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HISTORY
OF
THE COMMUNE OF 1871
THE REFORMERS' BOOKSHELF.
_Large crown 8vo., cloth, 3s. 6d. each._
1. THE ENGLISH PEASANT: His Past and Present. By RICHARD
HEATH.
2. THE LABOUR MOVEMENT. By L. T. HOBHOUSE, M.A.
Preface by R. B. HALDANE, M.P.
3 & 4. SIXTY YEARS OF AN AGITATOR'S LIFE: George Jacob
Holyoake's Autobiography. 2 vols.
5 & 6. BAMFORD'S PASSAGES IN THE LIFE OF A RADICAL. Edited,
and with an Introduction by HENRY DUNCKLEY ("Verax"). 2 vols.
7. RICHARD COBDEN AND THE JUBILEE OF FREE TRADE. By P.
LEROY-BEAULIEU, HENRY DUNCKLEY ("Verax"), Dr. THEODOR BARTH,
the Right Hon. LEONARD COURTNEY, M.P., and the Right Hon.
CHARLES VILLIERS, M.P.
8 & 9. THE ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY: Lectures on
Political Economy and its History, delivered at Oxford,
1887-1888. By Professor THOROLD ROGERS. Third edition. 2 vols.
10 & 11. THE INDUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
By Professor THOROLD ROGERS. 2 vols.
12. THE GLADSTONE COLONY. By JAMES FRANCIS HOGAN, M.P.
13 & 14. CHARLES BRADLAUGH: A Record of His Life and Work.
By His Daughter, HYPATIA BRADLAUGH BONNER. 2 vols.
15 & 16. THE INNER LIFE OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. Selected
from the Writings of WILLIAM WHITE, with a Prefatory Note by
his Son, and an Introduction by JUSTIN MCCARTHY, M.P.
17. POLITICAL CRIME. By LOUIS PROAL.
18 & 19. THE LIFE OF RICHARD COBDEN. By JOHN MORLEY. 2 vols.
LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN.
HISTORY
of
THE COMMUNE OF 1871
FROM THE FRENCH OF
LISSAGARAY
[Illustration]
LONDON
T. FISHER UNWIN
1902
CONTENTS.
PROLOGUE.
PAGE
HOW THE PRUSSIANS GOT PARIS AND THE RURALS FRANCE 1
CHAPTER I.
FIRST ATTACKS OF THE COALITION AGAINST PARIS--THE BATTALIONS
OF THE NATIONAL GUARD FEDERALISE AND SEIZE THEIR CANNON--THE
PRUSSIANS ENTER PARIS 58
CHAPTER II.
THE COALITION OPENS FIRE ON PARIS--THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE
CONSTITUTES ITSELF--M. THIERS ORDERS THE ASSAULT 69
CHAPTER III.
THE EIGHTEENTH OF MARCH 78
CHAPTER IV.
THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE CONVOKES THE ELECTORS--THE MAYORS OF
PARIS AND DEPUTIES OF THE SEINE TURN AGAINST IT 88
CHAPTER V.
THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE AFFIRMS ITSELF, REORGANISES THE PUBLIC
SERVICES, AND HOLDS PARIS 101
CHAPTER VI.
THE MAYORS, THE DEPUTIES, THE JOURNALISTS, THE ASSEMBLY
COMBINE AGAINST PARIS--THE REACTION MARCHES ON THE PLACE
VENDOME, AND IS PUNISHED 108
CHAPTER VII.
THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE TRIUMPHS OVER ALL OBSTACLES AND
CONSTRAINS THE MAYORS TO CAPITULATE 116
CHAPTER VIII.
PROCLAMATION OF THE COMMUNE 126
CHAPTER IX.
THE COMMUNE AT LYONS, ST. ETIENNE, AND CREUZOT 131
CHAPTER X.
THE COMMUNE AT MARSEILLES, TOULOUSE, AND NARBONNE 142
CHAPTER XI.
THE COUNCIL OF THE COMMUNE WAVERS FROM ITS FIRST SITTINGS
--THE MAYORS AND ADJUNCTS ELECTED DESERT EN MASSE 153
CHAPTER XII.
SORTIE OF THE THIRD APRIL--THE PARISIANS ARE REPULSED
EVERYWHERE--FLOURENS AND DUVAL ARE KILLED--THE VERSAILLESE
MASSACRE SOME PRISONERS 162
CHAPTER XIII.
THE COMMUNE IS VANQUISHED AT MARSEILLES AND NARBONNE 171
CHAPTER XIV.
THE GREAT RESOURCES OF THE COMMUNE--THE GREAT WEAKNESS OF
THE COUNCIL--NOMINATION OF CLUSERET--DECREE CONCERNING THE
HOSTAGES--THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE--THE BANK 182
CHAPTER XV.
THE FIRST COMBATS OF NEUILLY AND ANSNIERES--ORGANISATION AND
DEFEAT OF THE CONCILIATORS 190
CHAPTER XVI.
THE MANIFESTO OF THE COUNCIL--THE COMPLIMENTARY ELECTIONS OF
THE 16th APRIL SHOW A MINORITY WITHIN THE COUNCIL--FIRST
DISPUTES--THE GERMS OF DEFEAT 199
CHAPTER XVII.
OUR PARISIENNES--SUSPENSION OF ARMS FOR THE EVACUATION OF
NEUILLY--THE ARMY OF VERSAILLES AND THAT OF PARIS 207
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE PUBLIC SERVICES--FINANCE--WAR--POLICE--EXTERIOR--JUSTICE
--EDUCATION--LABOR AND EXCHANGE 217
CHAPTER XIX.
THE FREEMASONS JOIN THE COMMUNE--THE FIRST EVACUATION OF THE
PART OF ISSY--CREATION OF THE COMMITTEE OF PUBLIC SAFETY 236
CHAPTER XX.
ROSSEL REPLACES CLUSERET--THE RIVALRIES--THE DEFENCE OF THE
FORT OF ISSY 246
CHAPTER XXI.
PARIS IS BOMBARDED--THE FORT OF ISSY SUCCUMBS--THE COUNCIL
ELECTS A NEW COMMITTEE OF PUBLIC SAFETY--ROSSEL FLIES 254
CHAPTER XXII.
THE CONSPIRACIES AGAINST THE COMMUNE 265
CHAPTER XXIII.
M. THIERS' POLICY WITH REGARD TO THE PROVINCES--THE EXTREME
LEFT BETRAYS PARIS 271
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE IMPOTENCE OF THE SECOND COMMITTEE OF PUBLIC SAFETY--
EVACUATION OF THE FORT OF VANVES AND OF THE VILLAGE OF ISSY
--THE MANIFESTO OF THE MINORITY--THE EXPLOSION IN THE AVENUE
RAPP--FALL OF THE VENDOME COLUMN 288
CHAPTER XXV.
PARIS ON THE EVE OF DEATH 293
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE VERSAILLESE ENTER PARIS ON SUNDAY, 21ST MAY, AT THREE
O'CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON--THE COUNCIL OF THE COMMUNE
DISSOLVES 304
CHAPTER XXVII.
MONDAY 22ND--THE VERSAILLESE INVADE THE QUARTERS OF THE
EAST--PARIS RISES 313
CHAPTER XXVIII.
TUESDAY 23RD--MONTMARTRE IS TAKEN--THE WHOLESALE MASSACRES
--WE LOSE GROUND--PARIS ON FIRE--THE LAST NIGHT OF THE
HOTEL-DE-VILLE 326
CHAPTER XXIX.
WEDNESDAY 24TH--THE MEMBERS OF THE COUNCIL EVACUATE THE
HOTEL-DE-VILLE--THE PANTHEON IS TAKEN--THE VERSAILLESE SHOOT
THE FEDERALS BY HUNDREDS--THE FEDERALS SHOOT SIX HOSTAGES--
THE NIGHT OF THE CANNON 339
CHAPTER XXX.
THURSDAY 25TH--THE WHOLE LEFT BANK FALLS INTO THE HANDS OF
THE TROOPS--DELESCLUZE DIES--THE BRASSARDIERS STIMULATE THE
MASSACRE--THE MEMBERS OF THE COUNCIL EVACUATE THE MAIRIE OF
THE ELEVENTH ARRONDISSEMENT 353
CHAPTER XXXI.
THE RESISTANCE CENTRES IN BELLEVILLE--FRIDAY, FORTY-EIGHT
HOSTAGES ARE SHOT IN THE RUE HAXO--SATURDAY 27TH, THE WHOLE
TWENTIETH ARRONDISSEMENT IS INVADED--THE PERE LACHAISE IS
TAKEN--SUNDAY 28TH, THE BATTLE ENDS AT ELEVEN O'CLOCK IN THE
MORNING--MONDAY 29TH, THE FORT OF VINCENNES IS SURRENDERED 365
CHAPTER XXXII.
THE VERSAILLESE FURY--THE SLAUGHTER-HOUSES--THE PREVOTAL
COURTS--THE DEATH OF VARLIN--THE BURIALS 382
CHAPTER XXXIII.
THE CONVOYS OF PRISONERS--THE ORANGERIE--THE ARRESTS--SATORY
--THE DENUNCIATORS--THE PRESS--THE LEFT INSULTS THE
VANQUISHED--DEMONSTRATIONS IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES 395
CHAPTER XXXIV.
THE PONTOONS--THE FORTS--THE PRISONS--THE FIRST TRIALS 408
CHAPTER XXXV.
THE COURTS-MARTIAL--THE EXECUTIONS--BALANCE-SHEET OF THE
CONDEMNATIONS 424
CHAPTER XXXVI.
NEW CALEDONIA--EXILE--BALANCE-SHEET OF BOURGEOIS VENGEANCE
--THE LIBERAL CHAMBER AND THE AMNESTY 445
APPENDIX 467
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE.
PROLOGUE.
"Osons, ce mot renferme toute la politique de cette
heure."--_Rapport de St. Just a la Convention._
HOW THE PRUSSIANS GOT PARIS AND THE RURALS FRANCE.
_August 9, 1870._--In six days the Empire has lost three battles. Douai,
Frossart, MacMahon have allowed themselves to be isolated, surprised,
crashed. Alsace is lost, the Moselle laid bare. The dumbfoundered
Ministry has convoked the Chamber. Ollivier, in dread of a
demonstration, denounces if beforehand as "Prussian." But since eleven
in the morning an immense agitated crowd occupies the Place de la
Concorde, the quays, and surrounds the Corps Legislatif.
Paris is waiting for the _mot d'ordre_ of the deputies of the Left.
Since the announcement of the defeats they have become the only moral
authority. Bourgeoisie, workingmen, all rally round them. The workshops
have turned their army into the streets, and at the head of the
different groups one sees men of tried energy.
The Empire totters--it has now only to fall. The troops drawn up before
the Corps Legislatif are greatly excited, ready to turn tail in spite of
the decorated and grumbling Marshal Baraguay d'Hilliers. The people cry,
"To the frontier." Officers answer aloud, "Our place is not here."
In the Salle des Pas Perdus well-known Republicans, the men of the
clubs, who have forced their way in, roughly apostrophise the
Imperialist deputies, speak loudly of proclaiming the Republic. The
pale-faced Mamelukes steal behind the groups. M. Thiers arrives and
exclaims, "Well, then, make your republic!" When the President,
Schneider, passes to the chair, he is received with cries of
"Abdication!"
The deputies of the Left are surrounded by delegates from without. "What
are you waiting for? We are ready. Only show yourselves under the
colonnades at the gates." The honourables seem confounded, stupefied.
"Are you numerous enough? Were it not better to put it off till
to-morrow?" There are indeed only 100,000 men ready. Some one arrives
and tells Gambetta, "There are several thousands of us at the Place
Bourbon." Another, the writer of this history, says, "Make sure of the
situation to-day, when it may still be saved. To-morrow, having become
desperate, it will be forced upon you." But these brains seem paralysed;
no word escapes these gaping mouths.
The sitting opens. Jules Favre proposes to this base Chamber, the
abettor of our disasters, the humus of the Empire, to seize upon the
government. The Mamelukes rise up in dudgeon, and Jules Simon, hair on
end, returns to us in the Salle des Pas Perdus. "They threaten to shoot
us," he shrieks; "I descended into the midst of the hall and said,
'Well, shoot us.'" We exclaim, "Put an end to this." "Yes," says he, "we
must make an end of it,"--and he returns to the Chamber.
And thus ended their "damnable faces." The Mamelukes, who know their
Left, recover their self-assurance, throw Ollivier overboard and form a
_coup-d'etat_ Ministry. Schneider precipitately breaks up the sitting in
order to get rid of the crowd. The people, feebly repulsed by the
soldiers, repair in masses to the bridges, follow those who leave the
Chamber, expecting every moment to hear the Republic proclaimed. M.
Jules Simon, out of reach of the bayonets, makes a heroic discourse, and
convokes the people to meet the next day at the Place de la Concorde.
The next day the police occupy all the approaches.
Thus the Left abandoned to Napoleon III. our two last armies. One effort
would have sufficed to overthrow this pasteboard Empire.[1] The people
instinctively offered their help to render the nation unto herself. The
Left repulsed them, refused to save the country by a riot, and,
confining their efforts to a ridiculous motion, left to the Mamelukes
the care of saving France. The Turks in 1876 showed more intelligence
and elasticity.
During three weeks it was the story of the Bas-Empire all over
again,--the fettered nation sinking into the abyss in the face of its
motionless governing classes. All Europe cried, "Beware!" They alone
heard not. The masses, deceived by a braggart and corrupt press, might
ignore the danger, lull themselves with vain hopes; but the deputies
have, must have, their hands full of crushing truths. They conceal them.
The Left exhausts itself in exclamations. On the 12th M. Gambetta cries,
"We must wage Republican war"--and sits down again. On the 13th Jules
Favre demands the creation of a Committee of Defence. It is refused. He
utters no syllable. On the 20th the Ministry announces that Bazaine has
forced three army corps into the quarries of Jaumont; the next day the
whole European press related, on the contrary, that Bazaine, three times
beaten, had been thrown back upon Metz by 200,000 Germans. And no deputy
rises to interpellate the liars! Since the 26th they have known
MacMahon's insane march upon Metz, exposing the last army of France, a
mob of 80,000 conscripts, and vanquished, to 200,000 victorious Germans.
M. Thiers, again restored to favour since the disasters, demonstrates in
the committees and in the lobbies that this march is the way to utter
ruin. The extreme Left says and bruits about that all is lost and of all
these responsible persons seeing the state ship tempest-tossed, not one
raises his hand to seize the helm.
Since 1813 France had seen no such collapse of the governing classes.
The ineffable dastardliness of the Cent-jours pales before this superior
cowardice; for here Tartuffe is grafted upon Trimalcion. Thirteen months
later, at Versailles, I hear, amidst enthusiastic applause, the Empire
apostrophised, "Varus, give us back our legions." Who speaks, who
applauds thus? The same great bourgeoisie, which, for eighteen years
mute and bowed to the dust, offered their legions to Varus. The
bourgeoisie accepted the Second Empire from fear of Socialism, even as
their fathers had submitted to the first to make an end of the
Revolution. Napoleon I. rendered the bourgeoisie two services not
overpaid by his apotheosis. He gave them an iron centralisation and sent
to their graves 15,000 wretches still kindled by the flame of the
Revolution, who at any moment might have claimed the public lands
granted to them. But he left the same bourgeoisie saddled for all
masters. When they possessed themselves of the parliamentary government,
to which Mirabeau wished to raise them at one bound, they were incapable
of governing. Their mutiny of 1830, turned into a revolution by the
people, made the belly master. The great bourgeois of 1830, like him of
1790, had but one thought--to gorge himself with privileges, to arm the
bulwarks in defence of his domains, to perpetuate the proletariat. The
fortune of his country is nothing to him, so that he fatten. To lead, to
compromise France, the parliamentary king has as free license as
Bonaparte. When by a new outburst of the people the bourgeoisie are
compelled to seize the helm after three years, spite of massacre and
proscription, it slips out of their palsied hands into those of the
first comer.
From 1851 to 1869 they relapse into the same state as after the 18th
Brumaire. Their privileges safe, they allow Napoleon III. to plunder
France, make her the vassal of Rome, dishonour her in Mexico, ruin her
finances, vulgarise debauchery. All-powerful by their retainers and
their wealth, they do not risk a man, a dollar, for the sake of
protesting. In 1869 the pressure from without raises them to the verge
of power; a little strength of will and the government is theirs. They
have but the velleity of the eunuch. At the first sign of the impotent
master they kiss the rod that smote them on the 2nd December, making
room for the plebiscite which rebaptizes the Empire.
