"Cette republique a ete menacee par l'Assemblee, a-t-on dit,
Messieurs, quand l'insurrection a eclate, l'Assemblee ne
s'etait encore signalee au point de vue politique que par
deux actes: la nomination du chef du pouvoir executif et
l'acceptation d'un cabinet republicain."--_Discours de M.
Larcy, du Centre Gauche, contre l'Amnistie, Seance du 18
Mai 1876._
THE COALITION OPENS FIRE ON PARIS--THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE
CONSTITUTES ITSELF--M. THIERS ORDERS THE ASSAULT.
To the rural plebiscite the Parisian National Guard had answered by
their federation; to the threats of the monarchists, to the projects of
decapitalization, by the manifestation of the Bastille; to D'Aurelles'
appointment, by the resolutions of the 3rd March. What the perils of the
siege had not been able to effect the Assembly had brought about--the
union of the middle class with the proletariat. The immense majority of
Paris looked upon the growing army of the Republic without regret. On
the 3rd the Minister of the Interior, Picard, having denounced "the
anonymous Central Committee," and called upon "all good citizens to
stifle these culpable manifestations," no one stirred. Besides, the
accusation was ridiculous. The Committee showed itself in the open day,
sent its minutes to the papers, and had only made a manifestation to
save Paris from a catastrophe. It answered the next day: "The Committee
is not anonymous; it is the union of the representatives of free men
aspiring to the solidarity of all the members of the National Guard. Its
acts have always been signed. It repels with contempt the calumnies
which accuse it of inciting to pillage and civil war." The signatures
followed.[71]
The chiefs of the coalition saw clearly which way events were drifting.
The republican army each day increased its arsenal of muskets, and
especially of cannon. There were now pieces of ordnance at ten different
places--at the Barriere d'Italie, at the Faubourg St. Antoine, at the
Buttes Montmartre. A red placard informed Paris of the formation of the
Central Committee of the federation of the National Guards, and invited
citizens to organize in each arrondissement committees of battalions and
councils of legions, and to appoint the delegates to the Central
Committee. The ensemble, the ardour of the movement seemed to bear
witness to the powerful organization of the Central Committee. A few
days more and the answer of the people would be complete if a blow were
not struck at once.
What they misunderstood was the stout heart of the enemy. The victory of
the 22nd January blinded them. They believed in the stories of their
journals, in the cowardice of the National Guards, in the bragging of
Ducrot, who, in the bureaux of the Assembly swore eternal hatred to the
demagogues, but for whom, he said, he would have conquered.[72] The
bullies of the reaction fancied they could swallow Paris at a mouthful.
The operation was conducted with clerical skill, method, and discipline.
Legitimists and Orleanists, disagreeing as to the name of the monarch,
had accepted the compromise of Thiers, an equal share in the Government,
which was called "the pact of Bordeaux." Besides, against Paris there
could be no division.
From the commencement of March the provincial papers held forth at the
same time, speaking of incendiarism and pillage in Paris. On the 4th
there was but one rumor in the bureaux of the Assembly--that an
insurrection had broken out; that the telegraphic communications were
cut off; that General Vinoy had retreated to the left bank of the Seine.
The Government, which propagated these rumors,[73] despatched four
deputies, who were also mayors, to Paris. They arrived on the 5th, and
found Paris perfectly calm, even gay.[74] The mayors and adjuncts,
assembled by the Minister of the Interior, attested to the tranquility
of the town. But Picard, no doubt in the conspiracy, said, "This
tranquility is only apparent. We must act." And the ultra-Conservative
Vautrain added, "We must take the bull by the horns and arrest the
Central Committee."
