"Les generaux qui ont conduit l'entree a Paris sont de grands
hommes de guerre."--_M. Thiers a l'Assemblee Nationale, 22
Mai 1871._
MONDAY 22ND--THE VERSAILLESE INVADE THE QUARTERS OF THE
EAST--PARIS RISES.
At two o'clock Dombrowski arrived at the Hotel-de-Ville, pale, dejected,
his chest bruised with stones ploughed up by shot. He told the Committee
of Public Safety of the entry of the Versaillese, the surprise of Passy,
his useless efforts to rally the men. As he was pressed for news, as
they appeared astonished at such a rapid invasion, so little did the
Committee know of the military situation, Dombrowski, who misunderstood
them, exclaimed, "What! the Committee of Public Safety takes me for a
traitor! My life belongs to the Commune." His gesture, his voice,
testified to his bitter despair.
The morn was warm and bright, as the day before. The call to arms, the
tocsin, set three or four thousand men on foot, who hurried towards the
Tuileries, the Hotel-de-Ville, and the War Office; but hundreds of
others at that moment had abandoned their posts, left Passy, and emptied
the fifteenth arrondissement. The Federals of Petit-Vanves came back to
Paris at five o'clock, and seeing the Trocadero occupied by the
Versaillese, refused to hold out. On the left bank, at the St. Clothilde
Square, some officers attempted to stay them, but were repulsed by the
guards. "It is now a war of barricades," said they; "every one to his
quarter." At the Legion d'Honneur they forced their way; the
proclamation of Delescluze had released them.
Thus began that fatal proclamation placarded on all the walls:--
"Enough of militarism! No more staff-officers with their
gold-embroidered uniforms! Make way for the people, for the combatants
with naked arms! The hour of the revolutionary war has struck! The
people know nothing of learned manoeuvres. But when they have a gun in
their hands, pavement under their feet, they fear not all the
strategists of the monarchical school!"
When the Minister of War thus stigmatises all discipline, who will
henceforth obey? When he repudiates all method, who will listen to
reason? Thus we shall see hundreds of men refusing to quit the pavement
of their street, paying no heed to the neighboring quarter in agonies,
remaining motionless up to the last hour waiting for the army to come
and overwhelm them.
At five o'clock in the morning the official retreat began. The chief of
the general staff, Henri Prodhomme, had the War Office precipitately
evacuated, without carrying off or destroying the papers. The next day
they fell into the hands of the Versaillese, and furnished the
courts-martial with thousands of victims.
On leaving the Ministry, Delescluze met Brunel, who, set at liberty only
the evening before, had at once rallied his legion, and now came to
offer his services, for he was one of those men of convictions too
strong to be shaken by the most cruel injustice. Delescluze gave him the
order to defend the Place de la Concorde. Brunel repaired thither, and
disposed 150 tirailleurs, three pieces of 4 cm., one of 12, two of 7 on
the terrace of the Tuileries and by the bank of the river. He provided
the St. Florentin redoubt with a mitrailleuse and a piece of 4; that of
the Rue Royale, at the entrance of the Place de la Concorde, with two
pieces of 12.
In front of Brunel, at the Place Beauvan, some men of the 8th legion
made vain efforts to stop the fugitives from Passy and Auteuil, and then
betook themselves to put the quarter in a fit state of defence.
Barricades were thrown up in the Faubourg St. Honore as far as the
English Embassy, in the Rue de Suresne and Ville-Leveque; obstacles were
heaped up at the Place St. Augustin, the opening of the Boulevard
Haussmann, and in front of the Boulevard Malesherbes, when the
Versaillese presented themselves.
Early in the morning they had begun their onward march. At half-past
five Douai, Clinchant, and Ladmirault, passing along the ramparts,
debouched on the Avenue de la Grande Armee. The artillerists of the
Porte-Maillot, turning round, beheld in their rear the Versaillese,
their neighbours for some ten hours. Not a sentinel had denounced them.
