Paris under the Commune - John Leighton
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[Illustration: MARINE GUNNER AND STREET-BOY.
During the Prussian siege the sailors of the French navy played an
important part, their bravery, activity, and ingenuity being much
esteemed by the Parisians. Some, of them took the red side, and manned
the gun-boats on the Seine. Knowing the prestige attached to the brave
marines, the Communist generals made use of the naval clothes found in
the marine stores, and dressed therein some of the valliant heroes of
Belleville and Montmartre.]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 46: The game of pitch-halfpenny, in, which, in France, a cork
(_bouchon_), with halfpence on the top of it, is placed on the ground.]
[Footnote 47: General Eudes was the Alcibiades, or rather the Saint
Just, of the Commune. He had the face and manners of a fashionable
_tenorino_, the luxurious taste of the Athenian, the cruel inflexibility
of Robespierre's protege. He was born at Bonay, in the arrondissement of
Coutances. His father was a tradesman of the Boulevard des Italians. In
his examination before the Council of War in August, 1870, Eudes called
himself a shorthand writer and law student, though his real position was
said to be that of a linendraper's clerk. His first notable exploit was
the assassination of a fireman at La Villette. For this crime he was
brought before the First Council of War at Paris. Here he informed the
President, in somewhat unparliamentary terms, that "the betrayers of the
country were not the Republicans, and that to destroy the Imperial
Government was to annihilate the Prussians." In spite of the eloquent
appeal of his counsel, he was condemned to death. The events of the
fourth of September prevented the execution of this sentence, and he
lived to take an active part in the agitation of the thirty-first of
October. He was again tried for this conduct and acquitted, together
with Vermorel, Ribaldi, Lefrancais and others. Eudes' name figures in
the first decrees of the Commune, and on the last of those of the
Committee of Public Safety. On the second of April he was appointed
Delegate for War, and, conjointly with Cluseret, organised ten corps of
the Enfants Perdus of Belleville. He promised to each of his volunteers
an annuity of 300 francs and a decoration. Eudes was an atheist of the
most violent type, and sayings are attributed to him which make one
shudder.]
XXXIX.
Where is Bergeret? What have they done with Bergeret? We miss Bergeret.
They have no right to suppress Bergeret, who, according to the official
document, was "himself" at Neuilly; Bergeret, who drove to battle in an
open carriage; who enlivened our ennui with a little fun. They were
perfectly at liberty to take away his command and give it to whomsoever
they chose; I am quite agreeable to that, but they had no right to take
him away and prevent him amusing us. Alas! we do not have the chance so
often![48]
Rumours are afloat that he has been taken to the Conciergerie. Poor
Bergeret! and why is he so treated? Because he got the Federals beaten
in trying to lead them to Versailles?
[Illustration: CORPS LEGISLATIF.--THE HEAD-QUARTERS OF GENERAL
BERGERET.]
Citizens, if you will allow me to express my humble opinion on the
subject, I shall take the opportunity of insinuating that the plan of
Citizen Bergeret--which has, I acknowledge, been completely
unsuccessful--was the only possible one capable of transforming into a
triumphant revolution, the emeute of Montmartre, now the Commune of
Paris.
Let us look at it from a logical point of view, if you please. Does it
seem possible to you, that Paris can hold its own against the whole of
the rest of France? No, most certainly not. Today, especially, after the
disasters that have occurred to the communal insurrectionists of
Marseilles, Lyons, and Toulouse--disasters which your lying official
reports have in vain tried to transform into successes; today, I say,
you cannot possibly nourish any delusive hopes of help from the
provinces. In a few days, you will have the whole country in array in
front of your ramparts and your ruined fortresses, and then you are
lost; yes, lost, in spite of all the blinded heroism of those whom you
have beguiled to the slaughter. The only hope you could reasonably have
conceived was that of profiting by the first moment of surprise and
disorder, which the victorious revolt had occasioned among the small
number of hesitating soldiery which then constituted the whole of the
French army; to surprise Versailles, inadequately defended, and seize,
if it were possible, on the Assembly and the Government. Your sudden
revolution wanted to be followed up by a brusque attack, there would
then have been some hope--a faint one, I confess, but still a hope, and
this plan of Bergeret, by the very reason of its audacity, should not
have been condemned by you, who have only succeeded through violence and
audacity, and can only go on prospering by the same means. Now what do
you mean to do? To resist the whole of France? To resist your enemies
inside the walls, besides those enemies outside, who increase in numbers
and confidence every day? Your defeat is certain, and from this day
forth is only a question of time. You were decidedly wrong to put
Bergeret "in the shade" as they say at the Hotel de Ville,--firstly,
because he amused us; and secondly, because he tried the only thing that
could possibly have succeeded--an enterprise worthy of a brilliant
madman.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 48: General Bergeret, Member of the Central Committee,
Delegate of War, &c., was a bookseller's assistant. He emerged in 1869
from a printing-office to support the irreconcileable candidates in the
election meetings.
