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Cornell University Libra

Rossel’s posthumous papers.
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.
LONDON:
ROBSON AND SONS, PRINTERS, PANCRAS ROAD, N.W,
 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH.

LONDON:
CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193 PICCADILLY.

PARIS : E, LACHAUD, 4 PLACE DU THEATRE FRANCAIS,
1372.
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INTRODUCTION.

———>——

THE circumstances attending the connec-
tion of Captain Rossel with the Commune
of Paris, and his subsequent execution in
consequence of that connection, have ex-
cited so much interest in England, that I
trust no apolocy will be considered neces-
sary for offering to the British public a
translation of the Posthumous Papers con-
taining his own explanation of the circum-
stances which induced him to give his
services to the Communists.

In the letter of the 19th of March to
the Minister of War, tendering his resig-
nation of the post of Chief of the Corps of
Engineers at the Camp at Nevers, Rossel
says: ‘I have no hesitation in siding with
the party which has not signed the Treaty
of Peace, and which does not number
Vi INTRODUCTION.

amongst its adherents the generals guilty
of capitulation.’

From this, and from similar passages, it
is evident that when he joined the Com-
mune, it was with the hope that his services
would be employed, not against his own
countrymen, but against the foes of his
country. He reckoned upon the neutrality,
if not upon the indirect assistance, of the
Versailles Government, and was led away
by a patriotic enthusiasm, which is one of
the distinguishing features of his character,
to believe that the Commune would form
the nucleus of a national resistance.

As impartial as he is patriotic, he has
hardly been brought face to face with the
Communist leaders before he admits his
mistake; but he feels that he has crossed
the Rubicon, and that to draw back would
be dishonourable. With the whole energy
of his nature he struggles against disap-
pointment and humiliation, hoping against
hope that he may at length be able to
achieve something for his unfortunate coun-

try. In the depths of his heart he feels
INTRODUCTION. vil

that his cause is desperate, that failure is
inevitable; and yet he fights on, preferring,
‘in spite of all the disgraceful acts of the
Commune, to have fought on the side of
the vanquished rather than on that of the
victorious party.’

Independently of the fact that Rossel’s
Posthumous Papers present a complete apo-
logy for his conduct from his own point
of view, they are interesting in a historical
sense. His appreciation of the prominent
men with whom he came in contact is at
once racy and profound. The passage in
which he sets forth the equal difficulty of
blaming or praising Gambetta, is a good
specimen of the clearness of his judgment.

Through all his letters to his relations
there runs a vein of deep feeling; and he
has an unusually clear style and simple
way of telling his story, which inevitably
arouses the sympathy of the reader, whe-
ther he be French or English.

THE TRANSLATOR.
CONTENTS.

LETTER To HIs FatHER

Tue Tours GovERNMENT

Lerrer to M. GamBetta

Tue Camp at Nevers BErorE Marcu 18TH

Came at NEvERs—tTHE Hrap ENGINEER OFFICER

NovTEs TAKEN AT THE Camp at NEVERS

Tuer SrrRuccLe To THE Datu

A Letrer to M. GamBerra

Tue 19TH ofr Marcu ’ : .

Tue Part I pLaveD UNDER THE CoMMUNE—CLUSERET,
DeELEscLuzE, &c.

SUPPLEMENTARY NoTEs ‘ : , 2

THE OVERTHROW OF THE COMMUNE

Some ANECDOTES CONCERNING THE TakING oF Paris

Notes anp THOUGHTS .

On a VIGNETTE BY GusTavE Dori

Torotuy: a Fotiy

For my PaREnNTs .

Last WIsHES

To my Fatuer, Morner, BELLa, AND SARAH

‘VIXERUNT

PAGE
1

31
47
49
52
54
59
62
65

67

. 127

141

. 184
. 193

217
221

. 248
. 283

284
289
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

Letter to his Father.

