THE PUBLIC SERVICES--FINANCE--WAR--POLICE--EXTERIOR--JUSTICE
--EDUCATION--LABOUR AND EXCHANGE.
The insufficiency and the weakness of the Executive Commission became so
shocking, that on the 20th the Council decided to replace it by the
delegates of the nine commissions, amongst whom it had distributed its
different functions. These commissions were renewed the same day. In
general they were rather neglected; and how could one man attend to the
daily sittings of the Hotel-de-Ville, to his commission and his mairie?
For the Council had charged its members with the administration of their
respective arrondissements; and the real work of the several commissions
weighed on the delegates who had presided over them from their origin,
and for the most part were not changed on the 20th April. They continued
to act, as heretofore, almost single-handed. Before proceeding with our
narrative we will look more narrowly into their doings.
Two delegations required only good-will--those of the victualling
department and of the public or municipal services. The provisioning of
the town was carried on through the neutral zone, where M. Thiers,
however anxious to starve Paris,[131] could not prevent a regular supply
of food. All the foremen having remained at their posts, the municipal
services did not suffer. Four delegations--Finance, War, Public Safety,
Exterior--required special aptitude. The three others, Education,
Justice, Labour and Exchange, had to propound the philosophical
principles of this revolution. All the delegates save Frankel, a
workman, belonged to the small middle-class.
The Commission of Finance centered in Jourde, who, with his
inexhaustible garrulity, had eclipsed the too modest Varlin. The task
imposed was to procure every morning 675,000 francs for the payment of
the services, to feed 250,000 persons, and find the sinews of war.
Besides the 4,658,000 francs in the coffers of the Treasury, 214
millions in shares and other effects had been found in the Finance
Office; but Jourde could not or would not negotiate them, and to fill
his exchequer he had to lay hold of the revenues of all the
administrations--the telegraph and postal offices, the octrois, direct
contributions, custom house offices, markets, tobacco, registration and
stamps, municipal funds and the railway duties. The bank, little by
little, paid back the 9,400,000 francs due to the town, and even parted
with 7,290,000 francs on its own account. From the 20th March to the
30th April, twenty-six millions were thus scraped together. During the
same period the War Office alone absorbed over twenty. The Intendance
received 1,813,000 francs, all the municipalities together 1,446,000,
the Interior 103,000, Marine 29,000, Justice 5500, Commerce 50,000,
Education _one thousand_ only, Exterior 112,000, Firemen 100,000,
National Library 80,000, Commission of Barricades 44,500, L'Imprimerie
Nationale 100,000, the Association of Tailors and Shoemakers 24,882.
These proportions remained almost the same from the 1st May to the fall
of the Commune. The expenses of the second period rose to about twenty
millions. The sum total of the expenses of the Commune was about
46,300,000 francs, of which 16,696,000 were supplied by the bank, and
the rest by the various services, the octrois yielding nearly twelve
millions.
Most of these Services were under the superintendence of workmen or
former subordinate employes, and were all carried on with a fourth part
of their ordinary numerical strength. The director of the postal
department, Theisz, a chaser, found the Service quite disorganised, the
divisionary bureaux closed, the stamps hidden away or carried off, the
material, seals, the carts, &c., taken away, and the coffers empty.
Placards posted up in the hall and courts ordered the employes to
proceed to Versailles on pain of dismissal, but Theisz acted with
promptitude and energy. When the subordinate employes who had not been
forewarned came as usual to organise the mail service, he addressed
them, discussed with them, and had the doors shut. Little by little they
gave way. Some functionaries who were Socialists also lent their help,
and the direction of the various services was intrusted to the
head-clerks. The divisionary bureaux were opened, and in forty-eight
hours the collection and distribution of letters for Paris reorganised.
As to the letters destined for the provinces, clever agents threw them
into the offices of St. Denis and ten miles round, while for the
introduction of letters into Paris every latitude was given to private
initiative. A superior council was instituted, which raised the wages of
postmen, sorters, porters, caretakers of the bureaux, shortened the time
of service as supernumeraries, and decided that the ability of the
employes should be tested for the future by means of tests and
examinations.[132]
The Mint, directed by Camelinat, a bronze-mounter, one of the most
active members of the International, manufactured the postage stamps. At
the Mint, as at the general post-office, the Versaillese director and
principal employes had first parleyed, then made off. Camelinat,
supported by some friends, bravely took this place, had the works
continued, and every one contributing his professional experience,
improvements in the machinery as well as new methods were introduced.
