"Le commandant Segoyer a ete pris par les scelerats qui
defendaient la Bastille, et, sans respect des lois de la
guerre, a ete immediatement fusille"--_M. Thiers aux
Prefets, le 27 Mai._
THE RESISTANCE CENTRES IN BELLEVILLE--FRIDAY, FORTY-EIGHT
HOSTAGES ARE SHOT IN THE RUE HAXO--SATURDAY 27TH, THE WHOLE
TWENTIETH ARRONDISSEMENT IS INVADED--THE PERE LACHAISE IS
TAKEN--SUNDAY 28TH, THE BATTLE ENDS AT ELEVEN O'CLOCK IN
THE MORNING--MONDAY 29TH, THE FORT OF VINCENNES IS
SURRENDERED.
The soldiers continuing their nocturnal surprises, got hold of the
deserted barricades of the Rue d'Aubervilliers and the Boulevard de la
Chapelle. On the side of the Bastille they occupied the barricade of the
Rue St. Antoine at the corner of the Rue Castex, the station of the
Lyons Railway, and the Mazas prison; in the third, all the abandoned
defences of the market and of the Square du Temple. They reached the
first houses of the Boulevard Voltaire, and established themselves at
the Magasins Reunis.
In the darkness of the night a Versaillese officer was surprised by our
outposts of the Bastille and shot; "without respecting the laws of war,"
said M. Thiers the next day. As though during the four days that he had
been mercilessly shooting thousands of prisoners, old men, women, and
children, M. Thiers obeyed any other law than that of the savages.
The attack recommenced at daybreak. At La Villette the Versaillese,
crossing the Rue d'Aubervilliers, turned and occupied the abandoned
gasworks; in the centre, they got as far as the Cirque Napoleon; on the
right, in the twelfth arrondissement, they invaded the bastions nearest
the river without a struggle. One detachment went up the embankment of
the Vincennes Railway and occupied the station, while another took
possession of the Boulevard Mazas, the Avenue Lacuee, and penetrated
into the Faubourg St. Antoine. The Bastille was thus close pressed on
its right flank, while the troops of the Place Royale attacked it on the
left by the Boulevard Beaumarchais.
The sun did not shine forth. This five days' cannonade had drawn on the
rainfall that usually accompanies great battles. The fusillade had lost
its sharp, quick voice, but rolled on in muffled tones. The men,
harassed, wet to the skin, hardly distinguished through the misty veil
the point whence the attack came. The shells of a Versaillese battery
established at the Orleans Railway station disturbed the entrance of the
Faubourg St. Antoine. At seven o'clock the presence of soldiers at the
top of the faubourg was announced. The Federals hurried thither with
their cannon. If they do not hold out, the Bastille will be turned.
They did hold out. The Rue d'Aligre and the Avenue Lacuee vied with each
other in devotion. Intrenched in the houses, the Federals fell, but
neither yielded nor retreated; and, thanks to their self-sacrifice, the
Bastille for six hours still disputed its shattered barricades and
ruined houses. Each stone had its legend in this estuary of the
Revolution. Here encased in the wall is a bullet launched in 1789
against the fortress. Leaning against the same wall the sons of the
combatants of June fought for the same pavement as their fathers. Here
the conservatives of 1848 gave vent to their rage; but what was their
fury compared with that of 1871? The house at the corner of the Rue de
la Roquette, the angle of the Rue de Charenton, disappeared like the
scenery of a theatre, and amidst these ruins, under these burning beams,
some men fired their cannon, twenty times raised up the red flag, as
often overthrown by the Versaillese balls. Powerless as it well knew to
triumph over an entire army, the old glorious place will at least
succumb honourably.
How many were there at mid-day? Hundreds, since at night hundreds of
corpses lay around the chief barricade. In the Rue Crozatier they were
dead; they were dead too in the Rue d'Aligre, killed in the struggle or
after the combat. And how they died! In the Rue Crozatier an artillerist
of the army, gone over to the people on the 18th March, was surrounded.
