"Nous sommes d'honnetes gens; c'est par les lois ordinaires
que justice sera faite. Nous n'aurons recours qu'a la
loi."--_M. Thiers a l'Assemblee Nationale, 22 Mai 1871._
"Honest, honest Iago!"--_Shakespere._
THE VERSAILLESE FURY--THE SLAUGHTER-HOUSES--THE PREVOTAL
COURTS--THE DEATH OF VARLIN--THE BURIALS.
Order reigned in Paris. Everywhere ruins, death, sinister crepitations.
The officers walked provokingly about clashing their sabres; the
non-commissioned officers imitated their arrogance. The soldiers
bivouacked in all the large roads. Some, stupefied by fatigue and
carnage, slept on the pavement; others prepared their soup by the side
of the corpses, singing the songs of their native homes.
The tricolor flag hung from all the windows in order to prevent
house-searches. Guns, cartridge-boxes, uniforms, were piled up in the
gutters of the popular quarters. Before the doors sat women leaning
their heads upon their hands, looking fixedly before them, waiting for a
son or a husband who was never to return.
In the rich quarters the joy knew no bounds. The runaways of the two
sieges, the demonstrators of the Place Vendome, many emigrants of
Versailles, had again taken possession of the boulevards. Since the
Thursday this kid-glove populace followed the prisoners, acclaiming the
gendarmes who conducted the convoys,[202] applauding at the sight of
the blood-covered vans.[203] The civilians strove to outdo the military
in levity. Such a one, who had ventured no further than the Cafe du
Helder, recounted the taking of the Chateau d'Eau, bragged of having
shot his dozen prisoners. Elegant and joyous women, as in a pleasure
trip, betook themselves to the corpses, and, to enjoy the sight of the
valorous dead, with the ends of sunshades raised their last coverings.
"Inhabitants of Paris," said MacMahon on the 28th at mid-day, "Paris is
delivered! To-day the struggle is over. Order, labour, security are
about to revive."
"Paris delivered" was parcelled into four commands under the orders of
General Vinoy, Ladmirault, Cissey, Douay, and once more placed under the
regime of the state of siege raised by the Commune. There was no longer
any government at Paris than the army which massacred Paris. The
passers-by were constrained to demolish the barricades, and any sign of
impatience brought with it an arrest, any imprecation death. It was
placarded that any one in the possession of arms would immediately be
sent before a court-martial; that any house from which shots were fired
would be given over to summary execution. All public places were closed
at eleven o'clock. Henceforth officers in uniform alone could circulate
freely. Mounted patrols thronged the streets. Entrance into the town
became difficult, to leave it impossible. The tradespeople not being
allowed to go backwards and forwards, victuals were on the point of
failing.
"The struggle over," the army transformed itself into a vast platoon of
executioners. On the Sunday more than 5,000 prisoners taken in the
neighbourhood of the Pere Lachaise were led to the prison of La
Roquette. A chief of battalion standing at the entrance surveyed the
prisoners and said, "To the right," or "To the left." Those to the left
were to be shot. Their pockets emptied, they were drawn up along a wall
and then slaughtered. Opposite the wall two or three priests bending
over their breviaries mumbled the prayers for the dying.
From the Sunday to the Monday morning in La Roquette alone more than
1,900 persons were thus murdered.[204] Blood flowed in large pools in
the gutters of the prison. The same slaughter took place at the Ecole
Militaire and the Parc Monceaux.
These were the butcheries without phrases. At other places the prisoners
were conducted before the prevotal courts, with which Paris swarmed
since the Monday. These had not sprung up at hazard, and, as has been
believed in the midst of the fury of the struggle. It was proved before
the courts-martial that the number and seats of these prevotal courts,
with their respective jurisdictions, had been appointed at Versailles
before the entry of the troops.[205] One of the most celebrated was that
of the Chatelet Theatre, where Colonel Vabre officiated. Thousands of
prisoners who were led there were first of all penned in upon the stage
and in the auditorium, under the guns of the soldiers placed in the
boxes; then, little by little, like sheep driven to the door of the
slaughter-house, from wing to wing they were pushed to the saloon,
where, round a large table, officers of the army and the honest National
Guard were seated,[206] their sabre between their legs, a cigar in their
mouth. The examination lasted a quarter of a minute. "Did you take arms?
