THE FIRST COMBATS OF NEUILLY AND ASNIERES--ORGANISATION AND
DEFEAT OF THE CONCILIATORS.
The rout of the 3rd April daunted the timorous but exalted the fervent.
Battalions inert until then rose; the armament of the forts no longer
lagged. Save Issy and Vanves, rather damaged, the forts were intact. All
Paris soon heard these fine cannon of seven, which Trochu had
disdained,[119] firing so lustily and with such correct aim, that on the
evening of the 4th the Versaillese were obliged to evacuate the plateau
of Chatillon. The trenches that protected the forts were manned. Les
Moulineaux, Clamart, Le Val-Fleury resounded with the fusillade. To the
right we reoccupied Courbevoie, and the bridge of Neuilly was
barricaded.
Thence we continued to threaten Versailles. Vinoy received the order to
take Neuilly. On the morning of the 6th, Mont-Valerien, recently armed
with 24-pounders, opened fire on Courbevoie. After six hours of
bombardment the Federals evacuated the cross-roads and took up a
position behind the large barricade of the bridge of Neuilly. The
Versaillese cannonaded it while it was protected by the Porte-Maillot.
This Porte-Maillot, which has become legendary, had only a few cannon
exposed to the fire from above of Mont-Valerien. For forty-eight days
the Commune found men to hold this untenable post. Their courage
electrified all. The crowd went to the Arc-de-Triomphe to see them, and
the boys hardly waited for the explosion to run after the fragments of
the shells.
The Parisian intrepidity soon reappeared in the first skirmishes. The
bourgeois papers themselves regretted that so much ardour should not
have been spent on the Prussians. The panic of the 3rd April had
witnessed heroic deeds, and the Council, happily inspired, wanted to
give the defenders of the Commune a funeral worthy of them. It appealed
to the people. On the 6th, at two o'clock, an innumerable multitude
hurried up to the Beaujon Hospital, whither the dead had been
transported. Many, shot after the combat, bore on their arms the marks
left by cords. There were heart-rending scenes. Mothers and wives
bending over these bodies uttered cries of fury and vows of vengeance.
Three immense catafalques, each containing thirty-five coffins, covered
with black crape, adorned with red flags, drawn by eight horses each,
slowly rolled towards the great boulevards, preceded by trumpets and the
_Vengeurs de Paris_. Delescluze and five members of the Commune, with
their red scarfs on and bare-headed, walked as chief mourners. Behind
them followed the relations of the victims, the widows of to-day
supported by those of to-morrow. Thousands upon thousands, men, women,
and children, immortelles in their button-holes, silent, solemn, marched
to the sound of the muffled drums. At intervals subdued strains of music
burst forth like the spontaneous mutterings of sorrow too long
contained. On the great boulevards we numbered 200,000, and 100,000 pale
faces looked down upon us from the windows. The women sobbed, many
fainted. This Via Sacra of the Revolution, the scene of so many woes and
so many joys, has perhaps never witnessed such a communion of hearts.
Delescluze exclaimed in ecstasy, "What an admirable people! Will they
still say that we are a handful of malcontents?" At the Pere la Chaise
he advanced to the common grave. Wrinkled, stooping, sustained only by
his indomitable faith, this dying man saluted the dead. "I will make
you no long speeches; these have already cost us too dear.... Justice
for the families of the victims; justice for the great town which, after
five months of siege, betrayed by its Government, still holds in its
hands the future of humanity.... Let us not weep for our brothers who
have fallen heroically, but let us swear to continue their work, and to
save Liberty, the Commune, the Republic!"
The following day the Versaillese cannonaded the barricade and the
Avenue of Neuilly. The inhabitants, whom they had not the humanity to
forewarn, were obliged to take refuge in their cellars. Towards
half-past four the fire of the Versaillese ceased, and the Federals were
snatching a little rest, when the soldiers debouched en masse on the
bridge. The Federals, surprised, attempted to arrest their progress,
wounding one general and killing two, one of whom, Besson, was
responsible for the surprise of Beaumont l'Argonne during the march on
Sedan. But the soldiers in overwhelming force succeeded in pushing as
far as the old park of Neuilly.
The loss of this outlet was all the more serious that Bergeret, in a
letter published in the _Officiel_, had answered for Neuilly. The
Executive Commission replaced him by the Pole Dombrowski, whom Garibaldi
had demanded for his general staff during the war in the Vosges.
Bergeret's staff protested, and their bickerings led to the arrest of
their chief by the Council, already grown suspicious. The National Guard
itself showed some distrust of the new general. The Commission had to
present him to Paris, and, misinformed, invented a legend in his favour.
Dombrowski was not long in making it good.
