INSIDE PARIS: SIEGE AND COMMUNE--THE BARRICADES
Having overthrown the Empire at Sedan, the two German armies again
began rolling their waves of men towards Paris, the army of the
Meuse approaching the capital on its northern side by the valley of
the Marne, whilst the army of the Crown Prince of Prussia, after
crossing the Seine at Villeneuve-St. Georges, directed its course
towards Versailles, skirting the city upon the south. And on that warm
September morning, when General Ducrot, to whom the barely formed
Fourteenth Army Corps had been confided, resolved to attack the second
of the hostile armies on its flank march, Maurice, who was camping with
his new regiment, the 115th of the Line, in the woods on the left of
Meudon, only received orders to march when the disaster was already
a certainty. A few shells had sufficed; a frightful panic had broken
out among a battalion of newly recruited Zouaves, and the rest of the
troops had been carried off in such helter-skelter fashion that the
gallop of retreat did not cease till the men were behind the ramparts
of Paris, where the alarm was intense. All the positions in advance of
the southern forts were lost; and that evening the last link connecting
the city with France, the telegraph wire of the Western Railway line,
was severed. Paris was cut off from the world.
It was a frightfully sad evening for Maurice. Had the Prussians been
more enterprising they might have camped that night on the Place du
Carrousel. But they were extremely prudent folks, and had resolved
to conduct the siege in the classical manner. The exact lines of the
investment had already been settled--the cordon of the army of the
Meuse on the north, from Croissy to the Marne, by way of Epinay; and
the cordon of the Crown Prince of Prussia's army on the south, from
Chennevières to Châtillon and Bougival; whilst general headquarters
with King William, Count von Bismarck, and General von Moltke,
exercised authority from Versailles. The gigantic blockade, which folks
had refused to believe in, was already an accomplished fact. The city,
with its bastioned _enceinte_ upwards of twenty miles in circumference,
its fifteen forts and six detached redoubts, found itself, as it were,
imprisoned. And the army of the defence was only composed of the
Thirteenth Corps, which General Vinoy had saved and brought back to
the capital, and the Fourteenth, still in progress of formation, and
confided to General Ducrot--the pair of them comprising some eighty
thousand soldiers, besides whom there were fourteen thousand sailors,
naval gunners, and marines, fifteen thousand men belonging to various
volunteer corps, and one hundred and fifteen thousand Mobile Guards,
in addition to three hundred thousand National Guards apportioned
among the nine sections of the ramparts. But although there was thus
almost a nation of defenders, the disciplined, tried soldiers were
few in number. Men were being equipped and drilled; Paris had become
one immense entrenched camp. The defensive preparations were being
feverishly pushed forward, roads were intercepted, the houses in the
military zone were razed to the ground, the two hundred guns of heavy
calibre, and the two thousand five hundred others were utilised; other
cannon were cast, quite an arsenal springing into existence, thanks to
the great patriotic efforts of Dorian, the Minister of Public Works.
After the rupture of the negotiations of Ferrières, when Jules Favre
had acquainted the inhabitants with Count von Bismarck's demands--the
cession of Alsace, the surrender of the garrison of Strasburg, and the
payment of a war indemnity of five milliards of francs,[49]--a cry of
rage resounded, and everyone acclaimed the continuation of the war, the
prolongation of resistance as a condition indispensable to the very
existence of France. Even should there be no hope of victory, it was
the duty of Paris to defend herself so that the country might live.
One Sunday, at the close of September, Maurice was sent with a fatigue
party to the other end of the city, and a fresh hope buoyed him up as
he threaded the streets and crossed the squares. It seemed to him
that since the rout of Châtillon all hearts had been rising for the
mighty task that had to be accomplished. Ah! that Paris, which he had
known so intent upon enjoyment, so near to the most grievous faults,
how simple he found it now--cheerfully brave, and ready for every
sacrifice! Everybody was in uniform; those who, as a rule, took the
least interest in national affairs, now wore the _képi_ of the National
Guard. Like some gigantic clock whose works have broken, social life,
industry, trade, business, had suddenly come to a standstill, and
there remained but one passion--the resolution to conquer. It was the
only subject that men talked of, that inflamed both their hearts and
their heads, at the public meetings, during the guard-room vigils,
and amid the crowds that incessantly gathered in the streets, barring
both foot and roadways. Men's minds were carried away by the illusions
thus diffused; excessive tension was exposing them to the dangers
of generous folly. Quite a crisis of sickly neurosis was already
declaring itself, an epidemic fever of exaggerated fears as well as of
exaggerated confidence, amid which a mere nothing sufficed to set the
human animal loose. In the Rue des Martyrs, Maurice witnessed a scene
which passionately excited him--a furious mob rushing to the assault of
a lofty house, one of whose upmost windows had remained throughout the
night brightly illumined by a lamp, which had evidently been intended
as a signal to the Prussians stationed at Bellevue. Haunted by this
belief in signals, some citizens virtually lived upon the housetops,
watching all that went on around them. On the previous day, too, an
unfortunate man had narrowly escaped being drowned in the ornamental
water in the Tuileries Garden, because he had spread a map of the city
on a seat and consulted it.
All Maurice's confidence in the things in which he had formerly
believed was shattered, and he, once so open-minded, was also
succumbing to the mania of suspicion. Certainly he no longer despaired
as he had done on the night of the panic of Châtillon, when he had
anxiously wondered whether the French army would ever regain sufficient
virility to fight; no, the _sortie_ of September 30 in the direction
of L'Hay and Chevilly, that of October 13 when the Mobiles had
carried Bagneux, and that of October 21 when his regiment momentarily
secured possession of the park of La Malmaison, had restored all his
confidence, that flame of hope which a spark sufficed to rekindle
and which consumed him. Although the Prussians had hitherto checked
it upon every point, the army had none the less fought valiantly,
and it might yet conquer. Maurice's sufferings, however, were caused
by Paris itself, which darted from extreme illusion to the deepest
discouragement, ever haunted as it was, amid its thirst for victory,
by an all-absorbing fear of treachery. After the Emperor and Marshal
MacMahon, would not General Trochu and General Ducrot prove commanders
of scant ability, unconscious artisans of defeat? The same movement
which had swept the Empire away--all the impatience of violent-minded
men eager to assume power and save France--was now threatening the
Government of National Defence. Jules Favre and its other members were
indeed already more unpopular than the fallen ministers of Napoleon
III. Since they would not conquer the Prussians, it was their duty
to make way for others, for the revolutionaries, who were certain
of conquering by decreeing the _levée en masse_, and by employing
the inventors who offered to undermine the suburbs of the city or to
annihilate the enemy with a torrent of Greek fire.
On the eve of the rising of October 31 Maurice was thus consumed by
that malady of the siege days compounded of distrust and illusion.
He now lent a willing ear to fancies at which he would formerly have
smiled. Why should they not be realisable? Were not imbecility and
crime limitless? Was there not a possibility of a miracle amid all
the catastrophes overturning the world? There was a flood of rancour
within him which had been gathering since that night when, in front
of Mulhausen, he had heard of the disaster of Frœschweiler; and his
heart bled at the thought of Sedan--Sedan, that raw wound, still sore,
which opened and bled afresh at the tidings of the slightest reverse.
