"C'est par le canon et par la politique que nous avons pris
Paris."--_M. Thiers, Enquete sur le 18 Mars._
M. THIERS' POLICY WITH REGARD TO THE PROVINCES--THE EXTREME
LEFT BETRAYS PARIS.
Who was the great conspirator against Paris? The Extreme Left.
On the 19th March, what remained to M. Thiers wherewith to govern
France? He had neither an army, nor cannon, nor the large towns. These
possessed arms, and their workmen were on the alert. If that small
middle-class which makes the provinces endorse the revolutions of the
metropolis had followed the movement, imitated their kindred of Paris,
M. Thiers could not have opposed to them a single regiment. In order to
subsist, retain the provinces, and induce them to provide the soldiers
and the cannon that were to reduce Paris, what were the resources of the
chief of the bourgeoisie? A word and a handful of men. The word was
Republic; the men, the recognised chiefs of the Republican party.
Though the dull rurals barked at the mere name of the Republic, and
refused to insert it in their proclamations, M. Thiers, more cunning,
mouthed it lustily, and distorting the votes of the Assembly,[164] gave
it out as the watchword to his underlings.[165] Since the first risings
all the provincial officials had the same refrain: "We defend the
Republic against the factions."[166]
This was certainly something; but the rural votes, the past of M.
Thiers, clashed with these Republican protestations. The former heroes
of the National Defence were no longer acceptable as securities even for
the provinces. M. Thiers was well aware of it, and invoked the purest of
the pure--the chevroned returned from exile. Their prestige was still
intact in the eyes of the provincial democrats. M. Thiers met them in
the lobbies, told them they held the fate of the Republic in their
hands, flattered their senile vanity, and inveigled them so
successfully, that, from the 23rd,[167] they served him as
bottle-holders. When the small middle-class republicans of the provinces
beheld the profound Louis Blanc, the intelligent Schoelcher, and the
most famous grumblers of the radical vanguard fly to Versailles, and
insult the Central Committee, and, on the other hand, received neither
programme nor able emissaries from Paris, they turned away, and let the
flame enkindled by the workmen die out.
The cannonading of the 3rd April roused them a little. On the 5th, the
municipal council of Lille, composed of Republican notabilities, spoke
of conciliation, and called upon M. Thiers to affirm the Republic. That
of Lyons drew up a like address; St. Omer sent delegates to Versailles;
Troyes declared that it was "heart and soul with the heroic citizens who
fought for their republican convictions." Macon summoned the Government
and the Assembly to put an end to this struggle by the recognition of
republican institutions. The Drome, the Var, Vaucluse, the Ardeche, the
Loire, Savoy, the Herault, the Gers, and the Eastern Pyrenees, twenty
departments, issued similar addresses. The workmen of Rouen declared
their adhesion to the Commune; the workmen of Havre, rebuffed by the
bourgeois Republicans, constituted an independent group. On the 16th
April, at Grenoble, 600 men, women, and children went to the station to
prevent the departure of the troops and munitions for Versailles. On the
18th, at Nimes, the people, headed by a red flag, marched through the
town to the cry of "Vive la Commune! Vive Paris! Down with Versailles!"
On the 16th, 17th, 18th, there were disturbances at Bordeaux. Some
police agents were imprisoned, some officers ill-treated, the infantry
barracks pelted with stones, the people crying, "Vive Paris! Death to
the traitors!" The movement even spread to the agricultural classes. At
Saincoin in the Cher, at the Charite-sur-Loire, at Pouilly in the
Nievre, the National Guards in arms carried about the red flag. Cosne
followed on the 18th, Fleury-sur-Loire on the 19th. The red flag was
permanently hoisted in the Ariege; at Foix they stopped the transport of
the cannon; at Varilhes they tried to run the munition trains off the
lines. At Perigueux, the workmen of the railway station seized the
mitrailleuses.
