Part 30 (1/2)
When it was made known that the German army was to enter Paris, the National Guard of Belleville and Montmartre stole cannon from the fortifications, and placed them in position in their own quarter on the heights, so that they could fire into the city.
On March 18 General Vinoy, who had succeeded Trochu as military commander of Paris, demanded that these cannon should be given back to the city. Many of them had been purchased by subscription during the siege, but they were not the property of the men of Belleville and Montmartre, but of the whole National Guard. A regiment of the line was ordered to take possession of them, and they did so.
But immediately after, the soldiers fraternized with the National Guard of Belleville, and surrendered their prize. An officer of cha.s.seurs had been killed, and General Lecomte twice ordered his men to fire on the insurgents.[1] They refused to obey him. ”General Lecomte is right,” said a gentleman who was standing in a crowd of angry men at a street-corner near the scene of action. He was seized at once, and was soon recognized as General Clement Thomas, formerly commander of the National Guard of Paris. He had done gallant service during the siege; but that consideration had no weight with the insurgents. General Lecomte had been already arrested. ”We will put you with him,” cried the mob,--”you, who dare to speak in defence of such a scoundrel.” Both the unfortunate generals were immediately imprisoned.
[Footnote 1: Leighton, Paris under the Commune.]
At four P. M. they were brought forth by about one hundred insurgent National Guards; Lecomte's hands were tied, those of General Thomas were free. They were marched to an empty house, where a mock trial took place. No rescue was attempted, though soldiers of the line stood by. The two prisoners were then conducted to a walled enclosure at the end of the street. As soon as the party halted, an officer of the National Guard seized General Thomas by the collar and shook him violently, holding a revolver to his head, and crying out, ”Confess that you have betrayed the Republic!” The general shrugged his shoulders. The officer retired. The report of twenty muskets rent the air, and General Thomas fell, face downward. They ordered Lecomte to step over his body, and to take his place against the wall. Another report succeeded, and the butchery was over.
By evening the National Guard had taken possession of the Hotel-de-Ville, and the outer Boulevards were crowded by men shouting that they had made a revolution. On this day the insurgents a.s.sumed the name of ”Federes,” or Federals, denoting their project of converting the communistic cities of France into a Federal Republic.
In vain the Government put forth proclamations calling on all good citizens, and on the Old National Guard, to put down insurrection and maintain order and the Republic. The Old Battalions of the National Guard, about twenty thousand strong, had been composed chiefly of tradesmen and gentlemen; these, as soon as the siege was over, had for the most part left the city. Bismarck's proposition to Jules Favre had been to leave the Old National Guard its arms, that it might preserve order, but to take advantage of the occasion to disarm the New Battalions. As we have seen, all were permitted to retain their arms; but the chancellor told Jules Favre he would live to repent having obtained the concession.
The friends of order, in spite of the Government's proclamations, could with difficulty be roused to action. There were two parties in Paris,--the Pa.s.sives, and the Actives; and the latter party increased in strength from day to day. Indeed, it was hard for peaceful citizens to know under whom they were to range themselves.
The Government had left the city. One or two of its members were still in Paris, but the rest had rushed off to Versailles, protected by an army forty thousand strong, under General Vinoy.
A species of Government had, however, formed itself by the morning of March 19 at the Hotel-de-Ville. It called itself the Central Committee of the National Guard, and issued proclamations on _white_ paper (white paper being reserved in Paris for proclamations of the Government). It called upon all citizens in their sections at once to elect a commune. This proclamation was signed by twenty citizens, only one of whom, M. a.s.sy, had ever been heard of in Paris. Some months before, he had headed a strike, killed a policeman, and had been condemned to the galleys for murder. The men who thus const.i.tuted themselves a Government, were all members of the International,--that secret a.s.sociation, formed in all countries, for the abolition of property and patriotism, religion and the family, rulers, armies, upper cla.s.ses, and every species of refinement. Another proclamation decreed that the people of Paris, whether it pleased them or not, must on Wednesday, March 22, elect a commune.
In a former chapter I have tried to explain the nature of a commune.
Victor Hugo wrote his opinion of it, when the idea of a commune was first started, after the fall of Louis Philippe in 1848. His words read like a prophecy:--
”It would tear down the tricolor, and set up the red flag of destruction; it would make penny-pieces out of the Column of the Place Vendome; it would hurl down the statue of Napoleon, and set up that of Marat in its place; it would suppress the Academie, the ecole Polytechnique, and the Legion of Honor. To the grand motto of 'Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity,' it would add the words, 'or death.' It would bring about a general bankruptcy. It would ruin the rich without enriching the poor. It would destroy labor, which gives each of us his bread. It would abolish property, and break up the family. It would march about with the heads of the proscribed on pikes, fill the prisons with the suspected, and empty them by ma.s.sacre. It would convert France into a country of gloom. It would destroy liberty, stifle the arts, silence thought, and deny G.o.d. It would supply work for two things fatal to prosperity,--the press that prints a.s.signats, and the guillotine. In a word, it would do in cold blood what the men of 1793 did in the ravings of fever; and after the great horrors which our fathers saw, we should have the horrible in every form that is low and base.”