The Right never ceased baiting the bull. Sneers, provocations, insults,
were showered upon Paris and her representatives. Some among them,
Rochefort, Tridon, Malon, and Ranc, when withdrawing after the vote
mutilating the country, were followed by cries of "Pleasant journey to
you." Victor Hugo defending Garibaldi was hooted. Delescluze demanding
the impeachment of the members of the National Defence was no better
listened to. Jules Simon declared that he would maintain the law against
association. On the 10th the breach was opened. A resolution was passed
that Paris should no longer be the capital, and that the Assembly should
sit at Versailles. This was calling forth the Commune, for Paris could
not remain at the same time without a Government and without a
municipality. The field of battle once found, despair was to supply it
with an army. The Government had already decided to continue the pay of
the National Guards to those only who should ask for it. The Assembly
decreed that the bills due on the 13th November, 1870, should be made
payable on the 13th March, that is, in three days. The Minister Dufaure
obstinately refused any concession on this point. Notwithstanding the
urgent appeals of Milliere, the Assembly refused to pass any protective
bill for the tenants whose house-rents had been due for six months. Two
or three hundred thousand workmen, shopkeepers, model makers, small
manufacturers working in their own lodgings, who had spent their little
stock of money and could not yet earn any more, all business being at a
stand-still, were thus thrown upon the tender mercies of the landlord,
of hunger and bankruptcy. From the 13th to the 17th of March 150,000
bills were dishonored. Finally, the Right obliged M. Thiers to declare
from the tribune "that the Assembly could proceed to its deliberations
at Versailles without fearing the paving stones of an _emeute_," thus
constraining him to act at once, for the deputies were to meet again at
Versailles on the 20th.
D'Aurelles commenced operations against the National Guard, declaring he
would submit it to rigorous discipline and purge it of its bad elements.
"My first duty," said his order of the day, "is to secure the respect
due to law and property,"--this eternal provocation on the part of the
bourgeoisie when lifted to supreme power by revolutionary events.
The other senators also joined in. On the 7th Vinoy threw into the
streets with a pittance of eight shillings a head the twenty-one
thousand mobiles of the Seine. On the 11th, the day on which Paris
learnt her decapitalization and the ruinous decrees, Vinoy suppressed
six Republican journals, four of which, _Le Cri du Peuple_, _Le Mot
d'Ordre_, _Le Pere Duchene_, and _Le Vengeur_, had a circulation of
200,000. The same day the court-martial which judged the accused of the
31st October condemned several to death, among others Flourens and
Blanqui. Thus everybody was hit--bourgeois, republicans, revolutionists.
This Assembly of Bordeaux, the deadly foe of Paris, a stranger to her
in sentiment, mind, and language, seemed a Government of foreigners. The
commercial quarters as well as the faubourgs rang with a general outcry
against it.[75]
From this time the last hesitation disappeared. The mayor of Montmartre,
Clemenceau, had been intriguing for several days to effect the surrender
of the cannon, and he had even found officers disposed to capitulate;
but the battalion protested, and on the 12th, when D'Aurelles sent his
teams, the guards refused to deliver the pieces. Picard, making an
attempt at firmness, sent for Courty, saying, "The members of the
Central Committee are risking their heads," and obtained a
quasi-promise. The Committee expelled Courty.
It had since the 6th met at the hall of the Corderie. Although keeping
aloof from, and entirely independent of, the three other groups, the
reputation of the place was useful to it. It gave evidence of good
policy and baffled the intrigues of the _commandant_, Du Bisson, an
officer who had served abroad and been employed in undertakings of an
equivocal character, and who was trying to constitute a Central
Committee from above with the chiefs of the battalions. The Central
Committee sent three delegates to this group, where they met with lively
opposition. One chief of battalion, Barberet, showed himself
particularly restive; but another, Faltot, carried away the Assembly,
saying, "I am going over to the people." The fusion was concluded on the
10th, the day of the general meeting of the delegates. The Committee
presented its weekly report. It recounted the events of the last days,
the nomination of D'Aurelles, the menaces of Picard, remarking very
justly, "That which we are, events have made us: the reiterated attacks
of a press hostile to democracy have taught it, the menaces of the
Government have confirmed it; we are the inexorable barrier raised
against every attempt at the overthrow of the Republic." The delegates
were invited to push forward the elections of the Central Committee. An
appeal to the army was drawn up: "Soldiers, children of the people! Let
us unite to serve the Republic. Kings and emperors have done us harm
enough." The next day the soldiers lately arrived from the army of the
Loire gathered in front of these red placards, which bore the names and
addresses of all the members of the Committee.