On the 15th April five delegates from the municipal council of Lyons
presented themselves to M. Thiers. He protested his devotion to the
Republic, swore that the Assembly should not turn into a Constituent
Assembly. If he chose his functionaries outside the Republicans, it was
in order to treat all parties with consideration in the interest of the
Republic itself. He defended it against the men of the Hotel-de-Ville,
its worst enemies, said he; the delegates might assure themselves of
this even in Paris, and he was quite ready to furnish them with
safe-conducts. Besides, if Lyons dared to stir, 30,000 men were ready to
quell it.[168] This was his typical speech. All the deputations
received the same answer, given with such an air of bonhommie and such
complaisant familiarity as quite to overwhelm the provincials.
From the presidency they proceeded to the luminaries of the Extreme
Left, Louis Blanc, Schoelcher, Adam, and other eminent democrats, who
endorsed M. Thiers' words. These gentlemen, if condescending to admit
that the cause of Paris was not altogether wrong, declared it ill-begun
and compromised by a criminal combat. When Paris once disarmed they
would see what could be done. Opportunism is not of yesterday's growth.
It was born[169] into the world on the 19th March, 1871, had Louis Blanc
& Co. for godfathers, and was baptized in the blood of 30,000 Parisians.
"With whom should they treat in Paris?" asked Louis Blanc. "Without
speaking of Bonapartist and Prussian intrigues, the people who were
there striving to seize the government were fanatics, fools, or
rogues."[170] And all the Radicals bridled up: "Should we not be at
Paris if Paris were in the right?" The majority of the delegates,
lawyers, doctors, business men, brought up in veneration of these
shining lights, hearing besides the young men speaking like the
pontiffs, went back to the provinces, and as the Left preached to them,
preached in turn that it was necessary to abandon the Commune in order
to save the Republic. A few of them had visited Paris; but seeing the
divisions of the Hotel-de-Ville, often received by men unable to
formulate their ideas, threatened by Felix Pyat in the _Vengeur_, they
came back convinced that nothing could emerge from this disorder. When
they again passed through Versailles the deputies of the Left triumphed.
"Well, what did we tell you?" Even Martin-Bernard gave his electors the
ass's kick.
At Paris there were people who could not believe in such barefaced
treachery on the part of the Left, and still adjured them. "What are you
about at Versailles when Versailles is bombarding Paris?" said an
address of the end of April. "What figure can you cut in the midst of
these colleagues who assassinate your electors? If you persist in
remaining amongst the enemies of Paris, at least do not make yourselves
their accomplices by your silence. What! you allow M. Thiers to write to
the departments, '_The insurgents are emptying the principal houses of
Paris in order to put the furniture to sale_,' and you do not ascend the
tribune to protest! What! the whole Bonapartist and rural press may
inundate the departments with infamous articles, in which they affirm
that at Paris murder, violation, and theft reign supreme, and you are
silent! What! M. Thiers may assert that his gendarmes do not assassinate
the prisoners; you cannot ignore these atrocious executions, and you are
silent! Ascend the tribune; tell the departments the truth, which the
enemies of the Commune conceal from them. But our enemies, are they
yours also?"
A useless appeal, which the cowardice of the Left knew how to elude.
Louis Blanc, in his Tartuffe style, exclaimed, "O civil war! hideous
struggle! The cannon thunder! People are killing each other and dying;
and those in the Assembly who would willingly give their life to see
this sanguinary problem pacifically resolved are condemned to the
torture of not being able to make an act, utter a cry, speak a word."
Since the birth of the French Assemblies so ignominious a Left had never
been seen. The spectacle of the prisoners smitten, reviled, spat upon,
was unable to draw a protest from these wretched Parisian deputies. One
only, Tolain, asked for an explanation on the assassination at the
Belle-Epine. Louis Blanc, Schoelcher, Greppo, Adam, Langlois, Brisson,
&c., the Gerontes and the Scapins, sanctimoniously contemplated their
bombarded electors, and, fully aware of the facile forgetfulness of
Paris, dreamt of their future re-election.
Their calumnies succeeded in stifling the action but not the anguish of
the provinces. With heart and soul the workmen of France were with
Paris. The employes at the railway stations harangued the soldiers on
their passage, adjuring them to raise the butt-ends of their guns; the
official placards were torn during the night; the large centres sent
their addresses by the hundred; all the Republican papers demanded
peace, sought for some method of conciliation between Paris and
Versailles.