Cast into a scaring, nightmare-like existence, no longer knowing if he
were yet alive, he still suffered from the shock of each defeat; his
physical strength had been impoverished, his head weakened by that long
period of hungry days and sleepless nights; and the idea that so much
suffering would but lead to another and an irremediable disaster fairly
maddened him, transformed him, a man of culture, into a being governed
merely by instinct, fallen into childhood once more, and ever swayed
and carried away by the impulse of the moment. Anything, everything,
destruction, extermination rather than surrender a copper of the
fortune or an inch of the territory of France! The evolution at work
within him, which, under the blow of the first reverses, had swept
away his faith in the Napoleonic legend--that sentimental Bonapartism
which he had imbibed from his grandfather's epic narratives--was now
reaching completion. He no longer even believed in the theoretical,
orderly Republic, he was already inclining to revolutionary violence
and to the necessity of terror as the only means of sweeping away the
imbeciles and traitors who were butchering their own country. And so
he was heart and soul with the insurrectionists on October 31, when
such disastrous tidings came pouring upon Paris in fast succession--the
loss of Le Bourget, so gallantly carried by the Volunteers of the Press
on the night of the 27th; the arrival of M. Thiers at Versailles on
his return from his journey to the European capitals, whence he had
come, so it was reported, to treat for peace in the name of Napoleon
III.; and finally the surrender of Metz, which, after the vague
rumours which had been current, now became a frightful certainty,
a supreme sledge-hammer blow, another but infinitely more shameful
Sedan. And, on the morrow, when Maurice learnt of the occurrences at
the Hôtel-de-Ville--the insurrectionists momentarily victorious, the
members of the Government detained captive until the small hours of the
morning and then only saved by a veering of the population, which, at
first exasperated with them, had ultimately become anxious at thought
of the triumph of the rising--he regretted the failure of the attempt,
the failure to establish that Commune which might possibly have brought
them salvation, with its call to arms, and its proclamation of the
country in danger arousing all the classical memories of a free people
determined not to perish. Thiers, for his part, did not even dare to
enter the city, and on the rupture of the negotiations the Parisians
all but illuminated.
Then the month of November went by amid feverish impatience. Some
trifling engagements were fought, in which Maurice took no part. He
was now camping in the direction of St. Ouen, and at each opportunity
he applied for leave, to satisfy his incessant craving for news. Like
him, Paris was waiting anxiously. Political passions seemed to have
been somewhat appeased by the election of the district mayors, though
it was noticeable that most of the successful candidates belonged to
the extreme parties, an ominous symptom for the future. And that for
which Paris was so anxiously waiting during this long lull, was the
great _sortie_ so incessantly called for, the _sortie_ which was
to bring victory and deliverance. Of this, again, there was not the
slightest doubt; they would hurl back the Prussians and pass over them.
Preparations were being made on the peninsula of Gennevilliers, the
point which was considered most favourable for the projected effort.
But one morning there came a fit of mad delight at the good news of
Coulmiers--Orleans retaken, the Army of the Loire marching upon Paris,
and already camping, it was said, at Etampes. Then everything was
changed; the Gennevilliers scheme, Trochu's long meditated plan, was
abruptly set aside since it would merely be necessary to join hands
with the army of succour across the Marne. The military forces had by
this time been reorganised, and three armies had been created--one
composed of the battalions of the National Guard under the orders
of General Clément Thomas; the second, which General Ducrot was to
conduct to the great attack, formed of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth
Army Corps, reinforced by the best men that could be picked out of the
other forces; and finally the third, the reserve army, composed almost
entirely of Mobile Guards, and confided to General Vinoy. And when on
November 28 Maurice came to bivouac with his regiment--the 115th of
the Line--in the wood of Vincennes, he entertained no doubt of the
success of the effort. The three corps of the second army were all
encamped there, and the men told one another that their appointment
with the Army of the Loire was for the morrow at Fontainebleau.
Then, immediately afterwards, came the customary ill-luck, the
usual blunders, a sudden rising of the Marne which prevented the
pontoon-bridges from being thrown across it, and regrettable orders
which delayed the movements of the troops. On the following night the
115th of the Line was one of the first regiments to cross the river,
and as early as ten o'clock, under a terrible fusillade, Maurice
entered the village of Champigny. He was wild with excitement, and
his chassepot burnt his fingers despite the bitter cold. Ever since
he had been on the march he had had but one desire, to continue going
onward like that, onward, ever onward until he met his comrades of
the provinces over yonder. But, beyond Champigny and Bry, the army
had come upon the park-walls of Cœuilly and Villiers, walls more than
five hundred yards in length, which the enemy had transformed into
impregnable fortresses. They proved the limit, the obstacle that
bravery was powerless to surmount. From that moment all was hesitation
and retreat; the third corps' movements having been delayed, the first
and second, whose advance was already arrested, continued defending
Champigny during a couple of days, but eventually had to abandon
it during the night of December 2, having merely achieved a barren
victory. That night the whole army returned to encamp under the trees
of the wood of Vincennes, which were white with rime; and Maurice, who
could no longer even feel his feet, so numbed they were by the cold,
lay with his face upon the frozen ground, and wept.
Ah! the sad dreary days which followed after the collapse of that great
effort! The great _sortie_, so long in preparation, the irresistible
onslaught which was to have delivered Paris, had failed; and three days
later a letter from General von Moltke announced that the Army of the
Loire had again been defeated and compelled to abandon Orleans. The
fetters encompassing the city were being drawn tighter and tighter, as
it were, and henceforth there was no possibility of breaking through
them. Yet Paris, in the delirium of despair, seemed to acquire a fresh
resistive strength. Famine was beginning to threaten the inhabitants.
Since the middle of October meat had been rationed. In December not a
beast remained of the great droves of oxen and flocks of sheep which
had been turned into the Bois de Boulogne amid the clouds of dust
raised by their continuous tramping; and now the horses were being
slaughtered. The Government supplies, and the private stores of flour
and grain which had been requisitioned, had been calculated to yield
sufficient bread for four months. When the flour was all consumed it
became necessary to erect mills in the railway stations. There was also
a dearth of fuel, and such little as remained was reserved for grinding
the grain, baking the bread, and manufacturing weapons. And yet Paris,
without gas, with her streets lighted merely by petroleum lamps, few
and far between, Paris shivering under her icy mantle, Paris, whose
black bread and horseflesh were doled out to her in infinitesimal
quantities, continued hoping--hoping despite everything, talking of
Faidherbe in the north, of Chanzy on the Loire, and of Bourbaki in
the east, as though some prodigy were about to bring these commanders
victorious under the ramparts. The crowds which waited in the snow
outside the bakers' and butchers' shops still chatted gaily at times
over the news of some great imaginary victory. Indeed, after the short
fit of despondency which followed upon each defeat, the same tenacious
illusions would spring to life again, and flare yet higher and higher
among that mass of people whom suffering and hunger filled with
hallucinations. One day, a soldier who had spoken of surrender, was
almost massacred by the bystanders on the Place du Château d'Eau. The
troops, whose courage was exhausted and who felt the end approaching,
asked for peace, but the inhabitants still clamoured for the _sortie
en masse_, the torrential _sortie_, when the entire population, men,
women, and even children, were to rush upon the Prussians, like a vast
overflowing stream which throws everything down and sweeps it away.
And Maurice now kept apart from his comrades, avoiding them, and
experiencing a growing hatred of his soldier's calling which penned him
up idle and useless under the shelter of Mont Valérien. And thus he
availed himself of every opportunity that presented itself, invented
all possible pretexts to obtain leave, and hurried with more haste
than ever into that Paris where his heart had fixed its abode. He only
found peace of mind when he was in the midst of the thronging masses;
he tried to force himself to hope as the mob hoped. He often went to
witness the ascent of the balloons which every few days were sent up
from the Northern and Orleans railway stations, with a freight of
carrier pigeons, despatches, and letters. The balloons ascended and
were lost to sight in the cheerless wintry sky; and the hearts of the
onlookers became heavy with anguish whenever the wind wafted them in
the direction of Germany. Many of them must have been lost. Maurice had
written twice to his sister Henriette, but he did not know if she had
received his letters. His recollections of her and of Jean were now
so far away from him, in the depths of that vast world whence nothing
came, that he now thought of those dear ones but seldom, and then as
of affections which he had left behind him in some other life. There
was no room for them in his being now, it was filled to overflowing
with the ceaseless tempest of despondency and excitement amid which
he lived. Then, in the early days of January, he found fresh food
for his exasperation in the bombardment of the districts on the left
bank of the Seine. He had ended by ascribing the dilatoriness of the
Germans in this respect to humanitarian reasons, though it was simply
due to the difficulties they encountered in conveying their siege-guns
through France and getting them into position. And now that a shell
had killed two little girls at the Val-de-Grâce hospital, Maurice felt
unbounded scorn and hatred for those barbarians who murdered children
and threatened to burn down the public museums and libraries. However,
after the first few days of fright, Paris had resumed, under the bombs,
its life of unfaltering heroism.
