"La conciliation, c'est l'ange qui plane apres
l'orage."--_Dufaure a l'Assemblee Nationale, 26 Avril
1871._
THE PONTOONS--THE FORTS--THE PRISONS--THE FIRST TRIALS.
The human lakes of Versailles and Satory were soon overflowing. From the
first days of June the prisoners were filed off to the seaports and
crowded into cattle-waggons, the awnings of which, hermetically closed,
let in no breath of air. In a corner was a heap of biscuits; but
themselves thrown upon this heap, the prisoners had soon reduced it to
mere crumbs. For twenty-four hours, and sometimes thirty-two hours, they
remained without anything to drink. They fought in this throng for a
little air, a little room. Some, maddened, flung themselves upon their
comrades.[239] One day at La Ferte-Bernard cries were uttered in a
waggon. The chief of the escort stopped the convoy; the
sergents-de-ville discharged their revolvers through the awning. Silence
ensued, and the rolling coffins set out again at full speed.
From the month of June to the month of September 28,000 prisoners were
thus thrown into the harbours, the forts and the oceanic isles, from
Cherbourg to the Gironde. Twenty-five pontoons took in 20,000, the forts
and isles 8,087.
On the pontoons tortures were inflicted by regulation. The traditions
of June and of December were religiously observed with the victims of
1871. The prisoners, penned in cages made of wooden planks and iron
bars, received only a dim light through the nailed down port-holes.
Ventilation there was none. From the first hours the exhalations were
unbearable. The sentinels walked up and down in this menagerie with the
order to fire at the slightest alarm. Cannon charged with grapeshot
overlooked the batteries. There were neither hammocks nor blankets, and
for all food some biscuits, bread, and haricots, but no wine or tobacco.
The inhabitants of Brest and Cherbourg having sent some provisions and
little luxuries, the officers sent them back.
This cruelty relaxed somewhat after a time. The prisoners received a
hammock for every two, some shirts, some blouses, and now and then some
wine. They were allowed to wash, to come on to the deck to snatch a
little fresh air. The sailors showed some humanity, but the
marine-fusileers were always the same bandits as in the days of May, and
the crew was often obliged to tear the prisoners from them.
The regime of the pontoons varied according to the officers. At Brest
the second officer, commander of the _Ville de Lyon_, forbade the
insulting of the prisoners; while the master-at-arms of the _Breslau_
treated them like convicts. At Cherbourg one of the lieutenants of the
_Tage_, Clemenceau, was ferocious. The commander of the _Bayard_ turned
his vessel into a diminutive Orangerie. This ship had witnessed the most
abominable acts perhaps that have sullied the history of the French
navy. Absolute silence was the rule on board. As soon as any one spoke
in the cages, the sentry menaced and several times shot. For a
complaint, or mere forgetfulness of a rule, the prisoners were tied to
the bars of their cages by the ankles and wrists.[240]
The dungeons on shore were as terrible as the pontoons. At Quelern as
many as forty prisoners were shut up in the same casemate. The lower
ones were deadly. The cesspools emptied into them, and in the morning
the faecal matter covered the floor some two inches deep. By the side of
these were salubrious disengaged lodgments, but they would not remove
the prisoners thither. One day M. Jules Simon came, thought that his
former electors were looking but poorly, and decided that recourse must
be taken to severity. Elisee Reclus had opened a school, and tried to
raise out of their ignorance a hundred and fifty-one prisoners who could
neither read nor write. The Minister of Public Education had the classes
stopped, and had the small library, which the prisoners had got together
by making the greatest sacrifices, closed.
The prisoners of the forts, like those of the pontoons, were fed on
biscuits and bacon; later on, soup and broth were added on Sundays;
knives and forks were forbidden; it cost several days' struggle to get
spoons. The profit of the sutler, which, according to the list of
charges, ought to be limited to a tenth, reached as much as five hundred
per cent.