Bismarck prepared the war, Napoleon III. wanted it, the great
bourgeoisie looked on. They might have stopped it by an earnest gesture.
M. Thiers contented himself with a grimace. He saw in this war our
certain ruin; he knew our terrible inferiority in everything; he could
have united the Left, the _tiers-parti_, the journalists, have made
palpable to them the folly of the attack, and, supported by this
strength of opinion, have said to the Tuileries, to Paris if needs be,
"War is impossible; we shall combat it as treason." He, anxious only to
clear himself, simply demanded the despatches instead of speaking the
true word, "You have no chance of success."[2] And these great
bourgeois, who would not have risked the least part of their fortunes
without the most serious guarantees, staked 100,000 lives and the
milliards of France on the word of a Leboeuf and the equivocations of
a Grammont.[3]
And what then is the small middle-class doing meanwhile? This lean
class, which penetrates everything--industry, commerce, the
administration--mighty by encompassing the people, so vigorous, so ready
in the first days of our Hegira, will it not, as in 1792, rise for the
common weal? Alas! it has been spoilt under the hot corruption of the
Empire. For many years it has lived at random, isolating itself from the
proletariat, whence it issued but yesterday, and whither the great
barons of Capital will hurl it back again to-morrow. No more of that
fraternity with the people, of that zeal for reform, which manifested
themselves from 1830 to 1848. With its bold initiative, its
revolutionary instinct, it loses also the consciousness of its force.
Instead of representing itself, as it might so well do, it goes about in
quest of representatives among the Liberals.
The friend of the people who will write the history of Liberalism in
France will save us many a convulsion. Sincere Liberalism would be folly
in a country where the governing classes, refusing to concede anything,
constrain every honest man to become a revolutionist. But it was never
anything else than the Jesuitism of liberty, a trick of the bourgeoisie
to isolate the workmen. From Bailly to Jules Favre, the moderantists
have masked the manoeuvres of despotism, buried our revolutions,
conducted the great massacres of proletarians. The old clear-sighted
Parisian sections hated them more than the down right reactionists.
Twice Imperial despotism rehabilitated them, and the small middle-class,
soon forgetting their true part, accepted as defenders those who
pretended to be vanquished like themselves. The men who had made
abortive the movement of 1848 and paved the way for the 2nd December
thus became during the darkness which followed it the acclaimed
vindicators of ravished liberty. At the first dawn they appeared what
they had ever been----the enemies of the working-class. Under the
Empire the Left never condescended to concern itself with the interests
of the workmen. These Liberals never found for them a word, a
protestation, even such as the Chambers of 1830-1848 sometimes
witnessed. The young lawyers whom they had affiliated to themselves soon
revealed their designs, rallying to the Liberal Empire, some openly,
like Ollivier and Darimon, others with prudence, like Picard. For the
timid or ambitious they founded the "open Left," a bench of candidates
for public office; and in 1870 a number of Liberals indeed solicited
official functions. For the "intransigeants" there was the "closed
Left," where the irreconcilable dragons Gambetta, Cremieux, Arago,
Pelletan guarded the pure principles. The chiefs towered in the centre.
These two groups of augurs thus held every fraction of bourgeois
opposition--the timorous and the intrepid. After the plebiscite they
became the holy synod, the uncontested chiefs of the small middle-class,
more and more incapable of governing itself, and alarmed at the
Socialist movement, behind which they showed it the hand of the Emperor.
It gave them full powers, shut its eyes, and allowed itself to drift
gradually towards the parliamentary Empire, big with portfolios for its
patrons. The thunderbolt of the defeats galvanised it into life, but
only for a moment. At the bidding of the deputies to keep quiet, the
small middle-class, the mother of the 10th August, docilely bent its
head and let the foreigner plunge his sword into the very bosom of
France.
Poor France! Who will save thee? The humble, the poor, those who for six
years contended for thee with the Empire.
While the upper classes sell the nation for a few hours of rest, and the
Liberals seek to feather their nests under the Empire, a handful of men,
without arms, unprotected, rise up against the still all-powerful
despot. On the one hand, young men who form the bourgeoisie have gone
over to the people, faithful children of 1789, resolved to continue the
work of the Revolution; on the other hand, working-men unite for the
study and the conquest of the rights of labor. In vain the Empire
attempts to split their forces, to seduce the working-men. These see the
snare, hiss the professors of Caesarian socialism, and from 1863, without
journals, without a tribune, affirm themselves as a class, to the great
scandal of the Liberal sycophants, maintaining that 1789 has equalized
all classes. In 1867 they descend into the streets, make a manifestation
at the tomb of Manin, and, despite the bludgeons of the sbirri, protest
against Mentana. At this appearance of a revolutionary socialist party
the Left gnashes its teeth. When some working-men, ignorant of their own
history, ask Jules Favre if the Liberal bourgeoisie will support them on
the day of their rising for the Republic, the leader of the Left
impudently answers, "Gentlemen workmen, you have made the Empire; it is
your business to unmake it." And Picard says, "Socialism does not exist,
or at any rate we will not treat with it."
Thus set right for the future, the working-men continue the struggle
single-handed. Since the re-opening of the public meetings they fill the
halls, and, in spite of persecution and imprisonment, harass, undermine
the Empire, taking advantage of every accident to inflict a blow. On the
26th October 1869 they threaten to march on the Corps Legislatif; in
November they insult the Tuileries by the election of Rochefort; in
December they goad the Government by the _Marseillaise_; in January,
1870, they go 200,000 strong to the funeral of Victor Noir, and, well
directed, would have swept away the throne.
The Left, terrified at this multitude, which threatens to overwhelm
them, brands their leaders as desperadoes or as police agents. They,
however, keep to the fore, unmasking the Left, defying them to
discussion, keeping up at the same time a running fire on the Empire.
They form the vanguard against the plebiscite. At the war rumors they
are the first to make a stand. The old dregs of Chauvinism, stirred by
the Bonapartists, discharge their muddy waters. The Liberals remain
impassible or applaud; the workingmen stop the way. On the 15th July, at
the very same hour when Ollivier from the tribune invokes war with a
light heart, the revolutionary socialists crowd the boulevards crying,
"Vive la paix!" and singing the pacific refrain--
"Les peuples sont pour nous des freres
Et les tyrans des ennemis."
From the Chateau d'Eau to the Boulevard St. Denis they are applauded,
but are hissed in the Boulevards Bonne Nouvelle and Montmartre, and come
to blows with certain bands shouting for war.
The next day they meet again at the Bastille, and parade the streets,
Ranvier, a painter on porcelain, well known in Belleville, marching at
their head with a banner. In the Faubourg Montmartre the
sergents-de-ville charge them with drawn swords.
Unable to influence the bourgeoisie, they turn to the working-men of
Germany, as they had done in 1869:--"Brothers, we protest against the
war, we who wish for peace, labour, and liberty. Brothers, do not listen
to the hirelings who seek to deceive you as to the real wishes of
France." Their noble appeal received its reward. In 1869 the students of
Berlin had answered the pacific address of the French students with
insults. The working-men of Berlin in 1870 spoke thus to the working-men
of France: "We too wish for peace, labour, and liberty. We know that on
both sides of the Rhine there are brothers with whom we are ready to die
for the Universal Republic." Great prophetic words! Let them be
inscribed on the first page of the Golden Book just opened by the
workmen.
Thus towards the end of the Empire there was no life, no activity, save
in the ranks of the proletariat and the young men of the middle-class
who had joined them. They alone showed some political courage, and in
the midst of the general paralysis of the month of July 1870, they alone
found the energy to attempt at least the salvation of France.
They lacked authority; they failed to carry with them the small
middle-class, for which they also combat, because of their utter want of
political experience. How could they have acquired it during eighty
years, when the ruling class not only withheld light from them, but even
the right to enlighten themselves? By an infernal Machiavelism they
forced them to grope their way in the dark, so that they might hand them
over the more easily to dreamers and sectarians. Under the Empire, when
the public meetings and journals reappeared, the political education of
the workmen had still to be effected. Many, abused by morbid minds, in
the belief that their affranchisement depended on a _coup-de-main_, gave
themselves up to whoever spoke of overthrowing the Empire. Others,
convinced that even the most thorough-going bourgeois were hostile to
Socialism, and only courted the people in furtherance of their ambitious
plans, wanted the workmen to constitute themselves into groups
independent of all tutelage. These different currents crossed each
other. The chaotic state of the party of action was laid bare in its
journal, the _Marseillaise_, a hot mish-mash of doctrinaires and
desperate writers united by hatred of the Empire, but without definite
views, and above all, without discipline. Much time was wanted to cool
down the first effervescence and get rid of the romantic rubbish which
twenty years of oppression and want of study had made fashionable.
However, the influence of the Socialists began to prevail, and no doubt
with time they would have classified their ideas, drawn up their
programme, eliminated the mere spouters, entered upon serious action.
Already, in 1869, working-men's societies, founded for mutual credit,
resistance and study, had united in a Federation, whose headquarters
were the Place de la Corderie du Temple. The International, setting
forth the most adequate idea of the revolutionary movement of our
century, under the guidance of Varlin, a bookbinder of rare
intelligence, of Duval, Theisz, Frankel, and a few devoted men, was
beginning to gain power in France. It also met at the Corderie, and
urged on the more slow and reserved workmen's societies. The public
meetings of 1870 no longer resembled the earlier ones; the people wanted
useful discussions. Men like Milliere, Lefrancais, Vermorel, Longuet,
etc., seriously competed with the mere declaimers. But many years would
have been required for the development of the party of labour, hampered
by young bourgeois adventurers in search of a reputation, encumbered
with conspiracy-mongers and romantic visionaries, still ignorant of the
administrative and political mechanism of the bourgeois regime which
they attacked.
Just before the war some discipline was attempted. Some tried to move
the deputies of the Left, and met them at Cremieux'. They found them
stupefied, more afraid of a _coup-d'etat_ than of the Prussian
victories. Cremieux, pressed to act, answered naively, "Let us wait for
a new disaster, as, for instance, the fall of Strasbourg."
It was indeed necessary to wait, for without these shadows nothing could
be done. The small Parisian middle-class believed in the extreme Left,
as it had believed in our armies. Those who wished to do without them
failed. On the 14th the friends of Blanqui attempted to raise the
outlying districts, attacked the quarters of the firemen of La Villette,
and put the sergents-de-ville to flight. Masters of the field, they
traversed the boulevard up to Belleville, crying, "Vive la Republique!
Death to the Prussians!" No one joined them. The crowd looked on from
afar, astonished, motionless, rendered suspicious by the police agents,
who thus drew them off from the real enemy--the Empire. The Left
pretended to believe in the Prussian agent, to reassure the bourgeoisie,
and Gambetta demanded the immediate trial of the prisoners of La
Villette. The Minister Palikao had to remind him that certain forms must
be observed, even by military justice. The court-martial condemned ten
to death, although almost all the accused had had nothing to do with the
affray. Some true-hearted men, wishing to prevent these executions, went
to Michelet, who wrote a touching letter on their behalf. The Empire had
no time to carry out the sentences.
Since the 25th MacMahon was leading his army into the snares laid by
Moltke. On the 29th, surprised and beaten at Beaumont l'Argonne, he knew
himself overreached, and yet pushed forward. Palikao had written to him
on the 27th: "If you abandon Bazaine we shall have the Revolution in
Paris." And to ward off the Revolution he exposed France. On the 30th he
threw his troops into the pit of Sedan; on the 1st September the army
was surrounded by 200,000 enemies, and 700 cannons crowned the heights.
The next day Napoleon III. delivered up his sword to the King of
Prussia. The telegraph announced it; all Europe knew it that same night.
The deputies, however, were silent; they remained so on the 3rd. On the
4th only, at midnight, after Paris had passed through a day of feverish
excitement, they made up their minds to speak. Jules Favre demanded the
abolition of the Empire and a Commission charged with the defence, but
took care not to touch the Chamber. During the day some men of tried
energy had attempted to raise the boulevards, and in the evening an
anxious crowd pressed against the railings of the Corps Legislatif,
crying: "Vive la Republique." Gambetta met them and said, "You are
wrong; we must remain united; make no revolution." Jules Favre,
surrounded on his leaving the Chamber, strove to calm the people.
If Paris had been guided by the Left, France would have capitulated that
very hour more shamefully than Napoleon III. But on the morning of the
4th of September the people assemble, and amongst them National Guards
armed with their muskets. The astonished gendarmes give way to them.
Little by little the Corps Legislatif is invaded. At ten o'clock
notwithstanding the desperate efforts of the Left, the crowd fills the
galleries. It is time. The Chamber, on the point of forming a Ministry,
try to seize the government. The Left support this combination with all
its might, waxing indignant at the mere mention of a Republic. When that
cry bursts forth from the galleries, Gambetta makes unheard-of efforts
and conjures the people to await the result of the deliberations of the
Chamber,--a result known beforehand. It is the project of M. Thiers: a
Government Commission named by the Assembly; peace demanded and accepted
at any price; after that disgrace, the parliamentary monarchy. Happily a
new crowd of invaders bursts its way through the doors, while the
occupants of the galleries glide into the hall. The people expel the
deputies. Gambetta, forced to the tribune, is obliged to announce the
abolition of the Empire. The crowd, wanting more than this, asks for the
Republic, and carries off the deputies to proclaim it at the
Hotel-de-Ville.
This was already in the hands of the people. In the Salle du Trone were
some of those who for a month had attempted to rouse public opinion.
First on the ground, they might, with a little discipline, have
influenced the constitution of the government. The Left surprised them
haranguing, and, incited by an acclaiming multitude, Jules Favre took
the chair, which Milliere gave up to him, saying, "At the present moment
there is but one matter at stake--the expulsion of the Prussians."[4]
Jules Favre, Jules Simon, Jules Ferry, Gambetta, Cremieux, Emmanuel
Arago, Glais-Bizoin, Pelletan, Garnier-Pages, Picard, uniting,
proclaimed themselves the Government, and read their own names to the
crowd, which answered by adding those of men like Delescluze,
Ledru-Rollin, Blanqui. They, however, declared they would accept no
colleagues but the deputies of Paris. The crowd applauded. This frenzy
of just-emancipated serfs made the Left masters. They were clever enough
to admit Rochefort.
They next applied to General Trochu, named governor of Paris by
Napoleon. This general had become the idol of the Liberals because he
had sulked a little with the Empire.[5] His whole military glory
consisted in a few pamphlets. The Left had seen much of him during the
last crisis. Having attained to power, it begged him to direct the
defence. He asked, firstly, a place for God in the new regime; secondly,
for himself the presidency of the council. He obtained everything. The
future will show what secret bond so quickly united the men of the Left
to the loyal Breton who had promised "to die on the steps of the
Tuileries in defence of the dynasty."[6]
Twelve individuals thus took possession of France. They invoked no other
title than their mandate as representatives of Paris, and declared
themselves legitimate by popular acclamation.
In the evening the International and syndicates of the workmen sent
delegates to the Hotel-de-Ville. They had on the same day sent a new
address to the German workingmen. Their fraternal duty fulfilled, the
French workmen gave themselves up to the defence. Let the Government
organize it and they would stay by it. The most suspicious were taken
in. On the 7th, in the first number of his paper _La Patrie en Danger_,
Blanqui and his friends offered the Government their most energetic,
their absolute co-operation.
All Paris abandoned itself to the men of the Hotel-de-Ville, forgetting
their late defections, investing them with the grandeur of the danger.
To seize, to monopolize the government at such a moment, seemed a stroke
of audacity of which genius alone is capable. Paris, deprived for eighty
years of her municipal liberties, accepted as mayor the lachrymose
Etienne Arago. In the twenty arrondissements he named the mayors he
liked, and they again named the adjuncts agreeable to themselves. But
Arago announced early elections and spoke of reviving the great days of
1792. At this moment Jules Favre, proud as Danton, cried to Prussia, to
Europe, "We will cede neither an inch of our territories nor a stone of
our fortresses," and Paris rapturously applauded this dictatorship
announcing itself with words so heroic. On the 14th, when Trochu held
the review of the National Guard, 250,000 men stationed in the
boulevards, the Place de la Concorde, and the Champs-Elysees cheered
enthusiastically, and renewed a vow like that of their fathers on the
morning of Valmy.
