"A Versailles, tous les moyens ont ete employes pour assurer
l'instruction la plus serieuse, la plus attentive, la plus
complete de tous les proces qui ont ete juges.... Je tiens
donc que les jugements qui ont ete rendus ne sont pas
seulement en droit, d'apres toutes nos lois, inattaquables,
mais que, pour la conscience la plus scrupuleuse, ils sont
des jugements qui ont dit la verite.--('Tres bien! tres
bien!')"--_Le Garde des Sceaux Dufaure, Discours contre
l'Amnistie, Seance du 18 Mai 1876._
"Les conseils de guerre ont juge, je l'admets, pour le
mieux."--_Allain-Targe, depute Gambettiste, Seance du 19
Mai 1876._
THE COURTS-MARTIAL--THE EXECUTIONS--BALANCE-SHEET OF THE
CONDEMNATIONS.
Twenty-six courts-martial, twenty-six judicial mitrailleuses, were at
work at Versailles, Mont-Valerien, Paris, Vincennes, St. Cloud, Sevres,
St. Germain, Rambouillet, as far as Chartres. In the composition of
these tribunals not only all semblance of justice, but even all military
rules had been despised. The Assembly had not even troubled itself to
define their prerogatives. And these officers, hot from the struggle,
and for whom every resistance, even the most legitimate, is a crime, had
been let loose upon their overwhelmed enemies without any other
jurisprudence than their fancy, without any other rein than their
humanity, without any other instruction than their commission. With such
janissaries and a penal code comprising everything in its elastic
obscurity, there was no need for exceptional laws in order to attaint
all Paris. Soon one saw the most extravagant theories invented and
propagated in these judicial dens. Thus, being at the place of the crime
constituted legal complicity; with these magistrates this was a dogma.
Instead of removing the courts-martial into the ports, the prisoners
were forced to again undergo the painful journey from the sea to
Versailles. Some, like Elisee Reclus, had thus to pass through fourteen
prisons. From the pontoons they were conducted to the railway station on
foot, their hands manacled; but at Brest, when they passed through the
streets showing their chains, the passers-by uncovered before them.
With the exception of a few prisoners of note, whose trials I shall
briefly recount, the bulk of the prisoners were thrust before the
tribunals after an examination which did not even always make sure of
their identity. Too poor to get a defender, these unfortunate people,
without guides, without witnesses for the defence--those whom they
called did not dare to come for fear of being arrested--only appeared
and disappeared before the tribunal. The accusation, the examination,
the sentence were shuffled through in a few minutes. "You fought at
Issy, at Neuilly? Sentenced to transportation." "What! for life? And my
wife, my children?" To another: "You served in the battalions of the
Commune?" "And who would have fed my family when the workshop and
factory were closed?" Again sentenced to transportation. "And you?
Guilty of an illegal arrest. To the bagnio." On the 14th October, in
less than two months, the first and second courts had pronounced more
than six hundred sentences.
Would that I could recount the martyrology of the thousands who defiled
thus in sombre lines, National Guards, women, children, old men,
ambulance attendants, doctors, functionaries, of this decimated town! It
is you whom I should honour, you above all, you, the nameless, to whom I
should give the first place, as you took it in the work at the
barricades, where you obscurely did your duty. The true drama of the
courts-martial was not in those solemn sittings in which the accused,
the tribunal, the barristers prepared for public performance, but in
those halls which only saw the unhappy ones, ignored by the whole world,
face to face with a tribunal as inexorable as the chassepot. How many of
these humble defenders of the Commune held up their heads more proudly
than the chiefs, and whose heroism no one will tell! When the insolence,
the insults, the grotesque arguments of the conspicuous judges are
known, it may be guessed with what ignominy the unknown accused were
overwhelmed in the shade of these new prevotal courts. Who will avenge
these hecatombs of unknown men, executed in silence, like the last
combatants of the Pere Lachaise in the darkness of the night?
The journals have left no trace of their trials; but, in default of the
names of the victims, I can scatter those of some judges to the four
winds of history.
Formerly, in the days of honour of the French army, in 1795, after
Quiberon, it was necessary to threaten the officers of the Republic with
death in order to form the courts-martial that were to judge the
Vendeens. And yet those vanquished had, under the cannon, with English
arms, attacked their country in the rear, while the coalesced Powers
struck her in front. In 1871 the accomplices of Bazaine solicited the
honour of judging the vanquished of that Paris which had been the
bulwark of national honour. Through long months 1,509 officers of this
degraded army, that has not an hour too much for its rehabilitation and
for study, 14 generals, 266 colonels and lieutenant-colonels, and 284
commanders, were dubbed judges and commissaries. How select amongst this
pick of bestiality? When I mention a few presidents at hazard--Merlin,
Boisdenemetz, Jobey, Delaporte, Dulac, Barthel, Donnat, Aubert--I shall
be wronging a hundred others.
