Part 34 (1/2)
There was in existence a duplicate copy of the Grand Livre, though this was known only to the higher officials of the Treasury. It was kept in a sort of register's office not far from the Tuileries, and was in the care of a M. Chazal. When the Tuileries and the Treasury were on fire, the object of M. Chazal and of all who knew of the precious duplicate was to save it, in case the building in which it was deposited should share in the conflagration.
Of course the Grand Livre is of vast bulk. This copy was contained in great bundles of loose sheets. Luckily these papers were in stout oaken boxes on the ground-floor of a detached building opening on a courtyard. The Versailles troops had reached the spot, and ninety sappers and miners, with seven brave firemen, were at work with water-buckets attempting to save the main building, which was blazing fiercely when M. Chazal arrived. Already the detached building in which the precious duplicate was stored was on fire.
There was no place to which he could safely remove the precious papers, no means of transport to carry them away.
During the siege orders had been given to have large piles of sand placed in the courtyards of all public buildings, to smother sh.e.l.ls should any fall there. There were three of these sand-piles lying in the yard of this record office. In them deep trenches were rapidly dug; and the boxes were buried. Then the pile was covered with all the incombustible rubbish that could be collected; and had the Grand Livre been really destroyed, as for some days it was believed to have been, every Government creditor would have found his interests safe, through the exertions of M. Chazal and the intrepid band who worked under him.
In somewhat the same manner the gold and silver in the vaults of the Bank of France were saved from pillage. The narrow staircase leading to the vaults, down which only one man could pa.s.s at a time, was by order of the directors filled up with sand during the siege.
Though my readers may be weary of sad tales of ma.s.sacre, that of the Dominicans of Arceuil remains to be told. Their convent was in the suburbs of Paris; it had been turned by them into a hospital during the siege, and it continued to be so used during the Commune.
After the fall of Fort Issy, the insurgent troops made their headquarters not far from the convent. They were commanded by a general of some ability, but of ferocious character, named Serizier.
He was in the habit of saying, as he looked from his window into the garden of the Dominicans, ”Those rascals ought to be roasted alive.” On May 17 the roof of the building in which he lived caught fire. The Dominicans tucked up their gowns and did their best to put it out. When all was over, they were ordered to wait upon the general. They supposed that they were going to be thanked for their exertions, and were amazed at finding themselves accused of having set the building on fire as a signal to the Versaillais. The next morning a battalion of Communist soldiers surrounded their convent.
The prior, his monks, pupils, and servants, were arrested and marched to a casemate of a neighboring fort. Their convent was stripped of everything. The building, however, was saved by a _ruse_ on the part of an officer of the Commune, one of the better cla.s.s. They were two days without food, and were then driven into Paris like a flock of sheep, their black-and-white dress exposing them to all the insults and ribaldry of the excited mult.i.tude; for the Versaillais were in Paris, and hope, among those who knew the situation, was drawing to an end. That night the Dominicans were confined in a prison on the Avenue d'Italie, where a friend of Serizier's (known as Bobeche) was instructed what to do with them. During the morning, however, Bobeche went to a drinking saloon, and while there the man he left in charge received orders to send the priests to work on a barricade. He affected to misunderstand the order, and sent, instead, fifteen National Guards imprisoned for insubordination.
When Bobeche came back, half-drunk, he was furious. ”What! was the blood of priests to be spared, and that of patriots imperilled at a post of danger?” Before long the order was repeated. ”We will tend your wounded, General,” said the prior, ”we will go after them under fire, but we will not do the work of soldiers for you.” At this, soldiers were called out to shoot the Dominicans. They were reluctant to obey, and Serizier dared not risk disobedience. The fathers were remanded to prison, but were soon called out one by one. Some volunteers had been found willing to do the shooting, among them two women, the fiercest of the band. As the fathers came into the street, all were shot at, but some were untouched; and soon succeeded a dreadful scene. Round and round the open square, and up side streets, they were hunted. Four of the twenty escaped.
Men laughed and women clapped their hands at seeing the priests run.
Then Serizier went back to the prison, and was making preparations to shoot the remaining prisoners, who were laymen, when one of his subordinates leaned over him and whispered that the troops of Versailles were at hand. He dropped his papers and made off. The troops came on, and picked up the bodies of the dead Dominicans.
