It was not enough that men should be riddled with balls and torn to
pieces by shells. The women are also seized with a strange enthusiasm
in their turn, and they too fall on the battle-field, victims of a
terrible heroism. What extraordinary beings are these who exchange the
needle for the needle-gun, the broom for the bayonet, who quit their
children that they may die by the sides of their husbands or lovers?
Amazons of the rabble, magnificent and abject, something between
Penthesilea and Théroigne de Méricourt. There they are seen to pass as
cantinières, among those who go forth to fight. The men are furious,
the women are ferocious,—nothing can appal, nothing discourage them. At
Neuilly, a vivandière is wounded in the head; she turns back a moment
to staunch the blood, then returns to her post of danger. Another, in
the 61st Battalion, boasts of having killed three _gardiens de la
paix_[51] and several _gendarmes_. On the plain of Châtillon a woman
joins a group of National Guards, takes her stand amongst them, loads
her gun, fires, re-loads and fires again, without the slightest
interruption. She is the last to retire, and even then turns back again
and again to fire. A _cantinière_ of the 68th Battalion was killed by a
fragment of shell which broke the little spirit-barrel she carried, and
sent the splinters into her stomach. After the engagement of the 3rd of
April, nine bodies were brought to the _mairie_ of Vaugirard. The poor
women of the quarter crowd there, chattering and groaning, to look for
husbands, brothers and son’s. They tear a dingy lantern from each
other, and put it close to the pale faces of the dead, amongst whom
they find the body of a young woman literally riddled with shot. What
means the wild rage that seizes upon these furies? Are they conscious
of the crimes they commit; do they understand the cause for which they
die? Yesterday, in a shop of the Rue de Montreuil, a woman entered with
her gun on her shoulder and her bayonet covered with blood. “Wouldn’t
you do better to stay at home and wash your brats?” said an indignant
neighbour. Whereupon arose a furious altercation, the virago working
herself into such a fury that she sprang upon her adversary, and bit
her violently in the throat, then withdrew a few steps, seized her gun,
and was going to fire, when she suddenly turned pale, her weapon fell
from her hands, and she sank back dead. In her wild passion she had
broken a blood vessel. Such are the women of the people in this
terrible year of 1871. It has its _cantinières_ as ’93 had its
_tricoteuses_,[52] but the cantinières are preferable, for the horrible
in them partakes of a savage grandeur. Fighting as they are against
brothers and kinsfolk, they are revolting, but against a foreign enemy,
they would have been sublime.
Children, even, do not remain passive in this fearful conflict. The
children! you cry,—but do not smile; one of my friends has just seen a
poor boy whose eye has been knocked in with the point of a nail. It
happened thus. It was on Friday evening in the principal street of
Neuilly. Two hundred boys—the eldest scarcely twelve years old—had
assembled there; they carried sticks on their shoulders, with knives
and nails stuck at the end of them. They had their army roll, and their
numbers were called over in form, and their chiefs—for they had
chiefs—gave the order to form into half sections, then to march in the
direction of Charenton; a mite of a child trudged before, blowing in a
penny trumpet bought at a toy-shop, and they had a cantinière, a little
girl of six. Soon, they met another troop of children of about the same
numbers. Had the encounter been previously arranged? Had it been
decided that they should give battle? I cannot tell you this, but at
all events the battle took place, one party being for the Versailles
troops, the other for the Federals. Such a battle, that the inhabitants
of the quarter had the greatest difficulty in separating the
combatants, and there were killed and wounded, as the official
despatches of the Commune would give it; Alexis Mercier, a lad of
twelve, whom his comrades had raised to the dignity of captain, was
killed by the blow of a knife in the stomach.
Ah! believe it, these women drunk with hate, these children playing at
murder, are symptoms of the terrible malady of the times. A few days
hence, and this fury for slaughter will have seized all Paris.