Did you serve the Commune? Show your hands." If the resolute attitude of
a prisoner betrayed a combatant, if his face was unpleasant, without
asking for his name, his profession, without entering any note upon any
register, he was _classed_. "You?" was said to the next one, and so on
to the end of the file, without excepting the women, children, and old
men. When by a caprice a prisoner was spared, he was said to be
_ordinary_, and reserved for Versailles. No one was liberated.
The _classed_ ones were at once delivered to the executioners, who led
them into the nearest garden or court. From the Chatelet, for instance,
they were taken to the Lebau Barracks.[207] There the doors were no
sooner closed than the gendarmes fired, without even grouping their
victims before a platoon. Some, only wounded, ran along by the walls,
the gendarmes chasing and shooting at them till they fell dead. Moreau
of the Central Committee perished in one of these gangs. Surprised on
the Thursday evening in the Rue de Rivoli, he was conducted to the
Chatelet, and shot the next day. Those condemned in the prevotal court
of the Luxembourg were conducted into the garden and placed against a
terrace. There were so many victims, that the soldiers, tired out, were
obliged to rest their guns actually against the sufferers. The wall of
the terrace was covered with brains; the executioners waded through
pools of blood.
The massacre was thus carried on, methodically organised, at the Caserne
Dupleix, the Lycee Bonaparte, the Northern and Eastern Railway Stations,
the Jardin des Plantes, in many mairies and barracks, at the same time
as in the abattoirs. Large open vans came to fetch the corpses, and went
to empty them in the square or any open space in the neighbourhood.
The victims died simply, without fanfaronade.[208] Many crossed their
arms before the muskets, and themselves commanded the fire. Women and
children followed their husbands and their fathers, crying to the
soldiers, "Shoot us with them!" And they were shot. Women, till then
strangers to the struggle, were seen to come down into the streets,
exasperated by these butcheries, strike the officers, and then throw
themselves against a wall waiting for death.[209]
In June, 1848, Cavaignac had promised pardon, and he massacred. M.
Thiers had sworn by the law, and he gave the army carte-blanche. The
officers returned from Germany might now glut to their hearts' content
their wrath against that Paris which had insulted them by not
capitulating; the Bonapartists revenge on the Republicans the old
hatreds of the Empire; the boys just fresh from St. Cyr serve their
apprenticeship of insolence upon the _pekins_. A general (Cissey most
probably) gave the order to shoot M. Cernuschi, whose crime consisted in
having offered 100,000 francs for the anti-plebiscitary campaign of
1870.[210] Any individual of some popular notoriety was sure to die. Dr.
Tony Moilin, who had played no part during the Commune, but had been
implicated in several political trials during the Empire, was in a few
moments judged and condemned to death; "not," his judges condescended to
tell him, "that he had committed any act that merited death, but because
he was a chief of the Socialist party, one of those men of whom a
prudent and wise Government must rid itself when it finds a legitimate
occasion."[211] The Radicals of the Chamber, whose hatred of the Commune
had been most clearly demonstrated, did not dare to set foot in Paris
for fear of being included in the massacres.
The army, having neither police nor precise information, killed at
random. Any passer-by calling a man by a revolutionary name caused him
to be shot by soldiers eager to get the premium. At Grenelle they shot a
pseudo-Billioray,[212] notwithstanding his despairing protests; at the
Place Vendome they shot a pseudo-Brunel in the apartments of Madame
Fould. The _Gaulois_ published the recital by a military surgeon who
_knew_ Valles, and was present at his execution;[213] an eye-witness
declared he had seen Lefrancais shot on the Thursday in the Rue de la
Banque. The real Billioray was tried in the month of August; Brunel,
Valles, and Lefrancais succeeded in escaping from France. Members and
functionaries of the Commune were thus shot, and often several times
over, in the persons of individuals who resembled them more or less.