Serizier was not arrested till some months after, when the wife of one of his victims, who had dogged him constantly after her husband's death, discovered him in disguise and gave him up to justice.
The Prefecture of Police, which stands upon an island in the Seine, in the heart of Paris, had in those days a small prison in its main building, and an annex for women. These prisons were full of prisoners,--_reactionnaires_, as they were called in the last days of the struggle.
On May 26, as has been said, nothing remained for the Commune to do but mischief. Raoul Rigault was busy, with his corps of _Vengeurs de Flourens_, getting through as many executions as possible; Felix Pyat was organizing underground explosions, Ferre, the destruction of public buildings. A gentleman[1] confined in the women's part of the Prefecture, chancing to look down from a high window on the offices of the main building, saw beneath him eight men in the uniform of the Commune, one of them wearing much gold lace, who were saturating the window-frames with something from a bottle, and bedaubing other woodwork with mops dipped in a bucket that he presumed contained petroleum. Their caps were pulled low over their eyes, as if they did not wish to be recognized. At last he saw the officer strike a match and apply it to the woodwork, which caught fire immediately. Then rose frightful shrieks from the prisons both of the men and the women, for many others had seen what was going on. An earnest appeal to a turnkey to go to the director of the prison and represent to him that all his prisoners would be burned, was met by the answer that he did not take orders from prisoners. But all turnkeys were not Communists, though Communist officials were set over them. Some of them took advantage of the confusion to look into the cells, and speak hope and comfort to the prisoners. But as the flames caught the great wooden porch of the Prefecture, the screams of the women were heart-rending; They even disturbed Ferre, who sent orders ”to stop their squalling.”
One warder, Braquond, ventured to remonstrate. ”Bah!” said Ferre, ”they are only women belonging to gendarmes and _sergents de ville_; we shall be well rid of them.” Then Braquond resolved to organize a revolt, and save the prisoners. He ran to the corridor, and with a voice of authority ordered all the cell-doors to be opened, thus releasing four hundred prisoners. Braquond put himself at their head and led them on. But when they reached the outer gate, they were just in time to witness the departure of the last _Vengeur de Flourens_. Ferre had just received news that the troops of Versailles were close at hand, and he and his subordinates fled, leaving the prisoners to s.h.i.+ft for themselves.
[Footnote 1: Le Figaro.]
But though delivered from the Commune, not only was the Prefecture and all in it in peril, but every building and every life upon the island. Quant.i.ties of ammunition had been stored in the Prefecture; if that caught fire, the ”Cite” (as that part of Paris is called) and all its inhabitants would be blown into the air. The citizens of the quarter, the turnkeys, and the prisoners had nothing but their hands with which to fight the flames. In the midst of the fire they began to carry out the gunpowder. They had to make all speed, yet to be very careful. One train of powder escaping from a barrel, one sack of cartridges, with a rent in it, falling on the pavement, where sparks were dropping about, might have destroyed the whole ”Cite.”
There was a brave, stout woman, mistress of a coal and wood yard, named Madame Saint-Chely. She was a native of Auvergne, whence all porters and water-carriers in Paris come. With her sleeves tucked up, and her hair flying, she kept carrying out sack after sack of cartridges, undaunted, though her clothes caught fire.
Bending beneath the weight upon her back, she emptied them into the basin of the fountain that stands in the middle of the Place, then rushed back for more, while the flames poured from the windows of the upper story. Her activity and cheerfulness animated every one.
There was also a barber named Labois, who distinguished himself by his courage and activity in rolling barrels of powder out of the cellar of the prefecture, and plunging them into the Seine.
When several tons of powder and twenty millions of cartridges had been carried out, danger from that source was over. The next thing was to fight the flames. Then they discovered that all the fire-engines had been sent away. Every basin, pitcher, bucket, or saucepan on the island was put into requisition. Surrounded by the Seine, they had plenty of water. All worked with a will. At last an engine came, sent in to their help from Rambouillet.
One part of the Prefecture, whose burning caused innumerable sparks, was the depot for lost property. It contained, among other things twenty thousand umbrellas.
It was above all things desirable to remove the straw bedding of the prisoners, stored by day in one large room, and while those busy with powder and cartridges worked below, Pierre Braquond, the turnkey, took this task upon himself, a.s.sisted by some of his late prisoners.