The bank, which concealed its bullion, was obliged to furnish about
110,000 francs' worth, immediately coined into five-franc pieces. A new
coin-plate was engraved, and was about to be put into use, when the
Versaillese entered Paris.
The department of Public Assistance also depended on that of the
Finances. A man of the greatest merit, Treilhard, an old exile of 1851,
reorganised this administration, which he found entirely out of order.
Some doctors and agents of the service had abandoned the hospitals; the
director and the steward of the Petits-Menages at Issy had fled, thus
reducing many of their pensioners to go out begging. Some employes
forced our wounded to wait before the doors of the hospital, while the
sisters of mercy tried to make them blush for their glorious wounds; but
Treilhard soon put all in order, and, for the second time since 1792,
the sick and the infirm found friends in their guardians and blessed the
Commune. This kind-hearted and intellectual man, who was assassinated by
a Versaillese officer on the 24th May at the Pantheon, has left a very
elaborate report on the suppression of bureaux of charity, which chain
the poor to the Government and to the clergy. He proposed having them
replaced by a bureau of assistance in each arrondissement, under the
direction of a communal committee.
The Telegraph-office, Registration, and Domains, cleverly directed by
the honest Fontaine; the Service of the Contributions, entirely
re-established by Faillet and Combault; the National Printing Press,
which Debock reorganised and administered with remarkable
dexterity,[133] and the other departments connected with that of
Finance, ordinarily reserved to the great bourgeoisie, were managed with
skill and economy--the maximum of the salaries, 6000 francs, was never
reached--by workmen, subordinate employes; and this is not one of their
least crimes in the eyes of the Versaillese bourgeoisie.
Compared with the Finance department, that of War was a region of
darkness and utter confusion. Officers and guards encumbered the offices
of the Ministry, some demanding munitions and victuals, others
complaining of not being relieved. They were sent back to the Place
Vendome, maintained in the teeth of common sense, and directed by the
rather equivocal colonel, Henry Prudhomme. On the floor below, the
Central Committee, installed there by Cluseret, bustled, spent time and
breath in endless sittings, found fault with the delegate at war, amused
itself with creating new insignia, received the malcontents of the
Ministry, asked returns from the general staff, claimed to give advice
on military operations. In its turn, the Committee of Artillery, founded
on the 18th March, wrangled about the disposal of the cannon with the
War Office. The latter had the pieces of the Champ-de-Mars and the
Committee those of Montmartre. Attempts at creating a central park of
artillery,[134] or even at learning the exact number of the ordnance
pieces, were made in vain. Pieces of long range remained to the last
moment lying along the ramparts, while the forts had only pieces of
seven and twelve centimetres to answer the huge cannon of Marine, and
often the munitions sent were not of corresponding calibre. The
commissariat, assailed by adventurers of all sorts, took their stores at
haphazard. The construction of the barricades, which were to form a
second and third enceinte, instituted on the 9th April, had been left to
a crotchety fellow, sowing works broadcast without method and against
the plans of his superiors. All the other Services were conducted in the
same style, without fixed principles, without limitation of their
respective provinces, the wheels of the machine not working within one
another. In this concert without a conductor, each instrumentalist
played what he liked, confusing his own score with his neighbour's.
A firm and supple hand would soon have restored harmony. The Central
Committee, despite its assumption of lecturing the Commune, which it
said was "its daughter and must not be allowed to go astray," was now
only an assemblage of talkers devoid of all authority. It had, to a
great extent, been renewed since the establishment of the Commune, and
the much-contested elections to it--for many aspired to the title of
member--had given a majority of flighty, heedless men.[135] In its
present state this Committee derived its whole importance from the
jealousy of the Council. The Committee of Artillery, monopolised by
brawlers, would have yielded at once to the slightest pressure. The
commissariat and the other services depended entirely upon the action of
the delegate at War.