The party of the Commune has been divided into three cla.s.ses,--the rascals, the dupes, and the enthusiasts. The latter in the last hours of the Commune (which lasted seventy-three days) put forth in a manifesto their theory of government; to wit, that every city in France should have absolute power to govern itself, should levy its own taxes, make its own laws, provide its own soldiers, see to its own schools, elect its own judges, and make within its corporate limits whatever changes of government it pleased. These Communistic cities were to be federated into a Republic. It was not clear how those Frenchmen were to be governed who did not live in cities; possibly each city was to have territory attached to it, as in Italy in the Middle Ages.
The weather during March of the year 1871 was very fine, and fine weather is always favorable to disturbances and revolutions.
The very few men of note still left in Paris desirous of putting an end to disorder without the shedding of blood, proposed to go out to Versailles and negotiate with M. Thiers, the provisional president, and the members of his Government. They were the twelve deputies of the Department of the Seine, in which Paris is situated, headed by Louis Blanc, and the _maires_, with their a.s.sistants, from the twenty arrondiss.e.m.e.nts. They proposed to urge on the Government of Versailles the policy of giving the Parisians the right to elect what in England would be called a Lord Mayor, and likewise a city council; also to give the National Guard the right to elect its officers.
This deputation went out to Versailles on the 20th of March,--two days before the proposed election for members of a commune. On the 21st, while all Paris was awaiting anxiously the outcome of the mission, there was a great ”order” demonstration in the streets, and hopes of peace and concord were exchanged on all sides. The next day, the order demonstration, which had seemed so popular, was repeated, when a ma.s.sacre took place on the Place Vendome and the Rue de la Paix. Nurses, children, and other quiet spectators were killed, as also old gentlemen and reporters for the newspapers.
One of the victims was a partner in the great banking house of Hottinguer, well known to American travellers.
The most popular man at that moment in Paris seemed to be Admiral Seisset, who had commanded the brigade of sailors which did good service in the siege. He went out to Versailles to unite his efforts to those of the _maires_ and the deputies in favor of giving Paris munic.i.p.al rights; but M. Thiers and his ministers were firm in their refusal.
When this was known in Paris, great was the fury and indignation of the people. In vain had Louis Blanc entreated the a.s.sembly at Versailles to approve conciliatory measures; and when that body utterly refused to make terms with a Parisian mob, M. Clemenceau said, as he quitted their chamber: ”May the responsibility for what may happen, rest upon your heads.”
The mission to Versailles having been productive of no results, the election for a commune was held. The extremest men were chosen in every quarter of the city, and formed what was called the Council of the Commune. It held its sittings in the Hotel-de-Ville, and consisted at first of eighty members, seventy of whom had never been heard of in Paris before. Its numbers dwindled rapidly, from various causes, especially in the latter days of the Commune. Among them were Poles, Italians, and even Germans; two of the eighty claimed to be Americans.
The first act of the Council of the Commune was to take possession of the Hotel-de-Ville and to celebrate the inauguration of the new government by a brilliant banquet; its first decree was that no tenant need pay any back rent from October, 1870, to April, 1871,--the time during which the siege had lasted. It lost no time in inviting Garibaldi to a.s.sume the command of the National Guard.
This Garibaldi declined at once, saying that a commandant of the National Guard, a commander-in-chief of Paris, and an executive committee could not act together. ”What Paris needs,” he said, ”is an honest dictator, who will choose honest men to act under him. If you should have the good fortune to find a Was.h.i.+ngton, France will recover from s.h.i.+pwreck, and in a short time be grander than ever.”
On April 3 the civil war broke out,--Paris against Versailles; the army under the National a.s.sembly against the National Guard under the Commune. The Prussians from the two forts which they still held, looked grimly on.
At the bridge of Courbevoie, near Neuilly, where the body of Napoleon had been landed thirty years before, a flag of truce was met by two National Guards. Its bearer was a distinguished surgeon, Dr.
Pasquier. After a brief parley, one of the National Guards blew out the doctor's brains. When news of this outrage was brought to General Vinoy, he commanded the guns of Fort Valerien to be turned upon the city.
At five A. M. the next morning five columns of Federals marched out to take the fort. They were under the command of three generals, Bergeret, Duval, and Eudes. With Bergeret rode Lullier, who had been a naval officer, and Flourens, the popular favorite among the members of the Commune. The three divisions marched in full confidence that the soldiers under Vinoy would fraternize with them.
They were wholly mistaken; the guns of Fort Valerien crashed into the midst of their columns, and almost at the same time Flourens, in a hand-to-hand struggle, was slain.
Flourens had begun life with every prospect of being a distinguished scientist. His father had been perpetual secretary of the Academy of Sciences and a professor in the College de France, in which his son succeeded him when he was barely twenty-one. His first lecture, on the ”History of Man,” created a great impression; but in 1864 he resigned his professors.h.i.+p, and thenceforward devoted all his energies to the cause of the oppressed. In Crete he fought against the Turks. He was always conspiring when at home in Paris; even when the Prussians were at its gates, he could not refrain.
He was the darling of the Belleville population, whom in times of distress and trial he fed, clothed, and comforted. Sometimes he was in prison, sometimes in exile. ”He was a madman, but a hero, and towards the poor and the afflicted as gentle as a sister of charity,” said one who knew him.