"We are going to shoot you," cried the soldiers. He, shrugging his
shoulders, answered, "We can only die once!" Farther on an old man was
struggling; the officer by a refinement of cruelty wanted to shoot him
upon a heap of filth. "I fought bravely," said the old man; "I have the
right not to die in the mire."
Indeed they died well everywhere. That same day Milliere, arrested on
the left bank of the Seine, was taken to Cissey's staff. This
Imperialist general, ruined by the vilest debauchery, and who terminated
his Ministerial career by treachery,[194] had made of his headquarters
at the Luxembourg one of the slaughter-houses of the left bank.
Milliere's role during the Commune had been one of mere conciliation,
and his polemic in the journals entirely one of doctrine, and of a most
elevated character; but the hatred of the officers for every Socialist,
the hatred of Jules Favre, lay in wait for him. The assassin, the
staff-captain Garcin,[195] has recounted his crime, head erect.[196]
Before history we must let him speak.
"Milliere was brought in when we were breakfasting with the general at
the restaurant De Tournon, near the Luxembourg. We heard a great noise,
and went out. I was told, 'It is Milliere.' I took care that the crowd
did not take justice into its own hands. He did not come into the
Luxembourg; he was stopped at the gate. I addressed myself to him, and
said, 'You are Milliere?' 'Yes, but you know that I am a deputy.' 'That
may be, but I think you have lost your character of deputy. Besides,
there is a deputy amongst us, M. de Quinsonnas, who will recognise you.'
"I then said to Milliere that the general's orders were that he was to
be shot. He said to me, 'Why?'
"I answered him, 'I only know your name. I have read articles by you
that have revolted me' (probably the articles on Jules Favre). 'You are
a viper, that one crushes under one's feet. You detest society.' He
stopped, saying, with a significant air, 'Oh, yes! I indeed hate this
society.' 'Well, it will remove you from its bosom; you are going to be
shot.' 'This is summary justice, barbarity, cruelty.' 'And all the
cruelty you have committed, do you take that for nothing? At any rate,
since you say you are Milliere, there is nothing else to be done.'
"The general had ordered that he was to be shot at the Pantheon, on his
knees, to ask pardon of society for all the ill he had done. He refused
to be shot kneeling. I said to him, 'It is the order; you will be shot
on your knees, and not otherwise.' He played a little comedy, opening
his coat, and baring his breast before the firing party. I said to him,
'You are acting; you want them to say how you died; die quietly, that
will be the best.' 'I am free in my own interest and for the sake of my
Cause to do as I like.' 'So be it; kneel down.' Then he said to me, 'I
will only do so if you force me down by two men.' I had him forced on
his knees, and then his execution was proceeded with. He cried, 'Vive
l'humanite!' He was about to cry something else when he fell dead."[197]
An officer ascended the steps, approached the corpse, and discharged his
chassepot into the left temple. Milliere's head rebounded, and, falling
back, burst open, black with powder, seemed to look at the frontispiece
of the monument.
"Vive l'humanite!" The word implies two causes. "I care as much for the
liberty of other people as for that of France," said a Federal to a
reactionist.[198] In 1871, as in 1793, Paris combats for all the
oppressed.
The Bastille succumbed about two o'clock. La Villette still struggled
on. In the morning the barricade at the corner of the boulevard and of
the Rue de Flandre had been surrendered by its commander. The Federals
concentrated in the rear along the line of the canal, and barricaded the
Rue de Crimee. The Rotonde, destined to support the principal shock, was
reinforced by a barricade on the quay of the Loire. The 269th, which for
two days had withstood the enemy, recommenced the struggle behind the
new positions. This line from La Villette being of great extent, Ranvier
and Passedouet went to fetch reinforcements in the twentieth
arrondissement, where the remnants of all the battalions took refuge.
They crowded round the Mairie, that distributed lodgings and orders for
food. Near the church the waggons and horses were noisily put up. The
headquarters and different services were established in the Rue Haxo at
the Cite Vincennes, a series of constructions intersected by gardens.
