TUESDAY 23RD--MONTMARTRE IS TAKEN--THE WHOLESALE MASSACRES
--WE LOSE GROUND--PARIS ON FIRE--THE LAST NIGHT OF THE
HOTEL-DE-VILLE.
The defenders of the barricades slept on their paving-stones. The
hostile outposts were on the watch. At the Batignolles the Versaillese
reconnaissance carried off a sentinel. The Federal cried out with all
his might, "Vive la Commune!" and his comrades, thus warned, were able
to put themselves on their guard. He was shot there and then. In like
manner fell D'Assas and Barra.
At two o'clock La Cecilia, accompanied by the members of the Council,
Lefrancais, Vermorel, and Johannard, and the journalists Alphonse
Humbert and G. Maroteau, brought up a reinforcement of 100 men to the
Batignolles. To Malon's reproaches for having left the quarter without
succour the whole day, the General answered, "I am not obeyed."
_Three o'clock._--To the barricades! The Commune is not dead! The fresh
morning air bathes the fatigued faces and revives hope. The enemy's
cannonade along the whole line salutes the break of day. The
artillerists of the Commune, from Mont-Parnasse to the Buttes
Montmartre, which seem awaking, answered as well as they could.
Ladmirault, almost motionless the day before, now launched his men along
the fortifications, taking all the gates from Neuilly to St. Ouen in the
rear. On his right, Clinchant attacked by the same movement all the
barricades of the Batignolles. The Rue Cardinet yielded first, then the
Rues Noblet, Truffaut, La Condamine, and the lower Avenue of Clichy.
Suddenly the gate of St. Ouen opened, and the Versaillese poured into
Paris; it was the Montaudon division, which since evening had been
operating in the exterior. The Prussians had surrendered the neutral
zone, and so, with the help of Bismarck, Clinchant and Ladmirault were
able to take the Buttes by the two flanks.
Nearly surrounded in the mairie of the seventeenth arrondissement, Malon
ordered the retreat on Montmartre, whither a detachment of twenty-five
women, come to offer their services under the conduct of the citoyennes
Dimitrieff and Louise Michel, were also sent.
Clinchant, pursuing his route, was arrested by the barricade of the
Place Clichy. To reduce these badly disposed paving-stones, behind which
hardly fifty men were fighting, required the combined effort of the
Versaillese of the Rue de St. Petersbourg and their tirailleurs of the
College Chaptal. The Federals, having no more shells, charged with
stones and bitumen; their powder exhausted, they fell back upon the Rue
des Carrieres, and Ladmirault, master of the St. Ouen Avenue, turned
their barricade by the Montmartre Cemetery. About twenty guards refused
to surrender, and were at once shot by the Versaillese.
In the rear, the quarter Des Epinettes still held out for a time; at
last all resistance ceased, and about nine o'clock the entire
Batignolles belonged to the army.
The Hotel-de-Ville knew nothing yet of the progress of the troops when
Vermorel rushed thither in search of munitions for Montmartre. As he was
setting out at the head of the waggons he met Ferre, and, with the smile
familiar to him, said, "Well, Ferre, the members of the minority fight."
"The members of the majority will do their duty," answered Ferre.
Generous emulation of these men, who were both devoted to the people,
and who were to die so nobly.
Vermorel could not take his waggons as far as Montmartre, the
Versaillese already investing the heights. Masters of the Batignolles,
they had but to stretch out their hand to seize upon Montmartre. The
Buttes seemed dead; panic had during the night hurried on its underhand
work; the battalions, one after the other, had grown smaller, vanished.
Individuals seen later on in the ranks of the army had stirred
defections, spread false news, and every moment arrested civil and
military chiefs, under the pretext that they were betraying. Only about
a hundred men lined the north side of the hill; a few barricades had
been commenced in the night, but without spirit; the women alone had
shown any ardour.
Cluseret had, according to his usual habit, gone off in a vapour.