At the Fort Boyard men and women were packed into the same enclosure,
separated only by a screen. The women were forced to perform their
ablutions under the eyes of the sentinels. Sometimes their husbands were
in the neighbouring compartment. "We noticed," wrote a prisoner, "a
young and beautiful woman, twenty years old, who fainted every time she
was forced to undress."[241]
According to much evidence which we have received, the most cruel prison
was that of St. Marcouf. The prisoners remained there for over six
months, deprived of air, light, and tobacco, forbidden to speak, having
for their only nourishment the crumbs of brown biscuits and rancid fat.
All were attacked with scurvy.
This continual severity got the better of the most robust constitutions;
there were in consequence 2,000 sick in the hospitals. The official
reports admit 1,179 dead out of 33,665 civil prisoners. This figure is
evidently below the truth. During the first days at Versailles a certain
number of individuals were killed, and others died without being
counted. There were no statistics before the transfer to the pontoons.
There is no exaggeration in saying that 2,000 prisoners died while in
the hands of the Versaillese. A great number perished afterwards of
anaemia, and of maladies contracted during their captivity.
Some idea of the tortures of the pontoons and the forts, far from the
surveillance of public opinion, may be gathered from those that were
openly displayed at Versailles,[242] under the eyes of the Government,
the Chamber, and the Radicals. Colonel Gaillard, chief of military
justice, had said to the soldiers who guarded the prisoners of the
Chantiers, "As soon as you see any one move, raising their arms, fire;
it is I who give you the order."
At the Grenier d'Abondance of the Western Railway there were eight
hundred women. For weeks and weeks they slept on straw, were unable to
change their linen. At the slightest noise, a quarrel, the guards threw
themselves upon them, struck them, more especially on the breasts.
Charles Mercereau, a former Cent-Garde, the governor of this sink, had
those that displeased him tied down and then beat them with his cane. He
led about over his dominions the ladies of Versailles, covetous of
petroleuses, and before them said to his victims, "Come, hussies, cast
down your eyes." And indeed that was the least our Federal women could
do before these honest persons.
Prostitutes, carried off in the razzias, and carefully kept there in
order to spy upon the other prisoners, publicly abandoned themselves to
the guardians. The protests of the women of the Commune were punished by
blows with cords. With a refinement of infamy, the Versaillese wished to
bow down these valiant women to the level of the others. All the
prisoners were subjected to inspection.
Dignity and outraged nature revenged themselves by terrible crises.
"Where is my father? Where my husband? and my son? What! alone, quite
alone, and all these cowards against me! I, the mother, the laborious
wife, subjected to the whip, insult, and sullied by these unclean hands
for having defended liberty!" Many went mad. All passed through their
hours of madness. Those who were pregnant miscarried or brought forth
still-born children.
The priests were no more wanting in the prisons than at the fusillades.
The chaplain of Richemont said to the prisoners, "I know that I am here
in a forest of Bondy,[243] but my duty," &c. On the day of St. Magdalene
the Bishop of Algiers, making a delicate allusion to the saint of the
day, said to them, "That they were all Magdalenes, but not repentant;
that Magdalene had neither burned nor assassinated;" and uttering other
evangelical amenities.
The children were shut up in a part of the women's prison, and were just
as brutally treated. A corporal, the secretary of Mercereau, kicked open
the stomach of a boy; another received the bastinado, and lingered for a
long time at the infirmary. The son of Ranvier, twelve years old, was
cruelly beaten for refusing to betray the hiding-place of his father.
All these unfortunate prisoners of the pontoons, the forts, and the
houses of correction were for several months devoured by vermin before
their cases were inquired into. The Versaillese Moloch held more victims
than he could digest. After the first days of June he disgorged 1,090
persons reclaimed by the reactionists. But how to draw up indictments
against 36,000 prisoners? It was all very well for Dufaure to let loose
all the police agents of the Empire into the prisons; in the month of
August only 4,000 prisoners had been interrogated.