The very numerous barricades in the inextricable streets of Menilmontant
were almost all turned against the boulevard. The strategical route,
which on this point overlooks the Pere Lachaise, the Buttes Chaumont,
and the exterior boulevard, was not even guarded.
From the heights of the ramparts the Prussians were discernible in arms.
According to the terms of a convention previously concluded between
Versailles and the Prince of Saxony, the German army since Monday
invested Paris on the north and east. It had cut off the Railway of the
North, manned the canal line from St. Denis, posted sentinels from St.
Denis to Charenton, erected barricades on all the routes. From five
o'clock in the evening of Thursday 5,000 Bavarians marched down from
Fontenay, Nogent, and Charenton, forming an impenetrable cordon from the
Marne to Montreuil; and during the evening another corps of 5,000 men
occupied Vincennes, with eighty artillery pieces. At nine o'clock he
invested the fort and disarmed the Federals, who wanted to return to
Paris. He did still better--trapped the game for Versailles. Already
during the siege the Prussians had given an indirect support to the
Versaillese army; their cynical collusion with the French conservatives
showed itself undisguised during the eight days of May. Of all M.
Thiers' crimes, one of the most odious will certainly be his introducing
the conquerors of France into our civil discords, and begging their help
in order to crush Paris.
Towards mid-day fire broke out in the west part of the docks of La
Villette, an immense warehouse of petroleum, essences, and combustible
matters, set alight by the shells from both sides. This conflagration
forced us to leave the barricades of the Rues de Flandre and Riquet. The
Versaillese, attempting to traverse the canal in boats, were stopped by
the barricades of the Rue de Crimee and the Rotonde.
Vinoy continued to ascend the twelfth arrondissement after having left
the few thousand men necessary for the perquisitions and executions at
the Bastille. The barricade of the Rue de Reuilly, at the corner of the
Faubourg St. Antoine, held out a few hours against the soldiers who
cannonaded it from the Boulevard Mazas. At the same time the
Versaillese, marching along the Boulevard Mazas and the Rue Picpus,
moved towards the Place du Trone, which they tried to outflank by the
ramparts. The artillery prepared and covered their slightest movement.
Generally they charged the pieces at the corner of the roads they wanted
to reduce, advanced them, fired, and drew them back again under shelter.
The Federals could only reach this invisible enemy from the heights; but
it was impossible to centralise the artillery of the Commune, for each
barricade wanted to possess its gun without caring where it carried.
There was no longer authority of any kind. At the headquarters a
pell-mell of bewildered officers. The march of the enemy was only known
by the arrival of the survivors of the battalions. Such was the
confusion, that in this place, mortal to traitors, there might be seen,
in a general's uniform, Du Bisson, turned out of La Villette. The few
members of the Council to be met with in the twentieth arrondissement
wandered about at hazard, absolutely ignored; but they had not foregone
deliberating. On the Friday there were twelve of them in the Rue Haxo,
when the Central Committee arrived and claimed the dictatorship. It was
given them, in spite of some who protested, Varlin being added to their
number. The Committee of Public Safety was no longer heard of.
The only one of its members who played any part was Ranvier, splendidly
energetic in the combats. During these days he was the soul of La
Villette and Belleville, urging on the men, watching over everything. On
the 26th he issued a proclamation: "Citizens of the twentieth
arrondissement! if we succumb you know what fate is in store for you. To
arms! Be vigilant, above all in the night. I ask you to execute our
orders faithfully. Lend your support to the nineteenth arrondissement;
help it to repulse the enemy. There lies your safety. Do not wait for
Belleville itself to be attacked. Forward then. Vive la Republique!"
But very few read or obeyed. The shells from Montmartre, which from the
day before crushed Belleville and Menilmontant, the cries, the sight of
the wounded, dragging themselves from house to house in search of
succour, the too evident signs of the approaching end, precipitated the
ordinary phenomena of defeat. The people became fierce and suspicious.
