The roaring of cannon close at hand, the whizzing of shells, volleys of
musketry! I hear this in my sleep, and awake with a start. I dress and
go out. I am told the troops have come in. “How? where? when?” I ask of
the National Guards who come rushing down the street, crying out, “We
are betrayed!” They, however, know but very little. They have come from
the Trocadero, and have seen the red trousers of the soldiers in the
distance. Fighting is going on near the viaduct of Auteuil, at the
Champ de Mars. Did the assault take place last night or this morning?
It is quite impossible to obtain any reliable information. Some talk of
a civil engineer having made signals to the Versaillais; others say a
captain in the navy was the first to enter Paris.[98] Suddenly about
thirty men rush into the streets crying, “We must make a barricade.” I
turn back, fearing to be pressed into the service. The cannonading
appears dreadfully near. A shell whistles over my head. I hear some one
say, “The batteries of Montmartre are bombarding the Arc de Triomphe;”
and strange enough, in this moment of horror and uncertainty, the
thought crosses my mind that now the side of the arch on which is the
bas-relief of Rude will be exposed to the shells. On the Boulevard
there is only here and there a passenger hurrying along. The shops are
closed; even the café’s are shut up. The harsh screech of the
mitrailleuse grows louder and nearer. The battle seems to be close at
hand, all round me. A thousand contradictory suppositions rush through
my brain and hurry me along, and here on the Boulevard there is no one
that can tell me anything. I walk in the direction of the Madeleine,
drawn there by a violent desire to know what is going on, which
silences the voice of prudence. As I approach the Chaussée d’Antin I
perceive a multitude of men, women, and children running backwards and
forwards, carrying paving-stones. A barricade is being thrown up; it is
already more than three feet high. Suddenly I hear the rolling of heavy
wheels; I turn, and a strange sight is before me—a mass of women in
rags, livid, horrible, and yet grand, with the Phrygian cap on their
heads, and the skirts of their robes tied round their waists, were
harnessed to a mitrailleuse, which they dragged along at full speed;
other women pushing vigorously behind. The whole procession, in its
sombre colours, with dashes of red here and there, thunders past me; I
follow it as fast as I can. The mitrailleuse draws up a little in front
of the barricade, and is hailed with wild clamours by the insurgents.
The Amazons are being unharnessed as I come up. “Now,” said a young
_gamin_, such as one used to see in the gallery of the Théâtre Porte
St. Martin, “don’t you be acting the spy here, or I will break your
head open as if you were a Versaillais.”—“Don’t waste ammunition,”
cried an old man with a long white beard—a patriarch of civil
war—“don’t waste ammunition; and as for the spy, let him help to carry
paving-stones. Monsieur,” said he, turning to me with much politeness,
“will you be so kind as to go and fetch those stones from the corner
there?”
[Illustration: Café Life Under the Commune.
Spectacles of Paris.]
I did as I was bid, although I thought, with anything but pleasure,
that if at that moment the barricade were attacked and taken, I might
be shot before I had the time to say, “Allow me to explain.” But the
scene which surrounds me interests me in spite of myself. Those grim
hags, with their red headdresses, passing the stones I give them
rapidly from hand to hand, the men who are building them up only
leaving off for a moment now and then to swallow a cup of coffee, which
a young girl prepares over a small tin stove; the rifles symmetrically
piled; the barricade, which rises higher and higher; the solitude in
which we are working—only here and there a head appears at a window,
and is quickly withdrawn; the ever-increasing noise of the battle; and,
over all, the brightness of a dazzling morning sun—all this has
something sinister and yet horribly captivating about it. While we are
at work, they talk; I listen. The Versaillais have been coming in all
night.[99] The Porte de la Muette and the Porte Dauphine have been
surrendered by the 13th and the 113th battalions of the first
arrondissement. “Those two numbers 13 will bring them ill-luck,” says a
woman. Vinoy is established at the Trocadéro, and Douai at the Point du
Jour: they continue to advance. The Champ de Mars has been taken from
the Federals after two hours’ fighting. A battery is erected at the Arc
de Triomphe, which sweeps the Champs Elysées and bombards the
Tuileries. A shell has fallen in the Rue du Marché Saint Honoré. In the
Cours-la-Reine the 188th battalion stood bravely. The Tuileries is
armed with guns, and shells the Arc de Triomphe. In the Avenue de
Marigny the gendarmes have shot twelve Federals who had surrendered;
their bodies are still lying on the pavement in front of the
tobacconist’s. Rue de Sèvres, the _Vengeurs de Flourens_ have put to
flight a whole regiment of the line: the _Vengeurs_ have sworn to
resist to a man. They are fighting in the Champs Élysées, around the
Ministère de la Guerre, and on the Boulevard Haussman. Dombrowski has
been killed at the Château de la Muette. The Versaillais have attacked
the Western Saint Lazare station, and are marching towards the
Pépinière barracks. “We have been sold, betrayed, and surprised; but
what does it matter, we will triumph. We want no more chiefs or
generals; behind the barricades every man is a marshal!”
