THE GREAT RESOURCES OF THE COMMUNE--THE GREAT WEAKNESS OF THE
COUNCIL--NOMINATION OF CLUSERET--DECREE CONCERNING THE
HOSTAGES--THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE--THE BANK.
COMMITTEE--THE BANK.
After an armistice of seventy days, Paris again took up the struggle for
France single-handed. It was no longer the territory only which she
strove for, but the very ground-work of the nation. Victorious, her
victory would not be sterile as those of the battlefield; regenerated,
the people would set to the great work of remaking the social edifice;
vanquished, all liberty would be quenched, the bourgeoisie turn its
whips into scorpions, and a generation glide into the grave.
And Paris, so generous, so fraternal, did not shudder at the impending
civil war. She stood up for an idea that exalted her battalions. While
the bourgeois refuses to fight, saying, "I have a family," the workman
says, "I fight for my children."
For the third time since the 18th March Paris had but one soul. The
official despatches, the hireling journalists established at Versailles,
pictured her as the pandemonium of all the black-legs of Europe,
recounted the thefts, the arrests _en masse_, the endless orgies,
detailed sums and names. According to them, honest women no longer dared
venture into the streets; 1,500,000 persons oppressed by 20,000 ruffians
were offering up ardent prayers for Versailles. But the traveller
running the risk of a visit to Paris, found the streets and boulevards
tranquil, presenting their usual aspect. The pillagers had only pillaged
the guillotine, solemnly burnt before the mairie of the eleventh
arrondissement. From all quarters the same murmur of execration rose
against the assassination of the prisoners and the ignoble scenes at
Versailles. The incoherence of the first acts of the Council was hardly
noticed while the ferocity of the Versaillese was the topic of the day.
Persons coming full of indignation against Paris, seeing this calm, this
union of hearts, these wounded men crying "Vive la Commune!" these
enthusiastic battalions; there Mont-Valerien vomiting death, here men
living as brothers, in a few hours caught the Parisian malady.
This was a fever of faith, of blind devotion, and of hope--of hope above
all. What rebellion had been thus armed? It was no longer a handful of
desperate men fighting behind a few pavements, reduced to charging their
muskets with slugs or stones. The Commune of 1871, much better armed
than that of 1793, possessed at least 60,000 men, 200,000 muskets, 1,200
cannon, five forts; an enceinte covered by Montmartre, Belleville, the
Pantheon overtowering the whole city, munitions enough to last for
years, and milliards at her bidding. What else is wanted to conquer?
Some revolutionary instinct. There was not a man at the Hotel-de-Ville
who did not boast of possessing it.
The sitting of the 3rd April during the battle was stormy. Many
inveighed against this mad sortie. Lefrancais, indignant at having been
deceived, withdrew from the Commission, which, called upon to explain,
threw all the blame upon the generals. The friends of the latter took up
their defence, demanded that news should be waited for. Soon the
disastrous tidings were brought, and they could not hesitate any longer.
For such a usurpation of authority there was but one atonement possible.
Flourens and Duval had made it voluntarily. The others ought to have
followed. Thus the dead would have been appeased, similar follies once
for all cut short, and the authority of the Commune brought home to the
most refractory.
But the men at the Hotel-de-Ville were not of such inflexibility. Many
had fought, plotted together under the Empire, lived in the same
prisons, identified the Revolution with their friends. And besides, the
generals, were they alone guilty? So many battalions could not have
bestirred themselves all the night without the Council being informed
thereof. Though blind or deaf, they were none the less responsible. In
order to be just they ought to have decimated themselves. They felt
this, no doubt, and did not dare strike the generals.
They might at least have dismissed them. They contented themselves with
replacing them on the Executive Commission, and notified this measure
most respectfully. "The Commune was desirous to leave them all liberty
in the conduct of the military operations; it was as far from wishing to
disoblige them as from wishing to weaken their authority." And yet their
heedlessness, their incapacity, had been mortal. Their ignorance only
saved them from the suspicion of having betrayed. This indulgence was
big with promises for the future.
This future meant Cluseret. From the first days he had beset the Central
Committee, the Ministries, in quest of a generalship, his hands full of
war plans against the mayors. The Committee would have nothing to do
with him. He then clung to the Executive Commission, which on the 2nd
April, at seven o'clock in the evening, appointed him delegate at war,
with the order to enter upon his duties immediately.[115] The rappel was
being beaten at that moment for the fatal sortie. Cluseret took good
care not to take possession of his post, allowed the generals to ruin
themselves, and on the 3rd appeared before the Council to denounce their
"_gaminerie_." It was this military pamphlet-monger, with no pledge but
his decoration, won against the Socialists of 1848, who had played the
marionette in three insurrections, whom the Socialists of 1871 charged
with the defence of their Revolution.
