Paris under the Commune Part 35

XCII.

Oh! those that hear it not, how happy they must be; they will never understand how fearful this continuous, this dreadful noise is, and to feel that each ball is aimed at some breast, and each sh.e.l.l brings ruin in its train. Fear and horror wrings one's heart and maddens one's brain. Visions pa.s.s before one's eyes of corpses, of houses crushing sleeping inmates, of men falling and crying out for mercy! and one feels quite strange to go on living among the crowds that die!

I have been out a little while, a ball whistled over my shoulder, and flattened itself against an iron bar on a shop front. I heard a ma.s.s of gla.s.s shiver into fragments on the pavement. I determined to return home.

On my way back, I had to pa.s.s in front of a liqueur shop, the door of which was open, and several men were talking there. I stopped to learn the news. Montmartre is taken; the Federals had not opposed much resistance; but a great deal of firing had gone on in the side streets and lanes. Seven insurgents were surrounded. "Give yourselves up, and your lives will be saved," cried out the soldiers. They replied, "We are prisoners;" but one of them drew his revolver and shot an officer in the leg. Then the soldiers took the seven men, threw them into a large hole, and shot them from above like so many rabbits. Another man told me that he had seen a child lying dead at the corner of the Rue de Rome. "A pretty little fellow," he said, "his brains were strewed on the pavement beside him." A third, that when all the fighting was over at the Place Saint-Pierre a rifle shot was heard, and a captain of Cha.s.seurs fell dead. The major who was there, looked up and saw a man trying to hide himself behind a chimney pot; the soldiers got into the house, seized him on the roof, and brought him down into the Place. What did the insurgent do, but walked up to the major, smiling, and hit him a blow on the cheek. The major set him up against a wall, and blew his brains out with a revolver. Another insurgent who was arrested, made an insulting grimace at the soldiers; they shot him. On the southern sides of Paris, the operations of the army have not been so fortunate as on this. In the Faubourg St. Germain it advances very slowly, if it advance at all. The Federals fight with heroic courage at the Mont-Parna.s.se Station, the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, and the Croix-Rouge; from the corners of the streets, from the windows, from the balconies proceed shots rarely ineffective. This sort of warfare fatigues the soldiers, particularly as the discipline prevents them from using the same measures. At Saint-Quen, likewise, the march of the troops is stayed; the barricade of the Rue de Clichy holds out, and will hold out some time. In other quarters the advantages gained by the Versaillais are evident. Here and there some small show of resistance is offered, but the insurgents are flying. I cannot tell whether all these floating rumours are true. As I return home, I look round; in the Rue Geoffrey-Marie, near the Faubourg Montmartre, I see a National Guard alone in the middle of the street, nothing to screen him whatsoever; he loads his rifle and fires, loads and fires again; again and again! Thirty-three times! Then the rifle slips to the ground, and the man staggers and falls.

XCIII.

This morning, the 23rd, after a combat of three hours, the barricade of the Place de Clichy has not yet yielded. Yet two battalions of National Guards had, at the beginning of the fight, reversed their arms, and were fraternising with the soldiers on the Place de la Maine, a hundred and fifty yards from the scene of the fray. The cracking of the rifles, the explosion of sh.e.l.ls, and the sound of mitrailleuses filled the air. The smell of powder was stifling. Dreadful cries arose from the poor wounded wretches; and the whizzing projectiles from Montmartre rent the air above in their fiery course. "Beneath us," said an inhabitant of Batignolles who gave me these particulars, "beneath us the city lay like a seething caldron."

The beating of drums and the sharp trumpet-calls mixed in this monstrous din, and were every now and then lost in the tremendous noise of the firing.

About half-past one the sounds grew quieter; the barricade was taken.

The insurgents were retreating to La Chapelle and Belleville in disorder; the soldiers of the line rushed like a torrent into the Avenue de Clichy, leaving a tricolour flag hoisted upon the dismantled barricade.

Here and there, in the streets, the struggle had not ceased. In the Rue Blanche a rifle-shot proceeded from a ground-floor; the man was taken and executed outside his own door. The artillery was moving up the Rue Chaptal towards Montmartre and La Chapelle. The day was very hot; pails of water were thrown over the guns to quench their burning thirst. All the young men who were found in the streets were provisionally put under arrest, for they feared everyone, even children, and horrible vengeance and thirst for blood had seized upon all. Suddenly an isolated shot would be heard, followed a minute or two after by five or six others.

One knew reprisal had been done.