Carap at Nevers, Feb. 18, 1871.
My DEAREST FATHER,

I have really so many things to tell
you, that I don’t know where to begin. I begin
by what is most interesting to you. I am Acting-
colonel of Engineers, and I shall never be either
captain or commandant, or lieutenant-colonel, for
I shall leave the service if the shameful peace
with which we are threatened is concluded; and
if the war continues, I shall know how to obtain
for myself so clearly-defined a position, that no
one will think of questioning it. You know that
before the war I was already highly disgusted

B
2 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

with the vast association of incapables who held
high rank; and I was convinced that the most
fortunate and intelligent efforts would never have
any chance in this army against quiet mediocrity.
T have now broken completely with the corps of
Engineers and the Committee; the Frossards and
Coffiniéres are sufficiently fine specimens of the
system of promotion in the French army to induce
me to refrain willingly from competing with them.

Since the commencement of the war, I have
had a sufficient number of strange adventures ;
but a remarkable fact, and one which will aston-
ish you, is, that I have never been ordered under
fire. I have been under fire occasionally, but

solely for my own satisfaction, and I have run but

little danger.
At Metz, I was not long in being convinced

of the absolute incapacity of our chiefs, whether

 

generals or staff-officers—a hopeless incapacity
admitted by the whole army; and as I am in the
habit of carrying out my conclusions to the end,
even before the battle of August 14th I had

planned the means of expelling the whole clique,
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 3

and the measures I had imagined were not quite
impracticable. I remember one evening with my
comrade—a man of generous and resolute mind,
whom I had quite won over to my way of think-
ing. We were walking before those noisy resid-
ences of the Rue Desclercs, filled at all times
with horses, carriages, and gold-laced stewards,
and the whole tumult of an insolent and riotous
staff. We were examining the entrances and the
positions of the guards, and discussing how, with
some fifty resolute men, it would be easy to carry
off all those fellows. We were looking for those
fifty men; but we never succeeded in finding
more than ten.

On the 14th of August, towards evening, we
saw from the top of the Serperoix ramparts the
horizon from St. Julien to Quentin lighted up by
the battle-fires. On the 16th the army had crossed
the Moselle, and was face to face with the enemy.
As soon as I was freed from my service, as the
trains of wounded who arrived announced a great
battle, I hastened on horseback by Moulins and
Chatel to the plateau of Gravelotte, where I wit-
4 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

nessed a portion of the action side by side with a
magnificently-commanded battery of mitrailleuses.
Once again, on the day of the capitulation, I saw
the captain of that battery. On the 18th I went
again in the evening to see the battle, and met
General Grenier. He was returning after having
lost his division, which was quietly dispersing, hav-
ing exhausted its ammunition, and fought seven
hours without being relieved. On the morrow the
blockade was completed.

Nevertheless I continued to seek enemies for
those incapable generals. On the 31st August
and 1st September they tried to give battle, and
could not even manage to get their troops en-
gaged. The unfortunate Lebceuf tried, it is said,
to get killed, and only succeeded in getting a lot
of honest men killed in the stupidest manner. On
the evening of the 31st I went to see the battle
at Fort St. Julien; and on the morning of Sep-
tember 1st I went to the rear of the battle-field.
Among others, I there saw Laillard, now a chef
descadron, who was awaiting with two batteries

the moment for going into action. In the after-
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 5

noon, when I returned to the battle-field, they
were in full retreat. Seldom have I felt a deeper
mortification than when I saw our last chance of
taking the offensive thus shamefully thrown away ;
for each time there was fighting going on, I re-
gained confidence.

At last the disaster of Sedan and the pro-
clamation of the Republic became known. This
was about the 6th September. That evening I
was at Madame Cuvier’s, and Father Prost showed
great confidence in the falseness of the bad news.
I was laughed at for believing in them, and looked
upon as a dangerous alarmist. At last I was in-
duced laughingly to express my opinion of the
situation; and I told them that we should end by
capitulating, fixing as the time when they would
believe me the day when we should march out
without arms before the Prussians. ‘What,’ said
Prost, ‘won’t you even let us have our arms?’
Those who heard what I said that night have
reminded me of it since.