Merlin and Boisdenemetz are known. Colonel Delaporte was of the Gallifet
species. Old, used up, valetudinarian, he only revived after a sentence
of death. It is he who pronounced the greatest number, aided by the
clerk of the court, Duplan, who prepared the sentences beforehand, and
afterwards committed the most impudent forgeries in the minutes. Jobey
had, it was said, lost a son in the struggle with the Commune, and now
he avenged himself. His small wrinkled eye watched for the anguish in
the face of the unfortunate he condemned. Every appeal to good sense was
to him an insult.
"He would have been happy," said he, "to stew the lawyers together with
the culprits."
And yet how few lawyers did their duty! Many had declared that one could
not decently assist such prisoners. Others wanted to be requisitioned.
With four or five exceptions,[247] these unworthy defenders banqueted
with the officers. Barristers and commissaries communicated to each
other their means of attack or defence; the officers announced the
verdicts beforehand. The advocate Riche boasted of having drawn up the
accusation act against Rossel. The advocates officially designated did
not answer the call.
These ignorant judges, making a parade of violence, insulting the
prisoners, witnesses, and lawyers, were worthily seconded by the
commissaries. One of them, Grimal, sold to the demi-monde journals the
papers of the celebrated prisoners.[248] Gaveau, a savage simpleton,
without a shadow of talent, died some months after in a madhouse.
Bourboulon, eager for display, aimed at oratorical effects. Barthelemy,
a beer-drinker, fair and fat, made puns while asking for the heads of
the accused. Charriere, at fifty years of age still captain, a kind of
wild-cat, an imbecile, and a pretentious liar, said that he had "made a
vow of cruelty to Caesar." Jouesne, notorious in the army for his
stupidity, made up for it by his stubborn animosity. Not much was needed
in such courts. The most implacable, on the whole, were the third,
fourth, and sixth courts, and the thirteenth at St. Cloud, which
publicly boasted of acquitting nobody.
So much for the judges and the justice which the bourgeoisie gave those
proletarians they had not shot down. I should like to be able to follow
up step by step their swash-buckling jurisprudence, take the trials one
by one, show the laws violated, the most elementary rules of procedure
despised, the documents falsified, the evidence distorted, the prisoners
condemned to hard labour and to death without what would have been the
ghost of a proof with a serious jury; the cynicism of the prevotal
courts of the Restoration and of the Mixed Commissions of December
ingrafted on the brutality of the soldier who revenges his caste. Such a
work would require long technical labour.[249] I shall only indicate the
principal lines. Besides, are not these judgments already judged?
In 1871 the Versaillese Government demanded of Switzerland the
extradition of the governor of the Ecole Militaire, in 1876 that of the
delegate Frankel from Hungary, both condemned to death for assassination
and incendiarism. They were at once arrested. Liberal Switzerland and
rural Hungary, considering the acts of the Commune as common crimes,
were ready to deliver up the prisoners if Versailles furnished the legal
proof required by treaties of extradition that they had committed the
acts for which they had been condemned. The Versaillese Government only
produced the sentences of the courts-martial, and could not add the
least "trace of proof or any precise evidence establishing
culpability."[250] The prisoners had to be released.
On the 8th September Rossel appeared before the third court. His defence
consisted in saying that he had served the Commune in the hope that the
insurrection would recommence the war against the Prussians. Merlin
treated the prisoner with the greatest consideration, who in turn
testified the most profound respect for the army. But an example was
needed for romantic soldiers, and Rossel was condemned to death.
On the 21st Rochefort was sentenced to transportation in a fortress. The
Bonapartists of the court especially had their eye on the author of the
_Lanterne_. Merlin had defended Pierre Bonaparte. Gaveau accused the
prisoner of having outraged the person of the Emperor. Trochu, whom
Rochefort had called as a witness for the defence, answered the man who
during the siege had for him sacrificed his popularity, by an insulting
letter.
Revolutionary journalism had the honour of counting some victims in its
ranks. Young Maroteau, for two articles--two only--in the _Salut Public_
was condemned to death; Alphonse Humbert, for three or four articles in
the _Pere Duchesne_, to hard labour for life.
Other journalists were condemned to transportation. What was their
crime? Having defended the Commune. Yet the Commune had contented itself
with suppressing the journals that defended Versailles. In point of
fact, the courts-martial were charged to exterminate the revolutionary
party.
Fear of the future rendered them implacable. After the numberless
assassinations in the Rue des Rosiers, they too wanted to offer a
holocaust to the manes of Lecomte and Clement-Thomas. The real
executioners were not to be found. The explosion of fury which cost the
two generals their lives had been spontaneous, sudden as that which in
1789 killed Flesselles, Foulon, and Berthier. The actors of the drama
were legion, and with it all traces of them were lost. The military
judges selected the accused at random, as their colleagues had on the
Buttes Montmartre shot the first-comers.
