"Nos vaillants soldats se conduisent de maniere a inspirer la
plus haute estime, la plus grande admiration a
l'etranger."--_Discours de M. Thiers, a l'Assemblee
Nationale le 24 Mai 1871._
WEDNESDAY 24TH--THE MEMBERS OF THE COUNCIL EVACUATE THE
HOTEL-DE-VILLE--THE PANTHEON IS TAKEN--THE VERSAILLESE
SHOOT THE FEDERALS BY HUNDREDS--THE FEDERALS SHOOT SIX
HOSTAGES--THE NIGHT OF THE CANNON.
The defenders of the barricades, already without reinforcements and
munitions, were now left even without food, and altogether thrown on the
resources of the neighbourhood. Many, quite worn out, went in search of
some nourishment; their comrades, not seeing them return, grew
desperate, while the chiefs of the barricades strained themselves to
keep them back.
At nine o'clock Brunel received the order to evacuate the Rue Royale. He
went to the Tuileries to tell Bergeret that he could still hold out, but
at midnight the Committee of Public Safety again sent him a formal order
to retreat. Forced to abandon the post he had so well defended for two
days, the brave commander first removed his wounded and then his cannon
by the Rue St. Florentin. The Federals followed; when at the top of the
Rue Castiglione, they were assailed by shots.
It was the Versaillese, who, masters of the Rue de la Paix and the Rue
Neuve des Capucines, had invaded the Place Vendome, entirely deserted,
and by the Hotel-du-Rhin turned the barricade of the Rue Castiglione.
Brunel's Federals, abandoning the Rue de Rivoli, forced the rails of the
garden, went up the quays, and regained the Hotel-de-Ville. The enemy
did not dare to pursue them, and only at daybreak occupied the Ministry
of Marine, long since abandoned.
The rest of the night the cannon were silent. The Hotel-de-Ville had
lost its animation. The Federals slept in the square; in the bureaux the
members of the committees and the officers snatched a few moments of
repose. At three o'clock a staff officer arrived from Notre Dame,
occupied by a detachment of Federals. He came to tell the Committee of
Public Safety that the Hotel-Dieu harboured eight hundred sick, who
might suffer from the proximity of the struggle, and the Committee
commanded the evacuation of the cathedral in order to save these
unfortunate people.
And now the sun rose, eclipsing the glare of the conflagrations; the day
dawned radiant, but with no ray of hope for the Commune. Paris had no
longer a right wing; her centre was broken; to assume the offensive was
impossible. The prolongation of her resistance could now only serve to
bear witness to her faith.
Early in the morning the Versaillese moved on all points. They pushed
towards the Louvre, the Palais-Royal, the Bank, the Comptoir d'Escompte,
the Montholon Square, the Boulevard Ornano, and the line of the Northern
Railway. From four o'clock they cannonaded the Palais-Royal, round which
desperate battles were being fought. By seven o'clock they were at the
Bank and at the Bourse; thence they descended to St. Eustache, where
they met an obstinate resistance. Many children fought with the men; and
when the Federals were outflanked and massacred, these children had the
honour not to be excepted.
On the left bank the troops with difficulty marched up the quays and all
that part of the sixth arrondissement bordering upon the Seine. In the
centre, the barricade of the Croix-Rouge had been evacuated during the
night, like that of the Rue de Rennes, which thirty men had held for two
days. The Versaillese were then able to enter the Rues d'Assas and
Notre-dame-des-Champs. On the extreme right they reached the Val de
Grace, and advanced against the Pantheon.
At eight o'clock about fifteen members of the Council assembled at the
Hotel-de-Ville and decided to evacuate it. Two only protested. The third
arrondissement, intersected by narrow and well-barricaded streets,
sheltered the flank of the Hotel-de-Ville, which defied every attack
from the front and by the quays. Under such conditions of defence to
fall back was to fly, to strip the Commune of the little prestige still
remaining to it; but no more than the days before were they able to
collect two sound ideas. They feared everything, because ignorant of
everything. Already the commander of the Palais Royal had received the
order to evacuate that edifice, after having set it on fire. He had
protested, and declared he could still hold out, but the order was
repeated. Such was the state of bewilderment, that a member proposed a
retreat on Belleville. They might as well abandon the Chateau d'Eau and
the Bastille at once. As usual, the time was spent in small-talk. The
governor of the Hotel-de-Ville went backwards and forwards impatient.