There were at Metz hardly any officers of my

standing in the Engineers ; Padovani alone was of
6 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

the same promotion. Otherwise, with the aid of
some of the vigorous men I know, something might
have been done. But some said, ‘It is impossible.’
To which I answered, ‘Impossible perhaps, but ab-
solutely necessary.’ Others imagined that Bazaine
‘had his plan,’ poor devil! Your friend Worms
received my half-confidences with pleasure. His
penetration led him to guess the rest, and to guess
even more than I thought; but he was restrained
by a good-humoured scepticism, which he has per-
haps got rid of since the capitulation.

Very soon Bazaine, whose relations with the
Prussian head-quarters were becoming almost in-
timate and full of confidence, began to enter upon
his Bonapartist intrigues. I had never had the
intention of doing anything of a political nature;
but now Thad a fair chance in my favour, since
Bazaine had not recognised the new Government
of France. It was sufficient to hoist the flag of
the French Government to overthrow the whole
Imperialist set. Generals not disposed to coun-
tenance Bazaine in his intrigues were beginning

to be mentioned, and amongst them the name of
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 7

General Clinchant, who had led a brigade of
Zouaves in Mexico, and now commanded two fine
regiments of ‘Mexicans.’ I went to see him,
making use of his remembrance of you as my in-
troduction. He soon became confiding, and told
me how little certainty he had of being followed
by his regiments on all occasions. It was neces-
sary, in his opinion, to give an appearance of
legality to the overthrow of the generals; and
he saw two ways of accomplishing this: first, to
organise secretly the elections (which were to take
place on September 16th); and to have men he
was sure of, and Changarnier in particular, named
as representatives. This plan might not succeed ;
the men of the Liberal party in Metz, with whom
I was closely connected, were neither men of cha-
racter nor men of action. One alone, perhaps,
had the necessary energy —Péchoutre, a shoe-
maker of the Rue Téte d’Or, an exile of 1851;
but he had grown old, his party had been disor-
ganised by twenty years of oppression, the labour-
ing classes had no energy, and had lost all political

capacity; he was but a solitary individual, who
8 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

felt sadly how weak our party was. As for the
bourgeoisie, twas the bourgeoisie: worthy people,
good fathers of families, good husbands, and good
national guards; but who, if called upon for a
manly resolution, would reply, as a last argument,
‘ After all, I am married, and have a family.’ The
other plan consisted in sending an emissary to
Gambetta, to explain the state of affairs, and bring
back full powers for General Changarnier, who

was decidedly the head of the party —a head

 

without much brain.

To send a man to Gambetta was a very haz-
ardous, but, above all, a very slow proceeding ;
and I doubted if the strength of the army would
hold out sufficiently long. At last, seeing that
no one would make up his mind without the sup-
port of this shadow of legality, I accepted the
offers of a young pupil of the Polytechnic School,
who was entirely devoted to me, and was not yet
bound to the service. But before exposing him
to the risks of this adventure, I wished to make
sure if the stakes were worth playing for, and

went to see Changarnier.
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 9

I found in him an enlightened soldier, and
one whom age had not deprived of a certain vig-
ow. The marshals deceived him by appearing to
listen to his advice, and letting him hope it would
be followed ; for his part, he always believed that
they were going to fight. ‘It is settled for the
day after to-morrow,’ he told me with a confid-
ence I was far from sharing. He would not hear
of taking the lead without a government order ;
his scruples were highly honourable, but I tried
to prove to him that they were out of place.
‘No, said he, ‘I will not usurp the command of
an army in which I serve as a volunteer. I do
not wish to dishonour my gray hairs.’ When I
left him, he took my hands and squeezed them,
This took place about the 26th of September.
On the morrow, we procured peasant’s clothes, and
passed several days in seeking a favourable start-
ing-point for crossing the lines and getting rapidly
into Luxembourg. The undertaking was really a
difficult one. About this time my friend’s father
fell ill, and the plan for his departure was put off.