"Simon Mayer," said the report, "tried to the last moment to defend the
prisoners, and Kazdansky did his best to oppose the carrying out of the
threats of death. The crowd insulted him and tore off his gold lace."
Herpin-Lacroix had made desperate efforts; Lagrange, who had refused to
form the firing-party, felt so secure in his innocence that he had come
to give himself up to the judges of his own free will. The report made
the principal accused of him, along with Simon Mayer, Kazdansky,
Herpin-Lacroix, and a sergeant of the line, Verdagnier, who on the 18th
March had raised the butt-end of his gun.
The trial was conducted by Colonel Aubert, a sneering melodramatic
bigot. Despite his efforts and those of the commissary, not the
slightest proof could be brought forward against the prisoners. Even the
officers of the army, companions of General Lecomte, gave evidence in
their favour. "Simon Mayer did all that was possible to save us," said
the Commander Poussargue. This officer had heard a voice cry, "Do not
kill even traitors without judgment; form a court-martial;" textually
the words of Herpin-Lacroix. Of all the accused, he only recognised
Mayer. Another officer gave similar evidence. Verdagnier proved that at
the time of the executions he had been at the huts of Courcelles. The
accusation denied all, but without being able to produce a single
witness. Ribemont proved that he had withstood the assailants in the
room of the Rue des Rosiers. Masselot had against him nothing but the
evidence of some hostile women, pretending that he had boasted of having
shot at the generals. Captain Beugnot, aide-de-camp of the Minister, and
present at the execution, affirmed, on the contrary, that the generals
had been surrounded by the soldiers; M. de Maillefu, that the front of
the platoon was composed of nine soldiers, whose regiments he named.
There were not even false official witnesses, as in the trial of the
members of the Commune; and yet the accusation, far from letting them
escape its clutches, was most implacable with regard to these very men
who had risked their lives to save the generals. The commissary
threatened to arrest a witness who warmly gave evidence in favour of a
prisoner. After several sittings they discovered that they were judging
one individual for another. The president ordered the press to hush up
the incident. Each sitting, each new evidence, cleared the prisoners
and made a condemnation more impossible. Yet on the 18th November
Verdagnier, Mayer, Herpin-Lacroix, Masselot, Leblond, and Aldenhoff were
condemned to death; the others to penalties varying from hard labour to
imprisonment. One of those condemned to death, Leblond, was only fifteen
and a half years old.
This satisfaction given the army, the courts, as good courtiers, avenged
the offences against M. Thiers. The functionary Fontaine, charged by the
Commune with the demolition of the hotel of him who had demolished
hundreds of houses, appeared before the fifth court-martial, which did
its utmost to make him appear a thief. Every one knew that M. Thiers'
furniture and silver plate had been sent to the Garde-Meuble, the
objects of art to the museums, the books to the public libraries, the
linen to the ambulances, and that after the entry of the troops the
little man had regained possession of most of these objects. Some having
perished in the conflagration of the Tuileries, the report accused
Fontaine of having abstracted them, although only two valueless medals
had been found in his house. To this accusation, from which he believed
himself secured by a long life of probity and honour, Fontaine could
only reply with tears. The Figarists laughed at it a good deal, and he
was condemned to twenty years' hard labor.
On the 28th November the Assembly recommenced its fusillade. M. Thiers,
cleverly throwing upon the representatives the right of commuting the
penalties, had a Commission of Pardons named by the Chamber. It was
composed of fifteen members, purveyors of the Mixed Commission of 1852,
great proprietors, inveterate Royalists.[251] One of them, the Marquis
de Quinsonnas, had during the battle in the streets superintended the
executions at the Luxembourg. The president, Martel, was an old satyr,
who sold his pardons to pretty solicitresses.
The first cases which they took up were those of Rossel and Ferre. The
Liberal press pleaded warmly for the young officer. In his restless
mind, without unsound political opinions, who had so cavalierly turned
his back upon the Commune, the bourgeoisie soon recognised one of her
prodigal children. He had besides made an _amende honorable_. The press
published his memoirs, in which he reviled the Commune and the Federals.
Day by day they recounted the life of the prisoner, his sublime
colloquies with a Protestant clergyman, his heart-rending interviews
with his family. Of Ferre not a word, except to say he was "hideous."
His mother had died mad; his brother was shut up as mad in the dungeons
of Versailles; his father was a prisoner in the citadel of Fouras; his
sister, a young girl of nineteen, silent, resigned, stoical, spent her
days and nights in order to earn the twenty francs that she every week
sent her brother. She had refused the aid of her friends, unwilling to
share with any one the honour of accomplishing her pious duty. Indeed,
one can imagine nothing more "hideous!"