Despite his despatches and the promises of the Hotel-de-Ville, La
Cecilia had received neither reinforcements nor munitions. At nine
o'clock, no longer hearing the cannon of the Buttes, he hurried up, and
found the cannoniers gone. The runaways from the Batignolles arriving at
ten o'clock only brought in panic. The Versaillese might have presented
themselves; there were not 200 combatants there to receive them.
MacMahon, however, only dared attempt the assault with his best troops,
so redoubtable was this position, so great the renown of Montmartre. Two
entire army corps assailed it by the Rues Lepic, Mercadet, and the
Chaussee Clignancourt. From time to time some shots were fired from a
few houses; forthwith frightened columns came to a stand-still and began
regular sieges. These 20,000 men, who completely surrounded Montmartre,
helped by the artillery established on the terre-plein of the enceinte,
took three hours to climb these positions, defended without method by a
few dozen tirailleurs.
At eleven o'clock the cemetery was taken, and shortly after the troops
reached the Chateau-Rouge. In the environs there were some fusillades,
but the few obstinate men who still fought were soon killed, or withdrew
discouraged at their isolation. The Versaillese, scrambling up to the
Buttes by all the acclivities that lead to them, at mid-day installed
themselves at the Moulin de la Galette, descended by the Place St.
Pierre to the mairie, and occupied the whole of the eighteenth
arrondissement without any resistance.
Thus without a battle, without an assault, without even a protestation
of despair, was this impregnable fortress abandoned, from which a few
hundred resolute men might have kept the whole Versaillese army in
check, and constrained the Assembly to come to terms.
Hardly arrived at Montmartre, the Versaillese staff offered a holocaust
to the manes of Lecomte and Clement-Thomas. Forty-two men, three women,
and four children were conducted to No. 6 in the Rue des Rosiers and
forced to kneel bare-headed before the wall, at the foot of which the
generals had been executed on the 18th March; then they were killed. A
woman, who held her child in her arms, refused to kneel down, and cried
to her companions, "Show these wretches that you know how to die
upright."
On the following day these massacres continued. Each batch of prisoners
halted some time before this wall, marked with bullets, and were then
despatched on the slope of the Buttes that overlooks the St. Denis
route.[185]
The Batignolles and Montmartre witnessed the first wholesale massacres.
Every individual wearing a uniform or regulation boots was shot, as a
matter of course, without questions put, without explanations given.
Thus the Versaillese had been assassinating since the morning in the
Square des Batignolles, Place de l'Hotel-de-Ville, and at the gate of
Clichy. The Parc Monceaux was their principal slaughter-house in the
seventeenth arrondissement. At Montmartre the centres of massacre were
the Buttes, the Elysee, of which every step was strewn with corpses, and
the exterior boulevards.
A few steps from Montmartre the catastrophe was not known. At the Place
Blanche the women's barricade held out for several hours against
Clinchant's soldiers; they then retreated towards the Pigalle barricade,
which fell at about two o'clock. Its chief was led before a Versaillese
chief of battalion. "Who are you?" asked the officer. "Leveque, mason,
member of the Central Committee." The Versaillese discharged his
revolver in his face; the soldiers finished him.
On the other bank of the Seine our resistance was more successful. The
Versaillese had been able since morning to occupy the Babylone Barracks
and L'Abbaye-au-Bois, but Varlin stopped them at the cross-roads of the
Croix-Rouge. This cross-road will remain celebrated in the defence of
Paris. All the streets that open into it had been powerfully barricaded,
and this stronghold was only abandoned when fire and shells had reduced
it to a heap of ruins. On the banks of the river, the Rues de
l'Universite, St. Dominique, St. Germain, and De Grenelle, the 67th,
135th, 138th, and 147th battalions, supported by the _enfants perdus_
and _les tirailleurs_, resisted obstinately. In the Rue de Rennes and on
the contiguous boulevards the Versaillese exhausted their strength. In
the Rue Vavin, where Lisbonne conducted the defence, the resistance was
prodigious; for two days this advanced sentinel kept back the invasion
from the Luxembourg.