You know hy the blockade of Paris how rarely
10 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

the Prussian lines have been crossed; let this
serve as an excuse for our indecision. But I
was getting impatient ; I wished to obtain certain
proofs of the treachery of our general. I went
to call on my old comrade Albert Bazaine, the
nephew and aide-de-camp of the general, and I
found such duplicity in him, and such clumsy
duplicity too, that I positively resolved to sacrifice
my duty as a soldier to my duty as a citizen, and
to attempt to cross the lines myself; which I did
on the following day, dressed in the peasant’s
clothes which we had purchased for my friend of
the Polytechnic School. But, either owing to ill
luck or to want of skill, after several hours passed
in walking in the rain and darkness, I was caught,
by the light of a moon-ray, by the Prussian sen-
tries, into whose midst I had fallen just as they
were being relieved. Iwas taken to the advanced
posts; the men were good-humoured fellows, who
treated me gaily to some abominable black bread
and a little brandy. The commanding officer, a
young cadet, after rather a silly interrogatory in

bad French, had me led to the guard-tent, whence
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 11

I was taken to the cantonment. I passed the

night in the guard-house—after drying myself

 

before a large fire, for I was shivering with cold,
my poor clothes (the trousers only cost me ten-
pence) having been completely soaked by the rain
—and in the morning I underwent a summary
examination before a superior officer, the result of
which was that I was taken for some unfortunate
fellow driven out of Metz by hunger. I was then
led back by three grenadiers as far as the last sen-
try, orders having been given to fire upon me if
I looked round. The precipitated march of events
prevented me from renewing this attempt, which
I had made, I believe, on the 6th of October.
The inaction of the army and the intrigues of the
generals seemed likely to end in an early capitu-
lation. Bazaine and Coffinitres began to speak
openly of the impossibility of resistance ; this was
nearly the most shameful moment of that shame-
ful business. Before I made up my mind to
undertake anything, and bring forward Changar-
nier’s name, I had wished, as I have stated, to see

the old general; but as I only found him resolved
12 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

upon one point, i.e. not to compromise himself, I
should only have had him proposed if no other
solution could be hit upon. Clinchant often sent
me his aide-de-camp, Kremer, to see if no new
plan had turned up. Uncertain and hesitating,
he objected to taking any definite steps without
the support of the population; and, on the other
hand, the population would not move, unless the
army took the lead. So it ended in nothing being
done by anybody. But this is what happened to
one of my comrades and to myself.

We were actively engaged in finding the
means of action against Bazaine. One Saturday
Boyenyal went to see Changarnier, whilst I called
upon two very intriguing generals of the Third
Corps. They received me very well, and con-
fided to me a whole mass of interesting things
about Boyer’s mission and other occurrences ; but
when I saw that they were disposed to treat with
the Prussians, in order to be free to favour a poli-
tical change in France, I broke off the interview
rather abruptly, not wishing to have anything to

do with people who were thinking of internal poli-
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 13

tics when the country was invaded. I believe
those fellows (Changarnier was one of them, and
Aymard was the most influential after him) were
either Orleanists, or predisposed in favour of ab-
solute power. My long interview with Aymard
was very curious.

On the morrow, both my comrade and myself
were denounced to Bazaine. I have since learnt,
that that very day Changarnier had reopened re-
lations with head-quarters. Bazaine sent for my
comrade, who lost his temper, and confessed his
patriotic attempts. He was then taken to a fort
and shut up.

I arrived at head-quarters just as Boyenval
was coming out with a superior officer: he ap-
peared to be protesting rather sharply. I called
to him; he merely said that the marshal wished
to speak to me. I then perceived that his com-
panion was a general officer. I afterwards learnt
that that general had made him over to an officer
of gendarmerie, who had at once taken him to
Fort St. Quentin.

I was shown into the large study which is at
14 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

the bottom of the right-hand passage. It was
well lighted up. With the general were present
his two orderly officers (Mornay Soult and a tall
cuirassier). The marshal is rather short than tall,
and of an ordinary degree of stoutness. When
he saw me in my yellow boots and military over-
coat, he exclaimed with violence,

“What do you mean by that dress? What do
you mean by that dress?’ interrupted he when I
tried to explain.

‘Thad not,’ I answered, ‘anticipated the honour
of being admitted to your excellency’s presence.’