Suddenly the flames burst forth from the summit of the belfry; an hour
after the Hotel-de-Ville was but one glow. The old edifice, witness of
so many perjuries, where the people have so often installed powers that
have afterwards shot them down, now cracked and fell with its true
master. With the noise of the crumbling pavilions, of the toppling
vaults and chimneys, of the dull detonations and the loud explosions,
mingled the sharp reports of the cannon from the large barricade St.
Jacques, that swept the Rue de Rivoli.
The War Office and all the services moved off to the mairie of the
eleventh arrondissement. Delescluze had protested against the desertion
of the Hotel-de-Ville, and predicted that this retreat would discourage
many combatants.
The next day they left the Imprimerie Nationale, where the _Officiel_ of
the Commune appeared on the 24th for the last time. Like an _Officiel_
that respects itself, it was a day behind time; it contained the
proclamations of the day before and a few details of the battle, but
not beyond the Tuesday morning.
This flight from the Hotel-de-Ville, cutting the defence in two,
increased the difficulty of the communications. The staff officers who
had not disappeared reached the new headquarters with great trouble;
they were stopped at every barricade and constrained to carry
paving-stones. On producing their despatches pleading urgency, they were
answered, "To-day there are no more epaulettes." The anger they had
inspired for a long time broke out this very morning. In the Rue
Sedaine, near the Place Voltaire, a young officer of the general staff,
the Count de Beaufort, was recognised by the guards of the 166th
battalion, whom he had threatened some days before at the War Office.
Arrested for having tried to violate the orders of the post, Beaufort,
losing his temper, had flung out a menace to purge the battalion. Now,
the day before, near the Madeleine, the battalion had lost sixty men,
and believed in a revenge on the part of Beaufort. This officer was
arrested and conducted before a court-martial, which installed itself in
a shop of the Boulevard Voltaire. Beaufort produced such certificates
that the accusation was abandoned. Nevertheless, the judges decided that
he was to serve in the battalion as a simple guard. Some of those
present objected and named him captain. He came out triumphant. The
crowd, ignorant of his explanation, grumbled on seeing him free. A guard
rushed at him, and Beaufort was imprudent enough to draw out his
revolver. He was immediately seized and thrown back into the shop. The
chief of the general staff did not dare to come to the rescue of his
officer. Delescluze hurried up, asked for a respite, said that Beaufort
should be judged; but the crowd would hear of nothing, and it was
necessary to yield in order to prevent a terrible affray. Beaufort,
conducted to the open space situated behind the mairie, was shot.
Close by this outburst of fury, at the Pere Lachaise, Dombrowski was
receiving the last honours. His corpse had been transported thither in
the night, and during the passage to the Bastille a touching scene had
taken place. The Federals of these barricades had stopped the cortege
and placed the corpse at the foot of the July column; some men, torches
in their hands, formed into a circle, and all the Federals, one after
the other, came to place a last kiss on the brow of the general, while
the drums beat a salute. The body, enveloped in a red flag, was then put
into the coffin. Vermorel, the general's brother, his aides-de-camp, and
about 200 guards were standing up bareheaded. "There is he," cried
Vermorel, "who was accused of treachery! One of the first, he has given
his life for the Commune. And we, what are we doing here instead of
imitating him?" He went on stigmatising cowardice and panics. His
speech, usually intricate, now flowed from him, heated by passion, like
molten metal. "Let us swear to leave here only to seek death!" This was
his last word; he was to keep it. The cannon a few steps off had at
intervals covered his voice; few of the men present but shed tears.
Happy those who may have such funerals! Happy those buried during the
battle saluted by their cannon, wept over by their friends.
At that same moment the Versaillese agent who had flattered himself he
could corrupt Dombrowski was being shot. Towards mid-day the
Versaillese, vigorously pushing their attack on the left bank, had
stormed the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, the Institute, the Mint, which its
director, Camelinat, left only at the last minute. On the point of being
shut up in the Ile Notre Dame, Ferre had given the order to evacuate the
Prefecture of Police and to destroy it. The 450 prisoners arrested for
slight offences were, however, first set at liberty; one only, Vaysset,
was retained and shot on the Pont-Neuf before the statue of Henry IV.