We were less secure on our extreme left. The Versaillese had early in
the day invested the Mont-Parnasse Cemetery, which we held with a
handful of men. Near the restaurant Richefeu, the Federals, allowing the
enemy to approach, unmasked their mitrailleuses; but in vain, for the
Versaillese were numerous enough to surround the few defenders of the
cemetery on all sides, and soon stormed it. From there, passing by the
ramparts of the fourteenth arrondissement, they arrived at the Place St.
Pierre. The fortifications of the Avenue d'Italie and of the Route de
Chatillon, long since carefully prepared, but always against the
ramparts, were taken in the rear by the Chaussee du Maine, and the whole
defence of the cross-roads of the Quatre-Chemins was concentrated round
the church. From the top of the steeple about a dozen Federals of
Montrouge supported the barricade that barred two-thirds of the Chaussee
du Maine, held by thirty men for several hours. At last, their
cartridges exhausted, the tricolor flag was hoisted at the mairie, at
the same hour that it floated above the Buttes Montmartre. Henceforth
the route to the Place d'Enfer was open, and the Versaillese arrived
there after having undergone the fire from the Observatoire, where some
Federals had made a stand.
Behind these lines thus forced other defences were thrown up, thanks to
the care of Wroblewski. The day before, the general, receiving the order
to evacuate the forts, had answered, "Is it treachery or a
misunderstanding? I will not evacuate." Montmartre taken, the general
went to Delescluze, urging him to transfer the defence to the left bank.
The Seine, the forts, the Pantheon, the Bievre, formed, in his opinion,
a safe citadel, with the open fields for a retreat; a very just
conception this with regular troops, but one cannot at will displace the
heart of an insurrection, and the Federals were more and more bent on
remaining in their own quarters.
Wroblewski returned to his headquarters, assembled the commanders of the
forts, prescribed all the dispositions to be taken for their defence,
and came back to resume the command of the left bank, given him by
earlier decrees. But on sending orders to the Pantheon, he was answered
that Lisbonne commanded there. Wroblewski, undeterred, placed the
section left to him in a state of defence. He installed a battery of
eight pieces and two batteries of four on the Butte-aux-Cailles, a
dominant position between the Pantheon and the forts; he fortified the
Boulevards d'Italie, De l'Hopital, and De la Gare. His headquarters were
established at the Mairie des Gobelins, and his reserve at the Place
d'Italie, Place Jeanne d'Arc, and at Bercy.
At the other extremities of Paris the fourteenth and twentieth
arrondissements also prepared their defence. The brave Passedouet had
replaced Du Bisson, who still dared to present himself as
_chef-de-legion_ of La Villette. They barricaded the Grande Rue de la
Chapelle behind the Strasbourg Railway, the Rues d'Aubervilliers, De
Flandre, and the canal, so as to form five lines of defence, protected
on the flank by the boulevards and the fortifications. Cannon were
placed in the Rue Riquet at the gasworks, while rampart pieces were
carried by the men on to the Buttes Chaumont and others to the Rue de
Puebla. A battery of six was mounted on the height of the Pere Lachaise,
covering Paris with its rumbling reports.
A mute and desolate Paris. As on the day before, the shops remained
closed, and the streets, bleached by the sun, looked empty and menacing.
Estafets riding at full speed, pieces of artillery shifted from their
places, combatants on the march, alone broke this solitude. Cries of
"Open the shutters!" "Draw up the blinds!" alone interrupted this
silence. Two journals, _Le Tribun du Peuple_ and _Le Salut Public_, were
published, notwithstanding the Versaillese shells that were falling into
the printing-office of the Rue Aboukir.
A few men at the Hotel-de-Ville did their best to attend to details. One
decree authorised the chiefs of barricades to requisition the necessary
implements and victuals; another condemned every house from which
Federals were shot at to be burned. In the afternoon the Committee of
Public Safety issued an appeal to the soldiers:--
"The people of Paris will never believe that you could raise your arms
against them. When they face you your hands will recoil from an act that
would be a veritable fratricide.
"Like us, you too are proletarians. That which you did on the 18th March
you will do again. Come to us, brothers, come to us; our arms are open
to receive you."