Varlin, alas! was not to escape. On Sunday, the 28th May, he was
recognised in the Rue Lafayette, and led, or rather dragged, to the foot
of the Buttes Montmartre before the commanding general. The Versaillese
sent him to be shot in the Rue des Rosiers. For an hour, a mortal hour,
Varlin was dragged through the streets of Montmartre, his hands tied
behind his back, under a shower of blows and insults. His young,
thoughtful head, that had never harboured other thoughts than of
fraternity, slashed open by the sabres, was soon but one mass of blood,
of mangled flesh, the eye protruding from the orbit. On reaching the Rue
des Rosiers, he no longer walked; he was carried. They set him down to
shoot him. The wretches dismembered his corpse with blows of the
butt-ends of their muskets.
The Mount of Martyrs has no more glorious one than Varlin. May he too be
enshrined in the great heart of the working-class! Varlin's whole life
was an example. He had quite alone, by the mere force of his will,
educated himself, giving to study the rare hours left him in the evening
after the workshop; learning not with the view to push into the
bourgeoisie, as many others, but to instruct and enfranchise the people.
He was the heart and soul of the workingmen's associations at the end of
the Empire. Indefatigable, modest, speaking little, always at the right
moment, and then enlightening a confused discussion with a word, he had
preserved that revolutionary instinct which is often blunted in educated
workmen. One of the first on the 18th March, labouring during the whole
Commune, he was at the barricades to the last. His death is all to the
honour of the workmen. It is to Varlin and to Delescluze that this
history should be dedicated, if there were room in the frontispiece for
any other name than that of Paris.
The Versaillese journalists spat on his corpse; said that some hundreds
of thousands of francs had been found on him.[214] Returned to Paris
behind the army, they followed it like jackals. Those of the
demi-monde, above all, were mad with a sanguinary hysteria. The
coalition of the 21st March was re-made. All uttered one howl against
the vanquished workmen. Far from moderating the massacre, they
encouraged it, published the names, the hiding-places of those who were
to be killed, unflagging in inventions calculated to keep up the furious
terror of the bourgeoisie. After every fusillade they cried encore.
I quote at hazard, and could quote pages: "We must make a Communard
hunt" (_Bien Public_). "Not one of the malefactors in whose hands Paris
has been for two months will be considered as a political man. They will
be treated like the brigands they are, like the most frightful monsters
ever seen in the history of humanity. Many journals speak of re-erecting
the scaffold destroyed by them, in order not even to do them the honour
of shooting them" (_Moniteur Universel_). "Come, honest people, an
effort to make an end of this democratic and international vermin"
(_Figaro_). "These men, who have killed for the sake of killing and
stealing, are taken, and we should answer, Mercy! These hideous women,
who stabbed the breast of dying officers, are taken, and we should cry,
Mercy!" (_Patrie_).[215]
To encourage the hangmen, if that were necessary, the press threw them
crowns.
"What an admirable attitude is that of our officers and soldiers!" said
the _Figaro_. "It is only to the French soldier that it is given to
recover so quickly and so well." "What an honour!" cried the _Journal
des Debats_. "Our army has avenged its disasters by an inestimable
victory."
Thus the army wreaked on Paris revenge for its defeats. Paris was an
enemy like Prussia, and all the less to be spared that the army had its
prestige to reconquer. To complete the similitude, after the victory
there was a triumph. The Romans never adjudged it after civil struggles.
M. Thiers was not ashamed, under the eye of the foreigner, before still
smoking Paris, to parade his troops in a grand review. Who then will
dare to blame the Federals for having resisted the army of Versailles as
they would have the Prussians?