Just before his death he uttered these strange words, "You will answer
for my death to the Comte de Fabrice."[187]
The Versaillese, neglecting the Prefecture, entered the Rue Tarranes and
the contiguous streets. They were held in check for two hours at the
barricade of the Place de l'Abbaye, which the inhabitants of the
quarter helped to outflank. Eighteen Federals were shot. More to the
right the troops penetrated into the Place St. Sulpice, where they
occupied the mairie of the sixth arrondissement; thence they entered the
Rue St. Sulpice on one side, and on the other penetrated by the Rue de
Vaugirard into the garden of the Luxembourg. After two days of struggle
the brave Federals of the Rue Vavin fell back, and on their retreat blew
up the powder-magazine of the Luxembourg garden. The commotion for a
moment suspended the combat. The Palace of the Luxembourg was not
defended. Some soldiers crossed the garden, broke down the rails facing
the Rue Soufflot, traversed the boulevard, and surprised the first
barricade in that street.
Three barricades were raised before the Pantheon; the first at the
entrance of the Rue Soufflot--it had just been taken; the second in the
centre; the third extending from the mairie of the fifth arrondissement
to the Ecole de Droit. Varlin and Lisbonne, hardly escaped from the
Croix-Rouge, had hastened up again to face the enemy. Unfortunately the
Federals would listen to no chief, remained on the defensive, and,
instead of attacking the handful of soldiers exposed at the entrance of
the Rue Soufflot, gave the reinforcements time to arrive.
The bulk of the Versaillese reached the Boulevard St. Michel by the Rues
Racine and De l'Ecole de Medecine, which women had defended. The St.
Michel Bridge ceased firing for want of munitions, so that the soldiers
were able to pass over the boulevard in a body, and got as far as the
Place Maubert, while at the same time on the right they remounted the
Rue Mouffetard. At four o'clock the height Ste. Genevieve, well-nigh
abandoned, was invaded by all its slopes and its few defenders
dispersed. Thus the Pantheon, like Montmartre, fell almost without a
struggle. As at Montmartre, too, the massacres commenced immediately.
Forty prisoners were shot one after the other in the Rue St. Jacques,
under the eyes and by the orders of a colonel.
Rigault was killed in this neighbourhood. The soldiers seeing a Federal
officer knocking at the door of a house in the Rue Gay-Lussac fired
without hitting him. The door opened and Rigault went in. The soldiers
followed at full speed, rushed into the house, seized the landlord, who
proved his identity, and hastened to deliver up Rigault. The soldiers
were dragging him to the Luxembourg, when, in the Rue Royal-Collard, a
Versaillese staff colonel met the escort, and asked the name of the
prisoner. Rigault bravely answered, "Vive la Commune! Down with
assassins!" He was immediately thrown against a wall and shot. May this
courageous end be counted to him!
When the fall of the Pantheon, so valiantly defended in June, 1848,
became known in the mairie of the eleventh arrondissement, they at once
cried out against traitors; but what then had the Council and the
Committee of Public Safety done for the defence of this capital post? At
the mairie, as at the Hotel-de-Ville, they were deliberating.
At two o'clock the members of the Council, of the Central Committee,
superior officers, and the chiefs of the services were assembled in the
library. Delescluze spoke first, amidst a profound silence, for the
least whisper would have covered his dying voice. He said all was not
lost; that they must make a great effort, and hold out to the last.
Cheers interrupted him. He called upon each one to state his opinion. "I
propose," said he, "that the members of the Commune, engirded with their
scarfs, shall make a review of all the battalions that can be assembled
on the Boulevard Voltaire. We shall then at their head proceed to the
points to be conquered."
The idea appeared grand, and transported those present. Never since the
sitting when he had said that certain delegates of the people would know
how to die at their post, had Delescluze so profoundly moved all hearts.