The Revolution, bereft of its journals, spoke now through placards, of
the greatest variety of color and opinion, posted on all the walls.
Flourens and Blanqui, condemned in contumacy, placarded their
protestations. Sub-committees were being formed in all the popular
arrondissements. That of the thirteenth arrondissement had for its chief
a young iron founder, Duval, a man of cold and commanding energy. The
sub-committee of the Rue des Rosiers surrounded their cannon by a ditch
and had them guarded day and night.[76] All these committees quashed the
orders of D'Aurelles and were the true commanders of the National Guard.
No doubt Paris was roused, ready to redeem her abdication during the
siege. This Paris, lean and oppressed by want, adjourned peace and
business, thinking only of the Republic. The provisional Central
Committee, without troubling itself about Vinoy, who had demanded the
arrest of all its members, presented itself on the 15th at the general
assembly of the Vauxhall. Two hundred and fifteen battalions were
represented, and acclaimed Garibaldi as commander-in-chief of the
National Guard. An orator, Lullier, led the Assembly astray. He was an
ex-naval officer, completely crack-brained, with a semblance of military
instruction, and when not heated by alcohol having intervals of lucidity
which might deceive any one. He was named commanding colonel of the
artillery. Then came the names of those elected members of the Central
Committee, about thirty in all, for several arrondissements had not yet
voted. This was the regular Central Committee which was to be installed
at the Hotel-de-Ville. Many of those elected had formed part of the
preceding commission. The others were all equally obscure, belonging to
the proletariat and small middle class, known only to their battalions.
What mattered their obscurity? The Central Committee was not a
Government at the head of a party. It had no Utopia to initiate. A very
simple idea, fear of the monarchy, could alone have grouped together so
many battalions. The National Guard constituted itself an assurance
company against a _coup-d'etat_; for if Thiers and his agents repeated
the word "Republic," their own party and the Assembly cried "Vive le
Roi!" The Central Committee was a sentinel, that was all.
The storm was gathering; all was uncertain. The International convoked
the Socialist deputies to ask them what to do. But no attack was
planned, nor even suggested. The Central Committee formally declared
that the first shot would not be fired by the people, and that they
would only defend themselves in case of aggression.
The aggressor, M. Thiers, arrived on the 15th. For a long time he had
foreseen that it would be necessary to engage in a terrible struggle
with Paris; but he intended acting at his own good time, to retake the
town when disposing of an army of forty thousand men, well picked,
carefully kept aloof from the Parisians. This plan has been revealed by
a general officer. At this moment Thiers had only the mere wreck of an
army.
The 230,000 men disarmed by the capitulation, mostly mobiles or men
having finished their term of service, had been sent home in hot haste,
as they would only have swelled the Parisian army. Already some mobiles,
marines, and soldiers had laid the basis of a republican association
with the National Guards. There remained to Vinoy only the division
allowed him by the Prussians and 3,000 sergents-de-ville or gendarmes,
in all 15,000 men, rather ill-conditioned. Lefio sent him a few thousand
men picked up in the armies of the Loire and of the North, but they
arrived slowly, almost without _cadres_, harassed, and disgusted at the
service. At Vinoy's very first review they were on the point of
mutinying. They left them straggling through Paris, abandoned, mixing
with the Parisians, who succored them, the women bringing them soups and
blankets to their huts, where they were freezing. In fact, on the 19th
the Government had only about 25,000 men, without cohesion and
discipline, two-thirds of them gained over to the faubourgs.
How disarm 100,000 men with this mob? For, to carry off the cannon, it
was necessary to disarm the National Guard. The Parisians were no longer
novices in warfare. "Having taken our cannon," they said, "they will
make our muskets useless." The coalition would listen to nothing. Hardly
arrived, they urged M. Thiers to act, to lance the abscess at once. The
financiers--no doubt the same who had precipitated the war to give fresh
impulse to their jobbery[77]--said to him, "You will never be able to
carry out financial operations if you don't make an end of these
scoundrels."[78] All these declared the taking of the cannon would be
mere child's play.