And when did foreigners show such fury?[216] Death even seemed to whet
their rancour. On Sunday, the 28th, near the Mairie of the eleventh
arrondissement, about fifty prisoners had just been shot. Urged not by
an unworthy curiosity, but by the earnest desire to know the truth, we
went, at the risk of being recognised, as far as the corpses lying on
the pavement. A woman lay there, her skirts turned up; from her
ripped-up body protruded the entrails, which a marine-fusileer amused
himself by dividing with the end of his bayonet. The officers, a few
steps off, let him do this. The victors, in order to dishonor these
corpses, had placed inscriptions on their breasts, "assassin," "thief,"
"drunkard," and stuck the necks of bottles into the mouths of some of
them.
How to justify this savagery? The official reports only mention very few
deaths among the Versaillese--877 during the whole time of the
operations, from the 3rd April up to the 28th May.[217] The Versaillese
fury had then no excuse for these reprisals. When a handful of
exasperated men, to avenge thousands of their brothers, shoot
sixty-three of their most inveterate enemies[218] out of nearly 300 whom
they had in their hands, the hypocritical reaction veils its face and
protests in the name of justice. What, then, will this justice say when
those shall be judged who methodically, without any anxiety as to the
issue of the combat, and, above all, the battle over, shot 20,000
persons, of whom three-fourths had not taken part in the fight? Still
some flashes of humanity were shown by the soldiers, and some were seen
coming back from the executions their heads bowed down; but the officers
never slackened for one second in their ferocity. Even after the Sunday
they still slaughtered the prisoners, shouted "Bravo!" at the
executions. The courage of the victims they called insolence.[219] Let
them be responsible before Paris, France, the new generation, for these
deeds of infamy.
At last the smell of the carnage began to choke even the most frantic.
The pest, if not pity, was coming. Myriads of flesh-flies flew up from
the putrefied corpses. The streets were full of dead birds. The _Avenir
Liberal_, singing the praises of MacMahon's proclamations, applied the
words of Flechier: "He hides himself, but his glory finds him out." The
glory of the Turenne of 1871 betrayed him even up to the Seine.[220] In
certain streets the corpses encumbered the pathway, looking at the
passers-by from out of their dead eyes. In the Faubourg St. Antoine they
were to be seen everywhere in heaps, half white with chloride of lime.
At the Polytechnic School they occupied a space of 100 yards long and
three deep. At Passy, which was not one of the great centres of
execution, there were 1,100 near the Trocadero. These, covered over by a
thin shroud of earth, also showed their ghastly profiles. "Who does not
recollect," said the _Temps_, "even though he had seen it but one
moment, the square, no, the charnel of the Tour St. Jacques? From the
midst of this moist soil, recently turned up by the spade, here and
there look out heads, arms, feet, and hands. The profiles of corpses,
dressed in the uniform of National Guards, were seen impressed against
the ground. It was hideous. A decayed, sickening odour arose from this
garden, and occasionally at some places it became fetid." The rain and
heat having precipitated the putrefaction, the swollen bodies
reappeared. The glory of MacMahon displayed itself too well. The
journals were taking fright. "These wretches," said one of them, "who
have done us so much harm during their lives, must not be allowed to do
so still after their death." And those that had instigated the massacre
cried "Enough!"
"Let us not kill any more," said the _Paris Journal_ of the 2nd June,
"even the assassins, even the incendiaries. Let us not kill any more. It
is not their pardon we ask for, but a respite." "Enough executions,
enough blood, enough victims," said the _Nationale_ of the 1st June. And
the _Opinion Nationale_ of the same day: "A serious examination of the
accused is imperative. One would like to see only the really guilty
die."