Events progressed, and on the 18th of March Victor Bergeret reappeared,
resplendent in gold lace and embroidery, happy to have found at last a
government, to which Jules Favre did not belong.
When Bergeret, who never had any higher grade than that of sergeant in
the National Guard, was made general, he believed himself to be a
soldier. A friend of this pasteboard officer said one day, "If Bergeret
were to live a hundred years, he would always swear he had been a
general."
On the 8th April, Victor Bergeret was arrested by order of the Executive
Commission for having refused obedience to Cluseret, a general too, and
his superior, and he was incarcerated in the prison of Mazas, where he
remained for a short time, until the day when Cluseret was shut up there
himself. In fact, Cluseret went into the very cell which Bergeret had
just quitted, and found an autograph note written on the wall by his
predecessor, and addressed to himself. The words ran thus:--
"CITIZEN CLUSERET,--
"You have had me shut up here, and you will be here yourself before
eight days are over.
"GENERAL BERGERET."
On leaving the prison of Mazas, Bergeret was still kept a prisoner for a
time in a magnificent apartment of the Hotel de Ville, decorated with
gilded panneling and cerise-coloured satin. His wife was allowed to join
him here, and he also obtained permission to keep with him a little
terrier, of which he was extremely fond. Shortly afterwards he was
reinstated, took his place again in the Communal Assembly, and was
attached to the commission of war. The beautiful palace of the president
of the Corps Legislatif was now his residence, and there he delighted in
receiving the friends who had known him when he was poor. His invariable
home-dress in palace as in prison, was red from head to foot: red
jacket, red trousers, and red Phrygian cap.
One day, a short time after his release from prison, he said to an
intimate friend:--"Affairs are going well, but the Commune is in need of
money, I know it, and they are wrong not to confide in me. I would lend
them ten thousand francs willingly." The generalship had singularly
enriched the booksellers assistant, Victor Bergeret.]
[Illustration: GENERAL DOMBROWSKI.]
XL.
Who takes Bergeret's place? Dombrowski.[49] Who had the idea of doing
this? Cluseret. First of all we had the Central Committee, then we had
the Commune, and now we have Cluseret. It looks as if Cluseret had
swallowed the Commune, which had previously swallowed and only half
digested the Central Committee. We are told that Cluseret is a great
man, that Cluseret is strong, that Cluseret will save Paris. Cluseret
issues decrees, and sees that they are executed. The Commune says, "_we
wish_;" but Cluseret says, "_I wish_." It is he who has conceived and
promulgated the following edict:
"In consideration of the patriotic demands of a large number of
National Guards, who, although they are married men, wish to have
the honour of defending their municipal rights, even at the expense
of their lives ..."
I should like to know some of those National Guards who attach so little
importance to their lives! Show me two, and I will myself consent to be
the third. But I am interrupting Dictator Cluseret.
"The decree of the fifth of April is therefore modified:"
The decree of the fifth of April was made by the Commune, but Cluseret
does not care a straw for that.
"From seventeen to nineteen, service in the marching-companies is
voluntary, but from nineteen to forty it is obligatory for the
National Guards, married or unmarried.
"I recommend all good patriots to be their own police, and to see
that this edict is carried out in their respective quartern, and to
force the refractory to serve."
As to the last paragraph of Cluseret's decree it is impossible to joke
about it, it is by far too odious. This exhortation in favour of a
press-gang,--this wish that each man should become a spy upon his
neighbour (he says it in so many words), fills me with anger and
disgust. What! I may be passing in the streets, going about my own
business, and the first Federal who pleases, anybody with dirty hands, a
wretch you may be sure, for none but a wretch would follow the
recommendations of Cluseret,--an escaped convict, may take me by the
collar and say, "Come along and be killed for the sake of my municipal
independence." Or else I may be in bed at night, quietly asleep, as it
is clearly my right to be, and four or five fellows, fired with
patriotic ardour, may break in my door, if I do not hasten to open it on
the first summons like a willing slave, and, whether I like it or not,
drag me in night-cap and slippers, in my shirt perhaps, if it so pleases
the brave _sans-culottes_, to the nearest outpost. Now I swear to you,
Cluseret, I would not bear this, if I had not, during the last few
hungry days of the siege, sold to a curiosity dealer--your colleague now
in the Commune--my revolver, which I had hoped naively might defend me
against the Prussians! Think, a revolver with six balls, if you please,
and which, alas! I forgot to discharge!