The distant fusillade, the cannon of the Pere Lachaise, the confused
clamours of the battalions surrounding the mairie, blended with, and at
times drowned his voice. Behold, in the midst of this defeat, this old
man upright, his eyes luminous, his right hand raised defying despair,
these armed men fresh from the battle suspending their breath to listen
to this voice which seemed to ascend from the tomb. There was no scene
more solemn in the thousand tragedies of that day.
There was a superabundance of most vigorous resolutions. Open on the
table lay a large case of dynamite; an imprudent gesture might explode
the Mairie. They spoke of cutting off the bridges, of upheaving the
sewers. What was the use of this tall talking? Very different munitions
were needed now. Where is the engineer-in-chief who had said that at his
bidding an abyss would open and swallow up the enemy? He is gone. Gone
too the chief of the general staff. Since the execution of Beaufort, he
has felt an ill wind blowing for his epaulettes. More motions were made,
and motions will still be made to the end. The Central Committee
condescended to declare that it would subordinate itself to the
Committee of Public Safety. It seemed settled at last that the chief of
the 11th legion was to group all the Federals who had taken refuge in
the eleventh arrondissement; perhaps he might succeed in forming the
columns of which Delescluze had spoken.
The Delegate at War then visited the defences. Solid preparations were
being made at the Bastille. In the Rue St. Antoine, at the entrance of
the place, a barricade provided with three pieces of artillery was being
finished; another at the entrance of the faubourg covered the Rues de
Charenton and De la Rouqette; but here, as everywhere else, the flanks
were not guarded. Cartridges, shells, were piled up along the houses,
exposed to all projectiles. The approaches to the eleventh
arrondissement were hastily armed, and at the intersection of the
Boulevards Voltaire and Richard-Lenoir a barricade was being thrown up
with casks, pavements, and large bales of paper. This work, inaccessible
from the front, was also to be turned. Before it, at the entrance of the
Boulevards Voltaire, Place du Chateau d'Eau, a wall of pavement two
yards high was raised. Behind this mortal rampart, assisted by two
pieces of cannon, the Federals for twenty-four hours stopped all the
Versaillese columns debouching on the Place du Chateau d'Eau. On the
right, the bottom of the Rues Oberkampf, D'Angouleme, of the Faubourg du
Temple, the Rue Fontaine-au-Roi, and the Avenue des Amandiers were
already on the defensive. Higher up, in the tenth arrondissement,
Brunel, arrived that same morning from the Rue Royale, was again to the
fore, like Lisbonne, like Varlin, eager for new perils. A large
barricade cut off the intersection of the Boulevards Magenta and
Strasbourg; the Rue du Chateau d'Eau was barred, and the works of the
Porte St. Martin and St. Denis, at which they had worked day and night,
were filling with combatants.
Towards ten o'clock the Versaillese had been able to gain possession of
the Northern Railway station by turning the Rue Stephenson and the
barricades of the Rue de Dunkerque; but the Strasbourg Railway, the
second line of defence of La Villette, withstood their shock, and our
artillery harassed them greatly. On the Buttes Chaumont, Ranvier, who
directed the defence of these quarters, had established three howitzers
of 12 cm., two pieces of 7 near the Temple de la Sybille, and two pieces
of 7 on the lower hill, while five cannon enfiladed the Rue Puebla and
protected the Rotonde. At the Carrieres d'Amerique there were two
batteries of three pieces; the pieces of the Pere Lachaise fired
incessantly at the invaded quarters, seconded by cannon of large calibre
at the bastion 24.
The ninth arrondissement filled with fusillades. We lost much ground in
the Faubourg Poissonniere. Despite their success in the Halles, the
Versaillese were not able to get into the third arrondissement,
sheltered by the long arm of the Boulevard Sebastopol, and we commanded
the Rue Turbigo by the Prince Eugene Barracks. The second
arrondissement, almost totally occupied, still held out on the banks of
the Seine; from the Pont-Neuf the barricades of the Avenue Victoria and
Quai de Gevres resisted till night. Our gunboats having been abandoned,
the enemy seized and re-armed them.
The only success of our defence was at the Butte aux Cailles, where,
under the impulsion of Wroblewski, it changed into the offensive.
