THE CONSPIRACIES AGAINST THE COMMUNE.
The Commune had given rise to the various trades of the plot-monger, the
betrayer of gates, the conspiracy-broker. Vulgar sharpers, Jonathan
Wilds of the gutter, whom a shadow of police would have scared away,
they had no other strength than the weakness of the prefecture and the
carelessness of the delegations. The evidence relative to them is to a
certain extent still in the keeping of the Versaillese; but they have
themselves published a good deal, often borne witness against each
other, and what with private information, what with the opportunities
offered by our exile, we shall be able to penetrate into this realm of
blackguardism.
From the end of March they levied contributions upon all the Ministries
of Versailles, offering for a few sous to surrender some of the gates of
Paris or to kidnap the members of the Council. By degrees they were more
or less classed. The colonel of the staff, Corbin, was charged with the
organisation of the faithful National Guards still at Paris. The
commander of a reactionary battalion, Charpentier, a former drill
officer of St. Cyr, offered him his services, was accepted, and
presented a few of his cronies, Durouchoux, Demay, and Gallimard. Their
instructions were to recruit clandestine battalions, who were to occupy
the strategic points of the town on the day when the general attack
would summons all the Federals to the ramparts. A naval officer,
Domalain, offered at that moment to surprise Montmartre, the
Hotel-de-Ville, the Place Vendome, and the commissariat, with a few
thousand volunteers, whom he professed to have at hand. He entered into
partnership with Charpentier.
They bestirred themselves with might and main, grouped an astonishing
number of persons around official posts, and soon gave notice of 6,000
men and 150 artillerists provided with spiking machines. All these brave
ones only waited for a signal. In the meanwhile, money was of course
wanted to keep up their zeal, and Charpentier and Domalain, through the
agency of Durouchoux, indeed drew several hundred thousand francs from
the Versaillese.
Towards the end of April they found a redoubtable rival in Le Mere de
Beaufond, an ex-naval officer and governor of Cayenne _ad interim_.
Instead of drumming up for bourgeois recruits, an idea he declared
ridiculous, Beaufond proposed paralysing the resistance by means of
clever agents who should provoke defections and disorganise the
services. His plan, quite in accord with M. Thiers' notions, was
favourably looked upon at Versailles, which gave him full powers. He
took as helpmates two men of resolution, Laroque, a clerk at the bank,
and Lasnier, an ex-officer of Schoelcher's legion.
Besides these, the Ministry had still other bloodhounds--the Alsatian
Aronshonne, colonel of a free corps during the war, cashiered by his
men, who at Tours had accused him of theft; Franzini, later on
extradited by England and condemned as a swindler; Barral de Montaut,
who boldly presented himself at the War Office, and, thanks to his
aplomb, got himself named chief of the seventh legion; the Abbe Cellini,
chaplain of one knows not what fleet, patronised by Jules Simon; last,
the noble-minded conspirators, the great generals disdained by the
revolution, Lullier, Du Bisson, Ganier d'Abin. These honest Republicans
could not allow the Commune to ruin the Republic. If they accepted money
from Versailles, it was only with a view to saving Paris and the
Republican party from the men of the Hotel-de-Ville. They wanted to
overthrow the Commune, but betray it, oh! no, by no means!
One Briere de St.-Lagier framed comprehensive reports on all these
knights, and M. Thiers' secretary, Troncin-Dumersan, condemned three
years after as swindler, travelled backwards and forwards between Paris
and Versailles, brought the money, superintended and held in his hand
all the threads of these multifarious conspiracies, the one being often
carried on behind the back of the other.
Thence continual collisions. The ragamuffins mutually denounced each
other. Briere de St.-Lagier wrote: "I beg M. le Ministre of the Interior
to have M. Le Mere de Beaufond watched. I strongly suspect him of being
a Bonapartist. The money he has received has been used to a great extent
to pay his debts." By way of compensation another report said, "I
suspect MM. Domalain, Charpentier, and Briere de St.-Lagier. They often
meet at Peter's, and instead of occupying themselves with the great
cause of the deliverance, imitate Pantagruel. They pass for
Orleanists."[158]
The most venturesome of these enterprisers, Beaufond, managed to enter
into relations with the general staff of Colonel Henry Prodhomme, with
the Ecole Militaire, commanded by Vinot, and with the War Office, where
the chief of the artillery, Guyet, contrived to embroil the service of
the munitions. His agents, Lasnier and Laroque, worked upon a certain
Muley, who, having circumvented the Central Committee, got himself named
chief of the seventeenth legion, and to some extent disabled it. An
officer of artillery, Captain Piguier, placed at their disposal by the
Ministry, traced the plan of the barricades, and one of the band could
write on the 8th May, "No torpedoes are laid; the army may enter to the
flourish of trumpets." Now they had recourse to direct subornation; now
acting the part of fervent Communards, they knew how to draw out
information; while the imprudence of the functionaries singularly
facilitated their task. Staff officers, chiefs of services, fond of
assuming consequential airs, discussed the most delicate matters in the
cafes of the boulevards, full of spies.[159] Cournet, who had succeeded
Rigault at the prefecture of police, despite the gravity of his
deportment, did not better the service of general safety. Lullier, twice
arrested, each time escaping, openly spoke in the cafes of sweeping away
the Commune. Troncin-Dumersan, known for twenty years as the police
agent of the Ministry of the Interior, freely promenaded on the
boulevards, passing his retainers in review. The contractors charged
with the fortification of Montmartre every day found new pretexts to
defer the opening of the works; the Brea Church remained intact; the
undertaker of the demolition of the expiatory monument managed to put it
off till the entry of the troops. Hazard alone discovered the _brassard_
(armlet) plot, and the fidelity of Dombrowski disclosed that of Vaysset.