Monteret filed off his men by the Ternes; then, alone with a child,
charged one of the cannon of the Porte-Maillot, fired his last round at
the enemy, and succeeded in escaping by the Batignolles.
The column Douai remounted the Avenue as far as the barricade in front
of the Arc de Triomphe, which they took without a struggle, the Federals
hardly having time to carry off the cannon that were to have surmounted
the Arc de Triomphe. The soldiers marched up the quay, and ventured on
the silent Place de la Concorde; suddenly the terrace of the Tuileries
lighted up; the Versaillese, received with a point-blank volley, fled as
far as the Palais de l'Industrie, leaving many dead.
On the left the soldiers occupied the abandoned Elysee, and by the Rues
Morny and Abbatucci debouched on the Place St. Augustin, where the
barricades, hardly begun, could not resist, and towards half-past seven
the Versaillese installed themselves at the Pepiniere Barracks. The
Federals formed a second line in the rear, closing the Boulevard
Malesherbes at the top of the Rue Boissy d'Anglas.
On the left of Douai, Clinchant and Ladmirault continued their movement
along the ramparts. The important works at the gates of Bineau,
Courcelles, Asnieres, and Clichy, directed against the fortifications,
became useless, and the Ternes were occupied without striking a blow. At
the same time one of the Clinchant divisions passed by the outer
ramparts. The Federal battalions on duty at Neuilly, Levallois-Perret,
and St. Ouen were assailed with balls from the rear--(this was the
first intimation they got of the entry of the Versaillese)--and many
Federals were taken prisoners. Others succeeded in returning to Paris by
the gates of Bineau, Asnieres, and Clichy, spreading panic and rumours
of treason in the seventeenth arrondissement.
The rappel had been beaten all night in the Batignolles, and had called
out the sedentary guards and the youths. A battalion of engineers rushed
forward to encounter Clinchant's skirmishers, and began firing in front
of the Parc Monceaux and the Place Wagram, when the National Guards,
deceived by their red trousers, opened a deadly fire upon them. They
retreated and laid bare the Parc, which the Versaillese occupied, and
then pushed on to the Batignolles. There they were stopped by barricades
rising on all sides; on the left, from the Place Clichy to the Rue
Levis; in the centre, in the Rues Lebouteux, La Condamine, and Des
Dames; on the right, La Fourche, the rival position of the Place Clichy,
had been fortified, and soon the Batignolles formed a serious outwork
for Montmartre, our principal fortress.
The latter, for seventeen hours,[179] had looked silently on the entry
of the troops of Versailles. In the morning the columns of Douai and
Ladmirault, their artillery and their waggons, had met each other, and
become entangled on the Place du Trocadero. A few shells from
Montmartre[180] would have changed this confusion into a rout, and the
least check met with by the troops on their entry would have been for
Paris a second 18th March; but the cannon of the Buttes remained mute.
Monstrous negligence, which alone would suffice to condemn the Council,
the War Office, and the delegates of Montmartre. Eighty-five cannon and
about twenty mitrailleuses were lying there, dirty, pell-mell, and no
one during these eight weeks had even thought of cleaning them.
Projectiles of 7 cm. abounded, but there were no cartridges. At the
Moulin de la Galette three pieces of 24 cm. alone were supplied with
carriages, but there were neither parapets, blindages, nor even
platforms. At nine o'clock in the morning they had not yet fired; after
the first discharge the recoil overthrew the carriages, and much time
was required to set them up again. These three pieces themselves had
very little munition. Of fortifications or earthworks there were none;
merely a few barricades at the foot of the external boulevards had been
begun. At nine o'clock La Cecilia sent to Montmartre, and found the
defence in this disgraceful state. He immediately addressed despatches
to the Hotel-de-Ville, conjuring the members of the Council to come
themselves, or at least to send reinforcements of men and munitions.