We can only hope that even at this moment, when the revolution has
brought out of the darkness into the light, so many rascals and cowards,
just as the sediment rises to the top when the wine is shaken, we must
hope, that there will be found in Paris, nobody to undertake the mean
office of spy and detective; and that the decree of M. Cluseret will
remain a dead-letter, like so many other decrees of the Commune. I will
not believe all I am told; I will not believe that last night several
men, without any precise orders, without any legal character whatever,
merely National Guards, introduced themselves into peaceful families;
waking the wife and children, and carrying off the husband as one
carries off a housebreaker or an escaped convict. I am told that this is
a fact, that it has happened more than fifty times at Montmartre,
Batignolles, and Belleville; yet I will not believe it.[50] I prefer to
believe that these tales are "inventions of Versailles" than to admit
the possibility of such infamy.
Come now, Cluseret, War Delegate, whatever he likes to call himself.
Where does he come from, what has he done, and what services has he
rendered, to give him a right thus to impose his sovereign wishes upon
us?
He is not a Frenchman; nor is he an American; for the honour of France I
prefer his being an American. His history is as short as it is
inglorious. He once served in the French army, and left, one does not
know why; then went to fight in America during the war. His enemies
affirm that he fought for the Slave States, his friends the contrary. It
does not seem very clear which side he was on--both, perhaps. Oh,
America! you had taken him from us, why did you not keep him? Cluseret
came back to us with the glory of having forsworn his country.
Immediately the revolutionists received him with open arms. Only think,
an American! Do you like America? People want to make an America
everywhere. Modern Republics have had formidable enemies to contend
with--America and the revolution of '98. We are sad parodists. We cannot
be free in our own fashion, but are always obliged to imitate what has
been or what is. But that which is adapted to one climate or country, is
it always that which is the fittest thing for another? I will return,
however, to this subject another time. America, who is so vaunted, and
whom I should admire as much as could reasonably be wished, if men did
not try to remodel France after her image, one must be blind not to see
what she has of weakness and of narrowness, amid much that is truly
grand. It was said to me once by some one, "The American mind may be
compared to a compound liqueur, composed of the yeast of Anglo-Saxon
beer, the foam of Spanish wines, and the dregs of the _petit-bleu_ of
Suresnes, heated to boiling point by the applause and admiration given
by the genuine pale ale, the true sherry, and authentic Chateau-Margaux
to these their deposits. From time to time the caldron seethes with a
little too much violence, and the bubbling drink pours over upon the old
world, bringing back to the pure source, to the true vintage, their
deteriorated products. Oh! The poor wines of France! How many
adulterations have they been submitted to!" Calumny and exaggeration no
doubt; but I am angry with America for sending Cluseret back, as I am
angry with the Commune for having imposed him on Paris. The Commune,
however, has an admirable excuse: it has not, perhaps, found among true
Frenchmen one with an ambition criminal enough to direct, according to
her wishes, the destruction of Paris by Paris, and France by France.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 49: There are two versions of Dombrowski's earlier history. By
his admirers he was said to have headed the last Polish insurrection:
the party of order stigmatise him as a Russian adventurer, who had
fought in Poland, but against the Poles, and in the Caucasus, in Italy,
and in France--wherever; in fine, blows were to be given and money
earned. He entered France, like many other adventurous knights, in
Garibaldi's suite, came to Paris after the siege, and immediately after
the outbreak of the eighteenth of March was created general by the
Commune, and gathered round him in guise of staff the most illustrious,
or least ignoble, of those foreign parasites and vagabonds, who have
made of Paris a grand occidental Bohemian Babel. These soldiers of
fortune, most of whom had been "unfortunate" at home, formed the marrow
of the Commune's military strength.
Dombrowski had gained a name for intrepidity even among these men of
reckless courage and adventurous lives. He maintained strict discipline,
albeit to a not very moral purpose. Whoever dared connect his name with
the word defeat was shot. Like many other Communist generals he took the
most stringent measures for concealing the truth from his soldiers, and
thus staved off total demoralisation until the Versailles troops were in
the heart of Paris. His relations with the Federal authorities were not
of an uniformly amiable character.]
[Footnote 50: A poor Italian smith told me he had three men seized. They
had taken a stove near the fortifications of Ternes, when they were
arrested. "But we are Italians!" they cried. It was no excuse, for the
Federals replied, "Italians! so much the better; you shall serve as
Garibaldians!"]