Yes, Paris gave herself up without reserve--incurable confidence--to
that same Left to which she had been forced to do violence in order to
make her revolution. Her outburst of will lasted but for an hour. The
Empire once overthrown, she re-abdicated. In vain did far-seeing
patriots try to keep her on the alert; in vain did Blanqui write, "Paris
is no more impregnable than we were invincible. Paris, mystified by a
braggart press, ignores the greatness of the peril; Paris abuses
confidence." Paris abandoned herself to her new masters, obstinately
shutting her eyes. And yet each day brought with it new ill omens. The
shadow of the siege approached, and the Government of Defence, far from
removing the superfluous mouths, crowded the 200,000 inhabitants of the
suburbs into the town. The exterior works did not advance. Instead of
throwing all Paris into the work, and taking these descendants of the
levellers of the Champ-de-Mars out of the enceinte in troops of 100,000,
drums beating, banners flying, Trochu abandoned the earthworks to the
ordinary contractors. The heights of Chatillon, the key to our forts of
the south, had hardly been surveyed, when on the 19th the enemy
presented himself, sweeping from the plateau an affrighted troop of
zouaves and soldiers who did not wish to fight. The following day, that
Paris which the press had declared could not be invested, was surrounded
and cut off from France.
This gross ignorance very soon alarmed the Revolutionists. They had
promised their support, but not blind faith. Since the 4th September,
wishing to centralise the forces of the party of action for the defence
and the maintenance of the Republic, they had invited the public
meetings in each arrondissement to name a Committee of Vigilance charged
to control the mayors and to delegate four members to a Central
Committee of the twenty arrondissements. This tumultuous mode of
election had resulted in a committee composed of working-men, employes,
authors, known in the revolutionary movements of the last years. This
committee had established itself in the hall of the Rue de la Corderie,
lent by the International and the Federation of the syndicates.
These had almost suspended their work, the service of the National Guard
absorbing all their activity. Some of their members again met in the
Committee of Vigilance and in the Central Committee, which caused the
latter to be erroneously attributed to the International. On the 4th it
demanded by a manifesto the election of the municipalities, the police
to be placed in their hands, the election and control of all the
magistrates, absolute freedom of the press, public meeting and
association, the expropriation of all articles of primary necessity,
their distribution by allowance, the arming of all citizens, the sending
of commissioners to rouse the provinces. But Paris was then infected
with a fit of confidence. The bourgeois journals denounced the committee
as Prussian. The names of some of the signers were, however, well known
in the meetings and to the press: Ranvier, Milliere, Longuet, Valles,
Lefrancais, Mallon, etc. Their placards were torn down.
On the 20th, after Jules Favre's application to Bismarck, the Committee
held a large meeting in the Alcazar and sent a deputation to the
Hotel-de-Ville to demand war _a outrance_ and the early election of the
Commune of Paris. Jules Ferry gave his word of honour that the
government would not treat at any price, and announced the municipal
elections for the end of the month. Two days after a decree postponed
them indefinitely.
Thus this Government, which in seventeen days had prepared nothing,
which had allowed itself to be blocked up without even a struggle,
refused the advice of Paris, and more than ever arrogated to itself the
right of directing the defence. Did it then possess the secret of
victory? Trochu had just said, "The resistance is a heroic madness;"
Picard, "We shall defend ourselves for honour's sake, but all hope is
chimerical;" the elegant Cremieux, "The Prussians will enter Paris like
a knife goes into butter;"[7] the chief of Trochu's staff, "We cannot
defend ourselves; we have decided not to defend ourselves;"[8] and,
instead of honestly warning Paris, saying, "Capitulate at once or
conduct the combat yourselves," these men, who declared defence
impossible, claimed its undivided direction.
What then is their aim? To negotiate. Since the first defeats they have
no other. The reverses which exalted our fathers only made the Left more
cowardly than the Imperialist deputies. On the 7th of August Jules
Favre, Jules Simon, and Pelletan had said to Schneider, "We cannot hold
out; we must come to terms as soon as possible."[9] All the following
days the left had only one plan of policy--to urge the Chamber to
possess itself of the government in order to negotiate, hoping to get
into office afterwards. Hardly established, these defenders sent M.
Thiers all over Europe to beg for peace, and Jules Favre to run after
Bismarck to ask his conditions,[10]--a step that revealed to the
Prussian with what tremblers he had to deal.
When all Paris cried to them, "Defend us; drive back the enemy," they
applauded, accepted, but said to themselves, "You shall capitulate."
There is no more crying treason in history. The asinine confidence of
the immense majority no more diminishes the crime than the foolishness
of the dupe excuses the cheater. Did the men of the 4th September, yes
or no, betray the mandate they received? "Yes," will be the verdict of
the future.
A tacit mandate, it is true, but so clear, so formal, that all Paris
started at the news of the proceedings at Ferrieres. If the Defenders
had gone a step farther, they would have been swept away. They were
obliged to adjourn, to give way to what they termed the "madness of the
siege," to simulate a defence. In point of fact, they did not abandon
their idea for an hour, esteeming themselves the only men in Paris who
had not lost their heads.
"There shall be fighting since those Parisians will have it so, but only
with the view to soften Bismarck." On his return from the review, this
scene of hopeful enthusiasm manifested by 250,000 armed men is said to
have affected Trochu, who announced that it would perhaps be possible to
hold the ramparts.[11] Such was the maximum of his enthusiasm: to hold
out--not to open the gates. As to drilling or organising these 250,000
men, uniting them with the 240,000 mobiles, soldiers and marines
gathered together in Paris, and with all these forces forming a powerful
scourge to drive the enemy back to the Rhine, of this he never dreamt.
His colleagues thought of it as little, and only discussed with him the
more or less cavilling they might venture upon with the Prussian
invader.
He was all for mild proceedings. His devoutness forbade him to shed
useless blood. Since, according to all military manuals, the great town
was to fall, he would make that fall as little sanguinary as possible.
Besides, the return of M. Thiers, who might at any moment bring back the
treaty, was waited for. Leaving the enemy to establish himself
tranquilly round Paris, Trochu organised a few skirmishes for the
lookers-on. One single serious engagement took place on the 30th at
Chevilly, when, after a success, we retreated, abandoning a battery for
want of reinforcements and teams. Public opinion still hoaxed by the
same men that had cried, "A Berlin," believed in a success. The
Revolutionists only were not taken in. The capitulation of Toul and of
Strasbourg was to them a solemn warning. Flourens, chief of the 63d
battalion, but who was the real commander of Belleville, could no longer
restrain himself. With the head and heart of a child, an ardent
imagination, guided only by his own impulse, Flourens conducted his
battalions to the Hotel-de-Ville, demanded the _levee en masse_,
sorties, municipal elections, and the putting the town on short rations.
Trochu, who, to amuse him, had given him the title of major of the
rampart, made an elaborate discourse; the twelve apostles argued with
him, and wound up by showing him out. As delegates came from all sides
to demand that Paris should have a voice in her own defence, should name
a council, her Commune, the Government declared on the 7th that their
dignity forbade them to concede these behests. This insolence caused the
movement of the 8th October. The committee of the twenty arrondissements
protested in an energetic placard. Seven or eight hundred persons cried
"Vive la Commune" under the windows of the Hotel-de-Ville. But the
multitude had not yet lost faith. A great number of battalions hastened
to the rescue; the Government passed them in review. Jules Favre opened
the flood-gates of his rhetoric and declared the election impossible
because--unanswerable reason!--everybody ought to be at the ramparts.
The majority greedily swallowed the bait. On the 16th Trochu having
written to his crony Etienne Arago, "I shall pursue the plan I have
traced for myself to the end," the loungers announced a victory, and
took up the burden of their August song on Bazaine, "Let him alone; he
has his plan." The agitators looked like Prussians, for Trochu, as a
good Jesuit, had not failed to speak of "a small number of men whose
culpable views serve the projects of the enemy." Then Paris allowed
herself during the whole month of October to be rocked asleep to the
sound of expeditions commencing with success and always terminated by
retreats. On the 13th we took Bagneux, and a spirited attack would have
repossessed us of Chatillon: Trochu had no reserves. On the 21st a march
on the Malmaison revealed the weakness of the investment and spread
panic even to Versailles. Instead of pressing forward, General Ducrot
engaged only six thousand men, and the enemy repulsed him, taking two
cannons. The Government transformed these repulses into successful
reconnoitres, and coined money out of the despatches of Gambetta, who,
sent to the provinces on the 8th, announced imaginary armies, and
intoxicated Paris with the account of the brilliant defence of
Chateaudun.
The mayors encouraged this pleasant confidence. They sat at the
Hotel-de-Ville with their adjuncts, and this Assembly of sixty-four
members could have seen clearly what the Defence was if they had had the
least courage. But it was composed of those Liberals and Republicans of
whom the Left is the last expression. They knocked at the door of the
Government now and then, timidly interrogated it, and received only
vague assurances, in which they did not believe,[12] but made every
effort to make Paris believe.
But at the Corderie, in the clubs, in the paper of Blanqui, in the
_Reveil_ of Delescluze, in the _Combat_ of Felix Pyat, the plan of the
men of the Hotel-de-Ville is exposed. What mean these partial sorties
which are never sustained? Why is the National Guard hardly armed,
unorganized, withheld from every military action? Why is the casting of
cannon not proceeded with? Six weeks of idle talk and inactivity cannot
leave the least doubt as to the incapacity or ill-will of the
Government. This same thought occupies all minds. Let the sceptics make
room for those that believe in the Defence; let Paris regain possession
of herself; let the Commune of 1792 be revived to again save the city
and France. Every day this resolution sinks more deeply into virile
minds. On the 27th the _Combat_, which preached the Commune in
high-flown phraseology whose musical rhythm struck the masses more than
the nervous dialectics of Blanqui, hurls a terrific thunderbolt.
"Bazaine is about to surrender Metz, to treat for peace in the name of
Napoleon III.; his aide-de-camp is at Versailles." The Hotel-de-Ville
immediately contradicted this news, "as infamous as it is false. The
glorious soldier Bazaine has not ceased harassing the besieging army
with brilliant sorties." The Government called down upon the journalist
"the chastisement of public opinion." At this appeal the drones of Paris
buzzed, burnt the journal, and would have torn the journalist to pieces
if he had not decamped. The next day the _Combat_ declared that they had
the statement from Rochefort, to whom Flourens had communicated it.
Other complications followed. On the 20th a surprise made us masters of
Bourget, a village in the northeast of Paris, and on the 29th the
general staff announced this success as a triumph. The whole day it left
our soldiers without food, without reinforcements, under the fire of the
Prussians, who, returning on the 30th 15,000 strong, recovered the
village from its 1,600 defenders. On the 31st of October, Paris on
awaking received the news of three disasters: the loss of Bourget, the
capitulation of Metz, together with the whole army of the "glorious
Bazaine," and the arrival of M. Thiers for the purpose of negotiating an
armistice.
The men of the 4th September believed they were saved, that their goal
was reached. They had placarded the armistice side by side with the
capitulation, "good and bad news,"[13] convinced that Paris, despairing
of victory, would accept peace with open arms. Paris started up as with
an electric shock, at the same time rousing Marseilles, Toulouse, and
Saint-Etienne. There was such spontaneity of indignation, that from
eleven o'clock, in pouring rain, the masses came to the Hotel-de-Ville
crying "No armistice." Notwithstanding the resistance of the mobiles who
defended the entrance, they invaded the vestibule. Arago and his
adjuncts hastened thither, swore that the Government was exhausting
itself in efforts to save us. The first crowd retired; a second followed
hard upon. At twelve o'clock Trochu appeared at the foot of the
staircase, thinking to extricate himself by a harangue; cries of "Down
with Trochu" answered him. Jules Simon relieved him, and, confident in
his rhetoric, even went to the square in front of the Hotel-de-Ville and
expatiated upon the comforts of the armistice. The people cried "No
armistice." He only succeeded in backing out by asking the crowd to name
six delegates to accompany him to the Hotel-de-Ville. Trochu, Jules
Favre, Jules Ferry, and Picard received them. Trochu in Ciceronic
periods demonstrated the uselessness of Bourget, and pretended that he
had only just learnt the capitulation of Metz. A voice cried, "You are a
liar." A deputation from the Committee of the twenty arrondissements and
of the Committees of Vigilance had entered the hall a little while
before. Others, wishing to pump Trochu, invited him to continue his
speech. He recommenced, when a shot was fired in the square, putting an
end to the monologue and scaring away the orator. Calm being
re-established, Jules Favre supplied the place of the general, and took
up the thread of his discourse.
While these scenes were going on in the Salle du Trone, the mayors, so
long the accomplices of Trochu, were deliberating in the hall of the
municipal council. To quell the riot, they proposed the election of
municipalities, the formation of battalions of the National Guard, and
their joining them to the army. The scapegoat Etienne Aragot was sent to
offer this salve to the Government. At two o'clock an immense crowd
inundated the Place de l'Hotel-de-Ville, crying, "Down with Trochu! Vive
la Commune!" and carrying banners with the inscription "No armistice."
They had several times come into collision with the mobiles. The
delegates who entered the Hotel-de-Ville brought no answer. About three
o'clock, the crowd, growing impatient, rushed forward, breaking through
the mobiles, and forcing Felix Pyat, come to the Hotel-de-Ville as a
sight-seer, into the Salle des Maires. He exclaimed, struggled,
protested that this was against all rules. The mayors supported him as
well as they could, and announced that they had demanded the election of
the municipalities, and that the decree in that sense was about to be
signed. The multitude, still pushing forward, goes up to the Salle du
Trone, cutting short the oration of Jules Favre, who had rejoined his
colleagues in the Government-room.
While the people were thundering at the door, the Defenders voted the
proposition of the mayors--but in principle--not fixing the date for the
elections,[14]--another jesuitical trick. Towards four o'clock the mass
penetrated into the room. Rochefort in vain promised the municipal
elections. They asked for the Commune! One of the delegates of the
Committee of the twenty arrondissements, getting upon the table,
proclaimed the abolition of the Government. A Commission was charged to
proceed with the elections within forty-eight hours. The names of
Dorian, the only Minister who had taken the defence to heart, of Louis
Blanc, Ledru-Rollin, Victor Hugo, Raspail, Delescluze, Felix Pyat,
Blanqui and Milliere were received with acclamation.
Had this Commission seized on authority, cleared the Hotel-de-Ville,
posted up a proclamation convoking the electors with the briefest
delay, the day's work would have been beneficially concluded. But Dorian
refused. Louis Blanc, Victor Hugo, Ledru-Rollin, Raspail, Felix Pyat
remained silent or turned tail altogether. Flourens had time to come up.
He broke in upon the assembly with his tirailleurs of Belleville, got
upon the table round which were gathered the members of the Government,
and instead of a Commune proposed a Committee of Public Safety. Some
applauded, others protested, declaring the question was not to
substitute one kind of dictatorship for another. Flourens got the upper
hand, read the names, his own first, then those of Blanqui, Delescluze,
Milliere, Ranvier, Felix Pyat, and Mottu. Interminable discussions
followed, the disorder became terrible. The men of the 4th September
felt they were saved, and smiled as they looked at the conquerors who
allowed victory to slip through their fingers.
Thenceforth all became involved in an inextricable imbroglio. Every room
had its government, its orators. The confusion was such that about eight
o'clock reactionary National Guards could, under Flourens' nose, pick up
Trochu and Jules Ferry, while others carried off Blanqui when some
franc-tireurs tried to rescue him. In the cabinet of the mayor, Etienne
Arago and his adjuncts convoked the electors for the next day under the
presidency of Dorian and Schoelcher. Towards ten o'clock their placard
was posted up in Paris.
The whole day Paris had looked on. "On the morning of the 31st October,"
says Jules Ferry, "the Parisian population, from highest to lowest, was
absolutely hostile to us.[15] Everybody thought we deserved to be
dismissed." Not only did Trochu's battalions not stir, but one of the
best, led to the succour of the Government by General Tamisier,
commander-in-chief of the National Guard, raised the butt end of their
guns on arriving at the Place de l'Hotel-de-Ville. In the evening
everything changed when it became known that the members of the
Government were prisoners, and above all who were their substitutes.
The measure seemed too strong. Such a one, who might have accepted
Ledru-Rollin or Victor Hugo, could not make up his mind to Flourens and
Blanqui.[16] In vain the whole day drums had been beating to arms; in
the evening they proved effective. Battalions refractory in the morning
arrived at the Place Vendome, most of them believing, it is true, that
the elections had been granted; an assemblage of officers at the Bourse
only consented to wait for the regular vote on the strength of Dorian
and Schoelcher's placard. Trochu and the deserters from the
Hotel-de-Ville again found their faithful flock. The Hotel-de-Ville, on
the other hand, was getting empty.