A similar thing occurred at the same time on the left bank at the Ecole
Militaire. Face to face with its park of artillery, the Versaillese
since one o'clock in the morning were manoeuvring on the Trocadero
without a single cannon shot being fired at them. What, then, was the
governor of the Ecole about?
At daybreak the Langourian brigade attacked the huts of the
Champ-de-Mars. The Federals defended themselves several hours, and were
only dislodged by the shells of the Trocadero, which enkindled a
conflagration.[181] They then fell back upon the Ecole, and for a long
time checking the effort of the troops, gave the seventeenth
arrondissement time to rise. The quay as far as the Legion d'Honneur,
the Rues de Lille, De l'Universite, and the Boulevard St. Germain up to
the Rue Solferino were being barricaded. Half-a-dozen of the armlet
conspirators, led by Durouchoux and Vrignault, were coming down the Rue
du Bac at great speed, when a member of the Council, Sicard, arrested
them before the Petit St. Thomas. A bullet struck Durouchoux; his
acolytes carried him away, and took advantage of the occasion not to
appear again. The Rue de Beaune, Verneuil, and St. Peres were put in a
state of defence, and a barricade was thrown up in the Rue de Sevres at
the Abbaye-au-Bois.
On the right Cissey's soldiers descended the Rue de Vaugirard without
hindrance as far as the Avenue du Maine; another column filed off along
the railway, and at half-past six reached the Mont-Parnasse station.
This position, of supreme importance, had been utterly neglected; about
twenty men defended it, and they were soon short of cartridges, and
obliged to retreat to the Rue de Rennes, where, under the fire of the
troops, they constructed a barricade at the top of the Rue du Vieux
Colombier. On his extreme right Cissey occupied the Vanves gate and
lined the whole railway of the west.
Paris rose to the roar of the cannon and read the proclamation of
Delescluze. The shops were at once shut up again, the boulevards
remained empty, and Paris, the old insurgent, resumed her combative
physiognomy. Estafets dashed through the streets, and remainders of
battalions came to the Hotel-de-Ville, where the Central Committee, the
Committee of Artillery, and all the military services were concentrated.
At nine o'clock twenty members of the Council had assembled. A miracle!
There was Felix Pyat, who had cried "To arms!" in his paper that very
morning. He had put on his patriarchal air. "Well, my friends, our last
hour has come. Oh, for myself what matters it! My hair is grey, my
career run out. What more glorious end could I hope for than that of the
barricade. But when I see around me so many in the prime of youth, I
tremble for the future of the Revolution!" Then he demanded that the
names of the members present should be entered, in order to mark out
distinctly those true to their duty. He signed his name, and, with tears
in his eyes, the old comedian trotted off to a hiding-place, surpassing
by his last cowardice all his former villainies.
A sterile meeting this, spent in discussing the news of the day; no
impulsion given, no system of defence propounded. The Federals were left
to their own inspirations--left to look after themselves. During the
whole past night neither Dombrowski, nor the War Office, nor the
Hotel-de-Ville had thought of the battalions outside the town.
Henceforth each corps had nothing to expect but from its own initiative,
from the resources it might be able to create and the intelligence of
its chiefs.
In default of direction proclamations abounded.
"Let good citizen rise! To the barricades! The enemy is within our
walls. No hesitation. Forward, for the Commune and for liberty. To
arms!"
"Let Paris bristle up with barricades, and from behind these improvised
ramparts still hurl at her enemies her cry of war, of pride, of
defiance, but also of victory; for Paris with her barricades is
inexpugnable."
Great words; nothing but words.
_Mid-day._--General Cissey had turned the Ecole Militaire, and thereby
forced its last defenders. The soldiers invaded the Esplanade des
Invalides and entered the Rue Grenelle St. Germain, when L'Ecole
d'Etat-major exploded and put them to flight. Two of our cannon
enfiladed the Rue de l'Universite; four gunboats, anchored under the
Pont-Royal, opened fire on the Trocadero. In the centre, in the eighth
arrondissement, the Versaillese skirmished. At the Batignolles they did
not advance, but their shells harassed the Rue Levis. We also lost many
men in the Rue Cardinet, where children were fighting furiously.