Still it was necessary to satiate the rage of the bourgeoisie, which
wanted a sensational trial. A few celebrities who had escaped the
massacre had been taken, some members of the Council of the Commune, of
the Central Committee, Rossel, Rochefort, &c. M. Thiers and Dufaure got
up a grand performance.
This trial was to be the model one, to serve as a type for the
jurisprudence of the courts-martial, for the prisoners were to be judged
by the same soldiers who had conquered them. The old procureur and his
president applied all their pettifogging cunning to lowering the debate.
They refused the character of political men to the accused, and reduced
the insurrection to an ordinary crime, thus securing to themselves the
right of cutting short effective defences, and the advantage of
condemnations to the bagnio and to death, which the hypocritical
bourgeoisie pretends to have abolished in political cases.[244] The
third court-martial was carefully selected. The commissary chosen was
Gaveau, a low energumen, who had shown signs of mental alienation, and
had struck the prisoners in the streets of Versailles; the president,
Merlin, a colonel of engineers, one of the capitulards of Bazaine's
army; the rest an assortment of trusty Bonapartists. Sedan and Metz were
going to judge Paris.
The ceremony commenced on the 7th August, in a large hall containing two
thousand seats. Personages of rank reclined in the red velvet
arm-chairs; deputies occupied three hundred seats; the remainder
belonged to the bourgeois of note, to "honest" families, to the
aristocracy of prostitution, and to the howling press. These talking
journalists, these brilliant dresses, these smiling faces, these toyings
with fans, these gay bouquets, these opera-glasses pointed in all
directions, reminded one of the most elegant first-night performances.
The staff officers, in full uniform, smartly conducted the ladies to
their seats, not forgetting to make the indispensable bow.
All this scum boiled over when the prisoners appeared. There were
seventeen: Ferre, Assi, Jourde, Paschal Grousset, Regere, Billioray,
Courbet, Urbain, Victor Clement, Trinquet, Champy, Rastoul, Verdure,
Decamps, Parent, members of the Council of the Commune; Ferrat and
Lullier, members of the Central Committee.
Gaveau read the accusation act. This revolution was born of two plots,
that of the revolutionary party and that of the International; Paris had
risen on the 18th March, in answer to the appeal of a few scoundrels;
the Central Committee had ordered the execution of Lecomte and
Clement-Thomas; the manifestation of the Place Vendome was an unarmed
manifestation; the head-surgeon of the army had been assassinated while
making a supreme appeal to conciliation; the Commune had committed
thefts of all kinds; the implements of the nuns of Picpus were
transformed into instruments of orthopedy; the explosion of the Rapp
magazines was the work of the Commune; desirous of kindling violent
hatred of the enemy in the hearts of the Federals, Ferre had presided at
the execution of the hostages of La Roquette, set fire to the Ministry
of Finance, as was proved by the facsimile of an order written in his
hand, "_Burn Finances!_" Each one of the members of the Council of the
Commune had to answer for facts relating to his particular functions,
and collectively for all the decrees issued. This indictment, worthy of
a low police agent, communicated beforehand to M. Thiers, indeed made of
the cause a simple affair of robbery and arson.
It took up a whole sitting. The next day, Ferre, interrogated the first,
refused to answer, and laid his conclusions upon the table. "The
conclusions of the incendiary Ferre are of no moment!" cried Gaveau, and
the witnesses against him were called. Fourteen out of twenty-four
belonged to the police; the others were priests or Government employes.
An expert in handwriting, celebrated at the law-courts for his blunders,
affirmed that the order "_Burn Finances_" was certainly in Ferre's hand.
In vain the accused demanded that the signature of this order should be
compared with his, which figured very often in the jail register; that
at least the original should be produced, and not the facsimile. Gaveau
exclaimed indignantly, "Why, this is want of confidence!"