Most of the battalions of the Commune, believing their cause victorious,
had returned to their quarters. In the edifice there remained hardly a
thousand unarmed men, the only troops being Flourens' unmanageable
tirailleurs, while he wandered up and down amidst this mob. Blanqui
signed and again signed. Delescluze tried to save some remnants from
this great movement. He saw Dorian, received the formal assurance that
the elections of the Commune would take place the next day, those of the
Provisional Government the day after; put these assurances upon record
in a note where the insurrectional committee declared itself willing to
wait for the elections, and had it signed by Milliere, Flourens and
Blanqui. Milliere and Dorian went to communicate this document to the
members of the Defence. Milliere proposed to them to leave the
Hotel-de-Ville together, while charging Dorian and Schoelcher to
proceed with the elections, but on the express condition that no
prosecutions were to take place. The members of the Defence
accepted,[17] and Milliere was just saying to them, "Gentlemen, you are
free," when the National Guards asked for written engagements. The
prisoners became indignant that their word should be doubted, while
Milliere and Flourens could not make the Guards understand that
signatures are illusory. During this mortal anarchy the battalions of
order grew larger, and Jules Ferry attacked the door opening on to the
Place Lobau. Delescluze and Dorian informed him of the arrangement which
they believed concluded, and induced him to wait. At three o'clock in
the morning chaos still reigned supreme. Trochu's drums were beating on
the Place de l'Hotel-de-Ville. A battalion of Breton mobiles debouched
in the midst of the Hotel-de-Ville through the subterranean passage of
the Napoleon Barracks, surprised and disarmed many of the tirailleurs.
Jules Ferry invaded the Government-room. The indisciplinable mass
offered no resistance. Jules Favre and his colleagues were set free. As
the Bretons became menacing, General Tamisier reminded them of the
convention entered upon during the evening, and, as a pledge of mutual
oblivion, left the Hotel-de-Ville between Blanqui and Flourens. Trochu
paraded the streets amidst the pompous pageantry of his battalions.
Thus this day, which might have buoyed up the Defence, ended in smoke.
The desultoriness, the indiscipline of the patriots restored to the
Government its immaculate character of September. It took advantage of
it that very night to tear down the placards of Dorian and Schoelcher;
it accorded the municipal elections for the 5th, but in exchange
demanded a plebiscite, putting the question in the Imperialist style,
"Those who wish to maintain the Government will vote _aye_." In vain the
Committee of the twenty arrondissements issued a manifesto; in vain the
_Reveil_, the _Patrie en Danger_, the _Combat_, enumerated the hundred
reasons which made it necessary to answer _No_. Six months after the
plebiscite which had made the war, the immense majority of Paris voted
the plebiscite that made the capitulation. Let Paris remember and accuse
herself. For fear of two or three men she opened fresh credit to this
Government which added incapacity to insolence, and said to it, "I want
you," 322,000 times. The army, the mobiles, gave 237,000 ayes. There
were but 54,000 civilians and 9,000 soldiers to say boldly, _no_.
How did it happen that those 60,000 men, so clear-sighted, prompt, and
energetic, could not manage to direct public opinion? Simply because
they were wanting in _cadres_, in method, in organizers. The fever of
the siege had been unable to discipline the revolutionary party, in such
dire confusion a few weeks before, nor had the patriarchs of 1848 tried
to do so. The Jacobins like Delescluze and Blanqui, instead of leading
the people, lived in an exclusive circle of friends. Felix Pyat,
vibrating between just ideas and literary epilepsy, only became
practical[18] when he had to save his own skin. The others,
Ledru-Rollin, Louis Blanc, Schoelcher, the hope of the Republicans
under the Empire, returned from exile shallow, pursy, rotten to the core
with vanity and selfishness, without courage or patriotism, disdaining
the Socialists. The dandies of Jacobinism, who called themselves
Radicals, Floquet, Clemenceau, Brinon, and other democratic politicians,
carefully kept aloof from the working-men. The old Montagnards
themselves formed a group of their own, and never came to the Committee
of the twenty arrondissements, which only wanted method and political
experience to become a power. So it was only a centre of emotions, not
of direction,--the Gravilliers section of 1870-71, daring, eloquent,
but, like its predecessor, treating of everything by manifestoes.
There at least was life, a lamp, not always bright, but always burning.
What is the small middle-class contributing now? Where are their
Jacobins, even their Cordeliers? At the Corderie I see the proletariat
of the small middle-class, men of the pen and orators, but where is the
bulk of the army?
All is silent. Save the faubourgs, Paris was a vast sick chamber, where
no one dared to speak above his breath. This moral abdication is the
true psychological phenomenon of the siege, all the more extraordinary
that it co-existed with an admirable ardour for resistance. Men who
speak of going to seek death with their wives and children, who say, "We
will burn our houses rather than surrender them to the enemy,"[19] get
angry at any controversy as to the power intrusted to the men of the
Hotel-de-Ville. If they dread the giddy-headed, the fanatics, or
compromising collaborators, why do they not take the direction of the
movement into their own hands? But they confine themselves to crying,
"No insurrection before the enemy! No fanatics!" as though capitulation
were better than an insurrection; as though the 10th of August 1792 and
31st May 1793 had not been insurrections before the enemy; as though
there were no medium between abdication and delirium. And you, citizens
of the old sections of 1792-93, who furnished ideas to the Convention
and the Commune, who dictated to them the means of safety, who directed
the clubs and fraternal societies, entertained in Paris a hundred
luminous centres, say, do you recognise your offspring in these gulls,
weaklings, jealous of the people, prostrate before the Left like
devotees before the host?
On the 5th and 7th they renewed their plebiscitory vote, naming twelve
of the twenty mayors named by Arago, four amongst them, Dubail,
Vautrain, Tirard, and Desmarets, belonging to the pure reaction. The
greater part of the adjuncts were of the Liberal type. The faubourgs,
always at their post, elected Delescluze in the nineteenth
arrondissement and Ranvier, Milliere, Lefrancais, and Flourens in the
twentieth. These latter could not take their seats. The Government,
violating the convention of Dorian and Tamisier, had issued warrants for
their arrest, and for that of about twenty other revolutionists.[20]
Thus, out of seventy-five effective members, mayors and adjuncts, there
were not ten revolutionists.
These shadows of municipal councillors looked upon themselves as the
stewards of the Defence, forbade themselves any indiscreet question,
were on their best behaviour, feeding and administering Trochu's
patient. They allowed the insolent and incapable Ferry to be appointed
to the central mairie, and Clement-Thomas, the executioner of June 1848,
to be made commander-in-chief of the National Guard. For seventy days,
feeling the pulse of Paris growing from hour to hour more weak, they
never had the honesty, the courage to say to the Government, "Where are
you leading us?"
Nothing was lost in the beginning of November. The army, the mobiles,
the marines numbered, according to the plebiscite, 246,000 men and 7,500
officers: 125,000 National Guards capable of serving a campaign might
easily have been picked out in Paris, and 129,000 left for the defence
of the interior.[21] The necessary armaments might have been furnished
in a few weeks, the cannon especially, every one depriving himself of
bread in order to endow his battalion with five pieces, the traditional
pride of the Parisians. "Where find 9,000 artillerists?" said Trochu.
Why, in every Parisian mechanic there is the stuff of a gunner, as the
Commune has sufficiently proved. In everything else there was the same
superabundance. Paris swarmed with engineers, overseers, foremen, who
might have been drilled into officers. There lying wasted were all the
materials for a victorious army.
The gouty martinets of the regular army saw here nothing but barbarism.
This Paris, for which Hoche, Marceau, Kleber would have been neither too
young, nor too faithful, nor too pure, had for generals the residue of
the Empire and Orleanism, Vinoy of December, Ducrot, Luzanne, Leflo, and
a fossil like Chabaud-Latour. In their pleasant intimacy they made much
fun of the defence.[22] Finding, however, that the joke was lasting a
little too long, the 31st October enraged them. They conceived an
implacable, rabid hatred to the National Guard, and up to the last hour
refused to utilise it.
Instead of amalgamating the forces of Paris, of giving to all the same
_cadres_, the same uniforms, the same flag, the proud name of National
Guard, Trochu had maintained the three divisions: the army, mobiles, and
civilians. This was the natural consequence of his opinion of the
Defence. The army, incited by the staff, shared its hatred of Paris, who
imposed on it, it was said, useless fatigues. The mobiles of the
provinces, prompted by their officers, the cream of the country squires,
became also embittered. All, seeing the National Guard despised,
despised it, calling them, "_Les a outrance! Les trente sous!_" (Since
the siege the Parisians received thirty sous--1s. 2-1/2d.--as indemnity.)
Collisions were to be feared every day.[23]
The 31st of October changed nothing in the real state of affairs. The
Government broke off the negotiations, which, notwithstanding their
victory, they could not have pursued without foundering, decreed the
creation of marching companies in the National Guard, and accelerated
the cannon-founding, but did not believe a whit the more in defence,
still steered towards peace. Riots formed the chief subject of their
preoccupation.[24] It was not only from the "folly of the siege" that
they wished to save Paris, but above all from the revolutionists. In
this direction they were pushed on by the great bourgeoisie. Before the
4th September the latter had declared they "would not fight if the
working-class were armed, and if it had any chance of prevailing;"[25]
and on the evening of the 4th September Jules Favre and Jules Simon had
gone to the Corps Legislatif to reassure them, to explain to them that
the new tenants would not damage the house. But the irresistible force
of events had provided the proletariat with arms, and to make them
inefficient in their hands became now the supreme aim of the
bourgeoisie. For two months they had been biding their time, and the
plebiscite told them it had come. Trochu held Paris, and by the clergy
they held Trochu, all the closer that he believed himself to be amenable
only to his conscience. Strange conscience, full of trap-doors, with
more complications than those of a theatre. Since the 4th of September
the General had made it his duty to deceive Paris, saying, "I shall
surrender thee, but it is for thy good." After the 31st October he
believed his mission two-fold--saw in himself the archangel, the St.
Michael of threatened society. This marks the second period of the
defence. It may perhaps be traced to a cabinet in the Rue des Postes,
for the chiefs of the clergy saw more clearly than any one else the
danger of inuring the working-men to war. Their intrigues were full of
cunning. Violent reactionists would have spoilt all, precipitated Paris
into a revolution. They applied subtle tricks in their subterranean
work, watching Trochu's every movement, whetting his antipathy to the
National Guard, penetrating everywhere into the general staff, the
ambulances, even the mairies. Like the fisherman struggling with too big
a prey, they bewildered Paris, now apparently allowing her to swim in
her own element, than suddenly weakening her by the harpoon. On the 28th
November Trochu gave a first performance to a full-band accompaniment.
General Ducrot, who commanded, presented himself like a Leonidas: "I
take the oath before you, before the whole nation. I shall return to
Paris dead or victorious. You may see me fall; you will never see me
retreat." This proclamation exalted Paris. She fancied herself on the
eve of Jemmappes, when the Parisian volunteers scaled the
artillery-defended heights; for this time the National Guard was to take
part in the proceedings.
We were to force an opening by the Marne in order to join the mythic
armies of the provinces, and cross the river at Nogent. Ducrot's
engineer had taken his measures badly; the bridges were not in a fit
state. It was necessary to wait till the next day. The enemy, instead of
being surprised, was able to put himself on the defensive. On the 30th a
spirited assault made us masters of Champigny. The next day Ducrot
remained inactive, while the enemy, disgarnishing Versailles,
accumulated its forces upon Champigny. On the 2nd they recovered part of
the village. The whole day we fought severely. The former deputies of
the Left were represented on the field of battle by a letter to their
"very dear president." That evening we camped in our positions, but half
frozen, the "dear president" having ordered the blankets to be left in
Paris, and we had set out--a proof that the whole thing had been done in
mockery--without tents or ambulances. The following day Ducrot declared
we must retreat, and, "before Paris, before the whole nation," this
dishonoured braggart sounded the retreat. We had 8,000 dead or wounded
out of the 100,000 men who had been sent out, and of the 50,000 engaged.
For twenty days Trochu rested on his laurels. Clement-Thomas took
advantage of this leisure time to disband and stigmatise the tirailleurs
of Belleville, who had, however, had many dead and wounded in their
ranks. On the mere report of the commanding general at Vincennes, he
also stigmatised the 200th battalion. Flourens was arrested. On the 20th
of December these rabid purgers of our own ranks consented to take a
little notice of the Prussians. The mobiles of the Seine were launched
without cannons against the walls of Stains and to the attack of
Bourget. The enemy received them with a crushing artillery. An advantage
obtained on the right of the Ville-Evrard was not followed up. The
soldiers returned in the greatest consternation, some of them crying,
"Vive la paix!" Each new enterprise betrayed Trochu's plan, enervated
the troops, but had no effect on the courage of the National Guards
engaged. During two days on the plateau D'Ouron they sustained the fire
of sixty pieces. When there was a goodly number of dead, Trochu
discovered that the position was of no importance, and evacuated.
These repeated foils began to wear out the credulity of Paris. From hour
to hour the sting of hunger was increasing, and horse-flesh had become a
delicacy. Dogs, cats, and rats were eagerly devoured. The women waited
for hours in the cold and mud for a starvation allowance. For bread they
got black grout, that tortured the stomach. Children died on their
mothers' empty breasts. Wood was worth its weight in gold, and the poor
had only to warm them the despatches of Gambetta, always announcing
fantastic successes.[26] At the end of December their privations began
to open the eyes of the people. Were they to give in, their arms intact?
The mayors did not stir. Jules Favre gave them little weekly receptions,
where they gossiped about the cuisine of the siege.[27] Only one did his
duty--Delescluze. He had acquired great authority by his articles in the
_Reveil_, as free of partiality as they were severe. On the 30th
December he interpellated Jules Favre, said to his colleagues, "You are
responsible," demanded that the municipal council should be joined to
the Defence. His colleagues protested, more especially Dubail and
Vacherot. He returned to the charge on the 4th of January, laid down a
radical motion--the dismissal of Trochu and of Clement-Thomas, the
mobilisation of the National Guard, the institution of a council of
defence, the renewal of the Committee of War. No more attention was paid
him than before.
The Committee of the twenty arrondissements supported Delescluze in
issuing a red placard on the 6th: "Has the Government which charged
itself with the national defence fulfilled its mission? No. By their
procrastination, their indecision, their inertion, those who govern us
have led us to the brink of the abyss. They have known neither how to
administer nor how to fight. We die of cold, almost of hunger. Sorties
without object, deadly struggles without results, repeated failures. The
Government has given the measure of its capacity; it is killing us. The
perpetuation of this regime means capitulation. The politics, the
strategies, the administration of the Empire continued by the men of the
4th September have been judged. Make way for the people! Make way for
the Commune!"[28] This was outspoken and true. However incapable of
action the Committee may have been, its ideas were just and precise, and
to the end of the siege it remained the indefatigable, sagacious monitor
of Paris.
The multitude who wanted illustrious names, paid no attention to these
placards. Some of those who had signed it were arrested. Trochu,
however, felt himself attainted, and the very same evening had posted on
all the walls, "The governor of Paris will never capitulate." And Paris
again applauded, four months after the 4th September. It was even
wondered at that, in spite of Trochu's declaration, Delescluze and his
adjuncts should tender their resignations.[29]
Nevertheless, without obstinately shutting one's eyes it was impossible
not to see the precipice to which the Government was hurrying us on. The
Prussians bombarded our houses from the forts of Issy and of Vanves, and
on the 30th December, Trochu, having declared all further action
impossible, invoked the opinion of all his generals, and wound up by
proposing that he should be replaced. On the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th January
the Defenders discussed the election of an Assembly which was to follow
the catastrophe.[30] But for the irritation of the patriots, Paris would
have capitulated before the 15th.
The faubourgs no longer called the men of the Government other than "the
band of Judas." The great democratic lamas, who had withdrawn after the
31st October, returned to the Commune, thus proving their own
helplessness and the common sense of the people. The Republican
Alliance, where Ledru-Rollin officiated before half-a-dozen
incense-bearers, the Republican Union, and other bourgeois chapels, went
so far as to very energetically demand a Parisian Assembly to organise
the defence. The Government felt it had no time to lose. If the
bourgeoisie joined the people, it would become impossible to capitulate
without a formidable _emeute_. The population which cheered under the
shells would not allow itself to be given up like a flock of sheep. It
was necessary to mortify it first, to cure it of its "infatuation," as
Jules Ferry said, to purge it of its fever. "The National Guard will
only be satisfied when 10,000 National Guards have fallen," they said at
the Government table. Urged on by Jules Favre and Picard on the one
hand, and on the other by the simple-minded Emmanuel Arago,
Garnier-Pages, and Pelletan, the quack Trochu consented to give a last
performance.
