"La cause de la justice, de l'ordre, de l'humanite, de la
civilisation, a triomphe."--_M. Thiers a l'Assemblee
Nationale, 22 Mai 1871._
THE CONVOYS OF PRISONERS--THE ORANGERIE--THE ARRESTS--
SATORY--THE DENUNCIATORS--THE PRESS--THE LEFT INSULTS
THE VANQUISHED--DEMONSTRATIONS IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES.
Happy the dead! They had not to mount the Calvary of the prisoners.
From the wholesale fusillades one may guess the number of arrests. It
was a furious razzia; men, women, children, Parisians, provincials,
foreigners, a crowd of people of all sexes and all ages, of all parties
and all conditions. All the lodgers of a house, all the inhabitants of a
street, were carried off in a body. A suspicion, a word, a doubtful
attitude were sufficient to cause one to be seized by the soldiers. From
the 21st to the 30th May they thus picked up 40,000 persons.
These prisoners were formed into long chains, sometimes free, sometimes,
as in June, 1848, bound by cords so as to form only one body. Whoever
refused to walk on was pricked with the bayonet, and, if he resisted,
shot on the spot, sometimes attached to a horse's tail.[224] In front of
the churches of the rich quarters the captives were forced to kneel
down, bareheaded, amidst an infamous mob of lackeys, fashionables, and
prostitutes, crying, "Death! death! Do not go any further; shoot them
here!" At the Champs-Elysees they wanted to break the files to taste
blood.
The prisoners were sent on to Versailles. Gallifet awaited them at La
Muette. In the town he escorted the chains, halting under the windows
of the aristocratic clubs in order to earn plaudits and hurrahs. At the
gates of Paris he levied his tithe, walked past the ranks, and, with his
look of a famished wolf, "You seem intelligent," said he to some one;
"step out of the ranks." "You have a watch," said he to another; "you
must have been a functionary of the Commune," and he placed him apart.
On the 26th, in one single convoy, he chose eighty-three men and three
women, made them draw up along the talus of the fortifications and had
them shot.[225] Then he said to their comrades, "My name is Gallifet.
Your journals in Paris had sullied me enough. I take my revenge." On
Sunday, the 28th, he said, "Let those who have white hairs step out from
the ranks." One hundred and eleven captives advanced. "You," continued
Gallifet, "you have seen June, 1848; you are more culpable than the
others," and he had their corpses thrown over into the fortifications.
This purgation over, the convoys entered upon the route to Versailles,
pressed between two files of cavalry. It looked like the population of a
city dragged away by fierce hordes. Lads, grey-bearded men, soldiers,
dandies, all and every condition; the most delicate and the most rude
confounded in the same vortex. Many women, some with manacles on their
hands; such a one with her baby, who pressed its mother's neck with its
frightened little hands; another, her arm broken, her chemisette stained
with blood; another depressed, clinging to the arm of her more vigorous
neighbour; another in a statuesque attitude, defying pain and insults;
always that woman of the people, who, after having carried the bread to
the trenches and given consolation to the dying, hopeless--
"Decouragee de mettre au jour des malheureux,"
longed for liberating death.
Their attitude, which inspired foreign journals with admiration,[226]
exasperated the Versaillese ferocity. "In seeing the convoys of
insurgent women," said the _Figaro_, "one feels in spite of oneself a
kind of pity; but one is reassured by thinking that all the brothels of
the capital have been thrown open by the National Guards, who patronised
them, and that the majority of these ladies were inhabitants of these
establishments."
Panting, covered with filth, idiotic with fatigue, hunger, and thirst,
burnt by the sun, the convoys dragged themselves along for hours in the
overheated dust of the roads, harassed by the cries, the blows from the
mounted chasseurs. The Prussians had not thus cruelly treated these
soldiers when, prisoners themselves some months before, they had been
led away from Sedan or Metz. The captives who fell were sometimes shot,
sometimes they were only thrown into the carts that followed.
At the entry into Versailles the crowd awaited them, always the _elite_
of French society, deputies, functionaries, priests, officers, women of
all sorts. The fury of the 4th April and the preceding convoys were as
much surpassed as the sea swells at the equinoctial tide. The Avenues de
Paris and De St. Cloud were lined by savages, who followed the convoys
with vociferations, blows, covered them with filth and broken pieces of
bottle. "One sees," said the Liberal-Conservative newspaper, the
_Siecle_, of the 30th May, "women, not prostitutes, but elegant ladies,
insult the prisoners on their passage, and even strike them with their
sunshades." Woe to whoever did not insult the vanquished! Woe to him who
allowed a movement of commiseration to escape him! He was at once
seized, led to the post,[227] or else simply forced into the convoy.