The phantom general, stretched on his sofa, hatched orders, circulars,
now melancholy, now commanding, and never stirred a finger to watch over
their execution. If some member of the Council came to rouse him, "What
are you doing? Such a place is in peril;" he answered loftily, "All my
precautions are taken; give my combinations time to be accomplished,"
and turned over again. One day he bullied the Central Committee, which
left the Ministry to go and sulk in the Rue de l'Entrepot; a week later
he went after the same Committee, reinstating it at the War Office. Vain
to shamelessness,[136] he showed sham letters from Todleben proposing
plans of defense, and spent his time in posing to correspondents of
foreign journals. With an affectation of pride, he never put on a
uniform, which, however, at that time was the true dress of the
proletarian. It took the Council almost a month to recognise that this
pithless braggart was only a disappointed officer of the standing army,
his airs of an innovator notwithstanding.
Many hopes turned to the chief of his staff, Rossel, a young Radical,
twenty-eight years old, self-restrained, puritanic, who was sowing his
revolutionary wild oats. A captain of engineers in the army of Metz, he
had attempted to resist Bazaine, and escaped from the Prussians.
Gambetta had appointed him colonel of engineers at the camp of Nevers,
where he was still lingering on the 18th March. He was dazzled; saw in
Paris the future of France, and his own; threw up his commission and
hurried thither, where some friends placed him in the 17th Legion. He
was haughty, soon became unpopular, and was arrested on the 3rd April.
Two members of the Council, Malon and Ch. Gerardin, had him set free
and presented him to Cluseret, by whom he was accepted as chief of the
general staff. Rossel, fancying that the Central Committee was a power,
made up to it, seemed to ask it for advice, and sought out the men he
thought popular. His coldness, his technical vocabulary, his clearness
of speech, his get up as a great man, enchanted the bureaux, but those
who studied him more closely noticed his unsteady look, the infallible
sign of a perturbed spirit. By degrees the young revolutionary officer
became the fashion, and his consular bearing did not displease the
public, sickened at the flabbiness of Cluseret.
Nothing, however, justified this infatuation. Chief of the general staff
since the 5th April, he allowed all the Services to shift for
themselves; the only one in some measure organised, the _Control of
General Information_, was the work of Moreau, who every morning
furnished the War Office and the Commune with detailed, and often very
picturesque, reports on the military operations and the moral condition
of Paris.
This was about all the police the Commune had. The Commission of Public
Safety, which should have thrown light upon the most secret recesses,
emitted only a fitful glimmering.
The Central Committee had appointed Raoul Rigault, a young man of
twenty-four, much mixed up in the revolutionary movement, as civil
delegate to the prefecture of police, but under the severe direction of
Duval. Rigault well kept in hand might have made a very good subaltern,
and so long as Duval lived he did not go wrong. The unpardonable fault
of the Council was to place him at the head of a service where the
slightest mistake was more dangerous than at the advanced posts. His
friends, who, with the exception of a small number, Ferre, Regnard, and
two or three others, were as young and as giddy-headed as himself,
discharged in a boyish way the most delicate functions. The Commission
of Public Safety, which ought to have superintended Rigault, only
followed his example. There, above all, did they live as boon
companions, apparently unaware of having assumed the guardianship of,
and the responsibility for, 100,000 lives.
No wonder the mice were soon seen playing round the prefecture of
police. Papers suppressed in the morning were cried out in the evening
in the streets; the conspirators wormed themselves into all the services
without exciting the suspicion of Rigault or his companions. They never
discovered anything; it was always necessary to do it for them. They
made arrests like military marches in the daytime, with large
reinforcements of National Guards. After the decree on the hostages,
they had only managed to lay hands on four or five ecclesiastics of
mark, the Gallican Archbishop Darboy, an arrant Bonapartist; his
grand-vicar, Lagarde; the curate of the Madeleine; Deguerry, a kind of
De Morny in cassock; the Abbe Allard, the Bishop of Surat; and a few
Jesuits of nerve. Chance only delivered into their hands the president
of the Court of Appeal, Bonjean,[137] and Jecker, the famous inventor of
the expedition to Mexico.[138]
This culpable heedlessness, which the people have paid for with their
blood, was the salvation of criminals. Some National Guards had brought
to light the mysteries of the Picpus convent, discovered three
unfortunate women shut up in grated cages, strange instruments,[139]
corselets of iron, straps, racks, which smacked strangely of the
Inquisition, a treatise on abortion, and two skulls still covered with
hair. One of the prisoners, the only one whose reason had not given way,
said that she had been in this cage for ten years. The police contented
itself with sending the nuns to St. Lazare.[140] Some inhabitants of the
tenth arrondissement had discovered feminine skeletons in the caves of
the St. Laurent Church. The prefecture only made a show of inquiry that
ended in nothing.