Paris and Versailles! The agitation becoming chronic, M. Thiers launched
forth Dufaure, the Chapelier of the modern bourgeoisie, one of the most
odious executors of its dirty work. He enjoined his procureurs to
prosecute all the writers countenancing the Commune, "that dictatorship
usurped by foreigners and ticket-of-leave men, which signalises its
reign by burglary, breaking open private houses in the dead of night and
by force of arms," and to lay hands upon "the conciliators who entreat
the Assembly to hold out its noble hand to the blood-stained hand of its
enemies." Versailles thus hoped to strike terror at the moment of the
municipal elections, which took place on the 30th April.
They were everywhere Republican. These provinces, which had risen
against Paris in June, 1848, and in the elections of 1849, did not send
a hundred volunteers in 1871, and would only fight the Assembly. At
Thiers (Puy-de-Dome) the people occupied the Hotel-de-Ville, hoisted the
red flag, and seized the telegraphs. There occurred disturbances at
Souppe, Nemours, Chateau-Landau, in the arrondissement of Fontainebleau.
At Dordives (Loiret) the Communards planted a poplar surmounted by the
red flag in front of the mairie. At Montargis they raised the red flag,
placarded the appeal of the Commune to the rural districts, and forced a
solicitor who had tried to tear down the placard to ask pardon on his
knees. At Coulommiers (Seine-et-Marne) a demonstration took place to the
cries of "Vive la Republique! Vive la Commune!"
Lyons rose in insurrection. Since the 24th March the tricolor lorded it
here, save at the Guillotiere,[171] where the people maintained the red
one. The Council on its return to the Hotel-de-Ville had demanded the
recognition of the rights of Paris, the election of a Constituent
Assembly, and named an officer of _francs-tireurs_, Bourras, commander
of the National Guard. While the Council multiplied its addresses and
its applications to M. Thiers, the National Guard was again stirring. It
presented a programme to the municipal council, which officially
rejected it. The rebuff met by the delegates sent to Versailles
increased the irritation. When the communal elections were announced for
the 30th April, the revolutionary element maintained that the municipal
law voted by the Assembly was null and void, because that Assembly had
not the rights of a constituent one. Two delegates from Paris summoned
the mayor, Henon, to postpone the elections; and one of the actors in
the affray of the 28th September, Gaspard Blanc, reappeared on the
scene. The Radicals, always upon the scent of Bonapartism, have made
much ado about the presence of that personage. However, at that time he
was as yet but a madcap, and only in exile put on the Imperialist
livery. On the 27th, at the Brotteaux, in a large public meeting,
abstention from voting was decided upon. All the committees of the
Guillotiere followed, and in a public sitting of the 29th resolved to
oppose the vote.
On the 30th, the day of the elections, from six o'clock in the morning
the _rappel_ was beaten at the Guillotiere; armed citizens carried off
the ballot-boxes, and posted sentinels at the entrance of the hall. A
proclamation was placarded: "The city of Lyons can no longer look on
while her sister the heroic city of Paris is being strangled. The
Lyonnese revolutionists have with one accord named a Provisional
Commission. Its members are above all determined, rather than sustain
defeat, to make one heap of ruins of a town cowardly enough to allow the
assassination of Paris and the Republic." The Place de la Mairie was
thronged with an excited crowd; the mayor, Crestin, and his adjutant,
who attempted to interfere, were not listened to, and a Revolutionary
Commission installed itself in the Mairie.
Bourras sent an order to the commanders of the Guillotiere to unite
their battalions. They drew up towards two o'clock in the Des Brosses
court. A great number of guards disapproved the movement, yet no one was
willing to be the soldier of Versailles. The crowd surrounded them, and
finally broke the ranks; about a hundred, led by their captain, went to
the Mairie to hoist their red field-colours. The mayor was sent for, and
the Commission called upon him to join the movement; but he refused, as
he had done on the 22nd March. Suddenly the cannon thundered.