Frightful retrogradation of human nature, all the more hideous that it
contrasted with the elegance of the costume! Prussian officers came from
St. Denis once more to see what governing classes they had had to oppose
them.
The first convoys were promenaded about as a spectacle in the streets of
Versailles; others were stationed for hours at the torrid Place d'Armes,
a few steps from the large trees, whose shade was refused them. The
prisoners were then distributed in four depots, the cellars of the
Grandes-Ecuries, the Orangerie of the castle, the docks of Satory, and
the maneges of the Ecole de St. Cyr. Into these damp, nauseous cellars,
where light and air only penetrated by some narrow openings, men,
children, of whom some were not more than ten years old, were crowded
without straw during the first days. When they did get some, it was soon
reduced to mere dung. No water to wash with; no means of changing their
rags, as the relations who brought linen were brutally sent back. Twice
a day, in a trough, they got a yellowish liquid, a porridge. The
gendarmes sold tobacco at exorbitant prices, and confiscated it in order
to sell it over again. There were no doctors. Gangrene attacked the
wounded; ophthalmia broke out; deliriousness became chronic. In the
night were heard the shrieks of the fever-stricken and the mad.
Opposite, the gendarmes remained impassive, their guns loaded.
Even these horrors were outdone by the Fosse-aux-Lions, a vault without
air, absolutely dark, the antechamber of the tomb, under the large red
marble staircase of the terrace. Whoever was noted as dangerous, or
whoever had simply displeased the corporal, was thrown into it. The most
robust could only bear up against it a few days. On leaving it, giddy,
the mind a blank, dazzled by the broad daylight, they swooned. Happy he
who met the look of his wife. The wives of the captives pressed against
the outer rails of the Orangerie, striving to distinguish some one
amidst the dimly seen herd. They tore their hair, implored the
gendarmes, who thrust them back, struck them, called them infamous
names.
The hell of open daylight was the docks of the plateau of Satory, a vast
parallelogram enclosed by walls. The soil is clayey, and the least rain
soaks it. The first arrivals were placed within the buildings, which
could contain about thirteen hundred persons, the others remained
outside, bareheaded, for their hats had been knocked off at Paris or at
Versailles. The gendarmes were on duty, being more reliable, more
hardened than the soldiers.
On the Thursday evening at eight o'clock a convoy, composed chiefly of
women, arrived at the dock. "Many of us," one of them has reported to
me, the wife of a _chef-de-legion_, "had died on the way; we had had
nothing since morning.
"It was still daylight. We saw a great multitude of prisoners. The women
were apart in a hut at the entrance. We joined them.
"We were told that there was a pond, and, dying of thirst, we rushed
thither. The first who drank uttered a loud cry, vomited. 'Oh, the
wretches! they make us drink the blood of our own people.' For since
evening the wounded went there to bathe their wounds; but thirst
tormented us so cruelly, that some had the courage to rinse out their
mouths with this bloody water.
"The hut was already full, and we were made to lie on the earth in
groups of about 200. An officer came and said to us, 'Vile creatures!
listen to the order I give. Gendarmes, the first who moves, fire on
these----!'
"At ten o'clock we heard reports quite near. We jumped up. 'Lie down,
wretches!' cried the gendarmes, taking aim at us. It was some prisoners
being shot a few steps from us. We thought the balls would pass through
our heads. The gendarmes who had just been shooting came to relieve our
guardians. We remained the whole night watched by men heated with
carnage. They grumbled at those who writhed with terror and cold. 'Do
not be impatient; your turn is coming.' At daybreak we saw the dead. The
gendarmes said to each other, 'Oh! isn't this a jolly vintage?'
"In the evening the prisoners heard a sound of spades and hammers in the
wall of the south. The fusillades, the menaces had maddened them. They
awaited death from all sides and in every shape; they thought that this
time they were going to be blown up. Holes opened and mitrailleuses
appeared, some of which were discharged."[228]
On Friday evening a storm of several hours broke out above the camp. The
prisoners were forced, on pain of being shot, to lie down all night in
the mud. About twenty died of cold.
The camp of Satory soon became the Longchamp of Versailles high life.