However, in the midst of all these faults, the humanitarian idea
revealed itself, so thoroughly sound was this popular revolution. The
chief of the Bureau of Public Safety, making an appeal to the public for
the victims of the war, said, "The Commune has sent bread to ninety-two
wives of those who are killing us. The widows belong to no party. The
Republic has bread for every misery and care for all the orphans."
Admirable words these, worthy of Chalier and of Chaumette. The
prefecture, overrun by denunciations, declared that it would take no
account of the anonymous ones. "The man," said the _Officiel_, "who does
not dare to sign a denunciation serves a personal rancour and not the
public interest." The hostages were allowed to obtain from without food,
linen, books, papers, to be visited by their friends, and to receive the
reporters of foreign journals. An offer was even made M. Thiers to
exchange the hostages of greatest mark, the Archbishop, Deguerry,
Bonjean, and Lagarde, for the single Blanqui. To conduct this
negotiation the Vicar-General was sent to Versailles, after having sworn
to the Archbishop and the delegate to return to his prison in case of
non-success. But M. Thiers thought that Blanqui would give a head to the
movement, while the Ultramontanes, eagerly covetous of the episcopal
seat of Paris, took good care not to save the Gallican Darboy, whose
death would be a double profit, leaving them a rich inheritance, and
giving them at small expense a martyr. M. Thiers refused, and Lagarde
remained at Versailles.[141] The Council did not punish the Archbishop
for this want of faith, and a few days after set his sister at liberty.
Never even in the days of despair was the privilege of women forgotten.
The culpable nuns of Picpus and the other religieuses conducted to St.
Lazare were confined in a special part of the building.
The prefecture and the delegation of Justice also evinced their humanity
in ameliorating the service of the prisons. The Council in its turn,
striving to guarantee individual liberty, decreed that every arrest
should be immediately notified to the delegate of Justice, and that no
perquisition should be made without a regular warrant. National Guards,
misinformed, having arrested certain individuals reputed suspicious, the
Council declared in the _Officiel_ that every arbitrary act would be
followed by a dismissal and immediate prosecution. A battalion looking
for arms at the gas company's thought itself authorised to seize the
cash-box; the Council at once had the sum returned. The commissary of
police who arrested Gustave Chaudey, arraigned for having commanded fire
on the 22nd January, had also seized the money of the prisoner; the
Council dismissed the commissary. To prevent all abuse of power, it
ordered an inquiry into the state of the prisoners and the motives of
their detention, authorising at the same time all its members to visit
the prisoners. Rigault thereupon sent in his resignation, which was
accepted, for he was beginning to weary everybody, and Delescluze had
been obliged to rebuke him. His pranks filled the columns of the
Versaillese journals, always on the look-out for scandals. They accused
this childish police of terrorising Paris, and represented the members
of the Council, who refused to endorse the condemnations of the
court-martial, as assassins. The Figarist historians have kept up this
legend. That vile bourgeoisie, which bent its head under the 30,000
arrests of December, the _lettres de cachet_ of the Empire, and
applauded the 50,000 arrests of May, still howls about the 800 or 900
arrests made under the Commune. They never exceeded this figure in two
months of strife, and two-thirds of those arrested were only imprisoned
a few days, many only a few hours. But the provinces, only fed with news
by the Versaillese press, believed in its inventions, amplified in the
circulars of M. Thiers telegraphing to the prefects: "The insurgents
are emptying the principal houses of Paris in order to put the furniture
to sale."