Since the reverse of Champigny, there had only been one more abortive
attempt at a _sortie_, made in the direction of Le Bourget, and on
the evening when the plateau of Avron had to be evacuated, under the
fire of the heavy guns pounding away at the forts, Maurice shared the
violent fit of exasperation which spread throughout the city. At this
juncture the growing discontent which threatened to sweep away General
Trochu and the Government of National Defence acquired such intensity
that the rulers of the city were compelled to attempt a supreme and
hopeless effort. Why indeed did they refuse to lead the three hundred
thousand National Guards into the field, the National Guards who did
not cease offering themselves and claiming their share of peril? It
was the torrential _sortie_ clamoured for since the very outset,
Paris opening her flood-gates and drowning the Prussians beneath the
colossal torrent of her people. Despite the certainty of a fresh
defeat, it became necessary to accede to this gallant prayer; but in
order to limit the slaughter, the commanders contented themselves with
adjoining to the regular troops the fifty-nine marching battalions of
the National Guard. And the eve of January 19 was like a _fête_: an
enormous crowd thronged the Boulevards and the Champs-Elysées, watching
the regiments as they marched along headed by their bands, and singing
patriotic refrains. Children and women accompanied them, and men sprang
upon the benches to shout their ardent prayers for victory. Then, on
the morrow, the entire population betook itself to the neighbourhood
of the Arc-de-Triomphe, and a wild hope inflamed it when in the course
of the morning the tidings arrived of the occupation of Montretout.
Epic-like narratives circulated concerning the irresistible dash of the
National Guards; the Prussians were overcome, Versailles itself would
be captured before the evening. And then, what a collapse there was
when the inevitable repulse became known at nightfall! Whilst the left
wing of the army was occupying Montretout, the central column, after
making its way beyond the outer wall of Buzenval Park, was shattered
in its efforts to carry a second inner wall which it encountered.
There had been a thaw, moreover, a persistent fine rain had drenched
the roads, and the guns, those guns cast by public subscription, the
pride and the hope of Paris, were unable to come up. On the right, too,
General Ducrot's column, brought into action much too late, was still
lagging into the rear. The effort could be carried no further, and
General Trochu had to give orders for a general retreat. Montretout was
abandoned, St. Cloud was abandoned and set on fire by the Prussians.
And when black night had fallen the whole horizon was illumined by the
glow of that immense conflagration.
This time Maurice himself felt that it was all over. During four hours,
under the galling fire from the Prussian entrenchments, he had remained
in the park of Buzenval with some of the National Guards, whose
courage he greatly praised when he returned into the city a few days
afterwards. They had indeed conducted themselves bravely. That being
so, was not the defeat necessarily due to the imbecility and treachery
of the commanders? In the Rue de Rivoli he met bands of men shouting
'Down with Trochu!' and 'Vive la Commune!' Another awakening of the
revolutionary passions had come, a fresh propulsion of public opinion
of such a disquieting character that, to avoid being swept away, the
Government of National Defence thought it necessary to compel General
Trochu to resign his command and set General Vinoy in his place. That
same day, at a public meeting at Belleville, Maurice again heard a
demand for an attack _en masse_. It was a mad idea, and he knew it,
yet his heart again began beating more rapidly, in presence of this
obstinate resolve to fight and conquer. When all is ended, should
not the impossible be attempted? Throughout the night he dreamt of
prodigies.
Then another long week went by. Paris was suffering uncomplainingly.
The shops were no longer opened, the few foot passengers no longer
met a single vehicle in the deserted streets. Forty thousand horses
had been eaten; dogs, cats, and rats were fetching high prices. Since
the dearth of wheat had set in, the bread, partially compounded of
rice and oats, was black, viscous, and difficult of digestion; and the
interminable 'waits' outside the bakers' shops to obtain the three
hundred grammes of bread[50] to which each person's daily ration was
limited, were becoming mortal. Ah! those grievous 'waits' of the siege
days, those poor women shivering under the downpour, with their feet in
the icy slush--all the heroic wretchedness of the great city still bent
upon not surrendering. The death-rate had increased threefold,[51]
the theatres had been turned into ambulances. At nightfall the once
luxurious fashionable quarters fell into a dreary quietness, into dense
obscurity, like districts of some accursed city smitten by pestilence.
And amid the silence and obscurity, you heard but the far-off,
continuous crash of the bombardment, and saw but the flashes of the
guns setting the wintry sky aglow.
All at once, on January 26, Paris became aware that for a couple of
days past Jules Favre had been negotiating with Count von Bismarck for
an armistice; and at the same time it learnt that there only remained
sufficient bread for another ten days, barely the period requisite
for the revictualling of the city. Capitulation had become a brutal
necessity. In its stupor at thus at last learning the truth, Paris
mournfully allowed the Government to act as it listed. That same day,
at midnight, the last cannon shot was fired. And, on the 29th, when
the Germans had occupied the forts, Maurice came inside the ramparts
with the 115th and encamped in the neighbourhood of Montrouge. Then
began an aimless kind of life, made up of idleness and feverish unrest.
Discipline was greatly relaxed, the soldiers disbanded and roamed
about, waiting to be sent home again. He, however, remained in a wild
excited state, prompt to taking offence at the slightest provocation,
his disquietude ever ready to turn into exasperation. He devoured the
revolutionary newspapers, and that three weeks' armistice, concluded
for the sole purpose of allowing France to elect an Assembly which
was to pronounce upon the conclusion of peace or the continuance of
war, seemed to him a delusion and a snare, a final, supreme act of
treachery. Even if Paris were forced to capitulate, he, like Gambetta,
was in favour of continuing the war on the Loire and in the North. The
disasters which overtook the Army of the East, forgotten, compelled to
take refuge in Switzerland, enraged him. And then the result of the
elections brought his fury to a climax; it was just as he had foreseen,
the cowardly provinces, irritated by the resistance of Paris, hankered
for peace at any price, so that they might bring back the monarchy,
even under the Prussian guns. After the first sittings of the Assembly
at Bordeaux, Thiers, elected in six-and-twenty departments, chosen
chief of the executive by acclamation, became in his eyes a monster,
the man of every lie and every crime. And nothing could now calm
him--the peace which was concluded by the monarchical Assembly seemed
to him a climax of shame; he became delirious at the mere thought of
those harsh conditions, the indemnity of five milliards of francs, Metz
given up, Alsace abandoned, the gold and the blood of France pouring
forth from that wound opened in her flank, and never to be healed!
Then, during the last days of February, Maurice made up his mind to
desert. One clause of the treaty specified that the soldiers encamped
in Paris should be disarmed and sent home. He did not wait for this,
however; it seemed to him that it would rend his heart asunder if he
were compelled to quit that glorious Paris, which hunger alone had been
able to subdue. So he took himself off, and rented, in a six-storeyed
house in the Rue des Orties, atop of the Butte des Moulins,[52] a
little furnished room, akin to a belvedere, whence he could gaze over
the sea of roofs and chimneys, from the Tuileries to the Bastille. An
old fellow-student of the Law School had lent him a hundred francs.