Captain Aubrey did the honors with the ladies, the deputies, the
literary men, showing them his subjects grovelling in the mud, devouring
a few biscuits, taking tumblers of water from the pond into which the
gendarmes stood on no ceremony in easing themselves. Some, going mad,
dashed their heads against the walls; others howled, tearing their
beards and hair. A fetid cloud arose from this living mass of rags and
horrors. "There are," said the _Independence Francaise_, "several
thousands of people poisoned with dirt and vermin spreading infection a
kilometre around. Cannon are levelled at these wretches penned up like
wild beasts. The inhabitants of Paris are afraid of the epidemic
resulting from the burying of the insurgents killed in the town. Those
whom the _Officiel___ of Paris called the rurals are much more afraid of
the epidemic resulting from the presence of the live insurgents at
Satory."
Those are the honest people of Versailles, who had just caused the
triumph of "the cause of justice, order, humanity, and civilisation."
How good and humane, despite the bombardment and the sufferings of the
siege, those _brigands_ of Paris had been, above all by the side of
these _honest people_! Who ever ill-treated a prisoner in the Paris of
the Commune? What woman perished or was insulted? What obscure corner of
the Parisian prisons had hidden a single one of the thousand tortures
which displayed themselves in broad daylight at Versailles?
From the 24th May to the first days of June the convoys did not cease
flowing into those depths. The arrests went on in large hauls by day and
night. The sergents-de-ville accompanied the soldiers, and, under the
pretext of perquisitions, forced the locks, appropriating objects of
value. Several officers were in the sequel condemned for the
embezzlement of objects seized.[229] They arrested not only the persons
compromised in the late affairs, those who were denounced by their
uniforms, or documents found in the mairies and at the War Office, but
whoever was known for his republican opinions. They arrested, too, the
purveyors of the Commune, and even the musicians, who had never crossed
the ramparts. The ambulance attendants shared the same fate. And yet
during the siege a delegate of the Commune, having inspected the
ambulances of the press, had said to the personnel, "I am aware that
most of you are the friends of the Government of Versailles, but I hope
you may live long enough to recognise your mistake. I do not trouble
myself to know whether the lancets at the service of the wounded are
royalist or republican. I see that you do your task worthily. I thank
you for it. I shall report it to the Commune."
Some poor wretches had taken refuge in the Catacombs. They were hunted
by torchlight. The police agents, assisted by dogs, fired at every
suspicious shadow. Battues were organised in the forests near Paris. The
police watched all the stations, all the ports of France. Passports had
to be renewed and vised at Versailles. The masters of boats were under
supervision. On the 26th Jules Favre had solemnly asked the foreign
powers for the extradition of the fugitives, under the pretext that the
battle of the streets was not a political act.
Extradition flourished at Paris. Fear closed all doors. No shelter was
there for the fugitives. Few friends were left--no comrades. Everywhere
pitiless refusals or denunciations. Doctors renewed the infamies of
1834, and delivered up the wounded.[230] Every cowardly instinct rose to
the surface, and Paris disclosed sloughs of infamy whose existence she
had not suspected even under the Empire. The honest people, masters of
the streets, had their rivals, their creditors, arrested as Communards,
and formed committees of inquiry in their arrondissements. The Commune
had rejected the denunciators; the police of order received them with
open arms. The denunciations rose to the fabulous height of
399,823,[231] of which a twentieth at most were signed.
A very considerable part of these denunciations issued from the press.
For several weeks it did not cease stirring the rage and panic of the
bourgeoisie. M. Thiers, re-editing one of the absurdities of June, 1848,
in a bulletin spoke of "poisonous liquids collected in order to poison
the soldiers." All the inventions of that time were again taken up,
appropriated to the hour, and horribly amplified; chambers in the
sewers with wires all prepared, 8,000 petroleuses enrolled, houses
marked with a stamp for burning, pumps, injectors, eggs filled with
petroleum, poisoned balls, roasted gendarmes, hanged sailors, violated
women, prostitutes requisitioned, endless thefts--all was printed, and
the gulls believed all. Some journals had the speciality of false orders
for arson;[232] false autographs, of which the originals could never be
produced, but which were to be admitted as positive evidence by the
courts-martial and honest historians. When it fancied the fury of the
bourgeoisie was flagging, the press fanned it again, each journal
outbidding the other in villainy. "Paris, we know," said the _Bien
Public_, "asks for nothing better than to go to sleep again; though we
should trouble her, we will awaken her." And on the 8th June the
_Figaro_ still drew up plans of carnage.[233] The revolutionary writer
who will take the pains to collect in a volume extracts from the
reactionary press of May and June, 1871, from the Parliamentary
inquiries, the bourgeois pamphlets, and histories of the Commune--a
mixture as monstrous as that of the witches' cauldron--will do more for
the edification and the future justice of the people than a whole band
of mouthing agitators.