To enlighten the provinces and provoke their intervention, such was the
role of the delegation of the Exterior, which, under an ill-chosen
title, was only second in importance to that of War. Since the 4th
April--(I shall afterwards recount these movements)--the departments had
been stirring. Save that of Marseilles, in part disarmed, the National
Guard everywhere had guns. In the centre, east, west and south, powerful
diversions might easily have been made, the stations occupied, and
thereby the reinforcements and artillery destined for Versailles
arrested.
The delegation contented itself with sending some few emissaries,
without knowledge of the localities they were sent to, without tact and
without authority. It was even exploited by traitors, who pocketed its
money and handed over its instructions to Versailles. Well-known
Republicans, familiar with the habits of the provinces, offered their
services in vain. There, as elsewhere, it was necessary to be a
favourite. Finally, for the work of enlightening and rousing France to
insurrection, only a sum of 100,000 francs was allowed.
The delegation put forth only a small number of manifestoes, one a true
and eloquent resume of the Parisian revolution, and two addresses to the
peasants, one by Madame Andre Leo, simple, fervent, quite within the
reach of the peasantry: "Brother, you are being deceived. Our interests
are the same. What I ask for, you wish it too. The affranchisement which
I demand is yours.... What Paris after all wants is the land for the
peasant, the instrument for the workmen." This good seed was carried
away in free balloons, which, by a cleverly-contrived mechanism, from
time to time dropped the printed papers. How many were lost, fell among
thorns!
This delegation, created only for the exterior, entirely forgot the rest
of the world. Throughout all Europe the working-classes eagerly awaited
news from Paris, were in their hearts fellow-combatants of the great
town, now become their capital, multiplied their meetings, processions,
and addresses. Their papers, poor for the most part, courageously
struggled against the calumnies of the bourgeois press. The duty of the
delegation was to hold out a hand to these priceless auxiliaries: it did
nothing. Some of these papers exhausted their last means in defense of
the Commune, which allowed its defenders to succumb for want of bread.
The delegation, without experience, without resources, could not fight
against the astute cleverness of M. Thiers. It showed great zeal in
protecting foreigners, and sent the rich silver plate of the Ministry to
the Mint, but it did almost no real work.
Now we come to the delegations of vital importance. Since, by the force
of events, the Commune had become the champion of the Revolution, it
ought to have proclaimed the aspirations of the century, and, if it was
to die, leave at least their testament on its tomb. It would have
sufficed to state lucidly the ensemble of institutions demanded for
forty years by the revolutionary party.
The delegate of Justice, a lawyer, had only to make a summary of the
reforms long since demanded by all Socialists. It was the part of a
proletarian revolution to show the aristocracy of our judicial system
the despotic and antiquated doctrines of the Code Napoleon; the
sovereign people hardly ever judging themselves, but judged by a caste
issued from another authority than their own, the absurd hierarchy of
judges and tribunals, the _tabellionat_, the procureurs, 400,000
notaries, solicitors, sheriffs' officers, registrars, bailiffs,
advocates and lawyers, draining national wealth to the amount of many
hundreds of millions. It was, above all, for a revolution made in the
name of the Commune to endow the Commune with a tribunal at which the
people, restored to their rights, should judge by jury all cases, civil
and commercial, misdemeanours as well as crimes; a final tribunal,
without any appeal but for informalities, to state how solicitors,
registrars, sheriffs, may be rendered useless, and the notaries replaced
by simple registration officers. The delegate mostly limited himself to
appointing notaries, sheriffs' officers, and bailiffs, provided with a
fixed salary,--very useless appointments in a time of war, and which,
besides, had the fault of consecrating the principle of the necessity
for such officers. Scarcely anything progressive came of it. It was
decreed that, in case of arrests, the minutes were to state the motives
and the names of the witnesses to be called, while the papers, valuables
and effects of the prisoners were to be deposited at the Suitors' Fund.
Another decree ordered the directors of lunatic asylums to send the
nominal and explanatory statement concerning their patients within four
days. If the Council had thrown some light on these institutions, which
veil so many crimes, humanity would have been its debtor. However, these
decrees were never executed.