Moreover, as soon as he had secured a lodging, he entered himself
in one of the battalions of the National Guard, resolved to content
himself with the pay of a franc and a half per day allowed to the
citizen soldiery. The idea of leading a quiet, egotistical life in
the provinces horrified him. Even the letters which he received from
his sister Henriette, to whom he had written directly the armistice
was concluded, angered him with their pressing entreaties, the ardent
desire they expressed that he would come and rest at Remilly. He
refused to do so--he would only go there later on, when no Prussians
were left there.
And Maurice now led a vagabond, lazy life, in a state of increasing
feverishness. He no longer suffered from hunger; he had devoured the
first white bread he could procure with delight. Paris, where there
had never been any dearth either of wine or brandy, was now living
in plenty, sinking, too, into incorrigible dipsomania. Still, it was
always a prison, with its gates guarded by the Germans, and so many
complicated formalities in force that people were unable to leave.
There had as yet been no resumption of social life; there was still
no work, no business transactions were engaged in, and cooped within
the ramparts there was a whole people waiting in suspense and doing
nothing, losing its last habits of regular, orderly life, whilst it
vegetated in the bright sunshine of that budding springtime. During the
siege there had at least been the military service to tire men's limbs
and occupy their minds, whereas now the population, in the isolation
in which it still found itself, had all at once slipped into a life of
absolute idleness. Maurice, like most others, lounged about from morn
to eve, breathing the vitiated atmosphere, now thoroughly impregnated
with all the germs of madness which for months past had been ascending
from the mob. The unlimited liberty which prevailed completed the
universal destruction. Maurice read the papers, attended the public
meetings, shrugged his shoulders at the more preposterous speeches,
but, nevertheless, returned home with his brain full of violent ideas,
ready to engage in any desperate deed for the defence of what he
believed to be truth and justice. And in his little room, whence he
overlooked the city, he still indulged in dreams of victory, telling
himself that France, the Republic, might yet be saved, so long as the
treaty of peace was not finally signed.
The Prussians were to enter Paris on March 1, and when this became
known a long howl of execration and wrath went up from every heart.
Maurice never attended a public meeting now without hearing the
Assembly, Thiers, and the Men of the Fourth of September charged
with the responsibility of this crowning affront, from which, it was
asserted, they had not tried to spare the heroic city.[53] He himself
became so frenzied one evening that he made a speech and shouted that
all Paris ought to go and die upon the ramparts, rather than allow a
single Prussian to enter the capital. Amid this population, maddened by
long months of misery and hunger, reduced to absolute idleness, unable
to shake off its painful thoughts, consumed by suspicion, and fearful
of phantoms of its own creation, the insurrectionary movement grew
and spread, made all its preparations in the full light of day. It was
one of those moral crises which have followed upon all great sieges,
when excessive patriotism, deceived in its hopes and expectations,
after vainly inflaming men's minds, becomes changed into a blind
longing for violence and destruction. The Central Committee, elected
by the delegates of the National Guard, had just protested against
any attempt at disarming the citizen soldiery. A great demonstration
had followed on the Place de la Bastille, with red flags, incendiary
speeches, an immense concourse of people, and, as a climax, the murder
of a wretched detective, who was flung into the canal and stoned until
he drowned. And forty-eight hours later, on the night of February 26,
Maurice, aroused by the beating of the 'assembly' and the ringing
of the tocsin, met bands of men and women dragging cannon along the
Boulevard des Batignolles. And he too, with a score of other men,
harnessed himself to one of the guns, on hearing that the people
had been to fetch this artillery from the Place Wagram, so that the
Assembly might not hand it over to the Prussians. There were altogether
a hundred and seventy pieces, and for lack of horses the people dragged
them along with ropes, pushed them with their fists till they brought
them to the summit of Montmartre, with the fierce impetuosity of some
barbarian horde saving its idols from destruction. When on March 1
the Prussians had to content themselves with occupying the district
of the Champs-Elysées, penned up there within barriers like a herd of
anxious conquerors, Paris put on a lugubrious aspect and did not stir;
its streets were deserted, its houses closed--the whole city remained
lifeless, shrouded, as it were, in a huge veil of mourning.
Two more weeks went by, and Maurice no longer knew how he was living
during this long wait for the indeterminate, monstrous something whose
approach he could divine. Peace was now definitely concluded, the
Assembly was to take up its quarters at Versailles on March 20; but
to Maurice it seemed that nothing was yet ended, that some frightful
_revanche_ was at hand. Whilst he was dressing on the morning of March
18, he received a letter from Henriette, in which she again begged
him to join her at Remilly, affectionately threatening to go to fetch
him if he should delay his coming much longer. And then she referred
to Jean, and related how, after leaving her at the end of December to
join the Army of the North, he had fallen ill of a low fever and had
been nursed in a Belgian hospital; and he had written to her, only the
previous week, to say that in spite of his weakness he was about to
start for Paris with the intention of seeking active service again.
Henriette concluded by asking her brother to give her full particulars
concerning Jean as soon as he had seen him. Then Maurice, with this
letter lying open before his eyes, fell into a tender reverie.
Henriette, Jean, his fondly loved sister, his brother bound to him by
ties of mutual misery and succour; ah! how far those dear ones were
from his daily thoughts, now that the tempest was ever raging within
him!
However, as his sister informed him that she had been unable to give
Jean his address in the Rue des Orties, he determined to try and find
his friend that same day, by applying at the War Office. But he was
barely out of the house, just crossing the Rue St. Honoré in fact, when
two comrades of his battalion acquainted him with what had happened
during the night and early morning at Montmartre. And all three then
started off thither at the double-quick, half out of their senses.
Ah! that 18th of March, with what fatal excitement did it inflame
Maurice! Later on he could not clearly remember what he had done or
said that day. Looking backward, he first beheld himself galloping
along in a state of fury--fury at thought of the surprise which the
troops had attempted that morning before daybreak, with the view
of recapturing the guns of Montmartre, and thus disarming Paris.
Evidently enough, Thiers, who had recently arrived from Bordeaux, had
for two days past been planning this stroke, the object of which was
to enable the Assembly to proclaim the monarchy at Versailles. Next
Maurice beheld himself at Montmartre at about nine o'clock, fired by
the narratives of victory which were recounted to him--how the troops
had come stealing up in the darkness; how the arrival of the teams
which were to have removed the guns had been delayed; how the National
Guards had thereupon rushed to arms; and how the soldiers, loth to
fire on women and children, had eventually hoisted the butt-ends of
their chassepots and fraternised with the people. Then he beheld
himself roaming through Paris at random, already realising by midday
that the city belonged to the Commune, although there had been no
battle. Thiers and the ministers, however, had fled from the Ministry
of Foreign Affairs, where they had been assembled in council, the
Government rushed helter-skelter to Versailles, and the thirty thousand
troops of the garrison were led away in all haste, though not without
leaving over five thousand deserters on the road. Then Maurice beheld
himself at about half-past five at a corner on the outer Boulevards,
loitering among a group of ruffians and listening without any feeling
of indignation to the abominable story of the murder of Generals
Lecomte and Clément Thomas. Generals, indeed! He remembered those of
Sedan, incapable humbugs who only thought of taking all the blanket to
themselves! One the more or one the less, verily, that was a matter of
little consequence! And he had spent the remainder of the day in the
same wildly excited state, no longer capable of seeing things as they
really were, transported by this insurrection which the very paving
stones seemed to have favoured, which, in the unforeseen fatality of
its triumph, had spread and at one stroke secured power, placing the
Hôtel-de-Ville, at ten o'clock that same night, in the hands of the
members of the Central Committee, who were amazed to find themselves
assembled there.