Any individual without a uniform ran the risk of being shot if he had
not a well-known name to recommend him. The news that came from all
points of Paris augmented the anguish and despair. It was known that the
soldiers gave no quarter; that they despatched the wounded, killing even
doctors;[199] that every individual taken in a National Guard's uniform,
shod with regulation boots, or whose clothes showed traces of stripes
recently unstitched, was shot in the street or in the yard of his house;
that the combatants who surrendered, under the promise of having their
lives spared, were massacred; that thousands of men, women, children,
and aged people were taken to Versailles bareheaded, and often killed on
the way; that it sufficed to be related to a combatant, or to offer him
a refuge in order to share his fate; the numberless executions of
so-called petroleuses were recounted.
About six o'clock forty-eight gendarmes, ecclesiastics, and civilians
marched up the Rue Haxo between a detachment of Federals. At first they
were supposed to be prisoners recently taken, and defiled in the midst
of perfect silence. But the rumour spread that they were the hostages of
La Roquette, and that they were being led to death. The crowd grew
larger, followed, apostrophised, but did not strike them. At half-past
six the cortege reached the Cite Vincennes; the gates closed upon them,
and the crowd dispersed in the neighbouring grounds.
The escort tumultuously pushed the hostages against a kind of trench at
the foot of a wall. The chassepots were being levelled, when a member of
the Council said, "What are you doing? There is a powder-magazine here;
you will blow us up." He thus hoped to delay the execution. Others,
quite distracted, went from group to group, attempting to discuss, to
appease the wrath. They were repulsed, menaced, and their notoriety
hardly sufficed to save them from death.
The chassepots went off on all sides; by degrees the hostages fell.
Outside the crowd applauded. And yet for two days the soldiers taken
prisoners passed through Belleville without exciting a murmur; but these
gendarmes, these spies, these priests, who for fully twenty years had
trampled upon Paris, represented the Empire, the bourgeoisie, the
massacres under their most hateful forms.
That same morning Jecker, the accomplice of Morny, had been shot. The
Council had not known how to punish him; the justice of the people
alighted upon him. A platoon of four Federals went to fetch him at La
Roquette. He appeared to resign himself quietly, and even chatted on the
way. "You are mistaken," said he, "if you think I did a good piece of
business. Those people cheated me." He was executed in the open grounds
adjoining the Pere Lachaise from the side of Charonne.
During this day the troops did not execute any great movements. The
corps Douay and Clinchant were stationed on the Boulevard
Richard-Lenoir. The double barricade in the rear of Bataclan stopped the
invasion of the Boulevard Voltaire; a Versaillese general was killed in
the Rue St. Sebastian; the Place du Trone still held out by means of the
Philippe-Auguste barricade. The Rotonde and docks of La Villette also
prolonged their resistance. Towards the close of the day the
conflagration spread to the part of the docks nearest the Mairie.
In the evening, the army hedged in the defence between the
fortifications and a curved line which from the slaughter-houses of La
Villette extended to the gate of Vincennes, passing by the St. Martin
Canal, the Boulevard Richard-Lenoir, and the Rue du Faubourg St.
Antoine--Ladmirault and Vinoy occupying the two extremities, Douay and
Clinchant the centre.
The night of the Friday to Saturday was sombre and feverish in
Menilmontant and Belleville, ravaged by the shells. At the turning of
each street the sentinels demanded the watchword (Bouchotte-Belleville),
and often even that did not suffice, and one had to prove being sent
upon an errand. Every chief of a barricade claimed the right to stop
your passage. The remainder of the battalions continued arriving in
disorder, and encumbered all the houses. The majority finding no
shelter, rested in the open air, amidst the shells, always saluted with
cries of "Vive la Commune!"
In the Grande Rue de Belleville some National Guards carried coffins on
their crossed muskets, some men preceding them with torches, the drums
beating. These combatants, who amidst the shells silently interred their
comrades, appeared in touching grandeur. They were themselves at the
gates of death.
