge here and had fired on the troops.  Everywhere upon the barricades
National Guards taken with arms in their hands were shot.  The houses were
entered and searched; everything that was suspicious, everything that seemed
suspicious, was in danger.  The soldiers, black with smoke, were the blind
instruments of public vengeance - sometimes also of private grudges.  They no
longer knew what they were doing.  Their chiefs did not always take account of
the formal orders that had been given by Marshal MacMahon forbidding useless
violence.  Often, too, the officers tried in vain to restrain the fury of the
exasperated troops.  A National Guard's jacket, trousers with red stripes,
blackened hands, a shoulder appearing to be bruised by the rifle-stock, a pair
of clumsy boots on the feet, a suspicious mien, age, figure, a word, a
gesture, sufficed.

     Courts-martial were opened at the Chatelet, at the College de France, at
the Ecole Militaire, in several town halls.  The prisoners, collected in
crowds at all the points where resistance had been offered, and, one may say,
over the whole city, were sent before these improvised tribunals, which
proceeded to a summary classification.  Whether in the streets, or even
beforethese tribunals, how many premature executions were there?  How many
decisions equivalent to these executions?

     On Friday, the 26th, the fighting was concentrated first at Belleville
and the Place du Trone.  At Belleville, at the town hall of the Eleventh Ward,
the remnant of the Central Committee had resumed the direction of affairs
along with Varlin.  The command was intrusted to Hippolyte Parent. Ferre was
carrying out to the very end the horrible mission he had imposed upon himself.
After a hideous procession in the streets, which was but one long agony of
death, forty-eight hostages - priests, policemen, Jesuit fathers - were
massacred in the Rue Haxo.  Toward evening, Jecker, the banker, was shot at
Pere la Chaise.

     On the other side, at the Pantheon, Milliere, who took sides only at the
last moment, Milliere, who had long intervened, Milliere, upon whom fatality
and perhaps an implacable hatred were weighing, Milliere was shot on the steps
of the Pantheon.

     The Bastille yielded at two o'clock.  La Villette was still holding out.
Indescribable sufferings overwhelmed the exhausted combatants.  The fighting
was now centred in the extreme quarters, not far from the advanced guards of
the German army, who looked on at this spectacle, impassive, contenting
themselves with herding back the fugitives.

     Fighting was still in progress on Saturday, the 27th.  The weather was
awful; the sky livid, first a fog, then torrents of rain.  There was fighting
at La Villette, fighting at Charonne, fighting at Belleville.  The centre of
resistance was still the town hall of the Eleventh Ward, the Buttes Chaumont,
and the Rue Haxo.  Ranvier brought the last combatants up to the barricades.
Ferre was leading a troop of prisoners of the line, whom he still purposed to
shoot; they were delivered by the crowd.  He went back to La Roquette to fetch
fresh victims, but the three hundred men imprisoned there showed fight. Those
alone perished who tried to escape, and soon Ferre fled as fast as his horse
could gallop at the sound of "Here are the Versailles men."

     On Saturday evening two centres of resistance remained in the Eleventh
and Twentieth wards.  Five or six members of the Commune - Trinquet, Ferre,
Varlin, Ranvier - still held out at Belleville.  Some hundreds of the
Federates threw themselves into Pere la Chaise, to fight and die behind the
tombs.

     On Sunday, at four o'clock in the morning, Pere la Chaise was carried
after a short struggle.  The two wings of the Versailles army, which had
enveloped Paris, met at the Rue Haxo, where they captured thirty pieces of
artillery from the Federates.  The town hall of the Eleventh Ward was taken
after a desperate resistance.  The last groups of the Federates led by Varlin,
Ferre, Gambon, wandered from the Twentieth Ward to the Rue Fontaine-au-Roi in
the Eleventh.  Louis Piat hoisted the white flag and surrendered with about
sixty combatants.  The last barricade was in the Rue Ramponneau.  One single
Federate was defending it; he escaped; the last shots were fired.  By one
o'clock all was over.  The tricolor floated over the whole city.  On the 29th
the Fort of Vincennes, defended by three hundred seventy-five infantrymen, of
whom twenty-four were officers, surrendered after vainly trying to negotiate
with the Germans.  In the evening nine officers were put to death in the
ditches.

     On Sunday at midday Marshal MacMahon caused to be posted a proclamation
addressed to the inhabitants of Paris, saying: "The army of France has come to
save you.  Paris is delivered.  Our soldiers carried at four o'clock the last
positions held by the insurgents.  To-day the conflict is over, order is
reestablished, work and safety will again come into being."