For twelve weeks death remained suspended above the heads of the
condemned. At last, on the 28th November, at six o'clock in the morning,
they were told that they must die. Ferre jumped out of bed without
showing the slightest emotion, declined the visit of the chaplain, wrote
to ask the military tribunals for the release of his father, and to his
sister that she should have him buried so that his friends would be able
to find him again. Rossel, rather surprised at first, afterwards
conversed with his clergyman. He wrote a letter demanding that his death
should not be avenged--a very useless precaution--and addressed a few
thanks to Jesus Christ. For comrade in death they had a sergeant of the
45th line, Bourgeois, who had gone over to the Commune, and who showed
the same calm as Ferre. Rossel was indignant when they put on the
handcuffs; Ferre and Bourgeois disdained to protest.
The day was hardly dawning; it was bitterly cold. Before the Butte of
Satory 5,000 men under arms surrounded three white stakes, each one
guarded by twelve executioners. Colonel Merlin commanded, thus uniting
the three functions of conqueror, judge, and hangman. Some curious
lookers-on, officers and journalists, composed the whole public.
At seven o'clock the carts of the condemned appeared; the drums beat a
salute, the trumpets sounded. The prisoners descended, escorted by
gendarmes. Rossel, on passing before a group of officers, saluted them.
The brave Bourgeois, looking on at the whole drama with an indifferent
air, leant against the middle stake. Ferre came last, dressed in black
and smoking a cigar, not a muscle of his face moving. With a firm and
even step he walked up and leant against the third stake.
Rossel, attended by his lawyer and his clergyman, asked to be allowed to
command the fire. Merlin refused. Rossel wished to shake hands with him,
in order to do homage to his sentence. This was refused. During these
negotiations Ferre and Bourgeois remained motionless, silent. In order
to put a stop to Rossel's effusions an officer was obliged to tell him
that he was prolonging the torture of the two others. At last they
blindfolded him. Ferre pushed back the bandage, and, fixing his
eyeglass, looked the soldiers straight in the face.
The sentence read, the adjutants lowered their sabres, the guns were
discharged. Rossel and Bourgeois fell back. Ferre remained standing; he
was only hit in the side. He was again fired at and fell. A soldier
placing his chassepot at his ear blew out his brains.
On a gesture of Merlin a flourish of trumpets burst forth, and,
emulating the customs of the cannibals, the troops defiled in triumph
before the corpses. What cries of horror the bourgeoisie would have
uttered if before the executed hostages the Federals had paraded to the
sound of music!
The bodies of Rossel and Ferre were claimed by their families; that of
Bourgeois disappeared in the common grave of the St. Louis Cemetery. The
people will not disassociate his memory from that of Ferre, for they
both died with the same courage for the cause they had served with the
same devotion.
The Liberal press reserved its tears for Rossel. Some courageous
provincial papers did honour to all the victims, and devoted to the
hatred of France the Commission of Pardons--"the Commission of
Assassins," as a deputy, Ordinaire junior, said in the Assembly.
Prosecuted before juries, all these journals were acquitted.
Two days after the execution of Satory, the Commission of Pardons
ordered Gaston Cremieux to be killed. Six months had elapsed since his
condemnation, and this long delay seemed to make the murder impossible.
But the rural Commission wanted to avenge his famous speech of Bordeaux.
On the 30th November, at seven o'clock in the morning, Gaston Cremieux
was led to the Prado, a large plain bordering the sea. He said to his
guardians, "I will show how a Republican should die." He was placed
against the same stake where a month before the soldier Paquis had been
shot for going over to the insurrection.
Gaston Cremieux wished to have his eyes unbandaged and to command the
fire. They consented. Then addressing himself to the soldiers, "Aim at
the chest; do not touch my head. Fire! Vive la Repub...." The last word
was cut short by death. As at Satory, the dance of the soldiers round
the corpse followed.
The death of this young enthusiast made a deep impression in the town.
Registers placed at the door of his house filled in a few hours with
thousands of signatures. The revolutionists of Marseilles will not
forget his children.
The same day the sixth court avenged the death of Chaudey. This had been
ordered and superintended by Raoul Rigault alone. The men who formed the
platoon were abroad. Preau de Vedel, the principal accused, then
imprisoned in Ste. Pelagie for a common offence, had only held the
lantern. But the jurisprudence of the officers attributed to simple
agents the same responsibility as to the chiefs. Preau de Vedel was
condemned to death.