In the night the barricades of the Rue d'Allemagne were abandoned. A
thousand men at the utmost had for two days kept in check Ladmirault's
25,000 soldiers. Almost all these brave men were sedentary guards and
children.
The humid glimmer of the Saturday morning discovered a sinister
prospect. The fog was dense and penetrating, the soil steeped in
moisture. Clouds of white smoke rose slowly above the rain; it was the
fusillade. The Federals shivered under their drenched cloaks.
Since daybreak barricades of the strategic route, the gates of Montreuil
and Bagnolet, were occupied by the troops, who without resistance
invaded Charonne. At seven o'clock they established themselves in the
Place du Trone, whose defences had been abandoned. At the entrance of
the Boulevard Voltaire the Versaillese erected a battery of six pieces
against the Mairie of the eleventh arrondissement. Henceforth certain of
victory, the officers wanted to triumph noisily. This barricade, against
which they fired during the whole day of the 27th, had but two pieces of
the most irregular projection. Many a Versaillese shell strayed to the
legs of the statue of Voltaire, who, with his sardonic smile, seemed to
remind his bourgeois descendants of the "beau tapage" he had promised
them.
At La Villette the soldiers deviated from the line on all sides, passed
by the fortifications and attacked the Rues Puebla and De Crimee. Their
left, still engaged in the upper part of the tenth arrondissement,
endeavoured to gain possession of all its streets leading to the
Boulevard de la Villette. Their batteries of the Rue de Flandre, of the
ramparts, and the Rotonde united their fire to that of Montmartre, and
whelmed the Buttes Chaumont with shells. The barricade of the Rue Puebla
yielded towards ten o'clock. A sailor who had remained alone, hidden
behind the paving-stones, awaited the Versaillese, discharged his
revolver at them, and then, hatchet in hand, dashed into the midst of
their ranks. The enemy deployed in all the adjacent streets up to the
Rue Menadier, steadily held by our tirailleurs. At the Place des Fetes
two of our pieces enfiladed the Rue de Crimee and protected our right
flank.
At eleven o'clock nine or ten members of the Council met in the Rue
Haxo. One of them, Jules Allix, whom his colleagues had been obliged to
shut up as mad during the Commune, came up radiant. According to him,
all was for the best; the quarters of the centre were dismantled; they
had only to descend thither. Others thought that by surrendering
themselves to the Prussians, who would deliver them up to Versailles,
they might put an end to the massacres. One or two members demonstrated
the absurdity of this hope, and that besides the Federals would allow no
one to leave Paris. They were not listened to. A solemn note was being
drawn up, when Ranvier, who wandered about in all corners picking up men
one by one for the defence of the Buttes Chaumont, broke in upon their
deliberations, exclaiming, "Why do you not go and fight instead of
discussing!" They dispersed in different directions, and this was the
last meeting of these men of everlasting deliberations.
At this moment the Versaillese occupied the bastion 16. At mid-day the
rumour spread that the troops were issuing by the Rue de Paris and the
ramparts. A crowd of men and women, driven from their houses by the
shells, beset the gate of Romainville, asking with loud cries to be
allowed to flee into the neighbouring fields. At one o'clock the
drawbridge was lowered in order to give passage to some Freemasons who
had been to the German authorities to ask them whether they would allow
free passage to the fugitives. The crowd dashed out and dispersed in the
houses of the Village des Lilas. Some women and children attempting to
push on further and to cross the barricade thrown up in the middle of
the road, the sergeant of gendarmerie of Romainville threw himself upon
them, crying to the Prussians, "Fire! come, fire on this _canaille_!" A
Prussian soldier fired, wounding a woman.
Meanwhile the drawbridge had been raised. About four o'clock Colonel
Parent, on horseback, and preceded by a trumpet, dared on his own
authority to go and ask the Prussian troops for permission to pass.
Useless degradation. The officer answered that he had no orders, and
that he would refer to St. Denis.