[Illustration: Poor Pradier’s statues.
Place de La Concorde: LILLE suffers from her friends in fight, whilst
STRASBOURG, in crape, mourns the foe of France.]
[Illustration: Fire And Water—The effect of fire on the fountains of the
Place de la Concorde and the Château d’Eau—Hirondelles de Paris]
Eight or ten men come flying down the Chaussée d’Antin; they join,
crying out, “The Versaillais have taken the barracks; they are
establishing a battery. Delescluze has been captured at the Ministère
de la Guerre.”—“It is false!” exclaims a vivandière; “we have just seen
him at the Hôtel de Ville.”—“Yes, yes,” cry out other women, “he is at
the Hôtel de Ville. He gave us a mitrailleuse. Jules Vallès embraced
us, one after another; he is a fine man, he is! He told us all was
going well, that the Versaillais should never have Paris, that we shall
surround them, and that it will all be over in two days.”—“Vive la
Commune!” is the reply. The barricade is by this time finished. They
expect to be attacked every second. “You,” said a sergeant, “you had
better be off, if you care for your life.” I do not wait for the man to
repeat his warning. I retrace my steps up the Boulevard, which is less
solitary than it was. Several groups are standing at the doors. It
appears quite certain that the troops of the Assembly have been pretty
successful since they came in. The Federals, surprised by the
suddenness and number of the attacks, at first lost much ground. But
the resistance is being organised. They hold their own at the Place de
la Concorde; at the Place Vendôme they are very numerous, and have at
their disposal a formidable amount of artillery. Montmartre is shelling
furiously. I turn up the Rue Vivienne, where I meet several people in
search of news. They tell me that “two battalions of the Faubourg Saint
Germain have just gone over to the troops, with their muskets reversed.
A captain of the National Guard has been the first in that quarter to
unfurl the tricolour. A shell had set fire to the Ministère des
Finances, but the firemen in the midst of the shot and shell had
managed to put it out.” At the Place de la Bourse I find three of four
hundred Federals constructing a barricade; having gained some
experience, I hurry on to escape the trouble of being pressed into the
service. The surrounding streets are almost deserted; Paris is in
hiding. The cannonading is becoming more furious every minute. I cross
the garden of the Palais Royal. There I see a few loiterers, a knot of
children are skipping. The Rue de Rivoli is all alive with people. A
battalion marches hurriedly from the Hôtel de Ville; at the head rides
a young man mounted on a superb black horse. It is Dombrowski. I had
been told he was dead. He is very pale. “A fragment of shell hit him in
the chest at La Muette, but did not enter the flesh,” says some one.
