Reign of Terror.--Family Quarrels.--The Alsacians, etc., claim
German Nationality.--They leave Paris on our Passes.--Prisoners of
Commune.--Priests and Nuns.--Fragments of Shells.--"Articles
de Paris."--Fearful Bombardment of "Point du Jour."--Arrest of
Cluseret.--Commune Proclamations.--Capture of Paris.--Troops
enter by Undefended Gate.--Their Slow Advance.--Fight at the
Tuileries Gardens.--Communist Women.--Capture of Barricades.
--Cruelties of the Troops.--"Pétroleuses."--Absurd Stories about
them.--Public Buildings fired.--Destruction of Tuileries, etc., etc.
--Narrow Escape of Louvre.--Treatment of Communist Prisoners.
--Presents from Emperor of Germany.
As time passed, the puerilities and atrocities of the Commune kept
equal pace. They had taken possession of the public buildings and
raised the red flag upon them, suppressing the tricolor. They now
passed a decree requiring every man to be provided with a _carte
d'identité_; this, they said, was to protect them against Government
spies. They established a bureau of denunciation, where any man
who had a grudge against his neighbor had simply to denounce him
as a Versailles sympathizer, and he was arrested. They closed the
churches, or turned them into clubs. They arrested the priests;
they shut up some of the convents, and imprisoned the nuns. They
confiscated the gold and silver church plate, and turned it into
coin. It was emphatically a "Reign of Terror." It was estimated
that within a month after the outbreak of the Commune three hundred
thousand people left Paris.
In the clubs they denounced the Legation. They said that Mr.
Washburne was about to call in the Germans at the request of the
diplomatic corps. They proposed to hang him, and to banish the
rest of us. In point of fact, I believe that Mr. Washburne could
have called in the German army at any time. He had only to report
to General Manteuffel that the lives of the Germans in Paris were
in danger, and that he found himself unable to protect them, and
Manteuffel would have occupied Paris at once. But Mr. Washburne never
entertained an idea of doing this.
Then the Commune began to quarrel among themselves. The Happy Family
was at variance. Strange as it may appear, at the beginning of the
affair, there were many earnest, honest fanatics in Paris who joined
the movement. The first demands of the Commune under the influence
of these men were not unreasonable, in American eyes. They asked
that they might elect their own prefect, and that Paris should not be
garrisoned by Government soldiers. But events soon outstripped these
men; and as they found the city given over to organized pillage--the
Committee of Public Safety meeting in secret, instead of in the light
of open day, as they had promised, and the model republic of which
they had dreamed as much a chimera as ever--they withdrew from the
Government. Over twenty of them withdrew in a body, and published
their reasons for doing so. But the scoundrels who now directed
the movement "cared for none of these things." They had used these
poor enthusiasts while it suited their purpose; now they threw them
overboard, and replied to their manifesto by removing the Committee
of Public Safety as too mild, afflicted with scruples, and appointing
one of a bloodier type, one of its members a murderer.
During all this time the Legation was beset from morning till night.
The Alsacians and Lorrains residing in Paris, whom the treaty had
made Germans, but who were nevertheless permitted to choose their
nationality, had fully intended to _opter_ for the French, and
refused with indignation a German nationality. But when they found
that to remain French condemned them to the National Guard, while to
become German enabled them to leave Paris, and return to their homes,
they came in shoals to the Legation to ask for German passports. It
was a renewal of the days before the siege, the days of the German
expulsion. Much of Mr. Washburne's time was taken up in visiting
German prisoners, and procuring their discharge, and sometimes that
of French priests and nuns. To procure the release of Germans was no
very difficult task, for the Commune, as I have said, had a wholesome
fear of the Teuton, and "_Civis Germanicus sum_" was an open-sesame
to Communist prison-doors. But to release the poor French nuns was a
more difficult task. Mr. Washburne effected it in many instances; but
it required all his energy and decision.
And here I must remark how much better and more humane it was to do
as Mr. Washburne did--to hold such communication with the officials
of the Commune as was absolutely necessary, and so save human life,
and mitigate human suffering--than to sit with folded arms, and say,
"Really, I can have nothing to do with those people," and so let
fellow-creatures suffer and perish.
Where there is a will, there is generally a way. Mr. Washburne was
able to assist and protect indirectly many persons whom he could not
claim as American citizens or German subjects. We could not give a
United States passport to a Frenchman, but we could make him a bearer
of dispatches, give him a courier's pass, and so get him safely out
of Paris. Colonel Bonaparte escaped in this way. He was on the "Black
List" of the Commune for arrest, and arrest then meant death.
As the siege progressed, the bombardment became more and more severe.
The beautiful avenue of the Champs Elysées was like a city of the
dead. Not a living creature was to be seen upon it for hours. From
time to time a man would emerge cautiously from a side street, gaze
anxiously up the avenue, then start on a run to cross it. But the
"insatiate thirst of gold" is stronger than the fear of death; and,
at the worst of the bombardment, men and boys were to be seen lurking
near the Arch, and darting upon an exploding shell to secure its
fragments while they were still too hot to hold. A large business was
done in these fragments after the siege, as well as in the unexploded
shells. They were sold as relics; and the Parisian shop-keepers
mounted them as clocks, fenders, inkstands, penholders, and other
_articles de Paris_.