The same day the Federals of Neuilly beheld a young man, small of
stature, in a modest uniform, slowly inspecting the vanguards in the
thick of the fire. It was Dombrowski. Instead of the explosive glowing
French bravery, the cool and, as it were, unconscious courage of the
Slav. In a few hours the new chief had conquered all his men. The able
officer soon revealed himself. On the 9th, during the night, with two
battalions from Montmartre, Dombrowski, accompanied by Vermorel, took
the Versaillese by surprise at Asnieres, drove them off, seized their
cannon, and from the ironclad railway carriages cannonaded Courbevoie
and the bridge of Neuilly from the flank. At the same time his brother
stormed the castle of Becon, that commands the road from Asnieres to
Courbevoie. Vinoy having tried to retake this post on the night of the
12th-13th, his men were shamefully repulsed, and fled to Courbevoie as
fast as their legs would carry them.
Paris was ignorant of this success, so defective was the service of the
general staff. This brilliant attack was the deed of one man, just as
the defence of the forts was the spontaneous work of the National Guard.
There was as yet no direction. Whoever cared to rush into some venture
did so; whoever wanted cannon or reinforcements went to ask for them at
the Place Vendome, at the Central Committee, at the Hotel-de-Ville, of
the generalissime Cluseret.
The latter had made his debut with a blunder, calling out only the
unmarried men from seventeen to thirty-five, thus depriving the Commune
of its most energetic defenders, the grey-headed men, the first and last
under fire in all our insurrections. Three days after, this decree had
to be revoked. On the 5th, in his report to the Council, this profound
strategist announced that the attack of Versailles masked a movement for
occupying the forts of the right bank, at that moment in the hands of
the Prussians. Like Trochu, he blamed the cannonades of the last few
days, for squandering, as he said, the munitions. And this when Paris
abounded in powder and shell; when her young troops should have been
amused and sustained by artillery; when the Versaillese of Chatillon,
incessantly pursued by our fire, were obliged to remove every night;
when an uninterrupted cannonade alone could save Neuilly.
The Council was no wiser in its measures of defence. It decreed
compulsory service and the disarmament of the refractory; but the
perquisitions, made at random, without the assistance of the police, did
not procure a man or a hundred muskets the more. It voted life-pensions
to the widows, to the parents of the Federals killed in combat, to
their children an annuity till the age of eighteen, and adopted the
orphans. Excellent measures these, raising the spirits of the
combatants, only they assumed the Commune victorious. Was it not better,
as in the cases of Duval and Dombrowski, to give at once a few thousand
francs to those having a right to them? In fact, these unfortunate
pensioners received but fifty francs from the Commune.
These measures, incomplete, ill-managed, implied a want of study and of
reflection. The members came to the Council as to a public meeting,
without any preparation, there to proceed without any method. The
decrees of the day before were forgotten, questions only half solved.
The Council created councils of war and court-martials, and allowed the
Central Committee to regulate the procedure and the penalties; it
organised one-half of the medical service and Cluseret the other; it
suppressed the title of general, and the superior officers retained it,
the delegate at War conferring it on them. In the middle of a sitting,
Felix Pyat bounded from his chair to demand the abolition of the Vendome
column, while Dombrowski was making desperate appeals for
reinforcements.
He had hardly 2,500 men to hold Neuilly, Asnieres, and the whole
peninsula of Gennevilliers, while the Versaillese were accumulating
their best troops against him. From the 14th to 17th April they
cannonaded the castle of Becon, and on the morning of the 17th attacked
it with a brigade. The 250 Federals who occupied it held out for six
hours, and the survivors fell back upon Asnieres, where panic entered
with them. Dombrowski, Okolowitz, and a few sturdy men hastened thither,
succeeded in re-establishing a little order and fortified the
bridge-head. Dombrowski asking for reinforcements, the War Office sent
him only a few companies. The following day our vanguard was surprised
by strong detachments, and the cannon of Courbevoie battered Asnieres.
After a well-contested struggle, towards ten o'clock, several
battalions, worn out, abandoned the southern part of the village. In the
northern part the combat was desperate. Dombrowski, in spite of
telegram after telegram received only 300 men. At five o'clock in the
evening the Versaillese made a great effort, and the Federals,
exhausted, fearing for their retreat, threw themselves upon the bridge
of boats, which they crossed in disorder.
The reactionary journals made much ado about this retreat. Paris was
stirred by it. This fierce obstinacy of the combat began to open the
eyes of the optimists. Till then many persons believed it all some
dreadful misunderstanding and formed groups of conciliation. How many
thousands in Paris failed to understand the plan of M. Thiers and the
coalition till the day of the final massacre! On the 4th April some
manufacturers and tradesmen had created the _National Union of the
Syndical Chambers_, and taken for their programme, maintenance and
enfranchisement of the Republic, acknowledgment of the municipal
franchises of Paris. The same day, in the Quartier des Ecoles,
professors, doctors, lawyers, engineers, and students placarded a
manifesto demanding a democratic and laical Republic, an autonomous
Commune and the federation of the communes. An analogous group placarded
a letter to M. Thiers: "You believe in a riot, and you find yourself
brought face to face with precise and universal convictions. The immense
majority of Paris demands the Republic as a right superior to all
discussion. Paris has seen in the whole conduct of the Assembly the
premeditated design of re-establishing the monarchy." Some dignitaries
of the Freemason lodges appealed at once to Versailles and to the
Council: "Stop the effusion of such precious blood."