It was gotten up as a farce[31] at the same time as the
capitulation.[32] On the 19th the Council of Defence stated that a new
defeat would be the signal of the catastrophe. Trochu was willing to
accept the mayors as coadjutors on the question of capitulation and
revictualling. Jules Simon and Garnier-Pages were willing to surrender
Paris, and only make some reserve with regard to France. Garnier-Pages
proposed to name by special elections mandatories charged to capitulate.
Such was their vigil before the battle.
On the 18th the din of trumpets and drums called Paris to arms and put
the Prussians on the alert. For this supreme effort Trochu had been able
to muster only 84,000 men, of whom nineteen regiments belonged to the
National Guard. He made them pass the night, which was cold and rainy,
in the mud of the fields of Mont-Valerien.
The attack was directed against the defences that covered Versailles
from the side of La Bergerie. At ten o'clock, with the impulse of old
troops,[33] the National Guards and the mobiles, who formed the majority
of the left wing and centre,[34] had stormed the redoubt of Montretout,
the park of Buzenval, a part of St. Cloud, pushing forward as far as
Garches, occupying, in one word, all the posts designated. General
Ducrot, commanding the left wing, had arrived two hours behind time, and
though his army consisted chiefly of troops of the line, he did not
advance.
We had conquered several commanding heights which the generals did not
arm. The Prussians were allowed to sweep these crests at their ease, and
at four o'clock sent forth assault columns. Ours gave way at first,
then, steadying themselves, checked the onward movement of the enemy.
Towards six o'clock, when the hostile fire diminished, Trochu ordered a
retreat. Yet there were 40,000 reserves between Mont-Valerien and
Buzenval. Out of 150 artillery pieces, thirty only had been employed.
But the generals, who during the whole day had hardly deigned to
communicate with the National Guard, declared they could not hold out a
second night, and Trochu had Montretout and all the conquered positions
evacuated. Battalions returned weeping with rage. All understood that
the whole affair was a cruel mockery.[35]
Paris, which had gone to sleep victorious, awoke to the sound of
Trochu's alarm-bell. The General asked for an armistice of two days to
carry off the wounded and bury the dead. He said, "We want time, carts,
and many litters." The dead and wounded did not exceed 3000 men.
This time Paris at last saw the abyss. Besides, the Defenders,
disdaining all further disguise, suddenly dropped the mask. Jules Favre
and Trochu summoned the mayors. Trochu declared that all was lost and
any further struggle impossible.[36] The sinister news immediately
spread over the town.
During four months' siege, patriotic Paris had foreseen, accepted all;
pestilence, assault, pillage, everything save capitulation. On this
point the 20th of January found Paris, notwithstanding her credulity,
her weakness, the same Paris as on the 20th September. Thus, when the
fatal word was uttered, the city seemed at first wonder-struck, as at
the sight of some crime monstrous, unnatural. The wounds of four months
opened again, crying for vengeance. Cold, starvation, bombardment, the
long nights in the trenches, the little children dying by thousands,
death scattered abroad in the sorties, and all to end in shame, to form
an escort for Bazaine, to become a second Metz. One fancied one could
hear the Prussian sneering. With some, stupor turned into rage. Those
who were longing for the surrender threw themselves into attitudes. The
white-livered mayors even affected to fly into a passion. On the evening
of the 21st they were again received by Trochu. That same morning all
the generals had unanimously decided that another sortie was impossible.
Trochu very philosophically demonstrated to the mayors the absolute
necessity of making advances to the enemy, but declared he would have
nothing to do with it, insinuating that they should capitulate in his
stead. They cut wry faces, protested, still imagining they were not
responsible for this issue.
After their departure the Defenders deliberated. Jules Favre asked
Trochu to tender his resignation. But he, the apostle, insisted upon
being dismissed by them, fancying thus to cheat history into the belief
that he had to the last resisted capitulation.[37] The discussion was
growing warm when, at three o'clock in the morning, they were informed
of the rescue of Flourens and other political prisoners confined at
Mazas. A body of National Guards headed by an adjunct from the
eighteenth arrondissement had presented themselves an hour before in
front of the prison. The bewildered governor had let them have their
way. The Defenders, fearing a repetition of the 31st October, hurried on
their resolution replacing Trochu by Vinoy.
He wanted to be implored. Jules Favre and Leflo had to show him the
people in arms, an insurrection imminent. At that very moment, the
morning of the 22nd, the prefect of police, declaring himself powerless,
had sent in his resignation. The men of the 4th September had fallen so
low as to bend their knees before those of the 2nd December. Vinoy
condescended to yield.
His first act was to arm against Paris, to dismantle her lines before
the Prussians, to recall the troops of Suresne, Gentilly, Les Lilas, to
call out the cavalry and gendarmerie. A battalion of mobiles commanded
by Vabre, a colonel of the National Guard, fortified itself in the
Hotel-de-Ville. Clement-Thomas issued a furious proclamation: "The
factions are joining the enemy." He adjured the "_entire_ National
Guard to rise in order to smite them." He had not called upon it to rise
against the Prussians.
There were signs of anger afloat, but no symptoms of a serious
collision. Many revolutionists, well aware that all was at an end, would
not support a movement which, if successful, would have saved the men of
the Defence and forced the victors to capitulate in their stead. Others,
whose patriotism was not enlightened by reason, still warm from the
ardour of Buzenval, believed in a _sortie en masse_. We must at least,
said they, save our honor. The evening before, some meetings had voted
that an armed opposition should be offered to any attempt at
capitulation, and had given themselves a rendezvous before the
Hotel-de-Ville.
At twelve o'clock the drums beat to arms at the Batignolles. At one
o'clock several armed groups appeared in the square of the
Hotel-de-Ville; the crowd was gathering. A deputation, led by a member
of the Alliance, was received by G. Chaudey, adjunct to the mayor, for
the Government was seated at the Louvre since the 31st October. The
orator said the wrongs of Paris necessitated the nomination of the
Commune. Chaudey answered that the Commune was nonsense; that he always
had, and always would oppose it. Another and more eager deputation
arrived. Chaudey received it with insults. Meanwhile the excitement was
spreading to the crowd that filled the square. The 101st battalion
arrived from the left bank crying "Death to the traitors!" when the
207th of the Batignolles, who had marched down the boulevards, debouched
on the square through the Rue du Temple and drew up before the
Hotel-de-Ville, whose doors and windows were closed. Others joined them.
Some shots were fired, the windows of the Hotel-de-Ville were clouded
with smoke, and the crowd dispersed with a cry of terror. Sheltered by
lamp-posts and some heaps of sand, some National Guards sustained the
fire of the mobiles. Others fired from the houses in the Avenue
Victoria. The fusillade had been going on for half an hour when the
gendarmes appeared at the corner of the Avenue. The insurgents, almost
surrounded, made a retreat. About a dozen were arrested and taken to the
Hotel-de-Ville, where Vinoy wanted to despatch them at once. Jules
Ferry recoiled, and had them sent before the regular court-martials.
Those who had got up the demonstration and the inoffensive crowd of
spectators had thirty killed or wounded, among others a man of great
energy, Commandant Sapia. The Hotel-de-Ville had only one killed and two
wounded.
The same evening the government closed all the clubs and issued numerous
warrants. Eighty-three persons, most of them innocent,[38] were
arrested. This occasion was also taken advantage of to send Delescluze,
notwithstanding his sixty-five years, and an acute bronchitis which was
undermining his health, to rejoin the prisoners of the 31st October,
thrown pell-mell into a damp dungeon at Vincennes. The _Reveil_ and the
_Combat_ were suppressed.
An indignant proclamation denounced the insurgents as "the partisans of
the foreigners," the only resource left the men of the 4th September in
this shameful crisis. In this only they were Jacobins. Who served the
enemy? The Government ever ready to negotiate, or the men ever offering
a desperate resistance? History will tell how at Metz an immense army,
with _cadres_, well-trained soldiers, allowed itself to be given over
without a single marshal, _chef-de-corps_, or a regiment rising to save
it from Bazaine;[39] whereas the revolutionists of Paris, without
leaders, without organization, before 240,000 soldiers and mobiles
gained over to peace, delayed the capitulation for months and revenged
it with their blood.
The simulated indignation of traitors raised only a feeling of disgust.
Their very name, "Government of Defence," cried out against them. On the
very day of the affray they played their last farce. Jules Simon having
assembled the mayors and a dozen superior officers,[40] offered the
supreme command to the military man who could propose a plan. This
Paris, which they had received exuberant with life, the men of the 4th
September, now that they had exhausted and bled her, proposed to abandon
to others. Not one of those present resented the infamous irony. They
confined themselves to refusing this hopeless legacy. This was exactly
the thing Jules Simon waited for. Some one muttered, "We must
capitulate." It was General Lecomte. The mayors understood why they had
been convoked, and a few of them squeezed out a tear.
From this time forth Paris existed like the patient who is expecting
amputation. The forts still thundered, the dead and the wounded were
still brought in, but Jules Favre was known to be at Versailles. On the
27th at midnight the cannon were silenced. Bismarck and Jules Favre had
come to an _honourable_ understanding.[41] Paris had surrendered.
The next day the Government of the Defence published the basis of the
negotiations--a fortnight's armistice, the immediate convocation of an
Assembly, the occupation of the forts, the disarmament of all the
soldiers and mobiles with the exception of one division. The town
remained gloomy. These days of anguish had stunned Paris. Only a few
demonstrations were made. A battalion of the National Guard came before
the Hotel-de-Ville crying "Down with the traitors!" In the evening, 400
officers signed a pact of resistance, naming as their chief Brunel, an
ex-officer expelled from the army under the Empire for his republican
opinions, and resolved to march on the forts of the east, commanded by
Admiral Saisset, whom the press credited with the reputation of a
Beaurepaire. At midnight the call to arms and the alarm bell summoned
the tenth, thirteenth, and twentieth arrondissements. But the night was
icy cold, the National Guard too enervated for an act of despair. Two
or three battalions only came to the rendezvous. Brunel was arrested two
days after.
On the 29th January the German flag was hoisted on our forts. All had
been signed the evening before. 400,000 men armed with muskets and
cannons capitulated before 200,000. The forts, the enceinte were
disarmed. Paris was to pay 200,000,000 francs in a fortnight. The
Government boasted of having preserved the arms of the National Guard,
but every one knew that to take these it would have been necessary to
storm Paris. In fine, not content with surrendering Paris, the
Government of the National Defence surrendered all France. The armistice
applied to all the armies of the provinces save Bourbaki's, the only one
that would have profited by it.
On the following days there arrived some news from the provinces. It was
known that Bourbaki, pressed by the Prussians, had, after a comedy of
suicide, thrown his whole army into Switzerland. The aspect and the
weakness of the Delegation of the Defence in the provinces had just
begun to reveal themselves, when the _Mot d'Ordre_, founded by
Rochefort, who had abandoned the Government after the 31st October,
published a proclamation by Gambetta, stigmatizing a shameful peace, and
a whole litany of Radical decrees: ineligibility of all the great
functionaries and official deputies of the Empire; dissolution of the
_conseils-generaux_, revocation of some of the judges[42] who had formed
part of the mixed commission of the 2nd December. It was ignored that
during the whole war the Delegation had acted in contradiction to its
last decrees, which, coming from a fallen power, were a mere electoral
trick, and Gambetta's name was placed on most of the electoral lists.
Some bourgeois papers supported Jules Favre and Picard, who had been
clever enough to make themselves looked upon as the out-and-outers of
the Government; none dared to go so far as to support Trochu, Simon and
Ferry. The variety of electoral lists set forth by the republican party
explained its impotence during the siege. The men of 1848 refused to
accept Blanqui, but admitted several members of the International in
order to usurp its name, and their list, a medley of Neo-Jacobins and
Socialists, entitled itself "the list of the Four Committees." The clubs
and the workingmen's groups drew up lists of a more outspoken character;
one bore the name of the German Socialist deputy, Liebknecht. The most
decided one was that of the Corderie.
The International and the Federal Chamber of the workingmen's societies,
mute and disorganized during the siege, again taking up their programme,
said, "We must also have workingmen amongst those in power." They came
to an arrangement with the Committee of the twenty arrondissements, and
the three groups issued the same manifesto. "This," said they, "is the
list of the candidates presented in the name of a new world by the party
of the disinherited. France is about to reconstitute herself; workingmen
have the right to find and take their place in the new order of things.
The Socialist-revolutionary candidatures signify the denial of the right
to discuss the existence of the Republic; affirmation of the necessity
for the accession of workingmen to political power; overthrow of the
oligarchical Government and of industrial feudalism." Besides a few
names familiar to the public, Blanqui, Gambon, Garibaldi, Felix Pyat,
Ranvier, Tridon, Longuet, Lefrancais, Valles, these Socialist candidates
were known only in the workingmen's centers--mechanics, shoemakers,
ironfounders, tailors, carpenters, cooks, cabinetmakers, carvers.[43]
Their placards were but few in number. These disinherited could not
compete with bourgeois enterprise. Their day was to come a few weeks
later, when two-thirds of them were to be elected to the Commune. Now
those only received a mandate who were accepted by the middle-class
papers, five in all: Garibaldi, Gambon, Felix Pyat, Tolain, and Malon.
The list of representatives of the 8th February was a harlequinade,
including every republican shade and every political crotchet. Louis
Blanc, who had played the part of a goody during the siege, and who was
supported by all the committees except that of the Corderie, headed the
procession with 216,000 votes, followed by Victor Hugo, Gambetta, and
Garibaldi; Delescluze obtained 154,000 votes. Then came a motley crowd
of Jacobin fossils, radicals, officers, mayors, journalists, and
inventors. One single member of the Government slipped in, Jules Favre,
although his private life had been exposed by Milliere, who was also
elected.[44] By a cruel injustice, the vigilant sentinel, the only
journalist who during the siege had always shown sagacity, Blanqui,
found only 52,000 votes, about the number of those who opposed the
plebiscite, while Felix Pyat received 145,000 for his piping in the
_Combat_.[45]
This confused incongruous ballot affirmed at least the republican idea.
Paris, trampled upon by the Empire and the Liberals, clung to the
Republic, who gave her promise for the future. But even before her vote
has been proclaimed she heard coming forth from the provincial ballot
boxes a savage cry of reaction. Before a single one of her
representatives had left the town, she saw on the way to Bordeaux a
troop of rustics, of _Pourceaugnacs_, of sombre clericals, spectres of
1815, 1830, 1848, high and low reactionists, who, mumbling and furious,
came by the grace of universal suffrage to take possession of France.
What signified this sinister masquerade? How had this subterranean
vegetation contrived to pierce and overgrow the summit of the country?
It was necessary that Paris and the provinces should be crushed, that
the Prussian Shylock should drain our milliards and cut his pound of
flesh, that the state of siege should for four years weigh down upon
forty-two departments, that 100,000 Frenchmen should be cut off from
life or banished from their native soil, that the black brotherhood
should conduct their processions all over France, to bring about this
great conservative machination, which from the first hour to the last
explosion, the revolutionists of Paris and of the provinces had not
ceased to denounce to our treacherous or sluggish governors.
In the provinces the field and the tactics were not the same. The
conspiracy, instead of being carried on within the Government,
circumvented it. During the whole month of September the reactionists
hid in their lurking-places. The Government of National Defence had only
forgotten one element of defence--the provinces, seventy-six
departments. Yet they were agitating, showed life; they alone held in
check the reaction. Lyons had even understood her duty earlier than
Paris; in the morning of the 4th September she proclaimed the Republic,
hoisted the red flag, named a Committee of Public Safety.--Marseilles
and Toulouse organized regional commissions.--The Defenders understood
nothing of this patriotic zeal, thought France disjointed, and delegated
to put it right again two Liberal relics very much tainted, Cremieux and
Glais-Bizoin, together with a former governor of Cayenne, the
Bonapartist Admiral Fourichon.
They reached Tours on the 18th. The patriots hastened thither to meet
them. In the west and south, they had already organized Leagues to
marshal the departments against the enemy and supply the want of a
central impulse. They surrounded the delegates of Paris, asking them for
a _mot-d'ordre_, vigorous measures, the sending of commissioners, and
promised their absolute co-operation. The putridities answered, "We are
_entre nous_, let us speak frankly. Well, then, we have no longer any
army; all resistance is impossible. We only hold out for the sake of
making better conditions." We ourselves witnessed the scene.[46] There
was but one cry of indignation: "What! is this your answer when
thousands of Frenchmen come to offer you their lives and fortunes?"