Confused as were these memories in Maurice's mind, he retained a
precise recollection of one incident--his unexpected meeting with Jean.
The latter had reached Paris three days previously, penniless, still
wan and enfeebled by the fever which during two long months had kept
him in a hospital at Brussels; and meeting a former captain of his
old regiment, Captain Ravaud, he had at once joined the company which
this officer now commanded in the 124th of the Line. He had secured
his old rank of corporal, and on the evening of the insurrection he
had just left the Prince-Eugène barracks with his squad, the last of
the regiment, in view of reaching the left bank of the Seine, where
the entire army had received orders to concentrate, when he and his
men were suddenly stopped by the crowd assembled on the Boulevard St.
Martin. Shouts were raised, and there was a talk of disarming the
soldiers. With perfect coolness, however, Jean requested the mob to let
him alone; all this business did not concern him, said he; he simply
wished to carry out his orders without hurting anyone. But all at once
a glad cry of surprise rang out, and Maurice, who was among the crowd
and had drawn near, threw himself on his friend's neck, embracing him
fraternally.
'What! is it you?' said the young fellow, 'My sister wrote to me about
you, and I wished to go to the Ministry this morning to inquire after
you.'
Big tears of joy had gathered in Jean's eyes. 'Ah! my poor youngster;
how pleased I am to see you!' he replied. 'I myself have been wanting
to find you, but where could I go and look for you in this confounded
big place?'
The crowd, meantime, was still growling angrily, and Maurice turned
round to appease it. 'Let me talk to them, citizens!' said he. 'They
are good fellows and I'll answer for them.' Then, grasping his friend's
hands, he added in a lower voice: 'You will stay with us, won't you?'
Jean's face assumed an expression of deep surprise. 'Stay with
you--what do you mean?'
Then for a moment he listened to Maurice while the latter railed
against the Government and the army, recalled all that they had
suffered together in past times, and explained that the people was
at last about to become the master and would punish both traitors
and cowards and save the Republic. And by degrees, as Jean strove to
understand it all, his calm peasant's face darkened with increasing
sorrow: 'Ah! no, no, youngster, I can't stay, if it's for such fine
work as that--besides, my captain ordered me to take my men to
Vaugirard, and I am going there. If thunderbolts were falling, there I
should go all the same. It's only natural, you know it is, yourself.'
He had begun to laugh in his simple way, and added: 'It's you that must
come with us.'
But with a gesture of furious dissent Maurice released his hold on
Jean's hands. And for a few seconds they stood there face to face--one
a prey to all the exasperation born of that fit of insanity which had
taken possession of Paris, that malady of distant origin, sprung from
the bad leaven of the late reign; the other, strong in his practical
common-sense and ignorance, still healthy because he had grown apart
in the soil of labour and thrift. Yet they were brothers, a strong tie
bound them together, and they felt as though they were being wrenched
asunder when a swaying of the crowd suddenly parted them.
'Till we meet again, Maurice!'
'Till we meet again, Jean!'
It was a regiment of infantry, the 79th of the Line, which, debouching
in a compact mass from a side street, had just thrown the mob back upon
the footways. There was again some shouting and hooting, but none were
bold enough to bar the road to the soldiers, whose officers were urging
them along. And the little squad of the 124th, thus extricated from the
mob, was able to follow in the wake of the regiment without further
hindrance.
'Till we meet again, Jean!'
'Till we meet again, Maurice!'
Again did they wave their hands, yielding to the fatality of that
violent parting, but with their hearts still full of one another.
During the ensuing days Maurice at first forgot this incident, so
absorbing were the extraordinary events which now followed one
upon another in fast succession. On the 19th Paris awoke without a
Government; still, it was more surprised than frightened on learning
how panic had carried off the army, the public services, and the
ministers to Versailles during the night; and, as the weather was
magnificent that fine March Sunday, the city simply streamed into the
streets to gaze at the barricades. A large white placard emanating from
the Central Committee, and convoking the population for the Communal
elections, appeared a very sensible production. People merely expressed
surprise at finding it signed by names so utterly unknown. At the dawn
of the Commune, indeed, Paris, in the bitter memory of all that it had
suffered, in the suspicions also which ever haunted it, was hostile to
Versailles. Absolute anarchy, moreover, prevailed; the district mayors
and the Central Committee contending for authority, and the former
making ineffectual efforts at conciliation, whilst the latter, as yet
uncertain whether it could rely upon the entire federated National
Guard, modestly limited its demands to municipal liberty. The shots
fired at the pacific demonstration of the Place Vendôme, the few
victims who then fell, staining the pavement with their blood, sent
the first thrill of terror circulating through the city. And whilst
the triumphant insurrection was at last taking possession of all the
ministries and public departments, equal rage and alarm prevailed
at Versailles, where the Government was hastily gathering together
sufficient military forces to repel the attack which it felt to be
imminent. The most reliable troops of the armies of the North and of
the Loire were speedily summoned; and, ten days having sufficed to
collect a force of nearly eighty thousand men, confidence returned
so rapidly that already on April 2 a couple of divisions opened
hostilities by taking the suburbs of Puteaux and Courbevoie from the
Federals.[54]
It was only on the morrow that Maurice, who had set out with his
battalion to effect the capture of Versailles, again beheld Jean's
sorrowful countenance rise up amid his feverish souvenirs. The attack
of the Versaillese had stupefied and exasperated the National Guard,
and three columns of the latter, some fifty thousand men, had poured
forth from Paris early that morning, rushing towards Versailles by
way of Bougival and Meudon with the design of seizing the monarchical
Assembly and the murderer Thiers! 'Twas the torrential _sortie_, the
_sortie_ so ardently demanded during the siege, and Maurice wondered
where he should again see Jean, whether it would not be over yonder
among the corpses on the battlefield? But the rout came too promptly
for his surmises; his battalion had barely reached the Plateau des
Bergères, on the road to Reuil, when some shells, fired from the fort
of Mont Valérien, fell among the ranks. For a moment perfect stupor
prevailed; some of the men had imagined that the fort was held by their
comrades, whilst others averred that the commander had promised that he
would not fire. Then a mad terror took possession of the Federals, the
battalions disbanded and scurried back into Paris, whilst the head of
the column, cut off by a turning movement which General Vinoy promptly
effected, only reached Reuil to be cut to pieces there.
Maurice, who had escaped from the slaughter unharmed, and was thrilled
with the emotion of fighting, now nourished intense hatred for that
so-called government of law and order, which, beaten by the Prussians
in every encounter, could only muster up courage to conquer Paris.
And the German armies were still there, encamped on the north-eastern
side of the city from St. Denis to Charenton, and gazing on that fine
spectacle of a nation's Downfall! In the gloomy passion for destruction
which was gaining upon him, Maurice approved of the first violent
measures to which the Commune resorted, the erection of barricades in
the streets and squares, the arrest of the hostages, the Archbishop,
the priests, and the ex-functionaries. Atrocities were already being
perpetrated on either side; Versailles shot its prisoners, whilst
Paris decreed that for the head of each of its soldiers the heads of
three hostages should fall; and the little reason which Maurice still
retained, after so many shocks and so much havoc, was speedily swept
away by the blast of fury now blowing from every side. In his eyes the
Commune appeared as the Avenger of all the shame and degradation that
had been endured, as the Liberator armed with the knife to amputate
and the flame to purify. All this was not quite clear in his mind; the
cultured being yet lingering within him merely evoked the old classical
memories of triumphant free cities, and federations of rich provinces
imposing their will upon the world. Should Paris prove victorious, he
pictured her crowned with an aureole of glory, building up a new France
where justice and liberty would reign supreme, and organising a new
society after first sweeping away the rotten remnants of the old. To
tell the truth, when the elections were over, he felt some surprise
on reading the names of the members of the Commune; so extraordinary
was the mingling of Moderates, Revolutionaries, and Socialists of all
sects, to whom the mighty task was confided. He knew several of these
men, and esteemed them to be of very limited attainments. And would not
even the best of them come into collision and neutralise one another's
efforts, representing as they did such conflicting principles? However,
on the day when the Commune was solemnly installed in office at the
Hôtel-de-Ville, whilst the guns were booming and the trophies of red
flags were flapping in the breeze, he strove to forget everything,
buoyed up once more by boundless hope. And, fanned by the lies of some
and the unquestioning faith of others, his illusions were all revived
in this acute stage of his malady, which was now fast reaching a climax.