The men sing the _Chant du Départ_ as they march along. I see a few
women carrying arms among the insurgents; one who walks just behind
Dombrowski has a child in her arms. Looking in the direction of the
Place de la Concorde, I see smoke arising from the terrace of the
Tuileries. In front of the Ministère des Finances, this side of the
barricade is a black mass of something; I think I can distinguish
wheels; it is either cannon or engines. All around is confusion. I can
hear the musketry distinctly, but the noise seems to come from the
Champs Élysées; they are not firing at the barricade. I turn and walk
towards the Hôtel de Ville: mounted expresses ride constantly past;
companies of Federals are here and there lying on the ground around
their piled muskets. By the Rue du Louvre there is another barricade; a
little further there is another and then another.[100] Close to Saint
Germain l’Auxerrois women are busy pulling down the wooden seats;
children are rolling empty wine-barrels and carrying sacks of earth. As
one nears the Hôtel de Ville the barricades are higher, better armed,
and better manned. All the Nationals here look ardent, resolved, and
fierce. They say little, and do not shout at all. Two guards, seated on
the pavement, are playing at picquet. I push on, and am allowed to
pass. The barricades are terminated here, and I have nothing to fear
from paving-stones. Looking up, I see that all the windows are closed,
with the exception of one, where two old women are busy putting a
mattress between the window and the shutter. A sentinel, mounting guard
in front of the Café de la Compagnie du Gaz, cries out to me, “You
can’t pass here!” I therefore seat myself at a table in front of the
café, which has doubtless been left open by order, and where several
officers are talking in a most animated manner. One of them rises and
advances towards me. He asks me rudely what I am doing there. I will
not allow myself to be abashed by his tone, but draw out my pass from
my pocket and show it him, without saying a word. “All right,” says he,
and then seats himself by my side, and tells me, “I know it already,
that a part of the left bank of the river is occupied by the troops of
the Assembly, that fighting is going on everywhere, and that the army
on this side is gradually retreating.—Street fighting is our affair,
you see,” he continues. In such battles as that, the merest gamin from
Belleville knows more about it than MacMahon.... It will be terrible.
The enemy shoots the prisoners.” (For the last two months the Commune
had been saying the same thing.) “We shall give no quarter.”—I ask him,
“Is it Delescluze who is determined to resist?”—“Yes,” he answers.[101]
“Lean forward a little. Look at those three windows to the left of the
trophy. That is the Salle de l’État-Major. Delescluze is there giving
orders, signing commissions. He has not slept for three days. Just now
I scarcely knew him, he was so worn out with fatigue. The Committee of
Public Safety sits permanently in a room adjoining, making out
proclamations and decrees.”—“Ha, ha!” said I, “decrees!”—“Yes, citizen,
he has just decreed heroism!”[102] The officer gives me several other
bits of information. Tells me that “Lullier this very morning has had
thirty _réfractaires_ shot, and that Rigault has gone to Mazas to look
after the hostages.” While he is talking, I try to see what is going on
in the Place de l’Hôtel de Ville. Two or three thousand Federals are
there, some seated, some lying on the ground. A lively discussion is
going on. Several little barrels are standing about on chairs; the men
are continually getting up and crowding round the barrels, some have no
glasses, but drink in the palms of their hands. Women walk up and down
in bands, gesticulating wildly. The men shout, the women shriek.
Mounted expresses gallop out of the Hôtel, some in the direction of the
Bastille, some towards the Place de la Concorde. The latter fly past us
crying out, “All’s well!” A man comes out on the balcony of the Hôtel
de Ville and addresses the crowd. All the Federals start to their feet
enthusiastically.—“That’s Vallès,” says my neighbour to me. I had
already recognised him. I frequently saw him in the students’ quarter
in a little _crémerie_ in the Rue Serpente. He was given to making
verses, rather bad ones by-the-bye; I remember one in particular, a
panegyric on a green coat. They used to say he had a situation in the
_pompes funèbres_.[103] His face even then wore a bitter and violent
expression. He left poetry for journalism, and then journalism for
politics.
[Illustration: Jules Vallès, Commissioner Of Public instruction[104]]
To-day he is spouting forth at a window of the Hôtel de Ville. I cannot
catch a word of what he says; but as he retires he is wildly applauded.
Such applause pains me sadly. I feel that these men and these women are
mad for blood, and will know how to die. Alas! how many dead and dying
already! neither the cannonading nor the musketry has ceased an
instant. I now see a number of women walk out of the Hôtel, the crowd
makes room for them to pass. They come our way. They are dressed in
black, and have black crape tied round their arms and a red cockade in
their bonnets. My friend the officer tells me that they are the
governesses who have taken the places of the nuns. Then he walks up to
them and says, “Have you succeeded?”—“Yes,” answers one of them, “here
is our commission. The school children are to be employed in making
sacks and filling them with earth, the eldest ones to load the rifles
behind the barricades. They will receive rations like National Guards,
and a pension will be given to the mothers of those who die for the
Republic. They are mad to fight, I assure you. We have made them work
hard during the last month, this will be their holiday!” The woman who
says this is young and pretty, and speaks with a sweet smile on her
lips. I shudder. Suddenly two staff officers appear and ride furiously
up to the Hôtel de Ville; they have come from the Place Vendôme. An
instant later and the trumpets sound. The companies form in the Place,
and great agitation reigns in the Hôtel. Men rush in and out. The
officers who are in the café where I am get up instantly, and go to
take their places at the head of their men. A rumour spreads that the
Versaillais have taken the barricades on the Place de la Concorde.—“By
Jove! I think you had better go home,” says my neighbour to me, as he
clasps his sword belt; “we shall have hot work here, and that shortly.”