The Central Committee at the same time placarded a similar appeal--a
puerile but generous illusion; and on this point the people of Paris
entirely agreed with their mandatories. In spite of the frenzy of the
Assembly, the fusillade of the wounded, the treatment inflicted upon the
prisoners for six weeks, the workingmen did not admit that children of
the people could rend the entrails of that Paris who combated for them.
At three o'clock M. Bonvalet and other members of the _Ligue des Droits
de Paris_ presented themselves at the Hotel-de-Ville, where some members
of the Council and of the Committee of Public Safety received them. They
bewailed this struggle, proposed to interfere, as they had so
successfully done during the siege, and to carry to M. Thiers the
expression of their sorrow; further, they placed themselves at the
disposition of the Hotel-de-Ville. "Well, then," they were answered,
"shoulder a gun and go to the barricades!" Before this direct appeal
the League fell back upon the Central Committee, which had the weakness
to listen to them.
There was no question of negotiating in the midst of the battle. The
Versaillese, following up their success at Montmartre, were at this
moment pushing towards the Boulevard Ornano and the Northern Railway
station. At two o'clock the barricades of the Chaussee Clignancourt were
abandoned, and in the Rue Myrrha, by the side of Vermorel, Dombrowski
fell mortally wounded. In the morning Delescluze had told him to try his
best in the neighbourhood of Montmartre; and, without hope, without
soldiers, suspected since the entry of the Versaillese, all Dombrowski
could do was to die. He expired two hours afterwards at the Lariboisiere
Hospital. His body was taken to the Hotel-de-Ville, the men of the
barricades presenting arms as he was carried by. His glorious death had
disarmed suspicion.
Clinchant, thenceforth free on his left, proceeded to the ninth
arrondissement. A column marched down the Rues Fontaine, St. Georges,
and Notre Dame de Lorette, and made a halt at the cross-roads; while
another cannonaded the Rollin College before penetrating into the Rue
Trudaine, where it was held in check until the evening.
More in the centre, at the Boulevard Haussmann, Douai pressed close upon
the barricade of the Printemps shop, and with gunshots dislodged the
Federals who occupied the Trinite Church. Five pieces established under
the porch of the church were then directed at the very important
barricade that barred the Chaussee d'Antin at the entrance of the
boulevard. A detachment penetrated into the Rues Chateaudun and
Lafayette, but at the cross-roads of the Faubourg Montmartre a
barricade, a yard high at the utmost, defended by twenty-five men,
arrested them until night.
Douai's right was still powerless against the Rue Royale. There for two
days Brunel sustained a struggle only equalled by that of the
Butte-aux-Cailles, of the Bastille, and the Chateau d'Eau. His main
barricade, transversely crossing the street, was overlooked by the
neighbouring houses, from which the Versaillese decimated the Federals;
and Brunel, impressed with the importance of the post confided to him,
ordered these murderous houses to be burned down. A Federal obeying him
was struck by a ball in the eye, and came back dying to Brunel's side,
saying, "I am paying with my life for the order you have given me. Vive
la Commune!" All the houses comprised between No. 13 and the Faubourg
St. Honore were caught in the flames, and the Versaillese, appalled, ran
away, some passing over to the Federals. One of them put on the Parisian
uniform and became Brunel's orderly.
On the right the Boulevard Malesherbes, on the left the terrace of the
Tuileries, which Bergeret occupied since the day before, seconded
Brunel's efforts. The Boulevard Malesherbes, furrowed by shells, was
like a field ploughed up by gigantic shares. The fire of eighty pieces
of artillery at the Quay d'Orsay, Passy, the Champ-de-Mars, the Barriere
de l'Etoile converged on the terrace of the Tuileries and the barricade
St. Florentine. About a dozen Federal pieces bore up against this
shower. The Place de la Concorde, taken between these cross-fires, was
strewn with fragments of fountains and lamp-posts. The statue of Lille
was beheaded, that of Strasbourg pitted by the grapeshot.