During the night the Versaillese had examined our positions, and at
daybreak they mounted to the assault. The Federals did not wait for
them, and rushed forward to meet them. Four times the Versaillese were
repulsed, four times they returned; four times they retreated, and the
soldiers, discouraged, no longer obeyed their officers.
Thus La Villette and the Butte aux Cailles, the two extremities of our
defence, kept their ground; but what gaps all along the line! Of Paris,
all theirs on Sunday, the Federals now only possessed the eleventh,
twelfth, nineteenth, and twentieth arrondissements, and a part only of
the third, fifth, and thirteenth.
On that day the massacres took that furious flight which in a few hours
left St. Bartholomew's Day far behind. Till then only the Federals or
the people denounced had been killed; now the soldiers knew neither
friend nor foe. When the Versaillese fixed his eye upon you, you must
die; when he searched a house, nothing escaped him. "These are no longer
soldiers accomplishing a duty," said a conservative journal, _La
France_. And indeed these were hyenas, thirsting for blood and pillage.
In some places it sufficed to have a watch to be shot. The corpses were
searched,[188] and the correspondents of foreign newspapers called those
thefts the last perquisition. And the same day M. Thiers had the
effrontery to tell the Assembly: "Our valiant soldiers conduct
themselves in such a manner as to inspire foreign countries with the
highest esteem and admiration."
Then, too, was invented that legend of the petroleuses, which, born of
fear and propagated by the press, cost hundreds of unfortunate women
their lives. The rumour was spread that furies were throwing burning
petroleum into the cellars. Every woman badly dressed, or carrying a
milk-can, a pail, an empty bottle, was pointed out as a petroleuse, her
clothes torn to tatters, she was pushed against the nearest wall, and
killed with revolver-shots. The monstrously idiotical side of the legend
is that the petroleuses were supposed to operate in the quarters
occupied by the army.
The fugitives from the invaded quarters brought the news of these
massacres to the Mairie of the eleventh arrondissement. There, within
smaller compass and more menacing, reigned the same confusion as at the
Hotel-de-Ville. The narrow courts were full of waggons, cartridges, and
powder; every step of the principal staircase was occupied by women
sewing sacks for the barricades. In the Salle des Mariages, whither
Ferre had removed the office of Public Safety, the delegate, assisted by
two secretaries, gave orders, signed free passes, questioned the people
brought to him with the greatest calm, and pronounced his decisions in a
polite, soft, and low voice. Farther on, in the rooms occupied by the
War Office, some officers and chiefs of services received and expedited
despatches; some of them, as at the Hotel-de-Ville, doing their duty
with perfect sangfroid. At this hour certain men revealed extraordinary
strength of character, especially among the secondary actors of the
movement. They felt that all was lost, that they were about to die,
perhaps even at the hands of their own people, for the fever of
suspicion had reached its utmost degree of paroxysm; yet they remained
in the furnace, their hearts calm, their minds lucid. Never had a
Government, with the exception of that of the National Defence, more
resources, more intelligence, more heroism at its disposal than the
Council of the Commune; never was there one so inferior to its electors.
At half-past seven a great noise was heard before the prison of La
Roquette, where the day before the three hundred hostages, detained
until then at Mazas, had been transported. Amidst a crowd of guards,
exasperated at the massacres, stood a delegate of the Public Safety
Commission, who said, "Since they shoot our men, six hostages shall be
executed. Who will form the platoon?" "I! I!" was cried from all sides.
One advanced and said, "I avenge my father;" another, "I avenge my
brother." "As for me," said a guard, "they have shot my wife." Each one
brought forward his right to vengeance. Thirty men were chosen and
entered the prison.
The delegate looked over the jail register, pointed out the Archbishop
Darboy, the President Bonjean, the banker Jecker, the Jesuits Allard,
Clerc, and Ducoudray; at the last moment Jecker was replaced by the Cure
Deguerry.
They were taken to the exercise-ground. Darboy stammered out, "I am not
the enemy of the Commune. I have done all I could. I have written twice
to Versailles." He recovered a little when he saw death was inevitable.