He appeared suddenly to calm down. I was
standing in the middle of the office, not far from
the entrance, in military posture. The marshal
was walking up and down, the two officers were
leaning against the chimney. The marshal ques-
tioned me calinly, though perhaps with a slight
tinge of irritation. I answered him with perfect
self-possession, speaking very clearly, and at one
moment I even perceived that the tone of my
voice was much louder than it would have been

in ordinary conversation.
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 15

I must here observe that the marshal, like his
nephews, showed but little cleverness on this oc-
casion. This may astonish those who are accus-
tomed to attribute more than average cleverness
to people in place. But it is sufficient to observe,
that if the marshal had been a man of average
capacity, or if he had been surrounded by capable
men, we should not have been reduced to the con-
dition we are in.

As for military science and the science of go-
vernment, our rulers have not yet got beyond
their A B C; there is, therefore, nothing aston-
ishing that such should be the case where petty
diplomacy and the police are concerned.

If I have secrets to hide, civilised society,
especially in France, has means at hand, a fearful
machinery, to tear them from me. Torture is
abolished; but the first camusot you meet with is
more capable of drawing out a man, and disposes
of more redoubtable means, than the marshal in
his study.

You expose to a direct interrogatory a man

whom you wish to intimidate (the marshal did
16 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

not seek to intimidate me), or to gain over (he
did not seek to gain me over), or a man you mean
to put to death after speaking to him; but I left
his head-quarters at liberty. I was not even fol-
lowed.

“What do you go about the camp for?’ Such
was the marshal’s first question —a sufficiently
vague one for me to call for explanations before
answering it. But the marshal did not wish to
precise matters, and on his stating that there was
nothing to precise, I replied that I sometimes took
a walk outside the town, and that such had always
been my habit.

‘And what do you talk about when you are
out walking ?”

‘I talk of all sorts of things: of the present
condition of affairs, of what is going on about me.’

He wished for a more definite answer. It was
really difficult, if not impossible, to give him one;
for one hears and says so many things. I told
him that it would take us until to-morrow to re-
peat them. ‘Very well, then,’ said the marshal;

‘we will stay here until to-morrow,
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 17

When I told him, however, that I spoke of
the present condition of affairs, he chose to take
it as a confession, and seemed rather pleased. As
he pressed me upon the subject, though without
precising, I told him that I did not give my
thoughts to the present condition of affairs be-
cause it was the present condition of affairs, but
only in the same manner as I had busied myself
with the events which preceded it; that my in-
terest in military science was not of recent date,
and that an examination of my notes would easily
convince him of the fact; that for years I had
given my constant attention to the subject; that
there was nothing clandestine in what I was doing.
But I see that I am slightly inverting the order of
the conversation.

The first tolerably clear question which the
marshal put to me was with the object of learn-
ing if I had not called upon generals and other
superior officers to talk over the present condition
of affairs. I answered, that I had spoken to dif-
ferent officers.

‘But you were not acquainted with them.’

C
18 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

‘I have spoken on that subject with people
whom I knew and people whom I did not know.’

‘But you went to them on purpose.’

“On purpose for what, M. le Maréchal?’

It will be seen that my interview with the mar-
shal was the result of some formal denunciation,
which specified certain circumstances. I was in-
debted for this, as I at once saw, to the imprudent
overtures, through which I had extracted from
General Aymard the details of the projected ca-
pitulation.

I return to my interrogatory. ‘On purpose
for what?’ I asked.

“On purpose to learn the intentions of those
generals, and to find out what course they in-
tended taking under certain circumstances.’ And
a moment afterwards, to be more precise, ‘In the
event,’ he said, ‘of a capitulation, of which, thank
God, no one has as yet dreamt.’

I agreed respectfully to these last words by
an approving nod. The marshal went up to the
chimney-piece and leant against it. The officers

were at the end of the room, near the desk. I
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 19

don’t remember at all how the room was lighted
up; but I remember perfectly that all the faces
were in the full light.

The marshal persisted, and I went on defend-
ing myself.