On the left bank the Versaillese made their way from house to house. The
inhabitants of the quarter lent their assistance, and from behind their
closed blinds fired on the Federals, who, indignant, forced and set fire
to the treacherous houses. The Versaillese shells had already begun the
conflagration, and the rest of the quarter was soon in flames. The
troops continued to gain ground, occupied the Ministry of War, the
telegraph office, and reached the Bellechasse Barracks and the Rue de
l'Universite. The barricades of the quay and the Rue du Bac were
battered down by the shells; the Federal battalions, which for two days
had held out at the Legion d'Honneur, had no longer any retreat but the
quays. At five o'clock they evacuated this unclean place after having
set it on fire.
At six o'clock the barricade of the Chaussee d'Antin was lost to us;
the enemy advancing by the side streets had occupied the Nouvel Opera,
entirely dismantled, and from the top of the roofs the marine-fusileers
commanded the barricade. Instead of imitating them, of also occupying
the houses, the Federals, there as everywhere else, obstinately kept
behind the barricade.
At eight o'clock the barricade of the Rue Neuve des Capucines, at the
entrance of the Boulevard, gave way under the fire of the pieces of 4
cm. established in the Rue Caumartin. The Versaillese approached the
Place Vendome.
At all points the army had made decided progress. The Versaillese line,
starting from the Northern Railway station, following the Rues
Rochechouart, Cadet, Drouot, whose mairie was taken, the Boulevard des
Italiens, stretched to the Place Vendome and the Place de la Concorde,
passed along the Rue du Bac, the Abbaye-au-Bois, and the Boulevard
d'Enfer, ending at the bastion 81. The Place de la Concorde and the Rue
Royale, surrounded on their flanks, stood out like a promontory in the
midst of a tempest. Ladmirault faced La Villette; on his right Clinchant
occupied the ninth arrondissement; Douai presented himself at the Place
Vendome; Vinoy supported Cissy operating on the left bank. At this hour
hardly one-half of Paris was still held by the Federals.
The rest was given over to massacre. They were still fighting at one end
of a street when the conquered part was already being sacked. Woe to him
who possessed arms or a uniform! Woe to him who betrayed dismay! Woe to
him who was denounced by a political or personal enemy! He was dragged
away. Each corps had its regular executioner, the provost; but to speed
the business there were supplementary provosts in the streets. The
victims were led there--shot. The blind fury of the soldiers encouraged
by the men of order served their hatred and liquidated their debts.
Theft followed massacre. The shops of the tradesmen who had supplied the
Commune, or whom their rival shopkeepers accused, were given over to
pillage; the soldiers smashed their furniture and carried off the
objects of value. Jewels, wine, liqueurs, provisions, linen, perfumery,
disappeared into their knapsacks.
When M. Thiers was apprised of the fall of Montmartre, he believed the
battle over, and telegraphed to the prefects. For six weeks he had not
ceased to announce that, the ramparts taken, the insurgents would fly;
but Paris, contrary to the habits of the men of Sedan and Metz and of
the National Defence, contested street by street, house by house, and
rather than surrender, burned them.
A blinding glare arose at nightfall. The Tuileries were burning, so also
the Legion d'Honneur, the Conseil d'Etat, and the Cour des Comptes.
Formidable detonations were heard from the palace of the kings, whose
walls were falling, its vast cupolas giving way. Flames, now slow, now
rapid as darts, flashed from a hundred windows; the red tide of the
Seine reflected the monuments, thus redoubling the conflagration. Fanned
by an eastern wind, the blazing flames rose up against Versailles, and
cried to the conqueror of Paris that he will no longer find his place
there, and that these monarchical monuments will not again shelter a
monarchy. The Rue du Bac, the Rue du Lille, La Croix-Rouge, dashed
luminous columns into the air; the Rue Royale to St. Sulplice seemed a
wall of fire divided by the Seine. Eddies of smoke clouded all the west
of Paris, and the spiral flames shooting forth from these furnaces
emitted showers of sparks that fell upon the neighbouring quarters.