Malon and Jaclard, who directed this part of the defence, had since
morning in vain applied to Montmartre for reinforcements; so towards one
o'clock they themselves went in search of them. Not one of the
staff-officers could give them the slightest information. The Federals
were wandering about the streets or chatting in small groups. Malon
wanted to take them back with him, but they refused, reserving
themselves, they said, for the defence of their own quarter. The cannon
of the Buttes were mute, being short of cartridges; the Hotel-de-Ville
had sent only words.
Still there were two generals on the heights, Cluseret and La Cecilia,
the ex-delegate melancholily airing his somnolent incapacity, while La
Cecilia, unknown in this quarter, at once found himself powerless.
_Two o'clock._--The Hotel-de-Ville had again assumed its grand aspect of
March. On the right the Committee of Public Safety and on the left the
War Office were overrun. The Central Committee was multiplying its
orders and exclaiming against the incapacity of the members of the
Council, though itself incapable of setting forth a single precise idea.
The Committee of Artillery, more beset than ever, could not yet make out
its cannon, did not know to whom to give them, and often refused pieces
for the most important positions.
The delegates of the Congress of Lyons, conducted by MM. Jules Amigues
and J. Larroque, came to offer their intervention, but they had no
mandate, and did not even know whether M. Thiers would admit them. They
were received rather coldly. Besides, many at the Hotel-de-Ville
believed in victory, and almost rejoiced at the entry of the
Versaillese; for indeed Paris seemed to be rising.
The barricades increased quickly. That of the Rue de Rivoli, which was
to protect the Hotel-de-Ville, was erected at the entrance of the St.
Jacques Square, at the corner of the Rue St. Denis. Fifty workmen did
the mason-work, while swarms of children brought wheelbarrows full of
earth from the square. This work, several yards deep, six yards high,
with fosses, embrasures, an outwork, as solid as the Florentin redoubt,
which had taken weeks to raise, was finished in a few hours--an example
this of what an intelligent effort at the right time might have done for
the defence of Paris. In the ninth arrondissement, the Rues Auber, De la
Chaussee d'Antin, De Chateaudun, the cross-roads of the Faubourg
Montmartre, Notre Dame de Lorette, De la Trinite, and the Rue des
Martyrs were being unpaved. The large approaches, La Chapelle, Buttes
Chaumont, Belleville, Menilmontant, the Rue de la Roquette, the
Bastille, the Boulevards Voltaire and Richard Lenoir, the Place du
Chateau d'Eau, the large boulevards especially from the Porte St. Denis;
and on the left bank the whole length of the Boulevard St. Michel, the
Pantheon, the Rue St. Jacques, the Gobelins, and the principal avenues
of the thirteenth arrondissement were being barricaded. A great many of
these works of defence were never finished.
While Paris was preparing for the last struggle, Versailles was wild
with joy. The Assembly had met at an early hour, and M. Thiers would not
leave to any of his Ministers the glory of announcing the first
butcheries in Paris. His appearance on the tribune was hailed by
ferocious cheers. "The cause of justice, order, humanity, and
civilisation has triumphed," screamed the little man. "The generals who
have conducted the entry into Paris are great men of war. The expiation
will be complete. It will take place in the name of the law, by the law,
with the law." The Chamber understanding this promise of carnage, rose
to a man, and by a unanimous vote, Right, Left, Centre, Clericals,
Republicans, Monarchists, swore that "the Versaillese army and the chief
of the executive power had merited well of the country."[182]
The sitting was at once raised, the deputies rushing off to the Lanterne
de Diogene, Chatillon, and Mont-Valerien, to all the heights whence they
could, as from an immense Colosseum, observe the butchery of Paris
without incurring the least danger. The population of idlers accompanied
them, and on this route of Versailles deputies, courtesans, women of the
world, journalists, functionaries stung by the same craving, sometimes
crammed into the same carriage, displayed before the Prussians and
France the spectacle of a saturnalia of the bourgeoisie.