On the 4th December, in the hall of the third court, a kind of phantom,
pale-faced and sympathetic, appeared. It was Lisbonne, who for six
months had dragged about his wounds of the Chateau d'Eau. The same
before the court-martial as during the Commune and at Buzenval, this
bravest of the brave gloried in having fought, and only denied the
accusations of pillage. Other judges would have been proud to spare such
an enemy; the Versaillese condemned him to death.
Some days after, this same court-martial heard a woman's voice. "I will
not defend myself; I will not be defended," cried Louise Michel. "I
belong entirely to the social revolution, and I declare that I accept
the responsibility of all my acts. I accept it entirely and without
reserve. You accuse me of having participated in the execution of the
generals. To this I answer, yes. If I had been at Montmartre, when they
wished to fire on the people, I should not have hesitated to order fire
myself on those who gave such commands. As to the conflagrations of
Paris, yes, I did participate in them. I wanted to oppose a barrier of
flames to the invaders of Versailles. I have no accomplices; I acted on
my own account."
The Commissary Dailly demanded the penalty of death.
_Louise Michel._ What I ask of you, you who style yourselves a
court-martial, who proclaim yourselves my judges, who do not hide
yourselves like the Commission of Pardons, is the field of Satory, where
our brothers have already fallen. I must be cut off from society; you
have been told to do so. Well, the Commissary of the Republic is right.
Since it seems that every heart which beats for liberty has only right
to a little lead, I too demand my part. If you let me live, I shall not
cease to cry vengeance, and I shall denounce to the vengeance of my
brothers the assassins of the Commission of Pardons.
_The President._ I cannot allow you to go on.
_Louise Michel._ I have done. If you are not cowards, kill me.
They had not the courage to kill her at one blow. She was condemned to
transportation to a fortress.
Louise Michel did not stand alone in her courageous attitude. Many
others, amongst whom must be mentioned Lemel and Augustine Chiffon,
showed the Versaillese what terrible women these Parisians are, even
vanquished, even in chains.
The affair of the executions of La Roquette came on at the beginning of
1872. There, as in the Clement-Thomas and Chaudey trials, they had none
of the real actors except Genton, who had carried the order. Almost all
the witnesses, former hostages, gave evidence with the rage natural to
people who have trembled. The accusation, refusing to believe in an
outburst of fury, had built up a ridiculous scaffolding of a
court-martial discussing and ordering the death of the prisoners. It
asserted that one of the accused had commanded the fire, and he was
about to be condemned, in spite of the solemn protests of Genton, when
the real chief of the firing-party, who had just been discovered dying
in a prison, was brought in. Genton was condemned to death. His advocate
had odiously slandered him, then fled, and the court refused to allow
him a second defender.
The most important affair which followed was that of the Dominicans of
Arcueil. No execution had been less premeditated. These monks had fallen
in crossing the Avenue d'Italie, shot down by the men of the 101st. The
report accused Serizier, who at that moment was not even in the Avenue.
The only witness called against him said, "I do not affirm anything
myself; I have heard it said." But we know what close bonds unite army
and clergy. Serizier was condemned to death, as was also one of his
lieutenants, Bouin, against whom not a single witness could be brought
forward. The court took advantage of the occasion to pronounce sentences
of death against Wroblewski, who at that time had been at the
Butte-aux-Cailles, and against Frankel, who had been fighting at the
Bastille.
On the 12th March the affair of the Rue Haxo came on before the sixth
court, still presided over by Delaporte. The executioners of the
hostages had been no more discoverable than those of the Rue des
Rosiers. The indictment fell back upon the director of the prison,
Francois, who for a long time had disputed the surrender of his
prisoners, and upon twenty-two persons denounced by gossip contradicted
at the trial. Not one of the witnesses recognised the accused. Delaporte
multiplied his menaces with such a cynicism that the Commissary Rustaud,
who had, however, given proofs of his animosity in the preceding trials,
could not refrain from exclaiming, "But do you want to condemn them
all?" He was the next day replaced by the idiot Charriere. In spite of
all this, the indictment frittered away from hour to hour before the
disavowals of the witnesses. Still not one of the prisoners escaped.
Seven were condemned to death, nine to hard labour, and the others to
transportation.
The Commission of Pardons awaited, chassepot in hand, the prey given up to
them by the courts-martial. On the 22d of February, 1872, it shot three of
the so-called murderers of Clement-Thomas and Lecomte, even those whose
innocence had most clearly come out in the trial--Herpin-Lacroix,
Lagrange, and Verdagnier. Upright at the stake of the 28th November, they
cried "Vive la Commune!" and died, their faces radiant. On the 19th March
Preau de Vedel was executed. On the 30th April it was Genton's turn. The
wounds which he had received in May had reopened, and he dragged himself
to the Butte on his crutches. Arrived at the stake, he threw them from
him, cried "Vive la Commune!" and fell under the fire. On the 25th May the
three stakes were again occupied by Serizier, Bouin, and Boudin, the
latter condemned as chief of the platoon which in front of the Tuileries
had executed a Versaillese who attempted to prevent the erection of the
barricades of the Rue Richelieu. They said to the soldiers of the platoon,
"We are children of the people, and you are too. We shall show you that
the children of Paris know how to die." And they, also, fell, crying "Vive
la Commune!"