XLI.
It was not enough that men should be riddled with balls and torn to
pieces by shells. The women are also seized with a strange enthusiasm in
their turn, and they too fall on the battle-field, victims of a terrible
heroism. What extraordinary beings are these who exchange the needle for
the needle-gun, the broom for the bayonet, who quit their children that
they may die by the sides of their husbands or lovers? Amazons of the
rabble, magnificent and abject, something between Penthesilea and
Theroigne de Mericourt. There they are seen to pass as cantinieres,
among those who go forth to fight. The men are furious, the women are
ferocious,--nothing can appal, nothing discourage them. At Neuilly, a
vivandiere is wounded in the head; she turns back a moment to staunch
the blood, then returns to her post of danger. Another, in the 61st
Battalion, boasts of having killed three _gardiens de la paix_[51] and
several _gendarmes_. On the plain of Chatillon a woman joins a group of
National Guards, takes her stand amongst them, loads her gun, fires,
re-loads and fires again, without the slightest interruption. She is the
last to retire, and even then turns back again and again to fire. A
_cantiniere_ of the 68th Battalion was killed by a fragment of shell
which broke the little spirit-barrel she carried, and sent the splinters
into her stomach. After the engagement of the 3rd of April, nine bodies
were brought to the _mairie_ of Vaugirard. The poor women of the quarter
crowd there, chattering and groaning, to look for husbands, brothers and
son's. They tear a dingy lantern from each other, and put it close to
the pale faces of the dead, amongst whom they find the body of a young
woman literally riddled with shot. What means the wild rage that seizes
upon these furies? Are they conscious of the crimes they commit; do they
understand the cause for which they die? Yesterday, in a shop of the Rue
de Montreuil, a woman entered with her gun on her shoulder and her
bayonet covered with blood. "Wouldn't you do better to stay at home and
wash your brats?" said an indignant neighbour. Whereupon arose a furious
altercation, the virago working herself into such a fury that she sprang
upon her adversary, and bit her violently in the throat, then withdrew a
few steps, seized her gun, and was going to fire, when she suddenly
turned pale, her weapon fell from her hands, and she sank back dead. In
her wild passion she had broken a blood vessel. Such are the women of
the people in this terrible year of 1871. It has its _cantinieres_ as
'93 had its _tricoteuses_,[52] but the cantinieres are preferable, for
the horrible in them partakes of a savage grandeur. Fighting as they are
against brothers and kinsfolk, they are revolting, but against a foreign
enemy, they would have been sublime.
Children, even, do not remain passive in this fearful conflict. The
children! you cry,--but do not smile; one of my friends has just seen a
poor boy whose eye has been knocked in with the point of a nail. It
happened thus. It was on Friday evening in the principal street of
Neuilly. Two hundred boys--the eldest scarcely twelve years old--had
assembled there; they carried sticks on their shoulders, with knives and
nails stuck at the end of them. They had their army roll, and their
numbers were called over in form, and their chiefs--for they had
chiefs--gave the order to form into half sections, then to march in the
direction of Charenton; a mite of a child trudged before, blowing in a
penny trumpet bought at a toy-shop, and they had a cantiniere, a little
girl of six. Soon, they met another troop of children of about the same
numbers. Had the encounter been previously arranged? Had it been decided
that they should give battle? I cannot tell you this, but at all events
the battle took place, one party being for the Versailles troops, the
other for the Federals. Such a battle, that the inhabitants of the
quarter had the greatest difficulty in separating the combatants, and
there were killed and wounded, as the official despatches of the
Commune would give it; Alexis Mercier, a lad of twelve, whom his
comrades had raised to the dignity of captain, was killed by the blow of
a knife in the stomach.
Ah! believe it, these women drunk with hate, these children playing at
murder, are symptoms of the terrible malady of the times. A few days
hence, and this fury for slaughter will have seized all Paris.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 51: The Gardiens de la Paix replaced the Sergents de Ville.
They carried no sword, and wore a cap with a tricoloured band and
cockade; in fact were the policemen of Paris. The Gendarmerie are the
country police.]
[Footnote 52: Tricoteuses (knitters), women who attended political
clubs--working whilst they listened--1871 refined upon the idea of 1793.
The first revolution had its Tricoteuses, that of 1871 its
Petroleuses!!!]
XLII.