Finally, a certain number of those mayors and adjuncts who had not
capitulated till the eleventh hour, like Floquet, Corbon, Bonvalet, &c.,
pompously got up the _Republican Union League for the Rights of Paris_.
Now they asked for the recognition of the Republic, the right of Paris
to govern herself, and the custody of the town exclusively confided to
the National Guard; all that the Commune had wanted--all that they had
contented against from the 19th to the 25th of March.
Other groups were forming. All agreed on two points--the consolidation
of the Republic and the recognition of the rights of Paris. Almost all
the Communal journals reproduced this programme, and the Republican
journals accepted it. The deputies of Paris were the last to speak, and
then only to fall foul of Paris. In that lachrymose and Jesuitical tone
with which he has travestied history,[120] in those long-winded
sentimental periods which serve to mask the aridity of his heart and the
pettiness of his mind, that king of gnomes, Louis Blanc, wrote in the
name of his colleagues: "Not one member of the majority has as yet
questioned the Republican principle.... As to those engaged in the
insurrection, we tell them that they ought to have shuddered at the
thought of aggravating, of prolonging the scourge of the foreign
occupation by adding thereto the scourge of civil discords."
It is this that M. Thiers repeated word for word to the first
conciliators, the delegates of the _Union Syndicale_, who applied to him
on the 8th May: "Let the insurrection disarm; the Assembly cannot
disarm. But Paris wants the Republic. The Republic exists; by my honour,
so long as I am in power, it will not succumb. But Paris wants municipal
franchises. The Chamber is preparing a law for all communes; Paris will
get neither more nor less." The delegates read a project of compromise
which spoke of a general amnesty and a suspension of arms. M. Thiers let
them read on, did not formally contest a single article, and the
delegates returned to Paris convinced that they had discovered the basis
of an arrangement.
They had hardly left when M. Thiers rushed off to the Assembly, which
had just endowed all communes with the right of electing their mayors.
M. Thiers ascended the tribune, demanding that this right should be
restricted to towns of less than 20,000 souls. They cried to him, "It is
already voted." He persisted, declaring that "in a republic the
Government must be all the better armed because order is the more
difficult to maintain;" threatened to hand in his resignation, and
forced the Assembly to annul its vote.
On the 10th, the _League of the Rights of Paris_ sounded the trumpet and
had a solemn declaration placarded: "Let the Government give up
assailing the facts accomplished on the 18th March. Let the general
re-election of the Commune be proceeded with.... If the Government of
Versailles remains deaf to these legitimate revindications, let it be
well understood that all Paris will rise to defend them."[121] The next
day the delegates of the League went to Versailles, and M. Thiers took
up his old refrain, "Let Paris disarm," and would hear neither of an
armistice nor of an amnesty. "Pardon shall be extended" said he, "to
those who will disarm, save to the assassins of Clement-Thomas and
Lecomte." This was to reserve himself the choice of a few thousands. In
short, he wanted to be replaced in his position of the 18th March with
victory into the bargain. The same day he said to the delegates of the
Masonic lodges, "Address yourselves to the Commune; what is wanted is
the submission of the insurgents, and not the resignation of legal
power." To facilitate this submission, the next day the _Officiel_ of
Versailles compared Paris to the plain of Marathon infested by a band of
"brigands and assassins." On the 13th, a deputy, Brunet, having asked
whether the Government would or would not make peace with Paris, the
Assembly adjourned this interpellation for a month.
The League, thus well whipped, went on the 14th to the Hotel-de-Ville.
The Council, foreign to all these negotiations, left them entirely free,
and had only forbidden a meeting announced at the Bourse by
ill-disguised Tirards. It contented itself with opposing to the League
its declaration of the 10th: "You have said that if Versailles remained
deaf all Paris would rise. Versailles has remained deaf; arise." And to
make Paris the judge, the Council loyally published in its _Officiel_
the report of the conciliators.
FOOTNOTES:
[119] Out of 400 pieces cast by Paris during the siege, the Government
of the National Defence only accepted forty, on the pretence that the
others were imperfect.--Vinoy, _Siege de Paris_, p. 287.
[120] Sometimes even to falsification. In his account of the 9th
Thermidor, he makes Barrere say to Billaud-Varennes, "Do _not_ attack
Robespierre;" and on the strength of this expatiates on the greatness of
his hero. Now, the report of Courtois that he quotes, hoping, no doubt,
that no one would examine the accuracy of the statement, says, "Attack
_only_," and not "Do _not_ attack."
[121] It seems there was a split in the League. The Radicals, Floquet,
Corbon, &c., disapproved of this semi-commanding attitude, and boasted
of it later on before the Committee of Inquiry into the 18th March; but
during the Commune they made no public protest against this address.