These men who went to the grave so courageously, who with a gesture
defied the musket, who, dying, cried that their cause died not, these
ringing voices, these steadfast looks, disconcerted the soldiers
profoundly. The muskets trembled, and almost within point-blank range
they rarely killed at the first discharge. So at the next execution, the
6th July, the Commander Colin, who presided at these fusillades, ordered
the eyes of the victims bandaged. There were two of them--Baudoin,
accused of setting fire to the St. Eloi Church, and of killing an
individual who had fired at the Federals; and Rouilhac, an insurgent who
had shot at a bourgeois who was potting Federals. Both pushed back the
sergeants who came to blindfold them. Colin gave the order to tie them
to the stake. Three times Baudoin tore asunder the cords; Rouilhac
struggled desperately. The priest who came to assist the soldiers
received some blows in the chest. At last, overwhelmed, they cried, "We
die for the good cause." They were mangled by the balls. After the march
past, an officer of a psychological turn of mind, moving with the tip of
his boot the brains that trickled down, remarked to a colleague, "It is
with this that they thought."
In June, 1872, all the celebrated cases being disposed of, military
justice avenged the death of a Federal, Captain Beaufort. There is but
one explanation for this strange fact, which is that Beaufort belonged
to the Versaillese. We have received important evidence on this
head.[252] At all events, if Delescluze or Varlin had been shot by the
Federals, Versailles would not have avenged their death.
Three of those accused out of four were present, Deschamps, Denivelle,
and Madame Lachaise, the celebrated cantiniere of the 66th. She had
followed Beaufort before the council held at the Boulevard Voltaire,
and, having heard explanations, had done her best to protect him. The
indictment none the less made of her the principal instigator of his
death. On the written evidence of a witness who was not to be found, and
who had never been confronted with her, the commissary accused Madame
Lachaise of having profaned Beaufort's corpse. At this abominable
accusation this noble woman burst into tears. She, as well as Denivelle
and Deschamps, were condemned to death.
The obscene imagination of soldiers with Algerian habits taxed itself to
pollute the accused. Colonel Dulac, judging an intimate friend of
Rigault's, pretended that their friendship had been of an infamous
character. Despite the indignant protests of the prisoner, the wretched
officer persisted.
The bourgeois press, far from stigmatising, applauded. Without truce,
without lassitude, since the opening of the courts-martial it
accompanied all the trials with the same chorus of imprecations and the
same slanders. Some persons having protested against these executions so
long after the battle, Francisque Sarcey wrote, "The axe ought to be
riveted to the hand of the executioner."
Till then the Commission of Pardons had only killed three at a time. On
the 24th of July it slaughtered four--Francois, the director of La
Roquette, Aubry, Dalivoust, and De St. Omer, condemned for the affair of
the Rue Haxo. De St. Omer was more than suspected, and in the prison his
comrades kept aloof from him. Before the muskets they cried "Vive la
Commune!" He answered, "Down with it!"
On the 18th September, Lolive (accused of having participated in the
execution of the Archbishop), Denivelle, and Deschamps were executed.
These last cried, "Long live the Universal and Social Republic! Down
with the cowards!" On the 22nd January, 1873, nineteen months after the
battle in the streets, the Commission of Pardons tied three more victims
to its stakes--Philippe, member of the Council of the Commune, guilty of
having energetically defended Bercy; Benot, who set fire to the
Tuileries; and Decamps, condemned for the conflagration of the Rue de
Lille, although they had not been able to bring forward any evidence
whatever against him. "I die innocent," cried he. "Down with Thiers!"
Philippe and Benot: "Long live the Social Republic! Vive la Commune!"
They fell, not having belied the courage of the soldiers of the
Revolution of the 18th March.
This was the last execution at Satory. The blood of twenty-five victims
had reddened the stakes of the Commission of Pardons. In 1875 it had a
young soldier shot at Vincennes, accused of the death of the detective
Vizentini, thrown into the Seine by hundreds of hands at the
manifestation of the Bastille.[253]
The movements of the provinces were judged by courts-martial or assize
courts, according to the department being or not being in a state of
siege. Everywhere the issue of the Parisian struggle had been waited
for. Immediately after the defeat of Paris the reaction ran riot.