There were, to French honour, some traits of generosity, and even
heroism, amidst this epidemic of cowardice. Vermorel, wounded, was
taken in by the wife of a concierge, who succeeded for a few hours in
passing him off for her son. The mother of a Versaillese soldier gave
several members of the Council of the Commune an asylum. A great number
of insurgents were saved by unknown people; and yet it was during the
first days a matter of death, afterwards of transportation, to shelter
the vanquished. The women once again showed their great heart.
The average of arrests kept up in June and July to a hundred a day. At
Belleville, Menilmontant, in the thirteenth arrondissement, in certain
streets, there were only old women left. The Versaillese, in their lying
returns, have admitted 38,568 prisoners,[234] amongst whom were 1,058
women and 651 children, of whom forty-seven were thirteen years of age,
twenty-one twelve, four ten, and one seven,[235] as though they had by
some secret method counted the herds whom they fed at the troughs. The
number of those arrested very probably reached 50,000 men.
The errors were numberless. Some women of that beau monde who went with
dilated nostrils to contemplate the corpses of the Federals were
included in the razzias, and led off to Satory, where, their clothes in
rags, devoured by vermin, they figured very well as the imaginary
petroleuses of their journals.
Thousands of individuals were obliged to hide; thousands gained the
frontier. An idea of the general losses may be gathered from the fact
that at the complementary elections of July there were 100,000 less
electors than in February.[236] Parisian industry was crushed by it.
Most of the workmen who gave this branch of manufacture its artistic
cachet perished, were arrested, or emigrated in masses. In the month of
October the municipal council proved in an official report that certain
industries were obliged to refuse orders for want of hands.
The savageness of the searches, the number of the arrests, joined to the
despair of the defeat, tore from this town--bled to the last drop of
blood--some supreme convulsions. At Belleville, at Montmartre, in the
thirteenth arrondissement, shots were fired from houses. At the Cafe du
Helder, in the Rue de Rennes, the Rue de la Paix, Place de la Madeleine,
soldiers and officers fell, struck by invisible hands; near the
Pepiniere Barracks a general was shot at. The Versaillese journals
wondered, with naive impudence, that popular fury was not calmed, and
could not understand "what reason, even the most futile, of hatred one
could have for soldiers who had the most inoffensive look in the world"
(_La Cloche_).
The Left followed to the very end the line it had traced out for itself
on the 19th March. Having prevented the provinces from coming to the
rescue of Paris and voted its thanks to the army, it also joined its
maledictions to those of the rurals. Louis Blanc, who in 1877 was to
defend the red flag, wrote to the _Figaro_ to stigmatise the vanquished,
to bow down before their judges, and declare "the public indignation
legitimate."[237] This Extreme Left, which five years after grew
enthusiastic for the amnesty, would not hear the death-groans of the
20,000 shot, nor even, though but a hundred yards from them, the shrieks
from the Orangerie. In June, 1848, the sombre imprecation of Lammennais
fell upon the massacres, and Pierre Leroux defended the insurgents. The
great philosophers of the Rural Assembly, Catholic or Positivist, were
all one against the workingmen. Gambetta, delighted at being rid of the
Socialists, hurried back from St. Sebastien, and in a solemn speech at
Bordeaux declared that the Government which had been able to crush Paris
"had even by that proved itself legitimate."
There were some men of courage in the provinces. The _Droits de l'Homme_
of Montpellier, the _Emancipation_ of Toulouse, the _National du
Loiret_, and several advanced journals recounted the assassinations of
the conquerors. Most of these journals were prosecuted and suppressed.
Some movements took place; a commencement of riots at Pamiers (Ariege)
and at Voiron (Isere). At Lyons the army was confined in its barracks,
and the prefect, Valentin, had the town closed in order to arrest the
fugitives of Paris. There were arrests at Bordeaux.
At Brussels Victor Hugo protested against the declaration of the Belgian
government, which promised to deliver up the fugitives. Louis Blanc and
Schoelcher wrote him a letter full of blame, and his house was stoned
by a fashionable mob. Bebel in the German Parliament and Whalley in the
House of Commons denounced the Versaillese fury. Garcia Lopez said from
the tribune of the Cortes, "We admire this great revolution, which no
one can appreciate justly to-day."
The workingmen of foreign countries solemnised the obsequies of their
brothers of Paris. At London, Brussels, Zurich, Geneva, Leipzig, and
Berlin, monster meetings proclaimed themselves in accord with the
Commune, devoted the slaughterers to universal execration, and declared
accomplices of these crimes the Governments which had not made any
remonstrances. All the Socialist journals glorified the struggle of the
vanquished. The great voice of the International recounted their effort
in an eloquent address,[238] and confided their memory to the workmen of
the whole world.