I think it prudent to follow this advice. One glance at the Place
before I go. The companies of Federals have just started off by the Rue
de Rivoli and the quays at a quick march, crying “Vive la Commune!” a
ferocious joy beaming in their faces. A young man, almost a lad, lags a
little behind, a woman rushes up to him, and lays hold of his collar,
screaming, “Well, and you, are you not going to get yourself killed
with the others?”
[Illustration: Barricade Dividing the Rue de Rivoli and The Place De La
Concorde]
I reach the Rue Vieille-du-Temple, where another barricade is being
built up. I place a paving-stone upon it and pass on. Soon I see open
shops and passengers in the streets. This tradesmen’s quarter seems to
have outlived the riot of Paris. Here one might almost forget the
frightful civil war which wages so near, if the conversation of those
around did not betray the anguish of the speakers, and if you did not
hear the cannon roaring out unceasingly, “People of Paris, listen to
me! I am ruining your houses. Listen to me! I am killing your
children.”
On the boulevards more barricades; some nearly finished, others
scarcely commenced. One constructed near the Porte Saint Martin looks
formidable. That spot seems destined to be the theatre of bloody
scenes, of riot and revolution. In 1852, corpses laid piled up behind
the railing, and all the pavement tinged with blood. I return home
profoundly sad; I can scarcely think.—I feel in a dream, and am tired
to death; my eyelids droop of themselves; I am like one of those houses
there with closed shutters.
Near the Gymnase I meet a friend whom I thought was at Versailles. We
shake hands sadly. “When did you come back?” I ask.—“To-day; I followed
the troops.”—Then turning back with me he tells me what he has seen. He
had a pass, and walked into Paris behind the artillery and the line, as
far as the Trocadéro, where the soldiers halted to take up their line
of battle. Not a single man was visible along the whole length of the
quays. At the Champ de Mars he did not see any insurgents. The musketry
seemed very violent near Vaugirard on the Pont Royal and around the
Palais de l’Industrie. Shells from Montmartre repeatedly fell on the
quays. He could not see much,—however only the smoke in the distance.
Not a soul did he meet. Such frightful noise in such solitude was
fearful. He continued his way under shelter of the parapet. In one
place he saw some gamins cutting huge pieces of flesh off the dead body
of a horse that was lying in the path. There must have been fighting
there. Down by the water a man fishing while two shells fell in the
river, a little higher up, a yard or two from the shore. Then he
thought it prudent to get nearer to the Palais de l’Industrie. The
fighting was nearly over then, but not quite. The Champs Elysées was
melancholy in the extreme; not a soul was there. This was only too
literally true; for several corpses lay on the ground. He saw a soldier
of the line lying beneath a tree, his forehead covered with blood. The
man opened his month as if to speak as he heard the sound of footsteps,
the eyelids quivered and then there was a shiver, and all was over. My
friend walked slowly away. He saw trees thrown down and bronze
lamp-posts broken; glass crackled under his feet as he passed near the
ruined kiosques. Every now and then turning his head he saw shells from
Montmartre fall on the Arc de Triomphe and break off large fragments of
stone. Near the Tuileries was a confused mass of soldiery against a
background of smoke. Suddenly he heard the whizzing of a ball and saw
the branch of a tree fall. From one end of the avenue to the other, no
one; the road glistened white in the sun. Many dead were to be seen
lying about as he crossed the Champs Elysées. All the streets to the
left were full of soldiery; there had been fighting there, but it was
over now. The insurgents had retreated in the direction of the
Madeleine. In many places tricolor flags were hanging from the windows,
and women were smiling, and waving their handkerchiefs to the troops.