Maurice spent the entire month of April in the neighbourhood of
Neuilly, firing away at the Versaillese. The spring was an early one,
and the lilacs were already blooming; they fought amid the tender
greenery of the villa gardens, and some National Guards would return
home at nightfall with nosegays in their gun-barrels. The troops
assembled at Versailles were now so numerous that they had been divided
into two armies, the first actively engaged under Marshal MacMahon, and
the second forming a reserve force, commanded by General Vinoy. The
Commune, on its side, had about one hundred thousand mobilised National
Guards, and nearly as many men in the sedentary battalions, but of all
these not more than fifty thousand really fought. And day by day the
plan of the Versaillese became more and more evident; after taking
Neuilly they had occupied the château of Bécon and then Asnières, but
simply with a view of bringing the line of investment closer to the
city, which they purposed entering by the Point-du-Jour, as soon as
they could force the rampart there by means of the converging fire of
Mont-Valérien and the fort of Issy. Mont-Valérien belonged to them, and
all their efforts were directed towards capturing the fort of Issy, in
attacking which they availed themselves of some of the works which had
been thrown up by the Prussians during the late siege.
After the middle of April the cannonade and fusillade went on without
a pause. At Levallois and Neuilly an endless combat was kept up, a
skirmishing fire which rattled uninterruptedly by day and night alike.
Heavy guns, mounted upon armour-plated carriages, travelled along
the circular railway line, and fired over the roofs of Levallois at
Asnières. But it was at Vanves and at Issy that the cannonade proved
fiercest, all the window-panes on that side of Paris rattled as they
had done during the most terrible days of the German siege. And on
May 9, when, after a first alert, the fort of Issy finally fell into
the possession of the Versaillese, the defeat of the Commune became a
certainty, and a fit of panic impelled its members to the most evil
resolutions.
Maurice approved of the creation of a Committee of Public Safety. Pages
of history returned to his mind; had not the hour struck for energetic
measures to be adopted if the country were to be saved? Of all the
many acts of violence, there was but one which wrung his heart with
a secret anguish--the destruction of the Vendôme Column. In vain did
he reproach himself for this feeling, this childish weakness as he
deemed it; his grandfather's voice still rang in his ears telling him
tales of battle--Marengo, Austerlitz, Jena, Eylau, Friedland, Wagram,
the Moskowa--all those epic narratives which thrilled him yet. But it
was different when the question was one of demolishing the house of
that murderer, Thiers, of detaining the hostages as a guarantee and a
menace, for were not acts like these fitting reprisals now that the
rage of Versailles against Paris had increased to such a pitch that
the city was being bombarded, and that shells were plunging through
the house-roofs and killing women? That sombre longing for destruction
mounted to his brain as the end of his dream drew nigh. If the
principle of justice and retribution were destined to be annihilated
in bloodshed might the ground open and everything be transformed by
one of those cosmical convulsions that have renewed the life of the
world! Might Paris fall, burn like a huge sacrificial pyre rather
than be again delivered over to its vice and its misery, to that old
rotten social system that had ever upheld abominable injustice! And he
dreamed another great gloomy dream--the giant city reduced to cinders,
naught left but smoking embers on both banks of the river, a nameless,
unparalleled catastrophe whence a new people would arise. And thus
he took a more and more feverish interest in the wild reports which
circulated: whole districts undermined, the catacombs chokefull of
gunpowder, everything ready to blow up the public monuments; electric
wires connecting the mines so that a single spark would at the same
moment ignite them all; vast stores of inflammable products gathered
together, especially petroleum, enough to turn the streets and squares
into rivers and seas of flame. The Commune had sworn it--if the
Versaillese should enter the city, not one of them would pass beyond
the barricades blocking the crossways, the pavements would open, the
edifices would crumble, Paris would flare from end to end and swallow
up a world!
And if Maurice began clinging to this wild dream, it was because of
his secret discontent with the Commune itself. He despaired of the men
composing it, felt them to be incompetent, pulled this way and that by
conflicting views and interests, growing more and more exasperated,
losing their heads, and lapsing into imbecility as their peril
gradually increased. Of all the social reforms to which the Commune was
pledged, it had been unable to realise a single one; and it was already
certain that it would leave no durable work behind it. But the great
evil from which it suffered was the rivalry tearing it asunder, the
mutual suspicion which consumed each of its members. Many of them, the
Moderates, the timid ones, had already ceased taking any part in the
deliberations. The others acted on the spur of the moment, as events
might suggest, trembled at the prospect of a possible dictatorship, had
reached indeed that phase when the factions of revolutionary assemblies
exterminate one another in the hope of saving the Commonwealth.
After Cluseret, after Dombrowski, it became Rossel's turn to be
suspected. Delescluze, appointed civil delegate at War, could himself
do nothing, despite his great authority. And on the other hand the
social effort, of which there had been just a faint glimpse, subsided
to insignificance, proved utterly abortive amid the hourly increasing
isolation of these men, rendered powerless by dissension and reduced
to acts of despair.
Terror was rising in Paris. Irritated, at first, against Versailles,
shuddering at memory of the sufferings of the siege, the city was
now detaching itself from the Commune. The compulsory enrolment,
the decree incorporating every man under forty years of age in the
insurrectionary forces, had angered people of calm minds and caused a
flight _en masse_; some folks went off by way of St. Denis, disguised
and provided with spurious Alsatian passports,[55] others with the
help of ropes and ladders let themselves down into the ditch of the
fortifications on dark nights. The wealthy people of the middle class
had long since taken themselves off. Not a factory, not a workshop
had reopened its doors. There was no trade, no work, the old life of
idleness continued during that anxious wait for the inevitable ending.
And the people--the poorer classes--still lived upon the paltry pay
allowed to each National Guard--that franc and a half per diem paid
from the millions which were now being requisitioned from the Bank of
France, that franc and a half for the sake of which alone many men
still continued fighting, and which was really one of the primary
causes, the why and wherefore of the insurrection. Entire districts had
become depopulated, the shops were shut, the house-fronts lifeless. And
in the deserted streets under the warm sun of that lovely month of May,
there was nothing to look at but the funerals of Federals who had been
killed in action--processions unaccompanied by any priest, but fraught
with a barbaric pomp, the hearses draped with red flags and followed
by crowds wearing 'button-holes' of _immortelles_. The churches,
closed for purposes of worship, became transformed every evening into
political club-rooms. Only revolutionary newspapers were published,
all the others had been suppressed. And all this was tantamount to
the destruction of Paris, that great, ill-fated Paris which, like the
Republican capital it was, still retained a feeling of repulsion for
the Assembly, even while its terror of the Commune, and its impatience
to be delivered from it, grew and spread amid all the alarming rumours
that circulated--rumours of the daily arrest of hostages, and of
barrels of gunpowder lowered into the sewers, where men were said to
watch with lighted torches waiting for a signal.