On the 28th, the Lyonese broke out. Hardly four departments separated
them from the enemy, who might at any moment come to levy a contribution
on their city, and since the 4th September they had in vain demanded
arms. The municipality, elected on the 16th in place of the Committee of
Public Safety, passed its time in squabbling with the Prefect,
Challemel-Lacour, an arrogant Neo-Jacobin. On the 27th, instead of any
serious measures of defence, the council had reduced by fivepence the
pay of the workingmen employed in the fortifications, and appointed
Cluseret general _in partibus_ of an army to be created.[47]
The Republican committees of Les Brotteaux, of La Guillotiere, of La
Croix-Rousse,[48] and the Central Committee of the National Guard
decided to urge on the Hotel-de-Ville, and laid before it on the 28th
an energetic programme of defence. The workingmen of the fortifications,
led by Saigne, supported this step by a demonstration. They filled the
Place des Terreaux, and what with speeches, what with the excitement,
invaded the Hotel-de-Ville. Saigne proposed the nomination of a
revolutionary commission, and perceiving Cluseret, named him commander
of the National Guard. Cluseret, much concerned for his future, only
appeared on the balcony to propound his plan and recommend calm.
However, the commission being constituted, he no longer dared to resist,
but set out in search of his troops. At the door, the mayor, Henon, and
the prefect arrested him. They had penetrated into the Hotel-de-Ville by
the Place de la Comedie. Saigne, springing upon the balcony, announced
the news to the crowd, which, throwing itself upon the Hotel-de-Ville,
delivered the prospective general and in turn arrested the mayor and
prefect.
The bourgeois battalions soon arrived at the Place des Terreaux; shortly
after those of La Croix-Rousse and of La Guillotiere debouched. Great
misfortune might have resulted from the first shot. They parleyed. The
commission disappeared and the general swooned.
This was a warning. Other symptoms manifested themselves in several
towns. The prefects even presided over Leagues and met each other. At
the commencement of October, the Admiral of Cayenne had only been able
to set on foot 30,000 men, and nothing came from Tours but a decree
convoking the election for the 16th.
On the 9th, when Gambetta alighted from his balloon, all the patriots
started. The Conservatives, who had begun to creep out of their
recesses, quickly drew back again. The ardour and the energy of his
first proclamation carried people away. Gambetta held France absolutely;
he was all-powerful.
He disposed of the immense resources of France, of the innumerable men;
of Bourges, Brest, L'Orient, Rochefort, Toulon for arsenals; workshops
like Lille, Nantes, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Marseilles, Lyons; the seas
free; incomparably greater strength than that of 1793, which had to
fight at the same time the foreigner and internal rebellions. The
centers were kindling. The municipal councils made themselves felt, the
rural districts as yet showing no signs of resistance; the national
reserve intact. The burning metal needed only moulding.
The debut of the delegate was a serious blunder. He executed the decree
of Paris for the adjournment of the elections, which promised to be
republican and bellicose. Bismarck himself had told Jules Favre that he
did not want an Assembly, because this Assembly would be for war.
Energetic circulars, some measures against the intriguers, formal
instructions to the prefects, would have brightened and victoriously
brought out this patriotic fervor. An Assembly fortified by all the
republican aspirations, vigorously led, sitting in a populous town,
would have increased the national energy a hundredfold, brought to light
unhoped-for talents, and might have exacted everything from the country,
blood and gold. It would have proclaimed the Republic, and in case of
being obliged by reverses to negotiate, would have saved her from
foundering, prevented reaction. But Gambetta's instructions were formal.
"Elections at Paris would bring back days like June," said he. "We must
do without Paris," was our answer. All was useless. Besides, several
prefects, incapable of influencing their surroundings, predicted pacific
elections. Lacking the energy to grapple with the real difficulties of
the situation, Gambetta fancied he might shift them by the claptrap
expedient of his dictatorship.
Did he bring a great political revolution? No. His whole programme was,
"To maintain order and liberty and push on the war."[49] Cremieux had
called the Bonapartists "republicans going astray." Gambetta believed,
or pretended to believe, in the patriotism of the reactionists. A few
pontifical zouaves who offered themselves, the abject submission of the
Bonapartist generals, the wheedling of a few bishops,[50] sufficed to
delude him. He continued the tactics of his predecessors to conciliate
everybody; he spared even the functionaries. In the department of
Finance and Public Instruction, he and his colleagues forbade the
dismissal of any official. The War Office for a long time remained under
the supreme direction of a Bonapartist, and always carried on an
underhand war against the defence. Gambetta maintained in some
prefectures the same employes who had drawn up the proscription lists of
the 2nd December, 1851. With the exception of a few justices of the
peace and a small number of magistrates, nothing was changed in the
political _personnel_, the whole subordinate administration remaining
intact.
Was he wanting in authority? His colleagues of the council did not even
dare to raise their voices; the prefects knew only him; the generals put
on the manner of school-boys in his presence. Was a _personnel_ wanting?
The Leagues contained solid elements; the small bourgeoisie and
proletariat might have given the _cadres_.
Gambetta saw here only marplots, chaos, federalism, and roughly
dismissed their delegates. Each department possessed groups of known,
tried republicans, to whom the administration and the part of spurring
the Defence under the direction of commissioners might have been
intrusted. Gambetta refused almost everywhere to refer to them; the few
whom he appointed he knew how to fetter closely. He vested all power in
the prefects, most of them ruins of 1848, or his colleagues of the
Conference Mole, nerveless, loquacious, timorous, anxious to have
themselves well spoken of, and many anxious to feather themselves a nest
in their department.
The Defence in the provinces set out on these two crutches--the War
Office and the prefects. On this absurd plan of conciliation the
Government was conducted.
Did the new delegate at least bring a powerful military conception? "No
one in the Government, neither General Trochu nor General Leflo, no one
had suggested a military operation of any kind."[51] Did he at least
possess that quick penetration which makes up for want of experience?
After twenty days in the provinces he comprehended the military
situation no better than he had done at Paris. The capitulation of Metz
drew from him indignant proclamations, but he understood no more than
his colleagues of the Hotel-de-Ville that this was the very moment to
make a supreme effort.
With the exception of three divisions (30,000 men) and the greater part
of their cavalry, the Germans had been obliged to employ for the
investment of Paris all their troops, and they had no reserve left them.
The three divisions at Orleans and Chateaudun were kept in check by our
forces of the Loire. The cavalry, while infesting a large extent of
territory in the west, north and east, could not hold out against
infantry. At the end of October, the army before Paris, strongly
fortified against the town, was not at all covered from the side of the
provinces. The appearance of 50,000 men, even of young troops, would
have forced the Prussians to raise the blockade.
Moltke was far from disregarding the danger. He had decided in case of
need to raise the blockade, to sacrifice the park of artillery then
being formed at Villecoublay, to concentrate his army for action in the
open country, and only to re-establish the blockade after the victory,
that is to say, after the arrival of the army of Metz. "Everything was
ready for our decampment; we only had to team the horses," has been said
by an eye-witness, the Swiss Colonel D'Erlach. The official papers of
Berlin had already prepared public opinion for this event.
The blockade of Paris raised, even momentarily, might have led, under
the pressure of Europe, to an honorable peace; this was almost certain.
Paris and France recovering their salutary buoyancy, the revictualling
of the great town, and the consequent prolongation of her resistance,
would have given the time necessary for the organization of the
provincial armies.
At the end of October our army of the Loire was in progress of
formation, the 15th corps at Salbris, the 16th at Blois, already
numbering 80,000 men. If it had pushed between the Bavarians at Orleans
and the Prussians at Chateaudun; if--and this was an easy matter with
its numerical superiority--it beat the enemy one after another, the
route to Paris would have been thrown open, and the deliverance of Paris
almost sure.
The Delegation of Tours did not see so far. It confined its efforts to
recovering Orleans, in order to establish there an entrenched camp; so
on the 26th General D'Aurelles de Paladines, named by Gambetta
commander-in-chief of the two corps, received the order to rescue the
town from the Bavarians. He was a senator, a bigoted, rabid reactionist,
at best fit only to be an officer of zouaves, fuming in his heart at the
defence. It was resolved to make the attack from Blois. Instead of
conducting the 15th corps on foot, which by Romorantin would have taken
forty-eight hours, the Delegation sent it by the Vierzon railway to
Tours, a journey which took five days and could not be hidden from the
enemy. Still, on the 28th, D'Aurelles established before Blois, disposed
of 40,000 men at least, and the next day he was to have left for
Orleans.
On the 28th, at nine o'clock in the evening, the commander of the German
troops had him informed of the capitulation of Metz. D'Aurelles, jumping
at this pretext, telegraphed to Tours that he should adjourn his
movement.
A general of some ability, of some good faith, would, on the contrary,
have precipitated everything. Since the German army before Metz, now
disengaged, would swoop down upon the centre of France, there was not a
day to lose to be beforehand with it. Every hour told. This was the
critical juncture of the war.
The Delegation of Tours was as foolish as D'Aurelles. Instead of
dismissing him, it contented itself with moans, ordering him to
concentrate his forces. This concentration was terminated on the 3d
November.[52] D'Aurelles then had 70,000 men established from Mer to
Marchenoir. He might have acted, for events seconded him. That very day
a whole brigade of Prussian cavalry had been obliged to abandon Mantes
and to retreat before bands of franc-tireurs; French forces were
observed to be marching from Courville in the direction of Chartres.
D'Aurelles did not stir, and the Delegation remained as paralyzed as he.
"M. le Ministre," wrote on the 4th November the Delegate at War, M. de
Freycinet,[53] "for some days the army and myself do not know if the
Government wants peace or war. At this moment, when we are just
disposing ourselves to accomplish projects laboriously prepared, rumors
of an armistice disturb the minds of our generals, and I myself, I seek
to revive their spirits and push them on, I know not whether the next
day I shall not be disavowed by the Government." Gambetta the same day
answered: "I agree with you as to the detestable influence of the
political hesitations of the Government. From to-day we must decide on
our march forward;" and on the 7th D'Aurelles still remained motionless.
At last, on the 8th, he set out, and went about fifteen kilometers, and
in the evening again spoke of making a halt.[54] All his forces together
exceeded 100,000 men. On the 9th he made up his mind to attack at
Coulmiers. The Bavarians immediately evacuated Orleans. Far from
pursuing them, D'Aurelles announced that he was going to fortify himself
before the town. The Delegation let him do as he liked, and gave him no
orders to pursue the enemy.[55] Three days after the battle Gambetta
came to the headquarters and approved of D'Aurelles's plan. The
Bavarians during this respite had fallen back upon Toury, and two
divisions hurried from Metz by the railway arrived before Paris. Moltke
could at his ease direct the 17th Prussian division towards Toury, where
it arrived on the 12th. Three other corps of the army of Metz approached
the Seine by forced marches. The ignorance of the Delegation, the
obstruction of Trochu, the ill-will and blunders of D'Aurelles,
frustrated the only chances of raising the blockade of Paris.
On the 19th, the army of Metz protected the blockade in the north and in
the south. Henceforth the Delegation had but one part to play--to
prepare armies for France, solid, capable of manoeuvring, and finding
for this the necessary time, as in ancient times the Romans did, and in
our days the Americans. It preferred bolstering up vain appearances,
amusing public opinion with the din of arms, imagining that they could
thus puzzle the Prussians also. It threw upon them men raised but a few
days before, without instruction, without discipline, without
instruments of war, fatally destined to defeat. The prefects charged
with the organization of the mobiles, and those on the point of being
mobilized, were in continual strife with the generals, and lost
themselves in the details of the equipments. The generals, unable to
make anything of those ill-supplied contingents, only advanced on
compulsion.[56] Gambetta on his arrival had said in his proclamation,
"We will make young chiefs," and the important commands were given to
the men of the Empire, worn out, ignorant, knowing nothing of patriotic
wars. To these young recruits, who should have been electrified by
stirring appeals, D'Aurelles preached the word of the Lord and the
interest of the service.[57] The accomplice of Bazaine, Bourbaki,[58]
on his return from England, received the command of the army of the
East. The weakness of the new Delegate encouraged the resistance of all
malcontents. Gambetta asked the officers whether they would accept
service under Garibaldi;[59] he not only allowed them to refuse, but
even released a cure who in the pulpit had set a price on the General's
head. He humbly explained to the royalist officers that the question at
issue was not to defend the Republic but the territory. He gave leave to
the pontifical zouaves to hoist the banner of the Sacred Heart. He
suffered Admiral Fourichon to contend for the disposal of the navy with
the Delegation.[60] He indignantly rejected every project for an
enforced loan, and refused to sanction those voted in some departments.
He left the railway companies masters of the transport, in the hands of
reactionists, always ready to raise difficulties. From the end of
November, these boisterous and contradictory orders, these accumulations
of impracticable decrees, these powers given and taken back, clearly
proved that only a sham resistance was meant.
The country obeyed, giving everything with passive blindness. The
contingents were raised without difficulty; there were no refractory
recruits in rural districts, although the gendarmerie were absent with
the army; the Leagues had given way on the first remonstrance. There was
only a movement on the 31st October. The Marseilles revolutionists,
indignant at the weakness of their Municipal Council, proclaimed the
Commune. Cluseret, who from Geneva had asked the "Prussian" Gambetta for
the command of an army corps, appeared at Marseilles, got himself named
general, again backed out and retired to Switzerland, his dignity
forbidding him to serve as a simple soldier. At Toulouse, the
population expelled the general. At Saint-Etienne the Commune existed
for an hour. But everywhere a word sufficed to replace the authority in
the hands of the Delegation; such was the apprehension of everybody of
creating the slightest embarrassment.
This abnegation only served the reactionists. The Jesuits, who resumed
their intrigues, had been reinstated by Gambetta at Marseilles, whence
the indignation of the people had expelled them. The delegate cancelled
the suspension of papers that had published letters from Chambord and
D'Aumale. He protected the judges who had formed part of the mixed
commission, released the one who had decimated the department of the
Var, and dismissed the prefect of Toulouse for having suspended the
functions of another in the Haute-Garonne. The Bonapartists mustered
again.[61] The prefect of Bordeaux, an ultra-moderate Liberal, asking
for the authorization to arrest some of their ringleaders, Gambetta
severely answered him, "These are practices of the Empire, not of the
Republic." Cremieux, too, said, "The Republic is the reign of law."
Then the Conservative Vendee arose. Monarchists, clericals, capitalists,
waited for their time; cowering in their castles, all their strongholds
remained intact; seminaries, tribunals, general councils, which for a
long time the Delegation refused to dissolve _en masse_. They were
clever enough to figure here and there in the field of battle, in order
to preserve the appearance of patriotism. In a few weeks they had seen
through Gambetta and found out the Liberal behind the Tribune.
Their campaign was sketched, conducted from the beginning, by the only
serious political tacticians whom France possesses--by the Jesuits,
masters of the clergy. The arrival of M. Thiers provided the apparent
chief.
The men of the 4th September had made him their ambassador. France,
almost without diplomatists since Talleyrand, has never possessed one
more easily gulled than this little man. He had gone naively to London,
to Petersburg, to Italy, whose inveterate enemy he had always been,
begging for vanquished France alliances which had been refused her when
yet intact. He was trifled with everywhere. He obtained but one
interview with Bismarck, and negotiated the armistice rejected by the
31st October. When he arrived at Tours in the first days of November, he
knew that peace was impossible, and that henceforth it must be war to
the knife. Instead of courageously making the best of it, of placing his
experience at the service of the Delegation, he had but one object, to
baffle the defence.
It could not have had a more redoubtable enemy. The success of this man,
without ideas, without principles of government, without comprehension
of progress, without courage, would have been impossible everywhere,
save with the French bourgeoisie. But he has always been at hand when a
Liberal was wanted to shoot down the people, and he is a wonderful
artist in Parliamentary intrigue. No one has known like him how to
attack, to isolate a Government, to group prejudices, hatred, and
interests, to hide his intrigues behind a mask of patriotism and common
sense. The campaign of 1870-71 will certainly be his masterpiece. He had
made up his mind as to the lion's share due to the Prussians, and took
no more notice of them than if they had recrossed the Moselle. For him
the enemy was the defender. When our poor mobiles, without _cadres_,
without military training, succumbed to a temperature as fatal as that
of 1812, M. Thiers exulted at our disasters. His house had become the
headquarters for the Conservative notabilities. At Bordeaux especially
it seemed to be the true seat of the Government.
Before the investment the reactionary press of Paris had organized a
provincial service, and from the outset cooled down the Delegation.
After the arrival of M. Thiers it carried on a regular war. It never
ceased harassing, accusing, pointing out the slightest shortcomings,
with a view not to instruct, but to slander, and to wind up by the
foregone conclusion: Fighting is madness, disobedience legitimate. From
the middle of December this watchword, faithfully followed by all the
papers of the party, spread over the rural districts.