Did practical instinct make up for want of science on the part of the
delegation? Did it shed light upon the mysteries of the caves of Picpus,
the skeletons of St. Laurent? It seemed to take no notice of them, and
the reaction made merry at these supposed discoveries. The delegation
even missed the opportunity of winning over to the Commune, if only for
one day, all Republicans of France. Jecker was in their power. Rich,
brave, audacious, he had always lived certain of impunity, since
bourgeois legality inflicts no chastisement for crimes like the Mexican
expedition. The Revolution alone could smite him. Nothing was more easy
than to proceed against him. Jecker, pretending to have been the dupe of
the Empire, craved to make revelations. In a public court, before twelve
jurors chosen at hazard, in the face of the world, through him the
Mexican expedition might have been sifted, the intrigues of the clergy
unveiled, the pockets of the thieves turned out; it might have been
shown how the Empress, Miramon, and Morny had set the plot on foot, in
what cause and for what men France had lost seas of blood and hundreds
of millions. Afterwards the expiation might have been accomplished in
the open day, on the Place de la Concorde, in face of the Tuileries.
Poets, who rarely get shot, would perhaps have sighed, but the people,
the eternal victim, would have applauded, and said, "The Revolution
alone does justice." They neglected even to question Jecker.
The delegation at the Education department was bound to write one of the
finest pages of the Commune, for, after go many years of study and
experiments this question should spring forth ready armed from a truly
revolutionary brain. The delegation has not left a memoir, a sketch, an
address, a line, to bear witness for it in the future. Yet the delegate
was a doctor, a student of the German universities. He contented himself
with suppressing the crucifixes in the schoolrooms and making an appeal
to all those who had studied the question of teaching. A commission was
charged to organise primary and professional instruction, whose work
consisted in announcing the opening of a school on the 6th May. Another
commission for the education of women was named on the day the
Versaillese entered Paris.
The administrative action of the delegate was confined to impracticable
decrees and a few appointments. Two devoted and talented men, Elie
Reclus and B. Gastineau, were charged with the reorganisation of the
National Library. They forbade the lending of books, thus putting an end
to the scandalous practice by which a privileged few carved out a
private library from public collections. The federation of artists,
presided over by Courbet, elected member of the Council on the 16th
April, occupied itself with the re-opening and superintendence of the
museums.
Nothing would be known of the ideas of this revolution on education were
it not for a few circulars of the municipalities. Many had reopened the
schools abandoned by the Congregationists and the municipal teachers, or
driven away the priests who had remained. The municipality of the
twentieth arrondissement clothed and fed the children; that of the
fourth said, "To teach children to love and respect their
fellow-creatures, to inspire them with a love of justice, to teach them
that they must instruct themselves in the interests of all, such are the
principles of morality on which for the future communal education will
be based." "The teachers of the schools and infant asylums," declared
the municipality of the seventeenth arrondissement, "will for the future
exclusively employ the experimental and scientific method, that which
always starts from facts, physical, moral, intellectual." But these
vague formulas could not make amends for the want of a complete
programme.
Who, then, will speak for the people? The delegation of Labour and
Exchange. Exclusively composed of revolutionary Socialists, its purpose
was, "The study of all the reforms to be introduced into the public
services of the Commune or into the relations of the working men and
women with their employers; the revision of the commercial code and
customhouse duties; the transformation of all direct and indirect taxes,
the establishment of statistics of labour." It intended collecting from
the citizens themselves the materials for the decrees to be submitted to
the Commune.
The delegate to this department, Leo Frankel, procured the assistance of
a commission of initiative composed of workingmen. Registers for offers
and demands of work were opened in all the arrondissements. At the
request of many journeymen bakers night-work was suppressed, a measure
of hygiene as much as of morality. The delegation prepared a project for
the suppression of pawnshops, a decree concerning stoppages of wages,
and supported the decree relative to workshops abandoned by their
runaway masters.