The same day the member of the Council, Arnold, who still believed in an
American intervention, went to take a letter for Mr. Washburne to the
German outposts. He was conducted from one officer to another, received
rather rudely, and sent back with the promise that his letter would be
forwarded to the ambassador.
Near two o'clock several Versaillese battalions, having swept the
strategic route, reached the Rue de Crimee by the Rue des Lilas and the
open grounds of the fortifications, but were stopped in the Rue de
Bellevue. From the Place du Marche three cannon joined their fire to
that of the Place des Fetes in order to protect the Buttes Chaumont.
These pieces were the whole day served by only five artillerists, their
arms bare, without witnesses, needing neither chief nor orders. At five
o'clock the cannon of the Buttes were silent, having no more munitions,
and their gunners rejoined the skirmishers of the Rues Menadier,
Fessart, and Des Annelets.
At five o'clock Ferre brought up to the Rue Haxo the line soldiers of
the Prince Eugene Barracks, removed since Wednesday to the prison of La
Petite Roquette, which had just been evacuated, as also the Grande
Roquette. The crowd looked at them, not uttering a single threat, for
they felt no hatred to the soldiers, who belong, like themselves, to the
people. They were quartered in Belleville church. Their arrival caused a
fatal diversion. The people ran up to see them pass, and the Place des
Fetes was dismantled. The Versaillese came up, occupied it, and the last
defenders of the Buttes fell back on the Faubourg du Temple and the Rue
de Paris.
While our front was yielding we were attacked from the rear. Since four
o'clock in the afternoon the Versaillese had been laying siege to the
Pere Lachaise, which enclosed no more than 200 Federals, resolute, but
without discipline or foresight. The officers had been unable to make
them embattle the walls. Five thousand Versaillese approached the
enceinte from all sides, while the artillery of the bastion furrowed the
interior. The pieces of the Commune had scarcely any munition since the
afternoon. At six o'clock the Versaillese, not daring, in spite of their
numbers, to escalade the enceinte, cannonaded the large gate of the
cemetery, which soon gave way, notwithstanding the barricade propping
it. Then began a desperate struggle. Sheltered behind the tombs, the
Federals disputed their refuge foot by foot; they closed in with the
enemy in frightful hand-to-hand scuffles; in the vaults they fought with
side-arms. The foes rolled and died in the same grave. The darkness that
set in early did not end the despair.
On the Saturday evening there only remained to the Federals part of the
eleventh and twentieth arrondissements. The Versaillese camped in the
Place des Fetes, Rue Fessart, Rue Pradier up to Rue Rebeval, where, as
on the boulevard, they were detained. The quadrilateral comprised
between the Rue de Faubourg du Temple, the Rue Folie Mericourt, the Rue
de la Roquette and the exterior boulevard was in part occupied by the
Federals. Douay and Clinchant awaited on the Boulevard Richard-Lenoir
the moment when Vinoy and Ladmirault would have carried the heights, and
thus forced the Federals against the guns.
What a night for the few combatants of the last hours! It rained in
torrents. The conflagration of La Villette lit up this gloom with its
blinding glare. The shells continued to pound Belleville; they even
reached as far as Bagnolet and wounded some Prussian soldiers.
The wounded arrived in large numbers at the Mairie of the twentieth
arrondissement. There were neither doctors, nor medicines, nor
mattresses, nor blankets, and the unhappy people expired without
succour. Some spies, surprised in the dress of National Guards, were
there and then shot in the court. The _Vengeurs de Flourens_ arrived,
headed by their captain, a fine, handsome young fellow, reeling in his
saddle. The cantiniere, delirious, a handkerchief tied round her
bleeding brow, swore, called the men together with the cry of a wounded
lioness. From between the convulsive hands the guns went off at random.