The executions abated, and the sweeping off began. Carriages of all
kinds, vans, omnibuses, came to pick up the corpses and traversed the
town. Since the great pests of London and Marseilles, such cart-loads of
human flesh had not been seen. These exhumations proved that a great
number of people had been buried alive. Imperfectly shot, and thrown
with the heaps of dead into the common grave, they had eaten earth, and
showed the contortions of their violent agony. Certain corpses were
taken up in pieces. It was necessary to shut them as soon as possible
into closed waggons, and to take them with the utmost speed to the
cemeteries, where immense graves of lime swallowed up these putrid
masses.
The cemeteries of Paris absorbed all they could. The victims, placed
side by side, without any other covering than their clothes, filled
enormous ditches at the Pere Lachaise, Montmartre, Mont-Parnasse, where
the people in pious remembrance will annually come as pilgrims. Others,
more unfortunate, were carried out of the town. At Charonne, Bagnolet,
Bicetre, &c., the trenches dug during the first siege were utilised.
"There nothing is to be feared of the cadaverous emanations," said _La
Liberte_ "an impure blood will water the soil of the labourer,
fecundating it. The deceased delegate at war will be able to pass a
review of his faithful followers at the hour of midnight; the watchword
will be _Incendiarism and assassination_." Women by the side of the
lugubrious trench endeavoured to recognise these remains. The police
waited that their grief should betray them, in order to arrest those
"females of insurgents."
The burying of such a large number of corpses soon became too difficult,
and they were burnt in the casemates of the fortifications; but for want
of draught the combustion was incomplete, and the bodies were reduced to
a pulp. At the Buttes Chaumont the corpses, piled up in enormous heaps,
inundated with petroleum, were burnt in the open air.
The wholesale massacres lasted up to the first days of June,[221] and
the summary executions up to the middle of that month. For a long time
mysterious dramas were enacted in the Bois de Boulogne.[222] Never will
the exact number of the victims of the Bloody Week be known. The chief
of military justice admitted 17,000 shot;[223] the municipal council of
Paris paid the expenses of burial of 17,000 corpses; but a great number
were killed out of Paris or burnt. There is no exaggeration in saying
20,000 at least.
Many battlefields have numbered more dead, but these at least had fallen
in the fury of the combat. The century has not witnessed such a
slaughtering after the battle; there is nothing to equal it in the
history of our civil struggles. St. Bartholomew's Day, June, 1848, the
2nd December, would form but an episode of the massacres of May. Even
the great executioners of Rome and modern times pale before the Duke of
Magenta. The hecatombs of the Asiatic victors, the fetes of Dahomey
alone could give some idea of this butchery of proletarians.
Such was the repression "by the laws, with the laws." And during these
atrocities of incomparably worse than Bulgarian type, the bourgeoisie,
raising to heaven its bloody hands, undertook to incite the whole world
against this people, who, after two months of domination and the
massacre of thousands of their own, had shed the blood of sixty-three
prisoners.
All social powers covered the death-rattle of the victims by their
applause. The priests, those great consecrators of assassination,
celebrated the victory in a solemn service, at which the entire Assembly
assisted. The reign of the _Gesu_ was about to commence.
FOOTNOTES:
[202] In the Boulevard des Italiens women kissed the boots of the
mounted officers who escorted the convoys. A journalist, Francisque
Sarcey, wrote: "With what serene joy the eye rested on the loyal faces
of those brave gendarmes, who marched with a sprightly step by the sides
of the hideous column, forming a martial and severe framework!"
[203] Appendix XXII.
[204] Appendix XXIII.
[205] Appendix XXIV.
[206] Later on all the names will be known. Let us cite from amongst a
hundred. At the Mairie of the fifth arrondissement, the colonel of the
National Guard, Galle; at the seventh, M. Gabriel Ossude and M. Blamont;
at the College Bonaparte, M. de Soulanges, chief of the 69th battalion;
at the Mairie of the ninth arrondissement, M. Charpentier; at L'Elysee,
M. de St. Geniez, chief of the 3rd battalion; at the Luxembourg, MM.
Gosselin, Parfait, Daniel; at the Mairie of the thirteenth
arrondissement, MM. D'Avril, chief of the 4th battalion, Lascol, chief
of the 17th Thierce; at the Chatelet, Vabre in a few hours achieved an
atrocious celebrity.