_Eleven o'clock._--We go to the Hotel-de-Ville. Sentinels on far
advanced posts made it secure against any surprise; at long intervals a
gaslight flickered in the obscurity; at several barricades there were
torches, and even bivouac fires. That of the St. Jacques Square,
opposite the Boulevard Sebastopol, made of large trees, whose branches
swung to and fro in the wind, muttered and fluttered in the redoubtable
gloom.
The facade of the Hotel-de-Ville was reddened by distant flames; the
statues, which the reflection seemed to move, stirred in their niches.
The interior courts were filled with crowds and tumult. Artillery
ammunition waggons, carts, omnibuses, crammed with munitions, rolled off
with a great noise under the vaults. The fetes of Baron Haussmann awoke
no such sonorous echoes. Life and death, agony and laughter, jostled
each other on these staircases, on every storey, illumined by the same
dazzling light of the gas.
The lower lobbies were encumbered by National Guards rolled up in their
blankets. The wounded lay groaning on their reddened mattresses; blood
was trickling from the litters placed along the walls. A commander was
brought in who no longer presented a human aspect; a ball had passed
through his cheek, carried away the lips, broken the teeth. Incapable of
articulating a sound, this brave fellow still waved a red flag, and
summoned those who were resting to replace him in the combat.
In the notorious chamber of Valentine Haussmann the corpse of Dombrowski
was laid out upon a bed of blue satin. A single taper threw its lurid
light on the heroic soldier. His face, white as snow, was calm, the nose
fine, the mouth delicate, the small fair beard standing out pointed. Two
aides-de-camp seated in the darkened corners watched silently, another
hurriedly sketched the last traits of his general.
The double marble staircase was filled with people coming and going,
whom the sentinels could hardly keep away from the delegate's cabinet.
Delescluze signed orders, mute and wan as a spectre. The anguish of
those later days had absorbed his last vital powers; his voice was only
a death-rattle; the eye and the heart alone lived still in this moribund
athlete.
Two or three officers calmly prepared the orders, stamped and sent the
despatches; many officers and guards surrounded the table. No speeches,
a little conversation, among the various groups. If hope had waned,
resolution had not grown less.
Who are these officers who have laid aside their uniforms, these members
of the Council, these functionaries who have shaved their beards? What
are they doing here amongst these brave men? Ranvier, meeting two of his
colleagues thus disguised, who during the siege had been among the most
beplumed, apostrophised them, threatening to shoot them if they did not
at once return to their arrondissements.
A great example would not have been useless. From hour to hour all
discipline foundered. At that same moment the Central Committee, which
believed itself invested with power by the abdication of the Council,
launched a manifesto, in which it made conditions: "Dissolution of the
Assembly and of the Commune; the army to leave Paris; the Government to
be provisionally confided to the delegates of the large towns, who will
have a Constituent Assembly elected; mutual amnesty." The ultimatum of a
conqueror. This dream was placarded on a few walls, and threw new
disorder into the resistance.
From time to time some greater clamour arose from the square. A spy was
shot against the barricade of the Victoria Avenue. Some were audacious
enough to penetrate into the most intimate councils.[186] That evening,
at the Hotel-de-Ville, Bergeret had received the verbal authorisation to
fire the Tuileries, when an individual pretending to be sent by him
asked for this order in writing. He was still speaking when Bergeret
returned. "Who sent you?" said he to the personage. "Bergeret." "When
did you see him?" "Just here, a moment ago."
During this evening, Raoul Rigault, taking orders from himself only, and
without consulting any of his colleagues, repaired to the prison of Ste.
Pelagie, and signified to Chaudey that he was to die. Chaudey protested,
said he was a Republican, and swore that he had not given the order to
fire on the 22nd January. However, he had been at that time the only
authority in the Hotel-de-Ville. His protestations were of no avail
against Rigault's resolution. Led into the exercise-ground of Ste.
Pelagie, Chaudey was shot, as were also three gendarmes taken prisoners
on the 18th March. During the first siege he had said to some partisans
of the Commune, "The strongest will shoot the others." He died perhaps
for those words.
FOOTNOTES:
[185] Appendix XVI.
[186] Appendix XVII.