Henon and his council, as the month before, would have liked to
temporise; while Valentin and Crouzat dreamt of Espivent. At five
o'clock the 38th of the line debouched by the bridge of the Guillotiere;
the crowd penetrated into the ranks of the soldiers, conjuring them not
to fire, and the officers were constrained to take back their men to the
barracks. During this time the Guillotiere was fortifying itself. A
large barricade, extending from the store-houses of the Nouveau-Monde to
the angle of the Mairie, barred the Grande Rue; another was thrown up at
the entrance of the Rue des Trois Rois; a third on a level with the Rue
de Chabrol.
At half-past six the 38th came out of their barracks, but this time
watched by a battalion of chasseurs. Valentin, Crouzat, and the
procureur de la republique marched at their head. In front of the mairie
the Riot Act was read; some shots answered it, wounding the prefect. The
cavalry swept the Des Brosses court and the Place de la Mairie, while
two pieces of cannon opened fire on the edifice. Its doors soon gave way
and the occupants abandoned it. The troops entered after having killed
the sentinel, intent upon mounting guard to the very last. It has been
said that five insurgents, taken by surprise in the interior of the
building, were killed by a Versaillese officer with shots from his
revolver.
The struggle continued during part of the night in the neighbouring
streets, and the soldiers, deceived by the darkness, killed about a
hundred of their own men. The losses of the Communards were less great.
By three o'clock in the morning all was over.
At the Croix-Rousse some citizens had invaded the mairie and scattered
the voting-papers; the check of the Guillotiere cut short their
resistance.
The Versaillese took advantage of this victory to disarm the battalions
of the Guillotiere; but the population refused, rallying round the
victors. Some monarchists had been elected during the day, but everybody
considering the elections of the 30th null and void, they were obliged
to submit to a second ballot, and not one of them was re-elected. The
movement in favour of Paris continued.
These newly-elected republican councillors might have effectively
counterbalanced the authority of Versailles; the advanced press
encouraged them. The _Tribune_ of Bordeaux had the honour first to
propose a congress of all the towns of France, for the purpose of
terminating the civil war, assuring the municipal franchises, and
consolidating the Republic. The municipal council of Lyons issued an
identical programme, inviting all the municipalities to send delegates
to Lyons. On the 4th May the delegates of the councils of the principal
towns of the Herault met at Montpellier. The _Liberte_ of the Herault,
in a warm appeal reproduced by fifty journals, convoked the departmental
press to a congress. A common action was about to take the place of the
incoherent agitations of the last few weeks. If the provinces understood
their own strength, the time, their wants--if they found a group of men
equal to the occasion, Versailles, taken between Paris and the
departments, would have been obliged to capitulate to Republican France.
M. Thiers, with a vivid presentment of the danger, affected the attitude
of a strong Government, and energetically forbade the congresses. "The
Government would betray the Assembly, France, civilisation," said the
_Officiel_ of the 8th May, "if it allowed the assizes of Communism and
of the rebellion to constitute themselves by the side of the regular
power issued from universal suffrage." Picard, speaking from the tribune
of the instigation of the congress, said, "Never was there a more
criminal attempt than theirs. Outside the Assembly there exists no
right." The procureurs-generaux and the prefects received the order to
prevent all meetings. Some members of the _Ligue des Droits de Paris_ on
their way to Bordeaux were arrested.
More was not needed to frighten the Radicals. The organisers of the
congress of Bordeaux held their peace; those of Lyons wrote a piteous
address to Versailles, to the effect that they had only intended
convoking an assembly of the notables. M. Thiers, having attained his
object, disdained to prosecute them, even allowed the delegates of
eighteen departments to draw up their grievances, and seriously declare
that they "made that one of the two combatants responsible who should
refuse their conditions." And yet they might feel proud. Their chief had
done less. Gambetta had retired to Spain, to St. Sebastien, and there,
mute, without a sign of sympathy for those who sacrificed themselves for
the Republic, he in a cynical _far niente_ awaited the issue of the
civil war.
Thus the small middle-class of the provinces missed a rare chance of
conquering their liberties, of again taking up their grand role of 1792.
It became obvious how much its blood and its intelligence had been
impoverished by a long political vassalage and the complete absence of
all municipal life. From the 19th March to the 5th April they had
forsaken the workmen, when by seconding their efforts they might have
saved and continued the Revolution. When at last they wanted to
pronounce, they found themselves alone, the toy and laughing-stock of
their enemies. Such is their history since Robespierre.