May conciliation be hoped for yet? Alas! I can scarcely think so. The
bloody fight will have a bloody end. It is not alone between the Commune
of Paris and the Assembly of Versailles that there lies an abyss which
only corpses can fill. Paris itself, at this moment--I mean the Paris
sincerely desirous of peace--is no longer understood by France; a few
days of separation have caused strange divisions in men's minds; the
capital seems to speak the country's language no longer. Timbuctoo is
not as far from Pekin, as Versailles is distant from Paris. How can one
hope under such circumstances, that the misunderstanding, the sole cause
of our misfortunes, can be cleared away? How can one believe that the
Government of Monsieur Thiers will lend an ear to the propositions
carried there by the members of the Republican Union of the rights of
Paris,[53] by the delegates of Parisian trade and by the emissaries of
the Freemasons;[54] when the principal object of all these propositions
is the definitive establishment of the Republic, and the fall and entire
recognition of our municipal liberties. The National Assembly is at the
same point as it was on the eve of the 18th of March; it disregards now,
as it did then, the legitimate wishes of the population, and, moreover,
it will not perceive the fact that the triumphant insurrection--in spite
of the excesses that everyone condemns--has naturally added to the
validity of our just revendications. The "Communists" are wrong, but the
Commune, the true Commune, is right; this is what Paris believes, and,
unhappily, this is what Versailles will not understand; it wants to
remain, as to the form of its government, weakly stationary; it makes a
municipal law that will be judged insufficient; and, as it obstinately
persists in errors which were worn out a month ago and are rotten now,
they will soon consider the "conciliators" whose ideas have progressed
from day to day, as the veritable agents of the insurrection, and send
them, purely and simply, about their business.
Nevertheless, the desire of seeing this fratricidal war at an end, is so
great, so ardent, so general, that convinced as we are of the
uselessness of their efforts, we admire and encourage those who
undertake the almost hopeless task of pacification with persistent
courage. True Paris has now but one flag, which is neither the crimson
rag nor the tricolour standard, but the white flag of truce.
XLIII.
Do you know what the Abbaye de Cinq-Pierres is, or rather what it was?
Mind, not Saint-Pierre, but Cinq-Pierres (Five Stones). Gavroche,[55]
who loves puns and is very fond of slang, gave this nickname to a set of
huge stones which stood before the prison of La Roquette, and on which
the guillotine used to be erected on the mornings when a capital
punishment was to take place. The executioner was the Abbe de
Cinq-Pierres, for Gavroche is as logical as he is ingenious. Well! the
abbey exists no longer, swept clean away from the front of the Roquette
prison. This is splendid! and as for the guillotine itself, you know
what has been done with that. Oh! we had a narrow escape! Would you
believe that that infamous, that abominable Government of Versailles,
conceived the idea, at the time it sat in Paris, of having a new and
exquisitely improved guillotine, constructed by anonymous carpenters? It
is exactly as I have the honour of telling you. You can easily verify
the fact by reading the proclamation of the "_sous-comite en exercice._"
What is the "active under-committee?" I admit that I am in total
ignorance on the subject; but, what does it matter! In these times when
committees spring up like mushrooms, it would be absurd to allow oneself
to be astonished at a committee--and especially a sub-committee--more or
less. Here is the proclamation:--
"CITIZENS,--Being informed that a guillotine is at this moment in course
of construction,..." Dear me, yes, while you were fast asleep and
dreaming, with no other apprehension than that of being sent to prison
by the members of the Commune, a guillotine was being made. Happily, the
sub-committee was not asleep. No, not they! "... a guillotine ordered
and paid for ...". Are you quite sure it was paid for, good
sub-committee? For that Government, you know, had such a habit of
cheating poor people out of their rights. "... by the late odious
government; a portable and rapid guillotine." Ha! What do you say to
that? Does not that make your blood run cold? Rapid, you understand;
that is to say, that the guillotining of twelve or fifteen hundred
patriots in a morning would have been play to the Abbe of Cinq-Pierres.
And portable, too! A sort of pocket guillotine. When the members of the
Government had a circuit to make in the provinces, they would have
carried their guillotine with their seals of office, and if, at Lyons,
Marseilles, or any other great town, they had met a certain number of
scoundrels--Snip, snap! In the twinkling of an eye, no more scoundrels
left. Oh! how cunning! But let us go on reading. "The sub-committee of
the eleventh arrondissement ..." Oh! so there is a sub-committee for
each arrondisement, is there? "... has had these infamous instruments of
monarchical domination ..." One for you, Monsieur Thiers! "... seized,
and has voted their destruction for ever." Very good intentions,
sub-committee, but you can't write grammar. "In consequence, they will
be burnt in front of the _mairie_, for the purification of the
arrondissement and the preservation of the new liberties." And
accordingly, a guillotine was burnt on the 7th of April, at ten o'clock
in the morning, before the statue of Voltaire.