At about four o'clock in the afternoon, when the quarters of Belleville and Clichy were pretty well cleared of troops, two insurgents were walking, one behind the other, in the Rue Leonie. The one who walked last lifted his rifle and fired carelessly in the direction of the windows; the report sounded very loudly in the silent street, and a pane of gla.s.s fell in fragments to the ground. The insurgent who was in front did not even turn his head; these men seem to have become quite reckless and deaf to everything.

What the troops feared the most were the sharp-shooters hidden in the houses, aiming through little holes and cracks; suddenly a snap would be heard, and the officers would lift their gla.s.sed to their eyes; more often nothing was to be seen at all, but if the slightest shadow were visible behind a window curtain, the order was, "Search that house!" The executions did not take place in the apartments. Now and then an inhabitant or two were brought down into the street, and those never returned!

XCIV.

It is the middle of the night; and I awake with a terrible start. A bright red light streams through the panes. I throw open the window; the sky to the left is one ma.s.s of dark smoke and lurid streaks of light--it is a fire, Paris on fire![105] I dress and go out. At the corner of the Rue de Trevise a sentinel stops me, "You can't pa.s.s." I am so bewildered that I do not think of noticing whether he is a Federal or a soldier.

What am I to do, where am I to go? Although an hour ago b.a.l.l.s were whistling around, there are now people at every window. "The Ministere des Finances is on fire! the Rue Royale! the Louvre!" The Louvre! I can scarcely avoid a cry of horror. In a minute the enormity of the disaster has broken upon me. Oh! _chefs-d'oeuvre_ without number! I see you devoured, consumed, reduced to ashes! I see the walls tottering, the canvases fall from the frames and shrivel up; the "Marriage of Canaan"

is in flames! Raphael is struggling in the burning furnace! Leonardo da Vinci is no more! This was, indeed, an unexpected calamity! Fortune had reserved this terrible surprise for us! But I will not believe it, these rumours are false, doubtless! How should these people who inhabit this quarter know what I am ignorant of? Yet over our heads the sky is tinged with black and red!

[Ill.u.s.tration: RUINS OF THE RUE ROYALE, LOOKING TOWARDS THE PLACE DE LA CONCORDE AND ACROSS THE RUE DU FAUBOURG SAINT-HONORE.]

A strange smell fills the air, like that of a monstrous petroleum lamp just lighted. That dreaded word, petroleum, makes me shudder. Once distinctly I hear the sound of a vast body falling heavily. Not to be able to obtain information is terrible; not to know what is going on, while all around seems on fire; the day is beginning to break, the musketry and the cannonading commences afresh, it is a h.e.l.l, with death for its girdle! In front of me I see the corner of a building lighted up by the fire, on which little spirals of smoke are reflected from the distant conflagration. I rush home, I want to hide myself, to sleep, to forget. When I am in my room, I see through the white curtains of the window a bright light. I tremble and rush to the window! It is the gilt letters of a signboard, on the opposite side of the way, that are darting forth brilliant flashes, borrowed from the distant flames.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A BAY of the TUILERIES--from the PLACE du CARROUSEL.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: A WARM CORNER APPROACHING THE LOUVRE.]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 105: The 24th May the COMMITTEE FOR PUBLIC SAFETY issued these cold-blooded decrees:--

"Citizen Milliere, at the head of one hundred and fifty fuse-bearers, is to set fire to all houses Of suspicious aspect, as well as to the public monuments of the left bank of the Seine.

"Citizen Dereure, with one hundred and fifty fuse-bearers, is charged with the 1st and 2nd Arrondiss.e.m.e.nt.

"Citizen Billioray, with one hundred men, is charged with the 9th, 10th, and 20th Arrondiss.e.m.e.nts.

"Citizen Vesinier, with fifty men, has the Boulevards of the Madeleine and of the Bastille especially entrusted to him.

"These Citizens are to come to an understanding with the officers commanding the barricades, for the execution of these orders.

"DELESCLUZE, ReGeRE, RANVINE, JOHANNARD, VeSINIER, BRUNEL, DOMBROWSKI.

"Paris, 3 Prairial, year 79."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Milliere[106]]

XCV.