Bonjean could not keep on his legs. "Who condemns us?" said he. "The
justice of the people." "Oh, this is not the right one," replied the
president. One of the priests threw himself against the sentry-box and
uncovered his breast. They were led further on, and, turning a corner,
met the firing-party. Some men apostrophised them; the delegate at once
ordered silence. The hostages placed themselves against the wall, and
the officer of the platoon said to them, "It is not we whom you must
accuse of your death, but the Versaillese, who are shooting the
prisoners." He then gave the signal and the guns were fired. The
hostages fell back in one line, at an equal distance from each other.
Darboy alone remained standing, wounded in the head, one hand raised. A
second volley laid him by the side of the others.[189]
The blind justice of revolutions punishes in the first-comers the
accumulated crimes of their caste.
At eight o'clock the Versaillese closed in upon the barricade of the
Porte St. Martin. Their shells had long since set the theatre on fire,
and the Federals, pressed by this conflagration, were obliged to fall
back.
That night the Versaillese bivouacked in front of the Strasbourg
Railway, the Rue St. Denis, the Hotel-de-Ville (occupied towards nine
o'clock by Vinoy's troops), the Ecole Polytechnique, the Madelonnettes,
and the Monsouris Park. They presented a kind of fan, of which the fixed
point was formed by the Pont-au-Change, the right side by the
thirteenth arrondissement, the left by the streets of the Faubourg St.
Martin and the Rue de Flandre, the arc by the fortifications. The fan
was about to close at Belleville, which formed the centre.
Paris continued to burn furiously. The Porte St. Martin, the St.
Eustache Church, the Rue Royale, the Rue de Rivoli, the Tuileries, the
Palais-Royal, the Hotel-de-Ville, the Theatre-Lyrique, the left bank
from the Legion d'Honneur up to the Palais de Justice and the Prefecture
de Police, stood out bright red in the darkness of night. The caprices
of the fire displayed a blazing architecture of arches, cupolas,
spectral edifices. Great volumes of smoke, clouds of sparks flying into
the air, attested formidable explosions; every minute stars lit up and
died out again in the horizon. These were the cannon of the fort of
Bicetre, of the Pere Lachaise, and the Buttes Chaumont, which fired on
the invaded quarters. The Versaillese batteries answered from the
Pantheon, the Trocadero, and Montmartre. Now the reports followed each
other at regular intervals; now there was a continuous thunder along the
whole line. They aimed at random, blindly, madly. The shells often
exploded in the midst of their career; the whole town was enveloped in a
whirl of flame and smoke.
What men this handful of combatants, who, without chiefs, without hope,
without retreat, disputed their last pavements as though they implied
victory! The hypocritical reaction has charged them with the crime of
incendiarism, as if in war fire were not a legitimate arm; as if the
Versaillese shells had not set fire to at least as many edifices as
those of the Federals; as if the private speculation of certain men of
order had not its share in the ruins.[190] And that same bourgeois who
spoke of "burning everything"[191] before the Prussians, calls this
people scoundrels because they preferred to bury themselves in the
ruins rather than abandon their faith, their property, their families,
to a coalition of despots a thousand times more cruel and more lasting
than the foreigner.
At eleven o'clock two officers entered Delescluze's room and informed
him of the execution of the hostages. He listened to the recital without
ceasing to write, and then only asked, "How did they die?" When the
officers were gone, Delescluze turned to the friend who was working with
him, and, hiding his face in his hands, "What a war!" cried he, "what a
war!" But he knew revolutions too well to lose himself in bootless
reflections, and, mastering his emotion, he exclaimed, "We shall know
how to die!"
During the whole night despatches succeeded each other without
intermission, all demanding cannon and men under the threat of
abandoning such or such a position. But where to find cannon? And men
began to be as rare as the bronze.
FOOTNOTES:
[187] One of the commanders of the German troops.
[188] Appendix XVIII.
[189] At half-past eight o'clock in the Mairie of the eleventh
arrondissement the delegate Genton made this recital, which we heard,
and reproduce verbatim.
[190] Appendix XIX.
[191] "Burn everything! I have heard these words from the most wise, the
most virtuous men."--_Jules Favre, Enquete sur le 18 Mars_, vol. ii. p.
42. "Rather Moscow than Sedan," wrote during the first siege one of
these wise and virtuous men--M. Jules Simon.