Thus set to rights from the outset as to the plot and the character of
their judges, the accused might have declined every debate; they
committed the fault of accepting it. If even they had proudly
revindicated their political character! But it was not so; some even
denied it. Almost all, confining themselves to their personal defence,
abandoned the Revolution of the 18th March, whose mandate they had
solicited or accepted. Their preoccupation for their own safety betrayed
itself by sad defections. But from the very dock of the accused the
voice of the people thus denied arose avengingly. A workman of that
brave Parisian race, the first in labour, study, and combat, a member of
the Council of the Commune, intelligent and convinced, modest in the
Council, one of the foremost in the struggle, the shoemaker Trinquet,
revindicated the honour of having fulfilled his mandate to the end. "I
was," said he, "sent to the Commune by my co-citizens; I have paid with
my person; I have been to the barricades, and I regret not having died
there; I should not to-day assist at this sad spectacle of colleagues
who, after having taken their share in the action, will no longer bear
their part of the responsibility. I am an insurgent; I do not deny it."
The examinations were drawn out with fastidious slowness during
seventeen sittings. Always the same public of soldiers, bourgeois,
courtesans, hissing the accused; the same witnesses, priests, police
agents, and functionaries; the same fury in the accusation, the same
cynicism in the tribunal, the same howling of the press. The massacres
had not glutted this. It yelled at the accused, demanded their death,
and every day dragged them through the mire of its reports.[245]
Foreign correspondents were revolted. The _Standard_, a great reviler of
the Commune, said, "Anything more scandalous than the tone of the
demi-monde press during this trial it is impossible to imagine." Some of
the accused having asked for the protection of the president, Merlin
took up the defence of the journals.
Then came the prosecutor's address to the court. Gaveau, to remain true
to his instructions, was to demonstrate that Paris had fought for six
weeks in order to enable a few individuals to steal the remainder of the
public chests, to burn some houses, and to shoot a few gendarmes. This
epauletted limb of the law overthrew as a soldier all the arguments he
built up as a magistrate. "The Commune," he said, "had acted as a
Government," and five minutes after he refused the members of the
Council of the Commune the character of political men. Passing in review
the different accused, he said of Ferre, "I should be wasting my time
and yours by discussing the numerous charges weighing upon him;" of
Jourde, "The figures he has given you are quite imaginary. I shall not
trespass upon your time by discussing them." During the battle in the
streets Jourde had received the order of the Committee of Public Safety
to remit a thousand francs to every member of the Council. About thirty
only had received this sum. Gaveau said, "They divided millions amongst
each other;" and a man of his sort must have believed this. What
sovereign has ever abandoned power without carrying off millions? He
lengthily accused Grousset of having stolen paper in order to print his
journal; another of having lived with a mistress. A coarse _lansquenet_,
incapable of understanding that the more he lowered the men the greater
he made this Revolution, so vital despite all defections and
incapacities.
The audience emphasised this accusation with frantic applause. At the
conclusion there were calls as in a theatre. Merlin gave Ferre's
advocate permission to speak, but Ferre declared he wished to defend
himself, and commenced reading:--
After the conclusion of the treaty of peace consequent upon the shameful
capitulation of Paris, the Republic was in danger, the men who had
succeeded the Empire fallen in the midst of mire and blood"----
_Merlin._ Fallen in the midst of mire and blood! Here I must stop you.
Was not your Government in the same situation?
_Ferre._ "Clung to power, and, though overwhelmed by public contempt,
they prepared in the dark a coup-d'etat; they persisted in refusing
Paris the election of her municipal council"----
_Gaveau._ This is not true.
_Merlin._ What you are saying, Ferre, is false. Continue, but at the
third time I shall stop you.
_Ferre._ "The honest and sincere journals were suppressed, the best
patriots condemned to death"----
_Gaveau._ The prisoner cannot go on reading this. I shall ask for the
application of the law.
_Ferre._ "The Royalists were preparing for the partition of France. At
last, in the night of the 18th March, they believed themselves ready,
and attempted to disarm the National Guard, and the wholesale arrest of
Republicans"----
_Merlin._ Come, sit down. I allow your advocate to speak.
