2. The election by the National Guard of all its officers, including
the general.
3. Municipal franchises for Paris—that is to say, the right of the
citizens to meet—to appoint magistrates for the city, and to tax
themselves by their representatives.
On being appointed he made it a condition that the initiative should
rest with him, and then he began to execute his duties with a zeal
which never relaxed till his arrest on the 22nd March. By his orders,
barricades were erected in the Rue de Rivoli, where he massed the
insurgent forces. He ordered the occupation of the Hôtel de Ville and
the Napoleon Barracks by Brunel, the commander of the insurgents. At
midnight he took possession of the Prefecture of Police, at one o’clock
of the Tuileries, at two o’clock of the Place du Palais Royal, and at
four o’clock he was informed that the Ministry were to meet at the
Foreign Office.—“I would have surrounded them,” he said, “but Jules
Favre’s presence withheld me. I contented myself therefore with
occupying the Place Vendôme, the Hôtel de Ville, and ordering
strategical points on the right bank of the river and four on the
left.”
He was subsequently accused of having sold Mont Valérien to the
Versailles authorities, arrested, and thrown into the Conciergerie. He
reappeared, however, on the 14th April as commander of the flotilla of
the Commune. Furious with the Central Committee and the Commune he
opposed them and was arrested, but contrived to escape from Mazas. From
that moment the general of the Commune put himself in communication
with Versailles through the mediation of M. Camus and Baron Dathiel de
la Tuque, who agreed with him to organise a counter revolution. Lullier
was now busily employed in endeavouring to make people forget the part
he had taken in the insurrection of the 18th March. He had made it a
condition that neither he nor his accomplices, Gomez d’Absin and
Bisson, should be prosecuted. The expenses were calculated at 30,000
francs; of which M. Camus gave 2000 francs to Lullier, but the scheme
did not succeed. Lullier undertook to have all the members of the
Commune arrested, and to send the hostages to Versailles. Lullier is a
man of courage, foolhardy even, who never hesitated to fight, and if at
the end of the Commune he tried to serve the legitimate government, it
was from a spirit of revenge against the men who had refused his
dictation, and in his own interest.