Their plan gratuitously returned the pledged objects to the victims of
war and to the necessitous. Those who might refuse to confess this
latter title were to receive their pledges in exchange for a promise of
repayment in five years. The report terminated with these words: "It is
well understood that the suppression of the pawnshops is to be succeeded
by a social organisation giving serious guarantees of support to the
workmen thrown out of employment. The establishment of the Commune
necessitates institutions protecting the workmen from the exploitation
of capital."
The decree that abolished stoppages of salaries and wages put an end to
one of the most crying iniquities of the capitalist regime, these fines
often being inflicted on the most futile pretext by the employer
himself, who is thus at once judge and plaintiff.
The decree relative to the deserted workshops made restitution to the
mass, dispossessed since centuries, of the property of their own labour.
A commission of inquiry named by the Syndical Chambers was to draw up
the statistics and the inventory of the deserted workshops to be given
back into the hands of the workmen. Thus "the expropriators were in
their turn expropriated." The nineteenth century will not pass away
without having begun this revolution; every progress in machinery brings
it nearer. The more the exploitation of labour concentrates itself in a
few hands, the more the working multitude are massed together and
disciplined. Soon, conscious and united, the producing class will, like
the young France of 1789, have to confront but a handful of privileged
appropriators. The most inveterate revolutionary Socialist is the
monopolist.
No doubt this decree contained voids and stood in need of an elaborate
explanation, especially on the subject of the co-operative societies to
which the workshops were to be handed over. It was no more than the
other applicable in this hour of strife, and required a number of
supplementary decrees; but it at least gave some idea of the claims of
the working-class, and had it nothing else on its credit side, by the
mere creation of the Commission of Labour and Exchange, the revolution
of the 18th March would have done more for the workmen than all the
bourgeois Assemblies of France since the 5th May, 1789.
The delegation of Labour wanted to look carefully into the contracts of
the commissariat. It demonstrated that in the case of contracts
adjudicated to the lowest bidder, the running down of prices falls upon
wages and not on the profit of the contractor. "And the Commune is
blind enough to lend itself to such manoeuvres," said the report, "and
at this very moment, when the workingman dares death rather than submit
any longer to this exploitation." The delegate demanded that the
estimate of charges should specify the cost of labour, that the orders
should by preference be given to the workmen's corporations, and the
contracting prices fixed by arbitration between the commissariat, the
Syndical Chamber of the corporation, and the delegate of Labour.
To overlook the financial administration of all the delegations, the
Council in the month of May instituted a superior commission charged to
audit their accounts. It decreed that functionaries or contractors
guilty of peculation or theft should be punished with death.
In short, save the delegation of Labour, where they did work, the
fundamental delegations were unequal to their task. All committed the
same fault. During two months they had in their hands the archives of
the bourgeoisie since 1789. There was the Cour des Comptes (a judicial
board of accounts) to disclose the mysteries of official jobbery; the
Council of State, the dark deliberations of despotism; the Prefecture of
Police, the scandalous under-currents of social power; the Ministry of
Justice, the servility and crimes of the most oppressive of all classes.
In the Hotel-de-Ville there lay deposited the still unexplored records
of the first Revolution, of those of 1815, 1830, 1848, and all
diplomatists of Europe dreaded the opening of the portfolios at the
Foreign Office. They might have laid bare before the eyes of the people
the intimate history of the Revolution, the Directory, the first Empire,
the monarchy of July, 1848, and of Napoleon III. They published only two
or three fascicles.[142] The delegates slept by the side of these
treasures, heedless, as it seemed, of their value.
The Radicals, seeing these lawyers, these doctors, these publicists, who
allowed Jecker to remain mute and the Cour des Comptes closed, would
not believe in such ignorance, and still affect to unriddle the enigma
with the word "Bonapartism." A stupid accusation, given the lie by a
thousand proofs. For the honour even of the delegates the bitter truth
must be told. Their ignorance was not simulated, but only too real. To a
great extent it was the offspring of past oppression.
FOOTNOTES:
[131] Appendix VI.
[132] Appendix VII., report by Theisz.
[133] Appendix VIII.
[134] There were five parks--the Hotel-de-Ville, the Tuileries, the
Ecole Militaire, Montmartre, Vincennes. In all, including the artillery
of the forts and that of the open country, the Commune had more than
1100 cannon, howitzers, mortars, and mitrailleuses.