The advocate of Ferre demanded that his client might be allowed to read
the last sentences of his declaration, and Merlin gave way.
_Ferre._ "A member of the Commune, I am in the hands of its victors.
They want my head; they may take it. I will never save my life by
cowardice. Free I have lived, so I will die. I add but one word. Fortune
is capricious; I confide to the future the care of my memory and my
revenge."
_Merlin._ The memory of an assassin!
_Gaveau._ It is to the bagnio that such manifestoes should be sent.
_Merlin._ All this does not answer to the acts for which you are here.
_Ferre._ This means that I accept the fate that is in store for me.
During this duel between Merlin and Ferre the hall had remained silent.
Ferocious hisses burst forth when Ferre concluded. The president was
obliged to raise the sitting, and the judges were going out when a
barrister demanded that notice should be taken for the defence that the
president had called Ferre "assassin."
The hisses of the audience answered. The advocate indignantly turned to
the tribunal, to the seats of the press, to the public. Cries of rage
arose from all corners of the hall, drowning his voice for several
minutes. Merlin, who was radiant, at last obtained silence, and answered
cavalierly, "I acknowledge that I made use of the expression of which
the advocate spoke. The court takes notice of your conclusions."
The day before, as a barrister remarked to him, "We are all answerable,
not to the public opinion of to-day, but to history, which will judge
us;" Merlin had cynically answered, "History! At that epoch we shall no
longer be here!" The French bourgeoisie had found its Jeffries.
Early the next day the hall was crowded. The curiosity of the public,
the anxiety of the judges, were extreme. Gaveau, in order to accuse his
adversaries of all crimes at once, had for two days talked politics,
history, socialism. It would have sufficed to answer each one of his
arguments, in order to give the cause that political character which he
denied it, if one of the prisoners were at last to rouse up, and, less
careful of his person than of the Commune, follow up the accusation step
by step, oppose to the grotesque theories of conspiracy the eternal
provocation of the privileged classes; describe Paris offering herself
to the Government of National Defence, betrayed by it, then attacked by
Versailles, abandoned; the proletarians reorganising all the services of
this great city, and in a state of war, surrounded by treason, governing
for two months without police spies and without executions, remaining
poor in sight of the milliards of the bank; if he were to confront the
sixty-three hostages with the 20,000 assassinated, unveil the pontoons,
the jails, swarming with 40,000 unfortunate beings; take the world to
witness in the name of truth, of justice, of the future, and make of the
accused Commune the accuser.
The president might have interrupted him, the cries of the public
drowned his revindication, the court after the first words declared him
outlawed. Such a man, reduced to silence, would, like Danton gagged,
find a gesture, a cry, which should pierce the walls and hurl his
anathema at the head of the tribunal.
The vanquished missed this revenge. Instead of presenting a collective
defence or of maintaining a silence which would have saved their
dignity, the accused intrusted themselves to the barristers. Each one of
these gentlemen stretched a point to save his client even at the expense
of his brother lawyers. One barrister was also the _Figaro's_ and the
confidant of the Empress; another, one of the demonstrators of the Place
Vendome, begged the court not to confound his cause with that of the
scoundrel's near him. There were scandalous pleadings. This debasement
disarmed neither the tribunal nor the public. Every moment Gaveau
bounded out of his arm-chair. "You are an insolent fellow," said he to a
lawyer. "If there is anything absurd here, it is you." The audience
applauded, ever ready to pounce upon the prisoners. On the 31st August
its fury rose to such a pitch that Merlin threatened to have the court
cleared.
On the 2nd September the court feigned to deliberate the whole day. At
nine o'clock in the evening it returned to the sitting, and Merlin read
the judgment. Ferre and Lullier were condemned to death; Trinquet and
Urbain to hard labour for life; Assi, Billioray, Champy, Regere,
Grousset, Verdure, Ferrat to transportation in a fortress; Courbet to
six months' and Victor Clement to three months' imprisonment. Decamps
and Parent were acquitted. The audience retired much disappointed at
having got only two condemnations to death.