Certainly I nursed no vain illusions. What you had done, gentlemen of the Commune, had enlightened me as to your value, and as to the purity of your intentions. Seeing you lie, steal, and kill, I had said to you, "You are liars, robbers, and murderers;" but truly, in spite of Citizen Felix Pyat, who is a coward, and Citizen Miot, who is a fool; in spite of Milliere, who shot _refractaires_, and Philippe, whose trade shall be nameless; in spite of Dacosta, who amused himself with telling the Jesuits at the Conciergerie, "Mind, you are to be shot in an hour," and then an hour afterwards returning to say, "I have thought about it, and it is for tomorrow;" in spite of Johannard, who executed a child of fifteen guilty of selling a suppressed newspaper; in spite of Rigault, who, chucking the son of Chaudey under the chin, laughingly said to him, "Tomorrow, little one, we shall shoot papa;" in spite of all the madmen and fools that const.i.tuted the Commune de Paris, who after being guilty of more extravagances than are necessary to get a man sent to the Madhouse of Charenton, and more crimes than are sufficient to shut him up in prison at Sainte-Pelagie, had managed, by means of every form, of wickedness and excess, to make our beloved Paris a frightened slave, crouching to earth under their abominable tyranny; in spite of everything, I could not have dreamed that even their demoniac fury could have gone so far as to try to burn Paris, after having ruined it! Nero of the gutter! Sardanapalus drunk with vitriol! So your vanity wanted such a volcano to engulf you, and you wished to die by the light of such an _auto-da-fe_. Instead of torches around your funeral car, you wished the Tuileries, the library of the Louvre, and the Palace of the Legion of Honour burnt to ashes, the Rue Royale one vast conflagration, where the walls as they fell buried alive women and children, and the Rue de Lille vomiting fire and smoke like the crater of Vesuvius.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PALAIS DE JUSTICE, PARTLY DESTROYED. SAINTE CHAPELLE, SAVED.]

It has pleased you that thousands of families should be ruined, their savings scattered in the ashes of the vanished papers of the burnt Ministere des Finances and the _Caisse des depots_. In seeing that the art-galleries of the Louvre had remained intact, only its library burnt, you must have been seized with mad rage. How! Notre Dame not yet in flames? Sainte-Chapelle not on fire? Have you no more petroleum, no more flaming torches? The cry "To Arms!" is not enough, you must shout "To Fire!" Would you consume the entire city, and make of its ruins a horrible monument to your memory?

Do not say, "We have not done this; it is the people who are working out their own revenge, and we stand for nothing, we are as gentle as lambs.

Ranvier would not hurt a fly." Away with all this pretence; were you not on the balcony of the Hotel de Ville with your blood-red scarfs, uttering your commands? The populace, deceived and blinded, have but obeyed you. Do not all the circ.u.mstances leading to this stupendous catastrophe, reveal an elaborate and digested plan, determined long beforehand? Did we not read this notice, daily, in your official journal: "All those who have petroleum are requested immediately to declare the quant.i.ties in their possession?" Was there not a quick-match extinguished in the quarter of the Invalides that was to have communicated the flames to barrels of powder placed, long ago, in the great sewers? Yes, what has taken place you had decreed. If the disasters have not been more terrible, is it not, that, surprised at the sudden arrival of the troops, you had not the time to finish your preparations? Yes, you are the criminals! It was Eudes who gave out the petroleum to the _Petroleuses_; it was Felix Pyat who laid the train of gunpowder. It is Tridon who said: "Take care that the phials be not uncorked." The public incendiary committee has well performed its duty!

Wicked criminals! Execrable madmen! May Heaven bear me witness that my heart abhors revenge, is always inclined to pardon--but for these! What chastis.e.m.e.nt can be great enough to appease the wrath of justice! What vow of repentance could be offered up fervent enough to be received in Heaven, even at the moment when, struck down by b.a.l.l.s, they offer their lives as expiation? Misguided humanity!

[Ill.u.s.tration: MINISTeRE DES FINANCES

RUE DE RIVOLI

POLICE OF PARIS

Au Citoyen Lucas,

Faites de suite flamber Finances et venez nous retrouver. 4 prairial, an 79.

TH: FERRe.]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 106: This Milliere, formerly an advocate and writer on the _Ma.r.s.eillaise_, was a native of St-Etienne, and fifty-four years of age, a cool speaker, and advocate of advanced ideas, that got him several imprisonments. In March 1870 he was taken from the prison of Sainte-Pelagie to give evidence at Tours against Pierre Bonaparte for the murder of Victor Noir, where his lucid depositions told greatly against the prisoner. When regaining his liberty he became more revolutionary than ever, writing during the siege in the _Patrie en Danger_. At the peace he became one of the members for Paris, and sat at Bordeaux and Versailles, agitating social subjects and the law of lodgers. About the 10th of April he took part with the Commune, and at the entrance of the troops was taken at the Luxembourg after having fired six rounds from a revolver, was shot on the steps of the Pantheon, and died as he opened his shirt front, shouting, "_Vive la Republique!