The difficulty of escaping from the island was great, for the insurgents would fire on fugitives from the right bank of the river, the Versailles troops from the left. A warder, at the risk of his life, crept to the water's edge opposite to the Versaillais, and waved a white handkerchief. As soon as he was seen, the troops ceased firing.
Every moment it was expected that the roof of the prison would fall in, when suddenly the reservoir on the top of the building gave way, and the flames were checked by a rush of water. Braquond had said to Judge Bonjean a few days before he was sent from the Prefecture to Mazas, ”I can stay here no longer. I am going to escape to Versailles.” M. Bonjean replied: ”As a magistrate I command you to remain; as a prisoner I implore you. What would become of those under your care if the friends of the Commune were set over them?”
The Ministry of Marine (that is, the Navy Department) is situated in the Rue Saint-Florentin, near the Rue Royale and the Place de la Concorde,--the most beautiful part of the city. The officer who held it for the Commune was Colonel Brunei, an excellent middle-aged man, far too good for his a.s.sociations. There was no stain of any kind on his past life, but he had been disappointed when peace was made with the Germans, and had joined the Commune in a moment of patriotic enthusiasm. Once in its service, there was no way to escape.
On May 23 the Versaillais were gaining every moment. There was a man named Matillion, charged by the Central Committee to do anything or to burn anything to prevent their advance. That night, when houses that he had set on fire were blazing in the Rue Royale (he had had petroleum pumped upon them by fire-engines), there was a fierce orgy held by the light of the flames before the Church of the Madeleine. A wild, demon-like dance was led by three women who had done duty all day as _petroleuses_,--Florence, Aurore, and Marie. Marie had been publicly thanked at the Hotel-de-Ville for sending a cannonball through one of the statues before the Chamber of Deputies.
Three battalions of Communist soldiers stationed in the Ministry of Marine, which had been converted into a hospital, took advantage of the fact that the general attention was fixed upon this orgy to quit their post and steal away, leaving the Ministry undefended.
It was eleven at night; Colonel Brunel was sending to the Central Committee for fresh soldiers and fresh orders, when a paper was given him. He read it, turned pale, and sent for the doctor. ”The Central Committee,” he said, ”orders me to blow up this building immediately.” ”But my wounded?” cried the doctor. There were one hundred and seven wounded soldiers of the Commune in the hospital.
There was no place to which they could be moved, and no means of transportation. Colonel Brunel sent an orderly to represent the case to the Committee. All he could obtain was a detail of National Guards to a.s.sist in carrying away the wounded, together with a positive order to burn down the building. As the sick men were being very slowly carried out, a party arrived, commanded by a drunken officer, and carrying buckets of coal-oil and other combustibles, which they scattered about the rooms. By this time the fires of the Versaillais gleamed through the trees in the Champs elysees. The Rue Royale, near at hand, was in flames. Across the Seine, the Rue de Lille was burning. The Ministry of Finance and the palace of the Tuileries seemed a sea of flame. In the Ministry of Marine were two clerks, long attached to that branch of the Government service, who had been requested by Admiral Pothereau, the Minister for Naval Affairs, to remain at their post and endeavor to protect the papers and property. Their names were Gablin and Le Sage. M. Le Sage had his wife with him in the building. These men resolved to save the Ministry, or perish. While Le Sage, who was expert in gymnastics, set out to see if he could reach the general in command of the Versaillais, Gablin turned all his energies to prevent the impending conflagration. Putting on an air of haste and terror, he rushed into the room where the soldiers were refres.h.i.+ng themselves, and cried out l.u.s.tily that the Versaillais were upon them, but that if they followed him, he would save them. Under pretence of showing them a secret pa.s.sage, he led them into a chamber and locked the door. Then he turned his attention to their commander.
He represented to him that the Versaillais were close at hand, and promised him safety and a handsome reward if he would not set fire to the building. ”But I have my orders!” objected the half-tipsy officer. ”I have the order you had better obey,” replied Gablin, pointing a pistol at his head. ”Now, shall I fire, or shall I reward you?” The officer gave in. He helped M. Gablin to pour the buckets of coal-oil into the gutters in the courtyard, to clear away the powder, and to drench the floors with water. Then Gablin took him to a chamber, gave him plain clothes, and locked him in. He fell asleep upon the bed in a moment.