As a fact, this judicial performance had proved nothing. Could the
Revolution of the 18th March be appreciated from the conduct of
secondary actors, and Delescluze, Varlin, Vermorel, Tridon, Moreau, and
many others, by the attitude of Lullier, Decamps, Victor Clement, or
Billioray? And even if the bearing of Ferre and Trinquet had not proved
that there had been men in the Council of the Commune, what then did the
defection of the majority show if not that this movement was the work of
all, not of a few great minds; that in this crisis the people only had
been great, they only revolutionary; that the Revolution was to be found
in the people, not in the Government of the Commune?
The bourgeoisie, on the contrary, had displayed all its hideousness. The
audience, the tribunal, had been on the same level. Some witnesses had
manifestly perjured themselves. During the debates, in the lobbies, in
the cafes, all the ragamuffins who had endeavoured to dupe the Commune
impudently ascribed to themselves the success of the army. The _Figaro_,
having opened a subscription for Ducatel, had picked up 100,000 francs
and an order of the Legion d'Honneur for him. Allured by this success,
all the conspirators demanded their alms and their order. The partisans
of Beaufond-Lasnier, those of Charpentier-Domalain, fell out, recounted
their prowess, each and all swearing that he had betrayed better than
his rivals.
While society was being avenged at Versailles, the Court of Assizes of
Paris avenged the honour of Jules Favre. Immediately after the Commune,
the Minister for Foreign Affairs had had M. Laluye arrested, who was
guilty of having communicated to Milliere the documents published in the
_Vengeur_. The honest Minister, not having succeeded in getting his
enemy shot as a Communard, summoned him before the assizes for libel.
Here the former member of the Government of National Defence, the former
Minister of Foreign Affairs, the deputy of Paris, publicly confessed
that he had committed forgeries, but he pleaded having done so to secure
his children a fortune. This touching avowal melted the _patres
familias_ of the jury, and Laluye was condemned to imprisonment for one
year. Some months after he died at Ste. Pelagie. Jules Favre was
terribly lucky. In less than six months the fusillade and the dungeon
had delivered him of two redoubtable enemies.[246]
While the third court-martial was quarrelling with the lawyers, the
fourth hurried through its business without phrases. On the 16th August,
almost immediately after its opening, it had already pronounced two
sentences of death. If the one court had its Jeffries, the other had its
Trestaillon in Colonel Boisdenemetz, a kind of wild boar, a drunkard,
seeing all red, a wit at times, and correspondent of the _Figaro_. On
the 4th September some women were brought before him, accused of setting
fire to the Legion d'Honneur. This was the trial of the petroleuses. The
eight thousand enrolled furies who had been announced by the journals of
order were reduced to the number of five. The cross-examination proved
that the so-called petroleuses were only admirably kind-hearted
ambulance nurses. One of them, Retiffe, said, "I should have looked
after a soldier of Versailles as well as a National Guard." "Why,"
another was asked, "did you remain when all the battalion ran away?"
"There were wounded and dying," answered she simply. The witnesses for
the prosecution themselves declared that they had not seen any of them
kindle fire; but their fate was decided beforehand. Between two sittings
Boisdenemetz cried in a cafe, "Death to all these trulls!"
Three barristers out of five had deserted the bar. "Where are they?"
said the president. "They have asked to be allowed to absent themselves
to go to the country," answered the commissary. The court charged
soldiers with the defence of these poor women. One of them, the
Quartermaster Bordelais, made this fine speech: "I defer to the wisdom
of the tribunal."
His client, Suetens, was condemned to death, as were also Retiffe and
Marchais, "for having attempted to change the form of the Government;"
the two others to transportation and confinement. One of the condemned,
turning to the officer who read the sentence, cried to him in a
heart-rending voice, "And who will feed my child?"