The presence of the soldiery seemed to reassure everybody. The
concierges were seated before their doors with pipes in their mouths,
recounting to attentive listeners the perils from which they had
escaped; how balls pierced the mattresses put up at the windows, and
how the Federals had got into the houses to hide. One said, “I found
three of them in my court; I told a lieutenant they were there, and he
had them shot. But I wish they would take them away; I cannot keep dead
bodies in the house.” Another was talking with some soldiers, and
pointing out a house to them. Four men and a corporal went into the
place indicated, and an instant afterwards my friend heard the cracking
of rifles. The concierge rubbed his hands and winked at the bystanders,
while another was saying, “They respect nothing those Federals; during
the battle they came in to steal. They wanted to take away my clothes,
my linen, everything I have, but I told them to leave that, that it was
not good enough for them, that they ought to go up to the first floor,
where they would find clocks and plate, and I gave them the key. Well,
Messieurs, you would never believe what they have done, the rascals!
They took the key and went and pillaged everything on the first floor!”
My friend had heard enough, and passed on. The agitation everywhere was
very great. The soldiers went hither and thither, rang the bells, went
into the houses; and brought out with them pale-faced prisoners. The
inhabitants continued to smile politely, but grimly. Here and there
dead bodies were lying in the road. A man who was pushing a truck
allowed one of the wheels to pass over a corpse that was lying with its
head on the curbstone. “Bah!” said he, “it won’t do him any harm.” The
dead and wounded were, however, being carried away as quickly as
possible.
[Illustration: Shell Hole—a Convenient Seat. Shot marks: en profil—In
the rues—On the boulevards: Plus de lumière!! Plus d’ombre!!—Bullet
hole: en face.]
The cannon had now ceased roaring, and the fight was still going on
close at hand—at the Tuileries doubtless. The townspeople were tranquil
and the soldiery disdainful. A strange contrast; all these good
citizens smiling and chatting, and the soldiers, who had come to save
them at the peril of their lives, looking down upon them with the most
careless indifference. My friend reached the Boulevard Haussmann; there
the corpses were in large numbers. He counted thirty in less than a
hundred yards. Some were lying under the doorways; a dead woman was
seated on the bottom stair of one of the houses. Near the church of “La
Trinité” were two guns, the reports from which were deafening; several
of the shells fell on a bathing establishment in the Rue Taitbout
opposite the Boulevard. On the Boulevard itself, not a person was to be
seen. Here and there dark masses, corpses doubtless. However, the
moment the noise of the report of a gun had died away, and while the
gunners were reloading, heads were thrust out from doors to see what
damage had been done—to count the number of trees broken, benches torn
up, and kiosques overturned. From some of the windows rifles were
fired. My friend then reached the street he lived in and went home. He
was told that during the morning they had violently bombarded the
Collège Chaptal, where the Zouaves of the Commune had fortified
themselves; but the engagement was not a long one, they made several
prisoners and shot the rest.
My friend shut himself up at home, determined not to go out. But his
impatience to see and hear what was going on forced him into the
streets again. The Pépinière barracks were occupied by troops of the
line; he was able to get to the New Opera without trouble, leaving the
Madeleine, where dreadful fighting was going on, to the right. On the
way were to be seen piled muskets, soldiers sitting and lying about,
and corpses everywhere. He then managed, without incurring too much
danger, to reach the Boulevards, where the insurgents, who were then
very numerous, had not yet been attacked. He worked for some little
time at the barricade, and then was allowed to pass on. It was thus
that we had met. Just as we were about to turn up the Faubourg
Montmartre a man rushed up saying that three hundred Federals had taken
refuge in the church of the Madeleine, followed by gendarmes, and had
gone on fighting for more than an hour. “Now,” he finished up by
saying, “if the _curé_ were to return he would find plenty of people to
bury!”
I am now at home. Evening has come at last; I am jotting down these
notes just as they come into my head. I am too much fatigued both in
mind and body to attempt to put my thoughts into order. The cannonading
is incessant, and the fusillade also. I pity those that die, and those
that kill! Oh! poor Paris, when will experience make you wiser?