[135] The second Central Committee was composed of forty members, of
whom twelve only had formed part of the first Committee.
[136] "Do you know," said he to Delescluze, "that Versailles has offered
me a million?" "Be silent!" answered Delescluze, turning his back upon
him.
[137] He was arrested on the 20th March in his private room in the
Palace of Justice, where he had given the procureur-general a
rendezvous.
[138] He was recognised as he asked for his passport at the prefecture
of police.
[139] The correspondent of the _Times_ wrote in the number of 9th May:
"The superior and her nuns explained that these were orthopaedic
instruments--a superficial falsehood. The mattress and straps struck me
as being easily accounted for; I have seen such things used in French
midwifery and in cases of violent delirium; but the rack and its
adjuncts are justly objects of grave suspicion, for they imply a use of
brutal force which no disease at present known would justify."
[140] The nun who filled the post of superior, a big and bold virago,
answered Rigault in an easy-going manner. "Why have you shut up these
women?" "To do their families a service; they were mad. See gentlemen,
you are young men of good families; you'll understand that sometimes one
is glad to conceal the madness of one's relations." "But do you not know
the law?" "No, we obey our superiors." "Whose books are these?" "We know
nothing about them." Thus affecting simpleness, they sold the
simpletons.
[141] This negotiation has in part been recounted in the _Officiel_ of
the Commune. We add further details. Soon after his arrest the
Archbishop wrote to M. Thiers begging him to stop the execution of the
prisoners, on which the lives of the hostages depended. M. Thiers did
not answer. An old friend of Blanqui's, Flotte, went to the President to
propose an exchange, and said that the Archbishop might incur peril. M.
Thiers made a decided gesture: "What does it matter to me?" Flotte again
took up the negotiation through Darboy, who named Deguerry as envoy to
Versailles. The prefecture, unwilling to give up such a hostage, the
Vicar-General Lagarde took Deguerry's place. The Archbishop furnished
him with instructions, and on the 12th April Flotte conducted Lagarde to
the station and made him swear to return if he failed in his mission.
Lagarde swore, "Even if to be shot, I shall return. Can you believe that
I could for a single moment harbour the thought of leaving Monseigneur
alone here?" At the moment when the train was about to start, Flotte
insisted again, "Do not go if you have not the intention of returning."
The priest again renewed his oath. He went off, and handed over a letter
in which the Archbishop solicited the exchange. M. Thiers, pretending to
know nothing of this one, answered the first, which a Communalist
journal had just published. His answer is one of his masterpieces of
hypocrisy and falsehood: "The facts to which you call my attention are
absolutely false, and I am really surprised that so enlightened a
prelate as you, Monseigneur.... Our soldiers have never shot prisoners
nor sought to kill the wounded. That, in the heat of the combat, they
may have turned their arms against men who assassinate their generals,
is possible; but, the combat terminated, they resume the natural
generosity of the national character. I therefore spurn, Monseigneur,
the calumny that has been told you. I affirm that our soldiers have
never shot prisoners." On the 17th Flotte received a letter in which
Lagarde informed him that his presence was still indispensable at
Versailles. Flotte complained to the Archbishop, who could not believe
in this desertion. "It is impossible," said he, "that M. Lagarde should
remain at Versailles; he will come back; he has sworn it to me myself,"
and he gave Flotte a note for Lagarde. The latter answered that M.
Thiers retained him. On the 23rd Darboy wrote to him again: "On the
reception of this letter, M. Lagarde is immediately to retrace his steps
to Paris and to re-enter Mazas. This delay compromises us gravely, and
may have the saddest results." Lagarde did not answer any more.
Blanqui, transported to the Fort du Taureau, was rigorously kept in
solitary confinement. His friends thought of delivering him, and a sum
of 50,000 francs was prepared for his release. But much more would have
been necessary, and, above all, adroit agents, for the least imprudence
would have cost the life of the prisoner. The affair was procrastinated,
and part of the funds were still in the coffers of the Committee of
Public Safety at the entry of the Versaillese.
[142] Georges Duchene began examining the commercial transactions of the
Government of National Defence, but he published nothing.