A battery of immense strength was at length erected at Montretout,
near St. Cloud. It was probably the most powerful battery ever
erected in the world. It opened upon the gate of the Point du Jour,
and in a few days the scene of devastation in that quarter was
fearful. Not a house was left standing, scarcely a wall. Bodies of
soldiers of the National Guard lay unburied among the ruins. The fire
was too hot for their comrades to approach them.
In the mean time dissension reigned among the Communists. A new
Committee of Public Safety was appointed. They arrested Cluseret,
their Minister of War, as they had already arrested Lullier. They
accused him of treason, and it would have gone hard with him had the
Commune continued much longer in power. They said that "a hideous
plot had been discovered," but that the guilty were known, and "their
punishment should be exemplary as their crime was unparalleled." They
announced that if the Commune fell, they would fire the city, and its
beauty and its pride should be buried with them. They wrote forcibly,
those fellows! Had they fought with as much vigor as they wrote,
the world would at least have respected their courage, instead of
pronouncing them as cowardly as they were cruel. But their career of
crime and folly was drawing to a close.
One day a citizen of Paris, a civil engineer, was taking his
afternoon walk. As he approached one of the gates, not far from
Auteuil, he was surprised to find no National Guard on duty. He
kept on, and came to the fortifications. There was not a defender
in sight, while the French troops lay outside under cover watching
for some one to fire at. Why they had not discovered the absence
of the enemy can only be accounted for by the general inefficiency
into which the French army had fallen. The engineer raised his white
handkerchief on his cane, and when he saw that it was observed,
quietly walked through the ruins of the work, crossed the fosse, and
asked the officer in command why on earth he did not come in; there
was a gate, and no one to defend it. It occurred to the officer that
it might be as well to do so; that perhaps that was what he was
there for: so he marched in with his company, and Paris was taken.
It was rather an anticlimax! After a delay of months, and a fierce
bombardment, to enter Paris on the invitation of a citizen taking
his afternoon walk! It was never known how that gate came to be left
unguarded. It was probably owing to dissensions in the Commune. The
battalion holding it had not been relieved, as they expected to be;
so they voted that they would not stay any longer, shouldered their
muskets, and marched off.
The troops entered on the 22d of May. Once fairly in, the work
was comparatively easy; but they proceeded with great caution. It
was said that Gallifet urged that he should take his cavalry, and
scour the city. I believe that he could have done it on that day,
for the Communists were thoroughly demoralized; but it was thought
to be too hazardous an operation for cavalry. The next morning the
troops advanced unopposed as far as the Place de la Concorde. I
have the word of an American friend, whose apartment looked upon
the Place, that the strong barricade which connected the Rue St.
Florentin with the Tuileries Gardens was then undefended, and that
if the troops had advanced promptly they could have carried it
without resistance; but while they sent forward their skirmishers,
who found no one to skirmish with, and advanced with the utmost
caution, a battery, followed by a battalion of the National Guard,
galloped up from the Hôtel de Ville. The troops then began regular
approaches. They entered the adjoining houses, passing from roof to
roof, and occupying the upper windows, till finally they commanded
the barricade, and fired down upon its defenders. They filled barrels
with sand, and rolled them toward the barrier. Each barrel covered
two skirmishers, who alternately rolled the barrel and picked off the
defenders of the barricade if they ventured to show themselves. My
informant saw a young and apparently good-looking woman spring upon
the barricade, a red flag in her hand, and wave it defiantly at the
troops. She was instantly shot dead. When the work was carried, an
old woman was led out to be shot. She was placed with her back to the
wall of the Tuileries Gardens, and, as the firing party leveled their
pieces, she put her fingers to her nose, and worked them after the
manner of the defiant in all ages, or, as Dickens expresses it, "as
if she were grinding an imaginary coffee-mill."
Many of their strongest positions were abandoned by the insurgents,
having been turned by the troops. Those that resisted fell one after
the other, carried in the way I have described. Indeed, I can see
no possibility of a barricade holding out unless the adjacent houses
are held too. That at the head of the Rue St. Florentin was of great
strength, a regular work; for the Communists had several excellent
engineers in their ranks, graduates of the military schools, men who
had been disappointed under the Government in not meeting with the
promotion they thought they deserved, and so joined the Commune. The
ditch of the barricade St. Florentin was about sixteen feet deep.
It made a convenient burying-ground. The dead Communists, men and
women, were huddled into it, quicklime added, and the fosse filled
up. As the pleasure-seeker enters the Rue de Rivoli from the Place
de la Concorde he passes over the bodies of forty or fifty miserable
wretches--most of them scoundrels of the deepest dye--but among them
some wild fanatics, and some poor victims of the Commune, forced
unwillingly into its ranks.