For the first time country squires found their way to the ear of the
peasant. This war was about to draw off all the men who were not in the
army or in the Garde Mobile, and camps were being prepared to receive
them. The prisons of Germany held 260,000 men; Paris, the Loire, the
army of the East, more than 350,000. Thirty thousand were dead, and
thousands filled the hospitals. Since the month of August France had
given at least 700,000 men. Where are they to stop? This cry was echoed
in every cottage: "It is the Republic that wants war! Paris is in the
hands of the _levellers_." What does the French peasant know of his
fatherland, and how many could say where Alsace lies? It is he above all
whom the bourgeoisie have in view when they resist compulsory education.
For eighty years all their efforts tended to transforming into coolies
the descendants of the volunteers of 1792.
Before long a spirit of revolt infected the mobiles, almost everywhere
commanded by reactionists of mark. Here an equerry of the Emperor, there
rabid royalists led battalions. In the army of the Loire they muttered,
"We will not fight for M. Gambetta."[62] Officers of the mobilized
troops boasted of never having exposed the lives of their men.
In the beginning of 1871 the provinces were undermined from end to end.
Some general councils that had been dissolved met publicly, declaring
that they considered themselves elected. The Delegation followed the
progress of this enemy, cursed M. Thiers in private, but took good care
not to arrest him. The revolutionists who came to tell it the lengths
things were going were curtly shown out. Gambetta, worn out, not
believing in the defence, thought only of conciliating the men of
influence and rendering himself acceptable for the future.
At the signal of the elections, the scenery, laboriously prepared,
appeared all of a piece, showing the Conservatives grouped,
supercilious, their lists ready. We were far now from the month of
October, when, in many departments, they had not dared to put forward
their candidates. The decrees on the ineligibility of the high
Bonapartist functionaries only affected shadows. The coalition,
disdaining the broken-down men of the Empire, had carefully formed a
_personnel_ of pigtailed nobles, well-to-do farmers, captains of
industry, men likely to do the work bluntly. The clergy had skilfully
united on their lists the Legitimists and Orleanists, perhaps laid down
the basis for a fusion. The vote was carried like a plebiscite. The
republicans tried to speak of an honorable peace; the peasants would
only hear of peace at any price. The towns knew hardly how to make a
stand; at the utmost elected Liberals. Out of 750 members, the Assembly
counted 450 born monarchists. The apparent chief of the campaign, the
king of Liberals, M. Thiers, was returned in twenty-three departments.
The conciliator _a outrance_ could rival Trochu. The one had worried out
Paris, the other the Republic.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The prefect of police, Pietri, attests it: "It is certain that on
that day the revolution might have succeeded, for the crowd which
surrounded the Corps Legislatif on the 9th August was composed of
elements similar to those which triumphed on the 4th September."--
_Enquete sur le 4 Septembre_, vol. i. p. 258.
[2] Let it be understood that I proceed, the words of our adversaries in
hand--parliamentary inquiries, memoirs, reports, histories; that I do
not attribute to them an act or a word which has not been avowed by
them, their documents, or their friends. When I say M. Thiers _saw_, M.
Thiers _knew_, it is that M. Thiers has said, _I saw_, page 6, _I knew_,
page 11, vol. i. of the _Enquete sur les Actes du Gouvernement de la
Defense Nationale_. It will be the same with all the acts and words of
all the official or adverse personages that I quote.
[3] See the evidence of the Marquis de Talhouet, reporter of the
Commission charged to verify the famous despatch which precipitated the
vote for war. _Enquete sur le 4 Septembre_, vol. i. p. 121-124.
[4] _Compte-rendu du 31 Octobre_, by Milliere.
[5] Which did not, however, prevent his accepting a secret mission
during the Crimean war. He was commissioned by Napoleon III. to propose
to the English to betray Turkey by limiting the war to the defence of
Constantinople.
[6] _Enquete sur le 4 Septembre_, Jules Brame, vol. i. p. 201.
[7] _Enquete sur le 4 Septembre_, vol. ii. p. 194.
[8] Ibid., p. 313.
[9] Ibid., Jules Favre, vol. i. p. 330.
[10] In his official report, Jules Favre, to clear the Government, did
not neglect to assume the responsibility of this mission, which he said
he had undertaken without the knowledge of his colleagues.
[11] _Enquete sur le 4 Septembre_, Garnier-Pages, vol. i. p. 445.
[12] "Constantly in relations with the anxious population, which
urgently asked what was going on, what the Government thought, what it
was doing, we were obliged to screen it; to say that it was acting for
the best; that it had given itself up entirely to the defence; that the
chiefs of the army were most devoted and working with ardour.... We said
this without knowing, without believing it. We knew nothing."--_Enquete
sur le 4 Septembre_, Corbon, vol. i. p. 375.
[13] _Enquete sur le 4 Septembre_, Jules Ferry. He even calls the
armistice a "compensation."
[14] _Enquete sur le 4 Septembre_, vol. i. p. 432.
[15] _Enquete sur le 4 Septembre_, vol. i. p. 395. The deposition of
this imbecile, always equally naive, is all the more conclusive.
[16] "We were able to unite 40,000 men by telling the National Guards
that Blanqui and Flourens occupied the Hotel-de-Ville. These two names
did not fail to produce their usual effect."--_Enquete sur le 18 Mars_,
ed. Adam, vol. ii. p. 157. "If the name of Blanqui had not been
pronounced, the new elections announced by the placard of Dorian and
Schoelcher would have taken place the next day."--_Enquete sur le 4
Septembre_, Jules Ferry, vol. i. p. 396-431.
[17] See the affirmation of Dorian. _Enquete sur le 4 Septembre_, vol.
i. p. 527-528.
[18] He offered a musket of honour to any one who would kill the King of
Prussia, and patronised a Greek-fire that was to roast the German army.
[19] _Enquete sur le 18 Mars_, Jules Favre, vol. ii. p. 42.
[20] Even Felix Pyat was arrested. He managed to get out of prison
through a jest, writing to Emmanuel Arago: "What a pity that I should be
your prisoner; you might have been my advocate." He was set free.
[21] The Minister of War, Leflo, who naturally undervalues everything,
says, "This left us, while assuring the operations of the siege against
the Prussians, a disposable force of 230,000 to 240,000 men."
[22] Appendix I.
[23] _Enquete sur le 18 Mars_, Cresson, vol. ii. p. 135.
[24] Jules Simon, _Souvenirs du 4 Septembre_. His textual expressions.
[25] _Enquete sur le 18 Mars_, Jules Favre, vol. ii. p. 43.
[26] After the disaster of Orleans, which cut in two our army, he wrote:
"The army of the Loire is far from being annihilated; it is separated
into two armies of equal force."
[27] They avoided drawing up minutes to prevent even the appearance of
being a municipality (_Enquete sur le 4 Septembre_, Jules Ferry, vol. i.
p. 406). A dozen of these brave ones met with a few adjuncts at the
mairie of the third arrondissement. They confined their whole efforts to
seeking some one to replace Trochu. One of them, M. Corbon, has said
(_Enquete sur le 18 Mars_, vol. ii. p. 613): "However displeased they
might have been at the manner affairs were conducted by the Defence,
they would not for the world overthrow or weaken the Government."
[28] This placard was drawn up by Tridon and Valles.
[29] "See," said they, "what a terrible responsibility we should incur
if we consented any longer to remain the passive instruments of a policy
condemned by the interests of France and of the Republic."
[30] See the Minutes of the Government of the Defence, evidently
arranged for the best by M. Dreo, the son-in-law of Garnier-Pages.
[31] _Enquete sur le 18 Mars_, Ducrot, vol. iii. p. xx.
[32] See the Minutes of the Government of Defence.
[33] Who bears witness to the bravery of the National Guard? Superior
officers themselves. See in the _Enquete sur le 18 Mars_, the
depositions of General Leflo, Vice-Admiral Pothuan, Colonel Lambert, and
Trochu, speaking from the tribune: "If I did not fear to appear
intrusive, I could show that up to the close of the day the
inexperienced National Guards took and retook with the energy of old
troops, under terrific fire, the heights that had been abandoned. It was
necessary to hold them at any price in order to effect the retreat of
the troops engaged in the centre. I had told them so, and they
sacrificed themselves without hesitation."
[34] Vinoy's corps, which took Montretout, had five regiments and one
battalion of infantry, nineteen battalions of mobiles, five regiments of
National Guards. That of General Bellemare, which took Buzenval, had
five regiments of line, seventeen battalions of mobiles, eight regiments
of National Guards.
[35] "We shall give the National Guard a little peppering (_ecrabouiller
un peu la garde nationale_) since they wish it," said a colonel of
infantry, much annoyed at this affair. _Enquete sur le 4 Septembre_,
Colonel Chaper, vol. ii. p. 281.
[36] He told them by way of consolation that "from the evening of the
4th September he had declared that it would be madness to attempt
sustaining a siege by the Prussian army."--_Enquete sur le 4 Septembre_,
Corbon, vol. iv. p. 889.
[37] He has pronounced these words of perfect Jesuitism: "To yield to
hunger is to die, not to capitulate."--_Jules Simon, Souvenirs du 4
Septembre_, p. 299.
[38] Deposition of General Soumairs, _Enquete sur le 4 Septembre_, vol.
ii. p. 215.
[39] What disgrace! 175,000 men pretending that they had been sold by a
single one! In the Seven Years' War, in Westphalia, at Minden, when
General Morangies prepared to capitulate, 1500 men, roused by a
corporal, refused to surrender, forced their way, and rejoined the army
of the Count of Clermont.
[40] _Enquete sur le 4 Septembre_, Arnaud de l'Ariege, vol. ii. p.
320-321.
[41] "I return from Versailles. I have come to terms with M. de
Bismarck, and it has been agreed upon between us as a matter of honour
the firing should cease."--Order sent by Jules Favre on the 27th, seven
o'clock evening. Vinoy, _L'Armistice et la Commune_, p. 67.
[42] The decree sacrificed fifteen and spared twenty-four.
[43] _A. Arnaud_, _Avrial_, _Beslay_, _Blanqui_, _Demay_, _Dereure_,
Dupas, E. Dupont, _J. Durand_, _E. Duval_, _Eudes_, Flotte, _Frankel_,
_Gambon_, _Goupil_, Granger, Humbert, Jaclard, Jarnigon, Lacambre,
Lacord, _Langevin_, _Lefrancais_, Leverdays, _Longuet_, Macdonnell,
_Malon_, _Meillet_, Minet, _Oudet_, _Pindy_, _F. Pyat_, _Ranvier_, Rey,
Rouillier, _Serraillier_, _Theisz_, Tolain, _Tridon_, _Vaillant_,
_Valles_, _Varlin_. The names of those who were elected members of the
Commune are in italics.
[44] In the _Vengeur_, which had taken the place of the _Combat_, he
proved, documents in hand, that for years Jules Favre had been guilty of
forgery, bigamy, and falsification of papers of legitimation.
[45] After the five returned, sixteen candidates of La Corderie obtained
from 65,000 votes to 22,000 votes; Tridon 65,707, Duval 22,499.
[46] Which, besides, has been recounted by Marc Dufraisse in the
_Enquete sur le 4 Septembre_, vol. iv. p. 428.
[47] Cluseret, an ex-officer, decorated in 1848 for his spirited
conduct. "I unfortunately displayed too much energy in that disastrous
battle," he wrote in _Fraser's Magazine_ of March 1878. Attached to the
Arabian Bureaux, he threw up his commission after the Crimean war, and
not being able to play a part in Europe, engaged in the American civil
war for a short time, then withdrew to New York, where he campaigned
with his pen. Misunderstood by the bourgeoisie of the two worlds, he
again took to politics, but from the opposite side; offered himself to
the Irish insurgents; landed in Ireland urging them to rise, and one
fine night abandoned them. The nascent International also saw this
powerful general come and offer his services. He did a good deal in the
way of pamphleteering; tried to impress upon the workmen that he was the
sword and buckler of Socialism. "We or nothing," said he to the sons of
the massacred of June. The Government of the 4th September having also
failed to appreciate his genius, he called Gambetta _Prussian_, and got
himself sent as delegate to Lyons by the Corderie, where Varlin, whom he
deceived for a long time, had introduced him. He offered the Lyons
council to organise an army of volunteers which was to operate on the
flank of the enemy.
[48] The working-men's quarters of Lyons.
[49] _Enquete sur le 4 Septembre_, Gambetta, vol. i. p. 560.
[50] The Jew Cremieux lived with the Ultramontane Archbishop Guibert
(since made Archbishop of Paris) in his episcopal palace at Tours,
dining every day at his table, and in return rendering him all the
little services asked for by the clergy.
[51] _Enquete sur le 4 Septembre_, Gambetta, vol. i. p. 561.
[52] D'Aurelles de Paladines, _La Premiere Armee de la Loire_, p. 93.
[53] De Freycinet, _La Guerre en Province_, p. 86, 87.
[54] Ibid., p. 91.
[55] On the 11th, the delegate telegraphed to D'Aurelles: "We fully
approve of the dispositions you had taken for your troops round
Orleans.... You will receive instructions. In the meantime redouble your
vigilance in prevision of a return to the offensive on the part of the
enemy."--_D'Aurelles de Paladines_, _La Premiere Armee de la Loire_, p.
120. Thus, far from speaking of attacking, the Delegation only thought
of the defensive.
[56] "It was only when they could not help it that they made up their
minds to act," Gambetta has said in the _Enquete sur le 4 Septembre_.
The avowal is precious, coming from him.
[57] It is most amusing to hear D'Aurelles chaffing Trochu without
perceiving that he is just as ridiculous. In his evidence (_Enquete sur
le 4 Septembre_, vol. iii. p. 201) he says: "I did not deposit either a
plan or a testament at a lawyer's; I confined myself to writing to the
Bishop of Orleans: Monsignor, the army of the Loire to-day sets out on
its march to meet the army of General Ducrot. Pray, Monsignor, for the
salvation of France."
[58] And what other name is merited by the general who abandoned his
post in the field to go and negotiate with the sovereign whom France had
expelled?
[59] _Enquete sur le 4 Septembre_, Rolland, vol. iii. p. 456.
[60] Ibid., Dalloz, vol. iv. p. 398.
[61] If General Boyer, who saw the letter, is to be believed, the
Delegation of Tours on the 24th October made officious advances to the
Empress, and then gave the order to the charge-d'affaires at London to
go and thank her for the patriotism that she had shown in refusing to
treat with Bismarck, who trifled with her as well as with Bazaine. See
_Enquete sur le 4 Septembre_, vol. iv. p. 258.
[62] _Enquete sur le 4 Septembre_, Admiral Jaureguiberry, vol. iii. p.
297.
CHAPTER I.
"Le chef du pouvoir executif, pas plus que l'Assemblee
Nationale, s'appuyant l'un sur l'autre et se fortifiant
l'un par l'autre, n'avaient en aucune maniere provoque
l'insurrection parisienne."--_Discours de M. Dufaure contre
l'Amnistie_, _Seance du 18 Mai 1876._
FIRST ATTACKS OF THE COALITION AGAINST PARIS--THE BATTALIONS
OF THE NATIONAL GUARD FEDERALISE AND SEIZE THEIR
CANNON--THE PRUSSIANS ENTER PARIS.
The invasion has brought back the "Chambre introuvable" of 1816. After
having dreamt of a regenerated France soaring towards the light, to feel
oneself hurled back half a century, under the yoke of the Jesuits of the
Congregation, of the brutal rurals! There were men who lost heart. Many
spoke of expatriating themselves. The thoughtless said, "The Chamber
will only last a day, since it has no mandate but to decide on peace and
war." Those, however, who had watched the progress of the conspiracy and
the leading part taken in it by the clergy, knew beforehand that these
men would not allow France to escape their clutches before they crushed
her.
Men just escaped from famine-stricken but glowing Paris found on their
arrival at Bordeaux the Coblentz of the first emigration, but this time
invested with the power to glut rancors that had been accumulating for
forty years. Clericals and Conservatives were for the first time
allowed, without the interference of either emperor or king, to trample
to their hearts' content on Paris, the atheist, the revolutionist, who
had so often shaken off their yoke and baffled their schemes. At the
first sitting their choler burst out. At the farther end of the hall,
sitting alone on his bench, shunned by all, an old man rose and asked to
address the Assembly. Under his cloak glared a red shirt. It was
Garibaldi. At the call of his name, he wished to answer, to say in a few
words that he resigned the mandate with which Paris had honored him. His
voice was drowned in howls. He remained standing, raising his hand, but
the insults redoubled. The chastisement, however, was at hand. "Rural
majority! disgrace of France!" cried from the gallery a young vibrating
voice, that of Gaston Cremieux, of Marseilles. The deputies rose
threatening. Hundreds of "Bravos" answered from the galleries,
overwhelming the rurals. After the sitting the crowd cheered Garibaldi
and hooted his insulters. The National Guard presented arms, despite the
rage of M. Thiers, who under the peristyle apostrophized the commanding
officer. The next day the people returned, forming lines in front of the
theatre, and forced the reactionist deputies to undergo their republican
cheers. But they knew their strength, and from the beginning of the
sittings opened their attack. One of the rurals, pointing to the
representatives of Paris, cried, "They are stained with the blood of
civil war!" And when one of these representatives cried, "Vive la
Republique!" the majority hooted him, saying, "You are only a fraction
of the country." On the next day the Chamber was surrounded by troops,
who kept off the republicans.