And at this stage Maurice, who hitherto had never been inclined to
drink, found himself caught and submerged as it were in the universal
intoxication. At present, when he was on duty at some advanced post
or spent the night in a guard-room, it frequently happened that he
accepted a nip of brandy. And if he took a second nip excitement
followed, fanned by the breath of his comrades as it blew past his
face, reeking with alcoholic fumes. The drunkenness had become chronic,
an all-invading epidemic, bequeathed by the first siege, aggravated
by the second; for if the population had lacked bread it had always
possessed brandy and wine in profusion, and had so saturated itself
with drink, that the merest drop now sufficed to make it delirious.
For the first time in his life, on the evening of Sunday, May 21,
Maurice came back drunk to his lodging in the Rue des Orties, where he
still slept from time to time. He had again spent the day at Neuilly,
firing at the Versaillese and drinking with his comrades in the hope
of surmounting the intense weariness which was overpowering him. Then
with his head in a fog and his limbs exhausted, he had come and thrown
himself on the bed in his little room, led thither by instinct, for he
never remembered how he had managed to make the journey. And on the
following morning the sun was already high in the heavens when the
tumult of alarm bells, drums, and bugles at last aroused him. On the
previous evening, finding a gate of the ramparts at the Point-du-Jour
abandoned, the Versaillese had entered Paris unopposed.
Hastily dressing, and taking his gun, which he slung over his shoulder,
Maurice went down into the street, and, scarcely had he reached the
district municipal offices, when a cluster of scared comrades whom he
met there acquainted him with the events of the evening and the night,
in so confused a way, however, that it was at first difficult for him
to understand the position. The fort of Issy and the great battery at
Montretout had been pounding away at the ramparts for ten days past,
and with such effect that the St. Cloud gate of the fortifications
had at last become untenable. An assault had therefore been resolved
upon, and was to have taken place on the morning of May 22. But on
the afternoon of the 21st, at about five o'clock, a passer-by, seeing
that nobody remained guarding the St. Cloud gate, simply beckoned to
the Versaillese posted in the trenches, which were scarcely fifty
yards away. Two companies of the 37th of the Line thereupon at once
entered the city, and behind them followed the whole of the Fourth
Corps, commanded by General Douay. The troops poured into Paris in a
ceaseless stream throughout the night. At seven in the evening General
Vergé's division set out towards the Grenelle bridge, and even pushed
forward as far as the Trocadéro. At nine o'clock General Clinchant
captured Passy and La Muette. At three in the morning the First Corps
was camping in the Bois de Boulogne; and at about the same hour General
Bruat's division crossed the Seine to carry the Sèvres gate and
facilitate the entrance of the Second Corps, which, under the orders of
General de Cissey, occupied the Grenelle district an hour later. Thus
on the morning of the 22nd the army of Versailles held the Trocadéro
and La Muette on the right bank of the river, and Grenelle on the left
bank; and this to the stupor, wrath, and consternation of the Commune,
whose members were already accusing one another of treachery in their
agony at the idea that annihilation was now inevitable.
This, too, was Maurice's first feeling when he at last understood the
situation. The end had come, and no course remained but to meet death
boldly. Meantime, however, the alarm bells were pealing, the drums were
beating more loudly, women and even children were helping to build
barricades, and the streets were filling with all the feverish stir and
bustle of the battalions hastily assembled and hurrying to their posts
of combat. And at midday hope again sprang from the breasts of the
excited, determined soldiers of the Commune when they found that the
Versaillese had scarcely stirred from their positions. This army, which
they had feared to find at the Tuileries in a couple of hours' time,
manœuvred with extraordinary caution, profiting by the stern lessons of
defeat, and exaggerating the tactics which it had learnt at such dire
cost from the Germans.[56] Meantime the Committee of Public Safety, and
Delescluze, the delegate at War, organised and directed the defence
from their quarters at the Hôtel-de-Ville. It was noised abroad that
they had disdainfully repulsed a supreme attempt at conciliation. These
tidings inflamed the courage of their partisans; the triumph of Paris
once more seemed assured, and on all sides the resistance was to be as
fierce as the attack had been implacable--such was the hatred, fed by
lies and atrocities, which burnt in the hearts of either army.
Maurice spent that day in the neighbourhood of the Champ de Mars and
the Invalides, falling back slowly from street to street whilst firing
upon the troops. He had not been able to find his own battalion, and
was fighting in company with some comrades who were strangers to him,
and who had led him to the left bank of the river without his even
noticing it. Towards four o'clock they defended a barricade blocking
the Rue de l'Université, at the point where it reaches the Esplanade
des Invalides; and they did not abandon this position until the
twilight fell and they learned that Bruat's division, stealing along
by way of the quay, had secured possession of the Corps Législatif. As
it was, they narrowly escaped being caught, and only reached the Rue
de Lille with great difficulty, after making a long round through the
Rue St. Dominique and the Rue Bellechasse. When night fell the army of
Versailles occupied a line starting from the Vanves gate, on the left
bank of the Seine, and passing by way of the Corps Législatif across
the river to the Elysée palace, the church of St. Augustin, and the St.
Lazare railway station, until it finally reached the Asnières gate on
the north-west.
It was the morrow, May 23, a beautiful spring Tuesday, bright with warm
sunshine, which proved the terrible day for Maurice. The few hundred
Federals of various battalions, among whom he found himself, still
held the whole district from the quay to the Rue St. Dominique. Most
of them, however, had bivouacked in the gardens of the large mansions
lining the Rue de Lille, and he himself had fallen fast asleep on a
lawn adjoining the palace of the Legion of Honour. He fancied that
the troops would emerge from the Corps Législatif at dawn to drive
him and his comrades behind the strong barricades which had been
thrown up in the Rue du Bac, but several hours went by and there were
no signs of an attack. The combatants merely continued exchanging
random shots from one to the other end of the streets. All this,
however, formed part of the plan of the Versaillese, which was now
being slowly, cautiously carried out. Firmly resolved not to attempt
a front attack upon the formidable fortress into which the insurgents
had converted the Tuileries terrace, they had decided upon a double
advance along the ramparts on either side of the river in view of
capturing Montmartre on the north and the Observatory on the south to
begin with, and thence swooping down upon the city, surrounding the
central quarters and seizing upon them at one great stroke. Towards two
o'clock Maurice heard a comrade say that the tricolour flag was waving
over Montmartre. Simultaneously attacked by three army corps, whose
battalions had climbed the height on its northern and western sides,
the great battery of the Galette windmill had been captured; and the
victors were now streaming down into Paris, carrying in turn the Place
St. Georges, the church of Notre Dame de Lorette, the municipal offices
in the Rue Drouot, and the Grand Opera House; whilst on the left bank
the turning movement, starting from the Montparnasse Cemetery, was
now reaching the Place d'Enfer and the Horse Market. At these tidings
of the rapid progress made by the army the Communists gave way to
stupor, wrath, and fright. What! Montmartre had been carried in a
couple of hours--Montmartre, the glorious, impregnable citadel of the
insurrection! Maurice noticed that the ranks were thinning around him,
that trembling comrades were slinking away to wash their hands and slip
on a blouse, in their fear of the troops' reprisals. It was rumoured,
too, that they would soon be turned by way of the Croix-Rouge crossway,
the attack on which was now being prepared. The barricades in the Rue
Martignac and the Rue Bellechasse had already been carried, and the
insurgents were beginning to espy the red trousers of the soldiers at
the end of the Rue de Lille. And now the Communist force upon this
point became limited to the men of conviction, the desperate ones;
Maurice and some fifty others who were resolved to die after killing
as many as possible of those bloodthirsty Versaillese who treated the
Federals as bandits, dragging those whom they made prisoners to the
rear of their line of battle and shooting them down there. Since the
previous day the execrable feelings of hatred animating either side had
yet increased; it was now a war of extermination between those rebels
dying for their dream, and that army hot with reactionary passions and
exasperated at still having to fight.