The choice was execrable, the very idea of naming a delegate faulty. The
Council had just decided to keep on the defensive. To guard the lines,
regularise the services, provision and administer the battalions, the
best delegate would have been common sense. A commission, composed of a
few active and laborious men, would have offered all guarantees of
security.
Moreover, the Council failed to point out what sort of defence they had
in view. The defence of the forts, of the redoubts, of the accessory
positions, required thousands of men, experienced officers, a war with
the mattock as well as the musket. The National Guard was not qualified
for such soldiership. Behind the ramparts, on the contrary, it became
invincible. It would have sufficed to blow up the forts of the south, to
fortify Montmartre, the Pantheon, and the Buttes-Chaumont, to strongly
arm the ramparts, to create a second, a third enceinte, to render Paris
inaccessible or untenable to the enemy. The Council did not indicate
either of these systems, but allowed its delegates to dabble with the
two, and finally annulled the one by the other.
If they wished by the appointment of a delegate to concentrate the
military power, why not dissolve the Central Committee? The latter
acted, spoke more boldly and much better than the Council which had
excluded it from the Hotel-de-Ville. The Committee had installed itself
in the Rue de l'Entrepot, behind the Customs House, near its cradle.
Thence on the 5th April it launched a fine proclamation: "Workmen, do
not deceive yourselves about the import of the combat. It is the
engagement between parasitism and labour, exploitation and production.
If you are tired of vegetating in ignorance and wallowing in misery, if
you want your children to be men enjoying the benefit of their labour,
and not mere animals trained for the workshop and the battlefield, if
you do not want your daughters, whom you are unable to educate and
overlook as you yearn to do, to become instruments of pleasure in the
arms of the aristocracy of money, if you at last want the reign of
justice, workmen, be intelligent, rise!"
The Committee certainly declared in another placard that it did not
pretend to any political power, but power in times of revolution of
itself belongs to those who define it. For eight days the Council had
not known how to interpret the Commune, and its whole baggage consisted
in two insignificant decrees. The Central Committee, on the contrary,
very distinctly set forth the character of this contest, that had become
a social one, pointed out behind the struggle for municipal liberties
that devouring sphinx the question of the proletariat.
The Council might have profited by the lesson, endorsed if necessary
that manifesto, and then, referring to the protestations of the
Committee, obliged it to dissolve itself. This was all the more easy
that the Committee, much weakened by the elections, only existed thanks
to four or five members and its eloquent mouthpiece, Moreau. But the
Council contented itself with mildly protesting at the sitting of the
5th, and as usual letting things get along as best they could.
It was already drifting from weakness to weakness; and yet, if ever it
believed in its own energy it was that day. The savagery of the
Versaillese, the assassination of the prisoners, of Flourens and Duval,
had excited the most calm. They had been there full of life three days
ago, these brave colleagues and friends. Their empty places seemed to
cry out for vengeance. Well, then, since Versailles waged a war of
cannibals, they would answer an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
Besides, if the Council did not act, the people, it was said, would
perhaps revenge itself, and more terribly. They decreed that any one
accused of complicity with Versailles would be judged within forty-eight
hours, and if guilty, retained as a hostage. The execution by Versailles
of a defender of the Commune would be followed by that of a hostage--by
three said the decree, in equal or double number said the proclamation.
These different readings betrayed the troubled state of their minds. The
Council alone believed in having frightened Versailles. The bourgeois
journals certainly shouted "Abomination!" and M. Thiers, who shot
without any decrees, denounced the ferocity of the Commune. At bottom
they all laughed in their sleeves. The reactionists of any mark had long
since fled; there only remained in Paris the small fry and a few
isolated men, whom, if needs be, Versailles was ready to sacrifice.[116]
The members of the Council, in their childish impetuosity, had not seen
the real hostages staring them in the face--the bank, the civil
register, the domains and the suitors' fund. These were the tender
points by which to hold the bourgeoisie. Without risking a single man,
the Commune had only to stretch out its hand and bid Versailles
negotiate or commit suicide.
The timid delegates of the 26th March were not the men to dare this. In
allowing the Versaillese army to file off, the Central Committee had
committed a heavy fault; that of the Council was incomparably more
damaging. All serious rebels have commenced by seizing upon the sinews
of the enemy--the treasury. The Council of the Commune was the only
revolutionary Government that refused to do so. While abolishing the
budget of public worship, which was at Versailles, they bent their knees
to the budget of the bourgeoisie, which was at their mercy.