Espivent's courts-martial initiated these trials. He had his Gaveau in
Commander Villeneuve, one of the bombarders of the 4th April, his
Merlin, and his Boisdenemetz in the colonels Thomassin and Douat. On the
12th June Gaston Cremieux, Etienne, Pelissier, Roux, Bouchet, and all
those who could be connected with the movement of the 23rd March
appeared before the soldiers. The pretentious blockheadedness of
Villeneuve served as type of the military prosecutor's addresses with
which France was inundated. Cremieux, Etienne, Pelissier, and Roux were
condemned to death. This was not enough for the jesuitical bourgeois
reaction. Espivent had declared through the Court of Cassation that the
department of the Bouches-du-Rhone was in a state of siege since the 9th
August, 1870, in virtue of a decree by the Empress, which had neither
been published in the bulletin of laws, nor been sanctioned by the
Senate, nor even promulgated. Provided with this arm, he persecuted all
marked out by the hand of the Congregation. The municipal councillor,
David Bosc, ex-delegate to the Commission, a millionaire shipowner,
accused of having stolen a silver watch from a police agent, was only
acquitted by a small majority of voices. The next day the
colonel-president was replaced by the lieutenant-colonel of the 4th
Chasseurs, Donnat, half-mad with absinthe-drinking. A workingman, aged
seventy-five, was condemned to ten years' hard labour and twenty years'
deprivation of civil and political rights for having on the 4th
September arrested for half an hour a police agent who had sent him to
Cayenne in 1852. A crazy old woman, purveyor of the Jesuits, arrested
for a few moments on the 4th September, accused the former commander of
the Civil Guard of her arrest. Her accusation was contradicted by
herself and quite overthrown by alibis and numberless proofs. The
ex-commander was condemned to five years' of prison and ten years'
privation of civil rights. One of the soldier-judges, coming out after
committing this crime, said, "One must have very profound political
convictions to condemn in similar affairs." With these cynical
collaborators Espivent could satisfy all his hatred. He asked the courts
of Versailles to deliver up to him the member of the Council of the
Commune, Amourox, delegate for a time at Marseilles. "I am prosecuting
him for tampering with soldiers," wrote Espivent, "a crime punished by
death; and I am persuaded that this punishment will be applied to him."
The court-martial of Lyons was not very inferior. Forty-four persons
were prosecuted for the movement of the 22nd March, and thirty-two
condemned to penalties varying from transportation to imprisonment. The
insurrection of the 30th April furnished seventy prisoners, taken at
hazard at Lyons, as was the custom at Versailles. The mayor of the
Guillotiere, Crestin, called as witness, did not recognise amongst them
any of those he had seen on that day in his mairie. Presidents of the
courts, the Colonels Marion and Rebillot.
At Limoges, Dubois and Roubeyrol, democrats esteemed by the whole town,
were condemned in default to death, as the principal actors in the
movement of the 4th April; two were condemned to twenty years'
imprisonment for having boasted of knowing who had shot at Colonel
Billet. Another got ten years for having distributed munitions.
The verdicts of the jury varied. That of the Basses-Pyrenees on the 8th
August acquitted Duportal and the four or five persons accused of the
movement of Toulouse. The same acquittal took place at Rhodez, where
Digeon and the accused of Narbonne appeared after a preliminary
imprisonment of eight months. A sympathetic public filled the hall and
the approaches of the tribunal and cheered the accused at their
departure. The energetic attitude of Digeon once more showed the strong
cast of his character.
The jury of Riom condemned for the affairs of St. Etienne twenty-one
prisoners, among whom was Amouroux, who had only sent two delegates. A
young workingman, Caton, distinguished himself by his intelligence and
firmness.
The jury of Orleans was severe upon the accused of Montargis, all of
whom they condemned to prison, and atrocious to those of Cosnes and
Newry-sur-Loire, where there had been no resistance. There were
twenty-three altogether, of whom three were women. Their whole crime had
been carrying about a red flag and crying "Vive Paris! Down with
Versailles!" Malardier, a former representative of the people, who only
arrived on the eve of the manifestation, and who had taken no part in
it, was condemned to fifteen years' imprisonment. None of the accused
was spared. The proprietors of the Loiret avenged the fright of their
fellow-proprietors of the Nievre.
The movements of Coulommiers, Nimes, Dordives, and Voiron gave rise to
some convictions.
In the month of June, 1872, the greater part of the work of repression
was done. Of the 36,309[254] prisoners, men, women, and children,
without counting the 5,000 military prisoners, to whom the Versaillese
have confessed, 1,179, said they, had died in their prisons; 22,326 had
been liberated after long winter months in the pontoons, the forts, and
the prisons; 10,488 brought before the courts-martial, who had
condemned 8,525 of them. The persecutions did not cease. On the advent
of MacMahon, the 24th May, 1873, there set in a recrudescence. On the
1st January, 1875, the general resume of Versaillese justice gave 10,137
condemnations pronounced in presence of the accused, and 3,313 in
default. The sentences passed were distributed thus:--
Condemnations to death 270 of whom 8 women.