Much must be pardoned to soldiers heated with battle, and taught
to believe every prisoner they take an incarnate devil. But making
all allowances, there is no excuse for the wholesale butcheries
committed by the troops. A friend of mine saw a house in the
Boulevard Malesherbes visited by a squad of soldiers. They asked
the _concierge_ if there were any Communists concealed there. She
answered that there were none. They searched the house, and found
one. They took him out and shot him, and then shot her. One of the
attachés of the Legation saw in the Avenue d'Autin the bodies of six
children, the eldest apparently not over fourteen, shot to death as
_pétroleuses_, suspected of carrying petroleum to fire the houses.
There was no trial of any kind, no drum-head court-martial even, such
as the laws of civilized warfare require under all circumstances.
Any lieutenant ordered prisoners to be shot as the fancy took him,
and no questions were asked. Many an innocent spectator perished in
those days. An English officer had a narrow escape. He approached a
crowd of prisoners halted for a moment on the Champs Elysées; and
when they moved on, the guard roped him in with the rest, and would
not listen to a word of explanation. Happily he was able to attract
the attention of the Marquis de Gallifet and explain his position.
An officer of high rank who was escorting a batch of prisoners to
Versailles is said to have halted in the Bois, ridden down the
column, picked out those whose faces he particularly disliked, and
had them shot on the spot. The number of lives taken after the defeat
of the Commune can never be accurately known; but it was generally
computed at the time to exceed the number of those lost in both
sieges.
Petroleum next became the madness of the hour. Every woman carrying
a bottle was suspected of being a _pétroleuse_. The most absurd
stories were told of its destructive properties. Organized bands of
women were said to be patrolling the streets armed with bottles of
petroleum. This they threw into the cellar windows, and then set
fire to it. The windows were barred, and the cellars in Paris are
universally built in stone and concrete. How they effected their
purpose under these circumstances is not readily seen. If this was
their _modus operandi_, they were the most inexpert incendiaries ever
known. The Commune should blush for its pupils in crime. I do not
believe in the petroleum story, and I do not think that one-third of
the population believed in it. Yet such was the power of suspicion
in those days, and such the distrust of one's neighbor, that every
staid and sober housekeeper bricked up his cellar windows, and for
weeks in the beautiful summer weather not an open window was to be
seen on the lower stories. No doubt every second man thought it a
great piece of folly thus to shut out light and air from his lower
stories; but if he had not done as his neighbors did, he would have
been denounced by them as a _pétroleux_.
The leaders of the Commune, as I have said, had sworn that, if the
city were taken, they would blow up the public buildings, and bury
every thing in a common ruin. Happily, their good-will exceeded their
ability. They had no time to execute their atrocious projects. They
burned the Tuileries, the Finances, the Hôtel de Ville, the Comptes,
the Hotel of the Legion of Honor, and a small portion of the Palais
Royal. The only irreparable loss was that of the Hôtel de Ville. The
Finances, the Comptes, and the Legion of Honor had no imperishable
historical associations connected with them. The Tuileries was an
old and inconvenient building. The Emperor had already rebuilt it in
part. Plans for reconstructing the whole building had been prepared
and still exist, and nothing but the want of money had prevented
their being carried into execution long before.
I do not propose to dwell upon the horrors of the nights of the
23d and 24th of May, when all Paris appeared to be in flames. The
view from the high ground upon which the Legation stands was very
striking. A pall of smoke hung over the city by day, and pillars
of fire lighted it by night. One of the most painful features of
those days was the prolonged suspense. We did not know which of
the magnificent monuments of Paris were in flames; for the troops
permitted no approach, and the most startling rumors were current.
The Louvre was at one time in danger, but happily escaped.
I pass over, too, the cruelties of the march of the prisoners to
Versailles, and the sufferings they there endured. These things
are written in the annals of the times, and no good can be done
by reviving them. Beautiful France has been sorely tried with
revolutions. Let us hope that she has seen the last.
In the hotel of the German Embassy at Paris may be seen several
articles of value, mostly Sèvres and Dresden china, which the
German Government desires to present to Mr. Washburne, General
Read, and some few other officers of the United States, in token of
its gratitude for services rendered to German subjects during the
war. These articles can not be received without the permission of
Congress. The House promptly passed the joint resolution. The Senate
still hesitates. Mr. Fox, formerly Assistant Secretary of the Navy,
and the officers who accompanied him to Russia, were permitted to
receive such presents as "the Emperor might see fit to give them."
Are Mr. Washburne and his subordinates, who certainly rendered some
services, and suffered some hardships, less entitled to receive this
permission than Mr. Fox and his companions, who took a monitor to
Cronstadt?
* * * * * *
Transcriber's note:
Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been
corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within
the text and consultation of external sources.
Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text,
and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained. For example,
reconnoissance; embassador; encumbered, incumbrance; titbit.
Pg 10, 'Bass-reliefs' replaced by 'Bas-reliefs'.
Pg 234, 'mlliards' replaced by 'milliards'.
Pg 256, 'Bass-reliefs' replaced by 'Bas-reliefs'.
Pg 270, 'bass-reliefs' replaced by 'bas-reliefs'.