After eight o'clock the army ceased to advance, save in the eighth
arrondissement, where the barricade before the English Embassy was
turned by the gardens. Our line of the Faubourg St. Germain resisted
from the Seine to the Mont-Parnasse Station, which we were cannonading.
With nightfall the fusillade slackened, but the cannonade still went on.
A red light glared in the Tuileries; the Ministry of Finance was
burning. It had during the whole day received part of the Versaillese
shells, destined for the terrace of the Tuileries, and the papers piled
up in its upper storeys had taken fire. The firemen of the Commune had
at first extinguished this conflagration, interfering with the defence
of the St. Florentin redoubt, but it had soon lit up again, and become
unquenchable.
Then began those nights of horror, where, amidst the roaring of the
cannon, by the glimmer of burning houses, men sought each other in pools
of blood. The Paris of the revolt had at length been roused. Her
battalions descended towards the Hotel-de-Ville headed by bands and the
red flag. Small in number, a battalion perhaps two hundred strong, but
resolute, these Federals marched on in silence; there were seen also,
muskets on their shoulders, those men, devoted to the Social Revolution,
whom personal jealousy had kept at a distance. But in this hour none
thought of such recriminations. Because of the incapacity of the chiefs
ought the soldiers to desert their flag? The Paris of 1871 represented
against Versailles the Social Revolution and the new destinies of the
nation; one must be against or for her despite the faults committed.
Cowards only abstained. All the true revolutionists rose, even those who
had no illusions as to the issue of the struggle, eager to defy death in
the service of their immortal cause.
_Ten o'clock._--We proceeded to the Hotel-de-Ville. An irritated group
of Federals had just arrested Dombrowski. The general, without any
command since morning, had repaired with his officers to the outposts of
St. Ouen, and believing his role terminated, wanted in the night to ride
through the Prussian ranks and gain the frontier. A commander, who was
afterwards shot as a traitor, had incited his men against the general
under the pretext that he was betraying them. Led before the Committee
of Public Safety, Dombrowski indignantly exclaimed, "They say I have
betrayed!" The members of the Committee welcomed him affectionately, and
the incident had no further consequences.
Messengers arrived at the War Office from all the points of the battle.
A great number of guards and officers issued orders and despatches in
the midst of a continual bustle. The inner courts were full of waggons
and carriages, the horses all ready harnessed; munitions were being
taken out or brought in, and not the least sign of discouragement, or
even of anxiety, was visible, but everywhere an almost gay activity.
The streets and boulevards, with the exception of the invaded quarters,
had been lighted as usual. At the entrance of the Faubourg Montmartre
the light ceased abruptly, giving it the appearance of an enormous black
hole. This obscurity was guarded by Federal sentinels, uttering every
now and then their cry, "Passez au large!" Beyond this only a menacing
silence. These shadows moving about in the night seemed to assume
gigantic forms; one fancied oneself haunted by a sinister dream; the
bravest were appalled.
There were nights more noisy, more glaring, more grandiose, when the
conflagrations and the cannonade enveloped Paris, but none of more
lugubrious impress. A night of meditation this, the vigil of battle. We
sought each other in the gloom, spoke low, giving and taking comfort. At
the cross-roads we consulted each other in order to examine our
positions, and then to work! Now for the spade and the pavements! Let
the earth be heaped up where the shells may flatten themselves against
it; let the mattresses thrown from the windows shelter the combatants.
Henceforth there is to be no more rest; let the stones cemented with
hate press against each other like the shoulders of men arrayed for the
battlefield. The enemy has taken us by surprise, defenceless. May he
to-morrow encounter a Saragossa or a Moscow!