At about five o'clock, whilst Maurice and his comrades were finally
retreating to seek the shelter of the barricades in the Rue du Bac,
making their way from door to door down the Rue de Lille and still
firing as they went, the young fellow suddenly perceived a mass of
dense black smoke pouring out of an open window of the palace of the
Legion of Honour. It was the first of the conflagrations kindled
in Paris; and in the furious insanity that now possessed him he
experienced a fierce delight. The hour had come: might the whole city
flare like a huge sacrificial pyre, might fire purify the world! But
all at once he was overcome with astonishment. Five or six men had just
rushed out of the palace, led by a big fellow in whom he recognised
Chouteau, his former comrade in the 106th of the Line. Maurice had
caught sight of the scamp once before, just after the 18th of March,
when he was already wearing the gold-laced cap of an officer. Since
then he must have risen in rank, for his uniform was now covered
with galloons. Maybe he was attached to the staff of some Communist
general who shirked fighting; and indeed Maurice suddenly remembered
that a comrade had told him various anecdotes of this fellow Chouteau,
who had been quartered at this very palace of the Legion of Honour,
where in the company of his mistress he had led a life of continual
jollity, lying booted and spurred in the sumptuous beds, and smashing
the plate-glass mirrors with shots from his revolver just by way of a
lark. It was asserted, too, that his mistress, under pretence of going
to market, drove out every morning in a gala carriage, in which she
carried away bales of linen, clocks, and even articles of furniture.
Thus, when Maurice caught sight of the rogue running away with his men,
and still carrying a can of petroleum, he experienced a sensation of
uneasiness, a frightful doubt, a wavering of all the blind faith which
had been buoying him up. Was it possible that the great work could be
evil, since it had such a man as Chouteau for its artisan?
Several hours elapsed and still he fought, but in a distressful
fashion, conscious of no feeling save a sombre determination to die.
If he had erred, might he atone for his error with his blood! The
barricade at which he found himself barred the Rue de Lille at the
point where this street was intersected by the Rue du Bac. It was a
formidable one, strongly built of sandbags and barrels of earth and
faced by a deep ditch. Maurice was holding it with barely a dozen
Federals, all of them reclining among the sandbags, and with unerring
aim picking off every soldier who showed himself. Without moving,
without even speaking a word, such was the dogged sullenness of his
despair, the young fellow continued exhausting his cartridges until
night closed in, watching meantime the growth of the clouds of smoke
which were pouring out of the palace of the Legion of Honour, and were
swept down into the street by the wind. The flames were not yet visible
in the waning daylight. Another conflagration had broken out in a
neighbouring mansion. And all at once a comrade ran up to Maurice and
warned him that the soldiers, not daring to advance down the street,
were approaching through the gardens and houses skirting it, cutting
their way through the walls with picks. The end was at hand; the
troops might emerge on that very spot at any moment. And, indeed, on a
shot being fired from a window above him, he looked up and again saw
Chouteau and his men, who were now frantically climbing the stairs of
the corner houses on either hand, carrying lighted torches as well as
cans of petroleum. Half an hour later, the whole crossway was flaring
under the black sky, and Maurice, still reclining behind the barrels
and the bags, profited by the vivid light to shoot down any of the
soldiers who were imprudent enough to leave the shelter of the doorways
and show themselves in the street.
How long did he keep on firing? He no longer had any consciousness
of time or place. It might be nine o'clock, ten o'clock perhaps. The
abominable work in which he was engaged now gave him a sensation of
nausea, as though he were drunk with some loathsome wine which kept on
rising from his stomach. Now that the houses were flaming all around,
an intense heat, a burning, asphyxiating atmosphere was beginning to
envelop him. The crossway, barred on every side by piles of paving
stones, had become an intrenched camp which the conflagrations defended
with shower after shower of brands. And were not these the orders?
To set each district on fire as, one by one, its barricades were
abandoned, to check the advance of the troops by a devouring line of
furnaces, to burn down progressively each portion of Paris which they,
the insurgents, might be forced to surrender? And Maurice already
realised that the houses of the Rue du Bac were not the only ones that
were burning. Behind him an immense ruddy glow suffused the sky, and he
could hear a distant roar as though the whole city were catching fire.
Along the Seine, on the right bank, some other gigantic conflagrations
must be bursting forth. He had long since seen Chouteau hurry away,
fleeing the bullets. One by one, moreover, the most desperate of his
comrades took themselves off, terrified by the idea that they might
now at any moment be outflanked; and at last he remained there all
alone, and was still lying between two sandbags with the one thought of
defending the front of the barricade, when all at once some soldiers,
having made their way through the courtyards and gardens of the Rue de
Lille, came out by a house in the Rue du Bac and swooped down from the
rear.
For two long days, amid the excitement of that supreme struggle,
Maurice had not given a thought to Jean; nor had Jean since entering
Paris with his regiment, which had been adjoined to General Bruat's
division, for a single moment remembered his friend Maurice. On
the previous day, the corporal had spent his time firing upon the
insurgents on the Champ de Mars and the Esplanade des Invalides; and
on this, the second, the terrible day of the fighting, he had not left
the Place du Palais Bourbon till about noon, when he and his comrades
were sent forward to capture the barricades of the neighbourhood as
far as the Rue des Saints-Pères. He, usually so calm, had gradually
become quite exasperated by that fratricidal war, somewhat influenced
in this respect by his comrades, all of whom ardently longed for a
rest after so much fatigue and privation. The men who had spent long
months as prisoners of war in Germany, and who had only been brought
back to France to be re-incorporated in the army, felt thoroughly
enraged with Paris; and Jean, for his part, was further incensed by
all that he had heard of the abominations of the Commune--deeds which
struck at his belief in the rights of ownership, and at his desire for
orderly government. He was still the sensible, sober-minded peasant,
personifying the very foundation of the nation, desirous of peace in
order that one might again begin working, earning money, and recruiting
health and strength. And in the growing wrath which now carried away
all thought even of his most tender affections, he was especially
maddened by the deeds of the incendiaries. What! burn down houses, burn
down palaces, simply because one was not the stronger; no, no, anything
but that! Only bandits could do such things. And he, who only the day
before had been grieved by the summary executions of the Communists
captured by the troops, had now lost all control over himself and was
like a madman, striking and shouting fiercely, with his eyes starting
from their sockets.
It was with a rush that he debouched into the Rue du Bac, followed by
the few men of his squad. At first he could distinguish no one, and
fancied that the barricade had been altogether abandoned. Then, over
yonder, between two sandbags, he caught sight of a Communist who was
moving, levelling his gun again, about to fire down the Rue de Lille.
And, thereupon, under the furious propulsion of Destiny, he ran up and
nailed the man to the barricade with a thrust of his bayonet.
Maurice had not had time to turn. He gave a shriek and raised his head.
The conflagrations lighted up both men with a blinding blaze.
'Oh! Jean, my old friend, Jean, is it you?'
Die? Yes, willingly; he was desperately impatient for death. But to die
by his brother's hand was too hard; it marred his death--poisoned it
with an abominable bitterness.
'Is it you then, Jean--my old Jean?'
Jean looked at him, thunderstruck, abruptly sobered. They were alone;
the other soldiers had already started in pursuit of some runaways. All
around them the conflagrations were flaring yet higher, the windows
were vomiting great red flames, and one could hear the crash of the
burning ceilings as they sank inside the houses. Then Jean fell down
near Maurice, sobbing, feeling him, trying to raise him up so as to
ascertain whether he might not still be able to save him.
'Oh! my poor youngster, my poor youngster!'