They were indeed hardly watched, but because the National Guard knew
them to be in a safe place. It would suffice to pull up a few paving
stones to prevent their removal down the narrow steep streets of
Montmartre. On the first alarm all Paris would hasten to the rescue.
This had been seen on the 16th, when gendarmes presented themselves to
take from the Place des Vosges the cannon promised by Vautrain. The
National Guards arrived from all sides and unscrewed the pieces, and
the shopkeepers of the Rue des Tournelles commenced unpaving the street.
An attack was nonsensical, and it was this that determined Paris to
remain on the defensive. But M. Thiers saw nothing, neither the
disaffection of the middle classes nor the deep irritation of the
faubourgs. The little man, a dupe all his life, even of a MacMahon,
prompted by the approach of the 20th March, spurred on by Jules Favre
and Picard, who, since the failure of the 31st of October, believed the
revolutionists incapable of any serious action, and jealous to play the
part of a Bonaparte, threw himself head foremost into the venture. On
the 17th he held a council, and, without calculating his forces or those
of the enemy, without forewarning the mayors--(Picard had formally
promised them not to attempt to use force without consulting
them)--without listening to the chiefs of the bourgeois battalions,[79]
this Government, too weak to arrest even the twenty-five members of the
Central Committee, gave the order to carry off two hundred and fifty
cannon[80] guarded by all Paris.
FOOTNOTES:
[71] Arnold, J. Bergeret, Bouit, Castioni, Chauviere, Chouteau, Courty,
Dutil, Fleury, Frontier, H. Fortune, Lacord, Lagarde, Lavalette,
Maljournal, Matte, Ostyn, Piconel, Pindy, Prudhomme, Varlin, H. Verlet,
Viard. Many of these names, those of the representatives elected on the
3rd, were new ones. On the other hand, many of those that had figured in
the placard of the 28th were missing, because only those signed who were
present at the sitting.
[72] He dared to say from the tribune that he only returned on the 3rd
"to save Paris from any demagogic attempts."
[73] The prefecture of Rennes placarded this despatch of the Government:
"A criminal insurrection is being organised in Paris. I send forces
which, joined to the honest National Guards of Paris and to the other
regular troops which are still stationed there, will suppress, I hope,
this odious attempt."
[74] Jules Ferry, who had remained at Paris, telegraphed on the 5th to
the Government: "Never has a Sunday been calmer, notwithstanding
sinister reports. The population is enjoying the sun and their
promenades as if nothing had happened. I no longer believe in the
danger."
[75] "The vote of the Assembly," wrote Jules Favre, "was received at
Paris with extreme disfavour; not only amongst the fanatics and the
agitators; all classes of the population showed themselves almost
unanimous. Every one saw in it an affront and a menace. It was repeated
everywhere that this was the first act of a monarchical _coup-d'etat_;
that the Assembly was ready to name a king, and that, knowing the
unpopularity of its work, it sought to accomplish it far from the eyes
of those who might oppose it."
[76] This is the Committee which many took for the Central Committee.
[77] Some Bourse speculators, in the belief that a campaign of six weeks
would give a fresh impulse to the speculations they were living upon,
said, "It is a disagreeable moment to pass through, some 50,000 men to
be sacrificed, after which the horizon will clear and commerce
revive."--_M. Thiers, Enquete sur le 4 Septembre_, vol. i. p. 9.
[78] _Enquete sur le 18 Mars_, M. Thiers, vol. ii. p. 11.
[79] In the evening D'Aurelles assembled forty of the most reliable, and
asked them if their battalions would march. They all said their men were
not to be counted upon. _Enquete sur le 18 Mars_, vol. ii. p. 435, 456.
[80] This is the number of pieces given by M. Thiers in the _Enquete sur
le 18 Mars_.