Every passer-by was requisitioned. "Come, citizen, lend a hand for the
Republic!" At the Bastille and in the interior boulevards one met crowds
of workers, some digging the earth, others carrying the paving-stones;
children using spades and mattocks as big as themselves. The women
encouraged the men; the delicate hand of the young girl raised the heavy
pickaxe that fell with a sharp sound, emitting fiery sparks. It took an
hour to seriously break through the soil. What matter! they will spend
their night at it. On the Tuesday evening, at the intersection of the
Square St. Jacques and the Boulevard Sebastopol, many _dames de la
halle_ worked for a long time, filling earth sacks and wicker
baskets.[183]
And these were no longer the traditional redoubts two storeys high. Save
four or five in the Rue St. Honore and the Rue de Rivoli, the barricades
of May consisted of a few paving-stones hardly a man's height; behind
these sometimes a cannon or a mitrailleuse; and in the midst, wedged in
by two paving-stones, the red flag, the colour of vengeance. Behind
these shreds of ramparts thirty men held regiments in check.
If this general effort had been directed by the least thought of
combination, if Montmartre and the Pantheon had crossed their fires, the
Versaillese army would have melted away in Paris; but the Federals,
without directions, without military knowledge, saw no further than just
their own quarter, or even their own streets; so that instead of 200
strategical solidary barricades, easy to defend with 7,000 or 8,000 men,
hundreds were scattered about which it was impossible to arm
sufficiently. The general mistake was a belief that they would be
attacked from the front; while the Versaillese, thanks to their
numbers, everywhere executed flank movements.
In the evening the Versaillese line extended from the station of the
Batignolles to the extremity of the Railway of the West on the left
bank, passing by the St. Lazare Station, the Pepiniere Barracks, the
English Embassy, the Palais de l'Industrie, the Corps Legislatif, the
Rue de Bourgogne, the Boulevard des Invalides, and the Mont-Parnasse
Station. To face the invader there were but embryo barricades. If with
one effort he were to break through this line still so weak, he would
surprise the centre quite disarmed. But these 130,000 men did not dare
to. Soldiers and chiefs were afraid of Paris. They fancied the streets
would open, the houses fall upon them; as witness the fable of the
torpedoes, of the mines under the sewers, invented later on to justify
their indecision.[184] On the Monday evening, masters of several
arrondissements, they still trembled, fearful of some terrible surprise.
They needed all the tranquility of the night to recover from their
conquest, and convince themselves that the Committee of Defence, despite
their boasting, had neither foreseen nor prepared anything.
FOOTNOTES:
[179] "Seventeen hours were required to get in 130,000 men and our
numerous artillery."--_M. Thiers, Enquete sur le 18 Mars._
[180] "From this unexpected obstruction there resulted a confusion that
lasted till after the passage of the troops, and might have had serious
consequences. If the insurgents had then opened fire upon the Trocadero,
from the batteries of Montmartre, their shells would have harassed us a
great deal. But the cannon of Montmartre still kept silent. It was only
a little after nine o'clock that they commenced firing; the passage was
then already cleared."--_Vinoy, La Commune_, p. 130.
[181] The first conflagration of the days of May, and the Versaillese
have admitted that they themselves kindled it.--_Vinoy, L'Armistice et
la Commune_, p. 809.
[182] No deputy protested either on this day or after, or declared he
had abstained from voting, neither those of the extreme Left nor those
of the extreme Right. They are then, all of them equally answerable for
this vote.
[183] "At the Place Blanche," wrote G. Maroteau in the _Salut Public_ of
the next day, "there was a barricade perfectly constructed and defended
by a battalion of women, about 120. At the moment when I arrived, a dark
form detached itself from the recess of a courtyard. It was a young girl
with a Phrygian cap on her head, a chassepot in her hand, a
cartridge-box by her side. 'Stand, citizen! no one passes here!' I
stopped astonished, showed my safe-conduct, and the citoyenne allowed me
to go to the foot of the barricade."
[184] Appendix XV.