[207] Appendix XXV.
[208] Appendix XXVI.
[209] Appendix XXVII.
[210] Appendix XXVIII.
[211] Appendix XXIX.
[212] Appendix XXX.
[213] Appendix XXXI.
[214] The journal _L'Ariegeois_ has published the text of the report
addressed to the colonel of the 67th of the line by Lieutenant Sicre, a
native of the department of Ariege, who had taken part in the arrest of
Varlin, and commanded the firing-party. We extract the following
passage:--"Amongst the objects found on him were a pocket-book bearing
his name, a purse containing 284 francs 15 centimes, a penknife, a
silver watch, and a card of the man Tridon."
[215] Some foreign journals uttered the same cry. The _Naval and
Military Gazette_ of the 27th May said, "We are deliberately of opinion
that hanging is too good a death for such villains to die, and if
medical science could be advanced by operating upon the living body of
the malefactors who have crucified their country, we at least should
find no fault with the experiment."
[216] At a wineshop of the Place Voltaire we met some quite young
soldiers on the Sunday morning. They were marine-fusileers of the 1871
class. Their complexion was sallow, their movements heavy, their eyes
dull. "And there are many dead?" said we. "Ah!" answered one of them in
a stupefied tone, "we have the order to make no prisoners; it is the
general who told us" (they could not tell us the name of their general).
"If they had not lighted these fires they would not have been served
thus; but as they set on fire, we must kill" (textual). Then he went on
talking to his comrade. "This morning there" (and he pointed to the
barricade of the Mairie), "one came up in a blouse. We led him off. 'You
are not going to shoot me?' said he. 'Oh, I should think not!' We made
him pass in front of us, and then, pan, pan; and didn't he kick about
funnily!"
[217] Sixty-three officers killed and 430 wounded, 794 soldiers dead and
6024 wounded--in all, 877 dead and 6454 wounded. _Rapport du Marechal
MacMahon._
[218] This is the exact number of the hostages executed: four at Ste.
Pelagie, six at the Roquette, forty-eight at the Rue Haxo, four at the
Petite Roquette, and the banker Jecker.
[219] The Count de Mun said (_Enquete sur le 18 Mars_, vol. ii. p. 276),
"When they were shot, they all died with a kind of insolence which
cannot be attributed to a moral sentiment" (the sentiment of the
executioner, Monsieur de Mun, no doubt), "and can only be attributed to
the resolution to come to an end by death rather than live by working."
It is true that MacMahon had said (p. 28), "They seemed to think they
were defending a sacred cause, the independence of Paris. In their
intentions some of them may have been of good faith." Who is more
odious, he who believes he is killing an "insolent," or he who knows
that he is killing a martyr?
[220] "On the Seine may be seen a long trail of blood following the
course of the water and passing under the second arch from the side of
the Tuileries. This trail never stopped."--_La Liberte of the 31st May._
[221] Appendix XXXII.
[222] Appendix XXXIII.
[223] This is the figure given by General Appert in the _Enquete sur le
18 Mars_. MacMahon has said, "When men surrender their arms they must
not be shot; that was admitted. Unhappily, on certain points, the
instructions I had given were forgotten. I can, however, affirm that the
number of executions has been very restricted." Admire the logic of this
reasoning. No doubt a list has been kept of all, oblivious as to the
victims of the prevotal courts; the "loyal soldier" ignores them
completely.
Some days after the battle the _Nationale_, a Liberal-conservative paper
said, "In official circles it is estimated that 20,000 is the number of
Federals killed, shot, or dead in consequence of wounds received during
the days of May. We should not have dared to give this figure, which
seems to us considerable, if we had not got this information from
officers who have declared that this estimate is very probably
correct."