Thy child! See, he is here!
Some days after, before this same Boisdenemetz, fifteen children of
Paris appeared; the eldest was sixteen years old, the youngest, so small
that he could hardly be seen in the dock of prisoners, was eleven. They
wore blue blouses and military kepis.
"Druet," said the soldier, "what did your father do?"
"He was a mechanic."
"Why did you not work like him?"
"Because there was no work for me."
"Bouverat, why did you join the _Pupilles de la Commune_?"
"To get something to eat."
"You have been arrested for vagrancy?"
"Yes, twice; the second time for stealing a pair of stockings."
"Cagnoncle, you were _Enfant de la Commune_?"
"Yes, sir."
"Why did you leave your family?"
"Because they had no bread."
"Did you discharge many shots?"
"About fifty."
"Lescot, why did you leave your mother?"
"Because she could not keep me."
"How many children were there of you?"
"Three."
"You have been wounded?"
"Yes, by a ball in the head."
"Leberg, you have been with a master, and you were surprised taking the
cash-box. How much did you take?"
"Ten sous."
"Did not that money burn your hands?"
And you, red-handed man! these words, do they not burn your lips?
Sinister fools! who do not understand that before these children, thrown
into the streets without education, without hope, through the necessity
you have made for them, the culprit is you, lace-bedecked soldier, you,
the public minister of a society in which children twelve years old,
capable and willing to work, are forced to steal in order to get a pair
of stockings, and have no other alternative than to fall beneath bullets
or die of hunger!
FOOTNOTES:
[239] These details are extracted from very numerous notes furnished not
only by the prisoners, among others by Elisee Reclus, but by persons
entire strangers to the Commune, municipal councillors of seaport towns,
foreign journalists, &c.
[240] General Appert's report is not only silent with regard to these
ignominious proceedings, but lies with a placidity that is frightful. He
says, for instance, "The prisoners of the pontoons were treated like the
sailors, with this difference, that they did no work and got frequent
distributions of wine." Of the cages, the vermin, the blows, not a word.
In the same manner he recounts, in the style of a pretentious
quartermaster, the history of the Commune and of the last struggles. It
would be doing him too much honour to point out how his absurd
statements contradict each other. And yet it is from these official lies
that all bourgeois historians have till to-day compiled their histories.
[241] Letter addressed to the _Liberte_ of Brussels.
[242] Besides the 27,837 prisoners officially recognised at the
pontoons, 8472 others were admitted as being dispersed at Satory,
L'Orangerie, Les Chautiers, the houses of justice and correction of
Rouen-Clermont and St. Cyr. On the 15th of October there were still 3500
in the prisons of Versailles.
[243] The former resort of all sorts of criminals.
[244] The great political hecatombs have taken place in France since the
decree of the Provisional Government of 1848.
[245] Here is a sample, and not one of the most emphatic, "We must make
no mistake," said _La Liberte_; "we must, above all, not stand on
niceties; this is certainly a band of scoundrels, assassins, thieves,
and incendiaries whom we have before our eyes. To argue from their
situation of accused in order to exact for them the respect and benefit
of the law which supposes them innocent would be a want of faith. No,
no! a thousand times no! These are not ordinary accused; they were
taken, some in the very act, and the others have so surely signed their
culpability by authentic and solemn acts that it suffices to establish
their identity in order to cry with the full and sonorous voice of
conviction, 'Yes, yes! they are guilty!'
"The detained witnesses are, for the most part, sinister bandits, with
atrocious faces, repulsive types, especially the youngest, and whom one
would not like to meet even in broad daylight at the corner of a wood."
[246] Family and morality were triumphing along the whole line. Some
days after the fall of the Commune, the first president of the Court of
Cassation, the official go-between of the amours of Napoleon III.,
solemnly reoccupied, before all the courts united, his seat, whence the
hypocritical prudery of the men of the 4th September had expelled him.