At the same time the Conservative papers united in their hissings
against Paris, denying even her sufferings. The National Guard, they
said, had fled before the Prussians; its only exploits had been the 31st
October and 22nd January. These calumnies fructified in the provinces,
long since prepared to receive them. Such was their ignorance of the
siege, that they had named some of them several times--Trochu, Ducrot,
Ferry, Pelletan, Garnier-Pages, Emmanuel Arago--to whom Paris had
refused a single vote.
It was the duty of the Parisian representatives to clear up this
darkness, to recount the siege, to denounce the men responsible for the
failure of the defence, to explain the significance of the Parisian
vote, to unfurl the flag of republican France against the
clerico-monarchical coalition. They remained silent, contenting
themselves with puerile party meetings, from which Delescluze turned
away as heart-broken as from the Assembly of the Paris mayors. Our
Epimenides of 1848 answered with stereotyped humanitarian phrases the
clashing of arms of the enemy, who all the while affirmed his programme:
to patch up a peace, to bury the Republic, and for that purpose to
checkmate Paris. Thiers was named chief of the executive power with
general acclamation, and chose for his Ministers Jules Favre, Jules
Simon, Picard and Leflo, who might still pass muster with the provincial
republicans.
These elections, these menaces, these insults to Garibaldi, to the Paris
representatives; Thiers, the incarnation of the Parliamentary monarchy,
first magistrate of the Republic, blow after blow was struck at Paris, a
feverish, hardly revictualled Paris, hungering still more for liberty
than bread. This then was the reward for five months of suffering and
endurance. These provinces, which Paris had invoked in vain during the
whole siege, dared now to brand her with cowardice, to throw her back
from Bismarck to Chambord. Well, then, Paris was resolved to defend
herself even against France. The new imminent danger, the hard
experience of the siege, had exalted her energy and endued the great
town with one collective soul.
Already, towards the end of January, some republicans, and also some
bourgeois intriguers in search of a mandate, had tried to group the
National Guards with a view to the elections. A large meeting, presided
over by Courty, a merchant of the third arrondissement, had been held in
the Cirque. They had there drawn up a list, decided to meet again to
deliberate in case of double electoral returns, and had named a
committee charged to convoke all the companies regularly. This second
meeting was held on the 15th in the Vauxhall Douane Street. But who then
thought of the elections? One single thought prevailed: the union of all
Parisian forces against the triumphant rurals. The National Guard
represented all the manhood of Paris. The clear, simple, essentially
French idea of confederating the battalions had long been in every mind.
It was received with acclamation and resolved that the confederate
battalions should be grouped round a Central Committee.
A commission during the same sitting was charged to elaborate the
statutes. Each arrondissement represented--eighteen out of twenty--named
a commissary. Who were these men? The agitators, the revolutionists of
La Corderie, the Socialists? No; there was not a known name amongst
them. All those elected were men of the middle classes, shopkeepers,
employes, strangers to the coteries, till now for the most part
strangers even to politics.[63] Courty, the president, was known only
since the meeting at the Cirque. From the first day the idea of the
federation appeared what it was--universal, not sectarian, and therefore
powerful. The next day, Clement-Thomas declared to the Government that
he could no longer be answerable for the National Guard, and sent in his
resignation. He was provisionally replaced by Vinoy.
On the 24th, in the Vauxhall, before 2,000 delegates and guards, the
commission read the statutes it had drawn up, and pressed the delegates
to proceed immediately to the election of the Central Committee. The
Assembly was tempestuous, disquiet, little inclined for calm
deliberations. Each of the last eight days had brought with it more
insulting menaces from Bordeaux. They were going, it was said, to disarm
the battalions, suppress the thirty sous, the only resource of the
workingmen, and exact at once the owing house-rents and overdue
commercial bills. Besides, the armistice, prolonged for a week, was to
expire on the 26th, and the papers announced that the Prussians would
enter Paris on the 27th. For a week this nightmare had weighed on all
the patriots. The meeting, too, proceeded at once to consider these
burning questions. Varlin proposed: The National Guard only recognizes
the chiefs elected by itself. Another: The National Guard protests
through the Central Committee against any attempt at disarmament, and
declares that in case of need it will offer armed resistance. Both
propositions were voted unanimously. And now, was Paris to submit to the
entry of the Prussians, to let them parade her boulevards? It could not
even be discussed. The whole assembly, springing up over-excited, raised
one cry of war. Some warnings of prudence are disdained. Yes, they would
oppose their arms to the entry of the Prussians. The proposition would
be submitted by the delegates to their respective companies. And
adjourning to the 3rd March, the meeting broke up its sitting and
marched _en masse_ to the Bastille, carrying along with it a great
number of soldiers and mobiles.
Since the morning, Paris, fearing the loss of her liberty, had gathered
round her revolutionary column, as she had before crowded round the
statue of Strasbourg when trembling for France. The battalions defiled,
headed by drums and flags, covering the rails and pedestal with crowns
of immortelles. From time to time a delegate ascended the plinth, and
from this tribune of bronze harangued the people, who answered with
cries of "Vive la Republique!" Suddenly a red flag was carried through
the crowd into the monument, reappearing soon after at the balustrade. A
formidable cry saluted it, followed by a long silence. A man, climbing
the cupola, had the daring to go and fix it in the hand of the statue of
Liberty surmounting the column. Thus, amidst the frantic cheering of the
people, for the first time since 1848, the flag of equality overshadowed
this spot, redder than its flag by the blood of a thousand martyrs.
The following day the pilgrimages were continued, not only by National
Guards, but by the soldiers and mobiles. The army gave way to the
inspiration of Paris. The mobiles arrived preceded by their
quartermasters carrying large black crowns; the trumpeters, posted at
each corner of the pedestal, saluted them, and the crowd cheered them to
the echo. Women dressed in black suspended a tricolor flag bearing the
inscription, "The republican women to the martyrs." When the pedestal
was covered, the crowns and flowers soon wound themselves entirely round
the bust, encircling it from top to bottom with yellow and black
flowers, red and tricolor oriflammes, symbols of mourning for the past
and hope in the future.
On the 26th the manifestations became innumerable and irritated. A
police agent, surprised taking down the names of the battalions, was
seized and thrown into the Seine. Twenty-five battalions defiled,
sombre, a prey to a terrible anguish. The armistice was about to expire
and the _Journal Officiel_ did not speak of a prorogation. The journals
announced the entry of the German army by the Champs-Elysees for the
next day. The Government was sending the troops to the left bank of the
Seine and clearing out the Palace de l'Industrie. They forgot only the
cannons of the National Guards accumulated at the Place Wagram and at
Passy. Already the carelessness of the capitulards had delivered 12,000
more muskets to the Prussians than were stipulated for.[64] Who could
tell if the latter would not stretch out their hands to these fine
pieces, cast with the flesh and blood of the Parisians, marked with the
numbers of the battalions?[65] Spontaneously all Paris rose. The
bourgeois battalions of Passy, in accord with the municipality,[66] set
the example, drawing the pieces of the Ranelagh to the Parc
Monceaux.[67] Other battalions came to fetch their cannon in the Park
Wagram, wheeling them by the Rues St. Honore and Rivoli to the Place
des Vosges, under the protection of the Bastille.
During the day the troop sent by Vinoy to the Bastille had fraternized
with the people. In the evening, the rappel, the tocsin, the trumpets
had thrown thousands of armed men into the streets, who came to mass
themselves at the Bastille, the Chateau d'Eau, and the Rue de Rivoli.
The prison of St. Pelagie was forced and Brunel set free. At two o'clock
in the morning, forty thousand men remounted the Champs-Elysees and the
Avenue de la Grande Armee, silent, in good order, to encounter the
Prussians. They waited till daybreak. On their return, the battalions of
Montmartre seized all the cannon they found on their way, and took them
to the mairie of the eighteenth arrondissement and to the Boulevard
Ornano.
To this feverish but chivalrous outburst Vinoy could only oppose an
order of the day stigmatizing it. And this Government, that insulted
Paris, asked her to immolate herself for France! A placard posted up on
the morning of the 27th announced the prolongation of the armistice, and
for the 1st of March the occupation of the Champs-Elysees by 30,000
Germans.
At two o'clock the commission charged to draw up the statutes for a
Central Committee held a sitting at the mairie of the third
arrondissement. Some of its members since the evening before,
considering themselves invested with powers by the situation, had tried
to organize a permanent sub-committee in this mairie; but not being
numerous enough, they had adjourned until the next day and consulted the
chiefs of the battalions. The sitting, presided over by Captain
Bergeret, was stormy. The delegates of the battalion of Montmartre, who
had established a committee of their own in the Rue des Rosiers, would
speak only of fighting, showed their _mandats imperatifs_, and recalled
the resolution of the Vauxhall. It was almost unanimously resolved to
take up arms against the Prussians. The mayor, Bonvalet, rather uneasy
at having such guests, had the mairie surrounded, and, half by
persuasion, half by force, succeeded in getting rid of them.
During the whole day the faubourgs had armed and seized the munitions;
the rampart pieces were remounted on their carriages; the mobiles,
forgetting that they were prisoners of war, went to retake their arms.
In the evening one crowd inveigled the marines of La Pepiniere Barracks,
and led them to the Bastille to fraternize with the people.
A catastrophe was inevitable but for the courage of a few men who dared
to oppose this dangerous current. All the societies that met at the
Place de la Corderie, the Central Committee of the twenty
arrondissements, the International, and the Federation, looked with
reserve upon this Central Committee, composed of unknown men, who had
never taken part in the revolutionary campaigns. On leaving the mairie
of the third arrondissement, some delegates of battalions who belonged
to the sections of the International came to the Corderie to tell of the
sitting and the desperate resolution come to. Every exertion was made to
pacify them, and speakers were sent to the Vauxhall, where a large
meeting was being held; they succeeded in making themselves heard. Many
other citizens made great efforts to recall the people to reason. The
next morning, the 28th, the three groups of the Corderie published a
manifesto conjuring the workingmen to beware. "Every attack," said they,
"would serve to expose the people to the blows of the enemies of the
Revolution, who would drown all social vindications in a sea of blood."
Pressed on all sides, the Central Committee was obliged to yield, as it
announced in a proclamation signed by twenty-nine names. "Every
aggression would result in the immediate overthrow of the Republic.
Barricades will be established all round the quarters to be occupied by
the enemy, so he will parade in a camp shut out from our town." This was
the first official appearance of the Central Committee. The twenty-nine
unknown men[68] capable of thus pacifying the National Guard were
applauded even by the bourgeoisie, who did not seem to wonder at their
power.
The Prussians entered Paris on the 1st March. This Paris which the
people had taken possession of was no longer the Paris of the nobles and
the great bourgeoisie of 1815. Black flags hung from the houses, but the
deserted streets, the closed shops, the dried-up fountains, the veiled
statues of the Place de la Concorde, the gas not lighted at night, still
more pregnantly announced a town in its agony. Prostitutes who ventured
into the quarters of the enemy were publicly whipped. A cafe in the
Champs-Elysees which had opened its doors to the victors was ransacked.
There was but one _grand seigneur_ in the Faubourg St. Germain to offer
his house to the Prussians.
Paris was still wincing under this affront, when a new avalanche of
insults poured down upon her from Bordeaux. Not only had the Assembly
not found a word or act to help her in this painful crisis, but its
papers, the _Journal Officiel_ at their head, were indignant that she
should have thought of defending herself against the Prussians. A
proposition was being signed in the bureaux to fix the seat of the
Assembly outside of Paris. The projected law on overdue bills and
house-rents opened the prospect of numberless failures. Peace had been
accepted, hurriedly voted like an ordinary business. Alsace, the greater
part of Lorraine, 1,600,000 Frenchmen torn from their fatherland, five
milliards to pay, the forts to the east of Paris to be occupied till the
payment of the first 500,000,000 francs, and the departments of the East
till the entire payment; this was what Trochu, Favre, and the coalition
cost us, the price for which Bismarck permitted us the _Chambre
introuvable_. And to console Paris for so much disgrace, M. Thiers
appointed as General of the National Guard the incapable and brutal
commander of the first army of the Loire, D'Aurelles de Paladines. Two
senators, Vinoy and D'Aurelles, two Bonapartists, at the head of
Republican Paris--this was too much. All Paris had the presentiment of a
_coup-d'etat_.[69]
That evening there were large groups gathered in the boulevards. The
National Guards, refusing to acknowledge D'Aurelles as their commander,
proposed the appointment of Garibaldi. On the 3rd two hundred battalions
sent their delegates to Vauxhall. Matters began with the reading of the
statutes. The preamble declared the Republic "the only Government by law
and justice superior to universal suffrage, which is its offspring."
"The delegates," said Article 6, "must prevent every attempt whose
object would be the overthrow of the Republic." The Central Committee
was composed of three delegates for each arrondissement, elected by the
companies, battalions, legions and of the _chefs-de-legion_.[70] While
awaiting the regular election, the meeting there and then named a
provisional executive committee. Varlin, Pindy, Jacques Durand, and some
other Socialists of the Corderie formed part of it, an understanding
having been come to between the Central Committee, or rather the
commission which had drawn up the statutes, and the three groups of the
Corderie. Varlin carried a unanimous vote on the immediate re-election
of the officers of the National Guard. Another motion was put: "That the
department of the Seine constitute itself an independent republic in
case of the Assembly attempting to decapitalize Paris,"--a motion
unsound in its conception, faultily drawn up, which seemed to isolate
Paris from the rest of France--an anti-revolutionist, anti-Parisian
idea, cruelly exploited against the Commune. Who then was to feed Paris
if not the provinces? Who was to save our peasants if not Paris? But
Paris had been confined to solitary life for six months; she alone to
the last moment had declared for the continuation of the struggle at
any price, alone affirmed the Republic by a vote. Her abandonment, the
vote of the provinces, the rural majority, made so many men ready to die
for the universal republic fancy that the Republic might be shut up
within Paris.
FOOTNOTES:
[63] 3rd arrondissement, A. Genotal; 4th, Alavoine; 5th, Manet; 6th, V.
Frontier; 7th, Badois; 8th, Morterol?; 9th, Mayer; 10th, Arnold; 11th,
Piconel; 12th, Audoynaud; 13th, Soncial; 14th, Dacosta; 15th, Masson;
16th, Pe; 17th, Weber; 18th, Trouillet; 19th, Lagarde; 20th, A. Bonit.
Courty remained president, Ramel secretary.
[64] Vinoy, _L'Armistice et la Commune_, p. 128.
[65] The reactionists have said that this fear was feigned; that the
cannon were safe from the Prussians. This is so false that the general
staff itself feared a surprise. See Mortemart, chef d'etat-major,
_Enquete sur le 4 Septembre_, vol. ii. p. 844.
[66] _Enquete sur le 18 Mars_, Colonel Lavigne, vol. ii. p. 467.
[67] "The first cannons were taken, carried away, on the news of the
entry of the Prussians. And these, gentlemen, believe me, were carried
off by citizens devoted to order, the National Guards of Passy and
Auteuil, and taken where? From the Ranelagh."--_Jules Ferry_, _Enquete
sur le 18 Mars_, vol ii. p. 68.
[68] A. Alavoine, A. Bouit, Frontier, Boursier, David, Buisson, Harond,
Gritz, Tessier, Ramel, Badois, Arnold, Piconel, Audoynaud, Masson,
Weber, Lagarde, J. Laroque, J. Bergeret, Pouchain, Lavalette, Fleury,
Maljournal, Chouteau, Cadaze, Gastaud, Dutil, Matte, Mutin. Ten only of
those elected on the 15th figure in this document. Various delegations,
abstentions, and irregular adhesions had given nearly twenty new names.
[69] Roger du Nord, the chief of D'Aurelles' staff, "heard it said in
all the fractions of the National Guard, 'Why place a man of such energy
at the head of the National Guard if not to make a _coup
d'etat_?'"--_Enquete sur le 18 Mars_, vol. ii.
[70] The National Guards of each of the twenty arrondissements were
formed into a separate legion.