This commercial agent had gone to Versailles to propose to the Ministry
an operation of revictualling. Shown out, he again turned up, but this
time with the offer to bribe Dombrowski. Under the patronage of Admiral
Saisset--more crazy than ever--he got up his enterprise in the shape of
a commercial society, found shareholders, twenty thousand francs for the
incidental expenses, and entered into communication with an aide-de-camp
of Dombrowski's named Hutzinger, afterwards employed by the Versaillese
police as spy amongst the exiles in London. Vaysset told him that
Versailles would give Dombrowski a million if the general surrendered
the gates under his command. Dombrowski at once apprised the Committee
of Public Safety, and proposed to allow one or two Versaillese army
corps to enter the town and then to crush them by battalions lying in
ambush. The Committee would not risk this venture, but ordered
Dombrowski to follow up the negotiation.[160] Hutzinger accompanied
Vaysset to Versailles, saw Saisset, who offered to surrender himself as
hostage in guarantee of the execution of the promises made to
Dombrowski. The admiral was even, on a certain night, to repair secretly
to the Place Vendome, and the Committee of Public Safety, forewarned,
was preparing to arrest him, when Barthelemy St. Hilaire dissuaded
Saisset from this new blunder.
Then M. Thiers began to abandon the hope of taking the town by surprise.
This was his hobby of the first days of May. Upon the faith of a
bailiff, who promised to get the Dauphine gate surrendered by his friend
Laporte, chief of the sixteenth legion, M. Thiers had built up a whole
plan in spite of the repugnance of MacMahon and of the army, eager for a
triumphal entry.[161] In the night of the 3d May the whole active army
and part of the reserve were set on foot, and General Thiers went to
sleep at Sevres. At midnight the troops were massed in the Bois de
Boulogne before the lower lake, their eyes fixed on the closed gates.
The latter were to be thrown open by a reactionary company which had
formed at Passy under the orders of Wery, a lieutenant of the
thirty-eighth, acting as deputy of his former commander, Lavigne. But
the intelligent conspirators had forgotten to warn Lavigne, and the
company that was to relieve the Federals having had no order from their
superior, suspected an ambush, and refused the service. Thus the trusty
watch was not relieved. At dawn, after waiting in vain for several
hours, the troops returned to their cantonments. Two days after Laporte
was arrested and set free again, much too soon.
Beaufond, taking up the bailiff's plan, guaranteed the surrender of the
gates of Auteuil and Dauphine for the night of the 12th to the 13th May.
M. Thiers, again caught, forwarded all the gear for an escalade, and
several detachments were directed towards the Point du Jour, while the
army held itself in readiness to follow. But at the last moment the
profound combinations of the conspirators were foiled,[162] and, as on
the 3rd, the army had to turn tail. This attempt was known to the
Committee of Public Safety, who had known nothing of the first one.
Lasnier was arrested the next day. The Committee had just laid hands
upon the tricolor armlets which the National Guards of order were to
have worn on the entry of the army. The woman Legros, who made them,
neglected to pay the girls in her employ. One of them, believing that
the work was done on account of the Commune, went to ask for her wages
at the Hotel-de-Ville. Inquiries made at the woman Legros' put them on
the traces of Beaufond and his accomplices. Beaufond and Laroque managed
to hide; Troncin-Dumersan packed off to Versailles. Charpentier thus
remained master of the field. Corbin urged him to organise his men by
tens and hundreds, and traced him out a whole plan by which to get
possession of the Hotel-de-Ville immediately after the entry of the
troops. Charpentier, always imperturbable, diverted him day by day by
news of fresh conquests, spoke of 20,000 recruits, asked for dynamite to
blow up the houses,[163] and in true Pantagruelic style gobbled up the
considerable sums made over to him by Durouchoux.
After all, the whole gang of conspirators did not succeed in
surrendering one single gate, but they lent considerable aid in
disorganising the services. Still great care should be taken in availing
oneself of their reports, often inflated with imaginary successes to
justify the disbursement of the hundreds of thousands of francs that
they pocketed.
FOOTNOTES:
[158] All the unpublished reports that I quote and on which I rely have
been copied from the originals.
[159] Appendix XI.
[160] Appendix XII.
[161] "It was better to take possession of the town by main force," said
the apostolic Comte de Mun (_Enquete sur le 18 Mars_, vol. ii. p. 277).
"Thus right manifests itself in peremptory manner"--the right of
carnage, no doubt. "It was better that it should not be said that we had
got in by the back-door."
[162] It has been stated that a Polish officer of Dombrowski's staff,
killed afterwards during the street fight, was the agent in this
attempted treason. I have been unable, in spite of a minute search, to
discover the least proof of this imputation.
[163] See a letter from Colonel Corbin, quoted in the _Histoire des
Conspirations sous la Commune_, a work by A. J. Dalseme, arranged in the
form of a novel, but containing some documents.