On the triumphal entry of Moltke at the head of the victorious Prussian
army into Berlin, the workmen received them with hurrahs for the
Commune, and at several places the people were charged by the cavalry.
FOOTNOTES:
[224] Appendix XXXIV.
[225] This fact and the following one are not only attested by the
prisoners, but by the journals of order and the correspondents of the
conservative foreign newspapers speaking as eye-witnesses. Appendix
XXXV.
[226] "I observed a slender figure walking alone, in the costume of the
National Guard, with long fair hair floating over the shoulders, a
bright blue eye, and a handsome, bold young face, that seemed to know
neither shame nor fear. When the spectators detected at a glance that
this seeming young National Guardsman was a woman, their indignation
found vent in strong language; but the only response of the victim was
to glare right and left with heightened colour and flashing eyes. If the
French nation were composed only of Frenchwomen, what a terrible nation
it would be!"--_The Times, 29th May, 1871._
[227] They treated in this manner M. Ratisbonne, he who in the _Debats_
had just written, "What an inestimable victory!"
[228] These facts are borne witness to by several conservative journals,
among others the _Siecle_. We cite this paper in preference to the
Figarist journals, which might be suspected of having amplified the
glory of the army. "The day before yesterday there has been (at Satory)
an attempt at revolt. The soldiers began by aiming at the most mutinous;
but as this procedure did not seem sufficiently expeditious,
mitrailleuses were advanced, which fired into the crowd. Order was
re-established, but at what a price!" (Versailles, 27th May). "Towards
four o'clock in the morning a new rising took place amongst the
prisoners of Satory. There were several volleys of mitrailleuses, and,
as you may suppose, the number of dead and wounded must have been rather
considerable." (Versailles, May 28).
[229] Among others, one Thierce, lieutenant-colonel, who had presided at
the executions in the thirteenth arrondissement.
[230] At the Beaujon Hospital there was a wounded Federal whom all the
staff wanted to save. Only one person refused, the doctor Delbeau,
head-surgeon and professor in the faculty of medicine. He sent up the
soldiers of the neighbouring post and had the poor fellow taken away. Be
it said to the honour of the students that they forced him some months
after to suspend his lectures.
[231] The numbers of the registers where the denunciations were
inscribed enabled the proof of this statistic of infamy, published by
the spy journals of the time, to be ascertained.
[232] One of these orders, which commanded Milliere to set fire to the
left bank, was signed Billioray, who had fled on the 21st, and
Dombrowski, already dead at this time.
[233] "GENERAL ENTERPRISE OF PARISIAN SWEEPING.--The repression must
equal the crime. These are the means by which this result will be
arrived at. The members of the Commune, the chiefs of the insurrection,
the members of the committees, courts-martial and revolutionary
tribunals, the foreign generals and officers, the deserters, the
assassins of Montmartre, La Roquette, and Mazas, the _petroleurs_ and
the _petroleuses_, the ticket-of-leave men, are to be shot. Martial law
must be applied in all its rigour to the journalists who have placed the
torch and the chassepot in the hands of fanatic imbeciles. A part of
these measures have already been put into practice. Our soldiers have
simplified the work of the courts-martial of Versailles by shooting on
the spot; but it must not be overlooked that a great many culprits have
escaped chastisement."--_Le Figaro of the 8th June._
[234] Report of the General Appert, table i. pp. 215, 262.
[235] Report of the Captain Guichard, _Enquete sur le 18 Mars_, vol.
iii. p. 313.
[236] The _Journal des Debats_ estimated that "the losses by the party
of the insurrection in dead and prisoners reached the figure of 100,000
individuals."
[237] In the _Figaro_ of the 8th June--the same number which contained
the plan of massacre--might be read, "We have received the following
letter from M. Louis Blanc:--
"'To Monsieur Philippe Gille.
"'SIR,--I read in an article signed by you that the honest Republican
party has the right to expect a protestation from me against the
abominations of which Paris has been the theatre and the victim. This
observation surprises me.
"'What honest man could, without lacking self-respect, believe himself
obliged to warn the public that incendiarism, pillage, and assassination
horrify him? I esteem myself enough to judge that, on my part, a
declaration is perfectly useless.
"'When, too, public indignation is so legitimate and so great, are you
aware, sir, that in the tribunals the silence of the assistants is
obligatory; so true is it that the duty of everybody is to remain silent
when the judge is about to speak. Receive, sir, the assurance of my
regard.
LOUIS BLANC.'"
[238] The Civil War in France. Address of the Council of the
International Working-Men's Association.