Hard labour 410 " 29 "
Transportation in a fortress 3989 " 20 "
Simple transportation 3507 " 16 women and 1
child.
Detention 1269 " 8 women.
Confinement 64 " 10 "
Hard labour at public works 29
Imprisonment from three
months and upwards 432
Imprisonment from three
months to one year 1622 " 50 women and 1
child.
Imprisonment for more than
one year 1344 " 15 women and 4
children.
Banishment 322
Surveillance of the police 117 " 1 woman.
Fines 9
Children under sixteen sent
to houses of correction 56
-------- --- --
Total 13,440 of whom 157 were women and
62 children.
This resume contained neither the sentences pronounced by the
courts-martial beyond the jurisdiction of Versailles nor those of the
courts of assizes. We must therefore add 15 condemnations to death, 22
to hard labour, 28 to transportation in a fortress, 29 to simple
transportation, 74 to detention, 13 to confinement, and a certain number
to imprisonment. The total figure of the condemned of Paris and the
provinces exceeds 13,700, among whom were 170 women and 62 children.
Three-fourths of the 10,000 condemned while present--7,418 out of
10,137--were simple guards or non-commissioned officers, 1,942 subaltern
officers. There were only 225 superior officers, 29 members of the
Council of the Commune, 49 of the Central Committee. Despite their
savage jurisprudence, the inquiries, and the false witnesses, the
courts-martial had been unable to bring forward against nine-tenths of
the condemned--9,285--any other crime than the bearing of arms or the
exercise of public functions. Of the 766 condemned for so-called common
crimes, 276 were for simple arrests, 171 for the battle in the streets,
132 for crimes classed as "others" by the report, all evidently for acts
of war.[255] Notwithstanding the great number of ticket-of-leave men
designedly included in these prosecutions, nearly three-fourths of the
condemned--7,119--had no judiciary antecedents; 524 had incurred
condemnation for misdemeanor against public order (political or simple
police cases); 2,381 for crimes or misdemeanours, which the report took
care not to specify. Finally, this insurrection, provoked and conducted
by the foreigner according to the bourgeois press, furnished in all but
396 prisoners of foreign origin.
This is the balance-sheet of 1874. The following years added new
condemnations. The number of the courts was reduced, but their
institution was maintained and the prosecutions are going on. Even now,
six years after the defeat, the arrests and convictions have not ceased.
FOOTNOTES:
[247] Let us cite Dupont de Bussac, and above all Leon Bigot, who
defended Maroteau, Lisbonne, and a great number of obscure prisoners.
For a year he gave them his time, his labour, his money, publishing
memoirs, exhausting himself in applications. He died in harness,
falling, struck by apoplexy, even at the bar. The friends of the Commune
will not forget this noble devotion.
[248] He was condemned in 1876 to five years' imprisonment for
embezzlement.
[249] In the law-schools is there no one to undertake it? What finer
cause to begin with for a young man? What noble occasion to efface the
great wrongs of the schools during the Commune, to bring nearer the
proletarian this part of our youth, which is drifting further from them
every day?
[250] "To this demand of the communication of judicial evidence," said
the tribunal of Buda-Pesth in its judgment, "the French Government has
answered by purely and simply transmitting the sentence of the
court-martial. In this sentence there exists no trace of proof, nor any
precise evidence establishing culpability. Considering that this verdict
is totally destitute of evidence and legal proofs, and that it indicates
no means of procuring them, this tribunal exonerates Frankel from the
charges brought against him."
[251] Here are their names, which truly belong to the history of the
people:--Martel, president; Piou, vice-president; the Count Octave de
Bastard, Felix Voisin, secretaries; Batbie, the Count de Maille, the
Count Duchatel, Peltereau-Villeneuve, Francois Sacaze, Tailhaud, the
Marquis de Quinsonnas, Bigot, Merveilleux-Duvignan, Paris, Corne.
[252] Appendix XXXVII.
[253] According to reactionary journals this agent had been first bound
to a board, an odious invention, which nothing that came out during the
trial could justify. Vizentini, seized in a spontaneous outburst of
fury, and thrown immediately into the Seine, might even have been saved,
if a board to which he clung had not in tipping over struck him on the
head.
[254] Report of General Appert.
[255] Thus the seizures made during the house-searches, in virtue of
regular mandates, were classed among the acts of theft with violence,
pillage, &c., as though these acts had had any personal motive. Now it
is necessary to point out that no one gave evidence of theft against the
prisoners before the courts-martial; no one could say that the
conflagrations had been taken advantage of for pillage.