Then followed a scene of high comedy, if one could laugh at negligence
that has caused so much bloodshed. Since the 19th March the governors of
the bank lived like men condemned to death, every day expecting the
execution of their treasure. Of removing it to Versailles they could not
dream. It would have required sixty or eighty vans and an army corps. On
the 23rd, its governor, Rouland, could no longer stand it, and fled. The
sub-governor, De Ploeuc, replaced him. From his first interview with
the delegates of the Hotel-de-Ville he had seen through their timidity,
given battle, then seemed to soften, yielded little by little, and doled
out his money franc by franc. The bank, which Versailles believed almost
empty, contained: coin, 77 millions;[117] bank-notes, 166 millions;
bills discounted, 899 millions; securities for advances made, 120
millions; bullion, 11 millions; jewels in deposit, 7 millions; public
effects and other titles in deposit, 900 millions; that is, 2 milliards
180 million francs: 800 millions in bank-notes only required the
signature of the cashier, a signature easily made. The Commune had then
three milliards in its hands, of which over a milliard realised, enough
to buy all the generals and functionaries of Versailles; as hostages,
90,000 depositors of titles, and the two milliards in circulation whose
guarantee lay in the boxes in the Rue de la Vrilliere.
On the 29th March old Beslay presented himself before the tabernacle. De
Ploeuc had mustered his 430 clerks, armed with muskets without
cartridges. Beslay, led through the lines of these warriors, humbly
prayed the governor to be so kind as to supply the pay of the National
Guard. De Ploeuc answered superciliously, spoke of defending himself.
"But," said Beslay, "if, to prevent the effusion of blood, the Commune
appointed a governor." "A governor! never!" said De Ploeuc, who
understood his man; "but a delegate! If you were that delegate we might
come to an understanding." And, doing the pathetic, "Come, M. Beslay,
help me to save this. This is the fortune of your country; this is the
fortune of France."
Beslay, deeply moved, hurried off to the Executive Commission, repeated
his lesson all the better that he believed it and prided himself on his
financial lore. "The bank," he said, "is the fortune of the country:
without it, no more industry, no more commerce. If you violate it, all
its notes will be so much waste-paper."[118] This trash circulated in
the Hotel-de-Ville, and the Proudhonists of the Council, forgetting
that their master put the suppression of the bank at the head of his
revolutionary programme, backed old Beslay. At Versailles itself, the
capitalist stronghold had no more inveterate defenders than those of the
Hotel-de-Ville. If some one had at least proposed, "Let us at least
occupy the bank," but the Executive Commission had not the nerve to do
this, and contented itself with commissioning Beslay. De Ploeuc
received the good man with open arms, installed him in the nearest
cabinet, even persuading him to sleep at the bank, made him his hostage,
and once more breathed freely.
Thus since the first week the Assembly of the Hotel-de-Ville showed
itself weak towards the authors of the sortie, weak towards the Central
Committee, weak towards the bank, trifling in its decrees, in the choice
of its delegate to the War Office, without a military plan, without a
programme, without general views, and indulging in desultory
discussions. The Radicals who had remained in the Council saw whither it
was drifting, and, not inclined to play the martyrs, they sent in their
resignations.
O Revolution! thou dost not await the well-timed day and hour. Thou
comest suddenly, blind and fatal as the avalanche. The true soldier of
the people accepts the combat wherever hazard may place him. Blunders,
defections, compromising companions do not dishearten him. Though
certain of defeat, he struggles still; his victory looms in the future.
FOOTNOTES:
[115] Such is the text of the decree.
[116] M. Barthelemy St. Hilaire, M. Thiers' secretary, answered Barral
de Montaut, who spoke of the possibility of a massacre in the prisons:
"The hostages! the hostages! But we can do nothing. What should we do?
So much the worse for them."--_Enquete sur le 18 Mars_, vol. ii. p. 271.
[117] M. Beslay, in his book _Mes Souvenirs_, Paris, 1873, says: "The
cash in hand was forty and some odd millions." These "some odd" were no
less than 203 millions. They presented the good man fictitious
statements, with which they gulled him. In his evidence and the annexes
(_Enquete sur le 18 Mars_, vol. iii. errata, p. 488), M. de Ploeuc has
given the true statements.
[118] These were all the reasons he could ever allege, even in his book
written in Switzerland, whither M. de Ploeuc himself went to deposit him
after the fall of the Commune. Besides his life being saved, he, later
on, received a judicial ordinance to the effect that no further judicial
proceedings were to be taken against him.