The noise of the waggons, the threats, the lamentations, the fusillades,
the whizzing of the shells, mingled in a maddening tumult, and who in
those frightful hours did not feel his reason giving way? Every moment
brought with it a new disaster. One guard rushed up and said, "The
barricade Pradier is abandoned!;" another, "We want men in the Rue
Rebeval;" a third, "They are flying in the Rue des Pres." To hear these
death-knells there were but a few members of the Council present, among
whom were Trinquet, Ferre, Varlin, and Ranvier. Desperate of their
powerlessness, broken down by these eight days, without sleep and
without hope, the strongest were lost in grief.
From four o'clock Vinoy and Ladmirault launched their troops along the
ramparts on the defenceless strategic route, and soon effected a
junction at the Romainville gate. Towards five o'clock the troops
occupied the barricade of the Rue Rebeval in the Boulevard de la
Villette, and by the Rue Vincent and the Passage du Renard attacked the
barricades of the Rue de Paris from behind. The Mairie of the twentieth
arrondissement was not taken till eight o'clock. The barricade of the
Rue de Paris at the corner of the boulevard was defended by the
commander of the 191st and five or six guards, who held out till their
munitions were exhausted.
A column set out from the Boulevard Philippe-Auguste, penetrated into
the Roquette towards nine o'clock, and released the hostages who were
there. Masters of the Pere Lachaise from the day before, the Versaillese
might at least from nine o'clock in the evening have penetrated into the
abandoned prison. This delay of twelve hours sufficiently shows their
contempt for the lives of the hostages. Four of the latter--among whom
was the Bishop Surat--who had made their escape in the afternoon of
Saturday, had been retaken at the neighbouring barricades and shot
before the Petite Roquette.
At nine o'clock the resistance was reduced to the small square formed by
the Rues du Faubourg du Temple, Des Trois Bornes, Des Trois Couronnes,
and the Boulevard de Belleville. Two or three streets of the twentieth
arrondissement still struggled on, among others the Rue Ramponeau. A
small phalanx of fifty men, led by Varlin, Ferre, and Gambon, their red
scarfs round their waists, their chassepots slung across their
shoulders, marched down the Rue des Champs, and from the twentieth
arrondissement debouched on the boulevard. A gigantic Garibaldian
carried an immense red flag in front of them. They entered the eleventh
arrondissement. Varlin and his colleagues were going to defend the
barricade of the Rue du Faubourg du Temple and of the Rue Fontaine au
Roi. From the front it was inaccessible; the Versaillese, masters of the
St. Louis Hospital, succeeded in turning it by the Rues St. Maur and
Bichat.
At ten o'clock the Federals had almost no cannon left, and two-thirds of
the army hemmed them in. What mattered it? In the Rue du Faubourg du
Temple, Rue Oberkampf, Rue St. Maur, Rue Parmentier, they still wanted
to fight. There were barricades not to be turned and houses without
exits. The Versaillese artillery cannonade them till the Federals had
used up their munitions. Their last cartridge spent, whelmed by shells,
they threw themselves upon the muskets bristling around them.
By degrees the fusillade was lulled, all was silent. About ten o'clock
the last Federal cannon was discharged in the Rue de Paris, which the
Versaillese had taken. The piece, charged with double shot, with a
terrible crash exhaled the last sigh of the Commune of Paris.
The last barricade of the days of May was in the Rue Ramponeau. For a
quarter of an hour a single Federal defended it. Thrice he broke the
staff of the Versaillese flag hoisted on the barricade of the Rue de
Paris. As a reward for his courage, this last soldier of the Commune
succeeded in escaping.
At eleven o'clock all was over. The Place de la Concorde had held out
two days, the Butte aux Cailles two, La Villette three, the Boulevard
Voltaire two days and a half. Of the seventy-nine members of the
Council filling functions on the 21st of May, one, Delescluze, had died
on the barricades; two, J. Durand and R. Rigault, had been shot; two,
Brunel and Vermorel (who died some days after at Versailles),[200] were
wounded severely; three, Oudet, Protot, Frankel, slightly. The
Versaillese had lost few men. We had 3,000 killed or wounded. The losses
of the army in June, 1848, and the resistance of the insurgents had been
relatively more serious. But the insurgents of June had only to face
30,000 men; those of May combated against 130,000 soldiers. The struggle
of June lasted only three days; that of the Federals eight weeks. On the
eve of June the revolutionary army was intact; on the 21st May it was
decimated. The most valiant defenders had fallen at the advanced posts.