So on the 10th May M. Thiers entirely mastered the situation. Making use
of all arms, of corruption as well as of patriotism, lying in his
telegrams, making his journals lie, by turns familiar and haughty in his
interviews with the deputations, putting forward now his gendarmes, now
the deputies of the Left, he had succeeded in baffling all attempts at
conciliation. He had just signed the peace of Frankfort, and, free on
this side, rid of the provinces, he remained alone face to face with
Paris.
It was time. Five weeks of siege had exhausted the patience of the
rurals; the suspicions of the first days were reviving; they fancied
that the "petit bourgeois" was procrastinating in order to spare Paris.
The _Union des Syndicats_ had just published a report of a new
interview, in which M. Thiers had seemed to relax. A deputy of the Right
rushed to the tribune accusing M. Thiers of putting off the entry into
Paris. He answered curtly, "The opening by our army of trenches only six
hundred yards from Paris does not signify that we do not want to enter
there." The following day, 12th May, the Right returned to the charge.
Was it true that M. Thiers had said to the mayor of Bordeaux, "If the
insurgents will cease hostilities the gates of Paris shall be flung wide
open during a week for all except the assassins of the generals?" Could
it be that the Government intended withdrawing some Parisians out of the
clutches of the Assembly? M. Thiers inveighed, whined. "You select the
day when I am exiled, on which my house is being pulled down. It is an
indignity. I am obliged to command terrible acts; I command them. I must
have a vote of confidence." At last, nettled out of patience, he
retorted upon the rural growls with a snarl. "I tell you that there are
among you imprudent men, who are in too great a hurry. They must have
another eight days. At the end of these eight days there will be no more
danger, and the task will be proportionate to their courage and to their
capacity."
Eight days! Do you hear, members of the Commune?
FOOTNOTES:
[164] On the 23rd, Picard telegraphed to the procureur-general of Aix:
"The Republic was, the day before yesterday, again affirmed in a
proclamation of the Assembly." The very proclamation which the Assembly
had refused to conclude by the cry "Vive la Republique!"
[165] The same day--it was that of the Marseilles insurrection--Dufaure
telegraphed to the same procureur-general: "Read the name Republique
Francaise at the head of all the despatches I send you."
[166] I have in my possession about twenty proclamations of prefects or
magistrates. They are all on this point identically the same.
[167] "A great speech of the President of the Council has been applauded
by the Extreme left." The speech of the 21st March against Paris.
Dufaure to the procureur-general at Aix, 23rd March.
[168] He confessed his trickery in a speech pronounced at Bordeaux in
1875: "I was enabled with the remains of the defeated army to unite a
military force of 150,000 men, but if this force was sufficient to tear
Paris from the Commune, it could not have kept down the large towns of
France, keenly bent on the maintenance of the Republic, and coming to
ask me with distrust and irritation if it were the monarchy that we
combated for."
[169] I should say "resuscitated," if it were not doing these eunuchs
too much honour to compare them to Robespierre, who by their side
appears a hero. But how prevent one's thoughts from wandering to the
pontiff declaring inopportune the Republican outburst of June-July 1791;
inopportune the cries of Paris famished by engrossers; inopportune the
people asking for a single article in their favour in the Constitution
of 1798; inopportune the commissaries, without whom France would have
been dismembered; inopportune the great movement against the Church;
inopportune the Socialists and Jacques Roux, whom he did to death;
inopportune the popular societies closed by him, and after the
disappearance of which Paris expired; inopportune Clootz, yearning to
rally round France all the revolutionary forces of the world;
inopportune Hebert, who, nevertheless, had helped him to stifle the
Socialists; inopportune, in fine, all that was not cut out after his own
amiable pattern up to the day when he was himself declared inopportune
by the great bourgeoisie, who found it as easy as opportune to swallow
him at a mouthful as soon as he had purged, bled, muzzled for them the
revolutionary lion.
[170] Appendix XIII.
[171] The workmen's quarter in Lyons.