What might not these 15,000 men, uselessly sacrificed outside the town,
have done within Paris? What might not the brave men of Neuilly,
Asnieres, Issy, Vanves, Cachan, have done at the Pantheon and
Montmartre?
The occupation of the fort of Vincennes took place on Monday the 29th.
This fort, disarmed in conformity with the stipulations of the treaty of
peace, had been unable to take any part in the strife. Its garrison
consisted of 350 men and twenty-four officers, commanded by the
_chef-de-legion_ Faltot, a veteran of the wars of Poland and of
Garibaldi, one of the most active men on the 18th March. He was offered
a perfectly secure asylum, but answered that honour forbade his
deserting his companions in arms.
On the Saturday a Versaillese staff colonel came to negotiate a
capitulation. Faltot demanded passports in blank, not for himself, but
for some of his officers of foreign nationality, and on the refusal of
the Versaillese, Faltot committed the fault of applying to the Germans.
But MacMahon, in prevision of a siege, had solicited the assistance of
the Prince of Saxony, and the German was on the look-out on behalf of
his brother officer.[201] During the negotiations General Vinoy had
managed to hold communication with the place, where a few disreputable
individuals offered to reduce the intractable Federals. Among the latter
was Merlet, garde-general of engineering and artillery,
ex-non-commissioned officer, able, energetic, and quite resolved to blow
up the place rather than surrender it. The powder-magazine contained
1,000 kilogrammes of powder and 400,000 cartridges.
On Sunday, at eight o'clock in the morning, a shot sounded in Merlet's
chamber. His room was entered, and he was found lying on the ground, his
head pierced by the ball of a revolver. The disorder of the room
attested a struggle; and a captain of the 99th, released later on by the
Versaillese, B----, admitted that he had dispersed the elements of the
electric pile by means of which Merlet intended to spring the fort.
On Monday towards mid-day the Versaillese colonel renewed the proposal
for a surrender. For twenty-four hours the struggle had been over in
Paris. The officers deliberated; it was agreed that the gates should be
opened, and at three o'clock the Versaillese entered. The garrison,
having laid down their arms, had drawn up at the end of the court. Nine
officers were incarcerated apart.
In the night, in the fosses, a hundred yards from the spot where the
Duke of Enghien had fallen, these nine officers formed in a line before
a firing-party. One of them, Colonel Delorme, turned to the Versaillese
in command with the words, "Feel my pulse; see if I am afraid."
FOOTNOTES:
[194] Minister of War from 1871, he was in 1876, notwithstanding the
desperate efforts of MacMahon, expelled from the Ministry, partly
because of irregularities discovered in his budget, partly for having
let his mistress, a German, take the plan of one of the new forts round
Paris, which was transmitted to Berlin.
[195] Since promoted to a higher grade.
[196] _Enquete sur le 18 Mars_, vol. ii. p. 239.
[197] See Appendix XX.
[198] Heard and reported by the author of the book _Le Fond de la
Societe sous la Commune_. The author wittily adds, "What the devil was
this imbecile solicitous about?"
[199] Appendix XXI.
[200] The Versaillese calumniators, pursuing him even to his last hour,
spread abroad that he had confessed to a Jesuit, and had disavowed his
writings "in presence of the gendarmes and nuns."
[201] "Marshal MacMahon to General Vinoy, 29th May, 10.5 morning.--On
our propositions to enter the fort, Prince of Saxony has given the order
to enlarge the blockade, in order to leave the French authorities free
to act as they think fit. He has promised to preserve the
blockade."--_Vinoy, L'Armistice et la Commune_, p. 430.