‘In your excellency’s high position,’ I con-
tinued, ‘it is natural that you should receive a
host of reports, with more or less truth in them,
and which must be carefully examined before any
faith is placed in them.’

I got the marshal to admit that he was bring-
ing an accusation against me, and placed before
him in a clear light the improbability of a mere
captain’s going about dictating to generals the
course they should take. I submitted to him a
very simple means of finding out if an officer
wasted his time in culpable intrigues, namely, to
examine how he did his work, and how he fulfilled
all the duties of his rank.

The marshal having asked what mission I ful-
filled in running about the camps, I answered,

that I fulfilled no mission. What mission could

T fulfil?
20 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

In the warmth of my defence, the conversa-
tion was taking a familiar turn, and I laughed at
the improbability of a captain having a mission to
gain over generals. I called for an inquiry, or
at least for a confrontation. It could only be a
misunderstanding, a mistake as to facts, which I
claimed the right of discussing.

‘Such an accusation,’ said I, ‘must be looked
into in a different manner.’

‘But, said the marshal, ‘there is no accusa-
tion.’

‘Thave only one wish, and that is to do my
duty?

‘T have no doubt of it,’ said the marshal.
‘Come,’ continued he, ‘I am frank; I question
you with frankness; answer me with an equal
frankness.’

‘That is what Ihave been trying to do since
you have done me the honour of questioning me.
Question me, and I place myself quite at your
disposal, and will answer as clearly as possible.’

He agreed to this, and did not appear dis-

satisfied with my tone.
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 21

‘Have you seen General Changarnier?’ asked
he.

‘I have had the honour of seeing him once.’

‘And what did you say to him?’

‘Nothing worth repeating. I was very for-
tunate to be able to meet that eminent man, of
whom I had often heard in my childhood.’

‘J have not the honour,’ said the marshal, ‘to
know General Changarnier; he has only been to
see me once since IJ have been here,’

The marshal perhaps thought that I was one
of Changarnier’s men.

‘And what was the object of your visit ?’

Here I displayed some coyness about giving
an answer, not finding it disagreeable to be soli-
cited. I said I had no motive that I need hide;
but such as it was, J would rather mention it in
General Changarnier’s presence than in his ab-
sence. At last, on being pressed by the marshal,
J admitted that my visit had to do with a military
memorandum which I had drawn up concerning
the situation of the army (‘a situation which has

much changed since that time, added I, shaking
22 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

my head), and which I had been assured the ge-
neral would consent to patronise. I had, however,
given up my idea; for the memorandum contained
things that there was a difficulty about saying ;
it existed, however, and could be consulted.

‘I do not mean to say,’ I added, ‘that my
work is in a fit state to be placed before your
excellency just as it stands; but I can assure
you without hesitation, that it contains nothing to
compromise me.’

‘Tam far from blaming you,’ said the mar-
shal, ending the conversation by a reticence.

I have omitted to mention that one of the first
heads of the marshal’s interrogatory which I had
energetically forced him to drop, had been, that
‘I had communicated to certain generals projects
contrary to discipline, and had rendered it neces-
sary for them to silence me.’

I took up those last words very sharply, tell-
ing the marshal that I had never placed any one
in the position of silencing me. And as he re-
turned to the same facts, I again stopped him by

the firmness of my denial.
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 23

All this went on very quietly. I was respect-
ful, as it was proper I should be, and the marshal
very calm. It was a superior questioning an in-
ferior on matters of service, indifferent at bottom
to both of them. But when I told him that I
only sought to do my duty, and he answered at
once that he had no doubt of it, something strange
and violent remained understood between us. I
wish I could reproduce the convinced firmness of
my tone in pronouncing those words; and I thought
I could catch a shade of sadness in his.

At last, as I became more pressing, and the
marshal less at his ease, as I demanded a discus-
sion and an inquiry into the facts I was charged
with; and as the marshal refused it, and only
asked me to answer with a frankness equal to his
own, he put the question to me for the last time:
‘If I had been to general officers to induce them
to act in a particular manner under certain cir-
cumstances?’ I answered by a very clear denial,
and waited for him to give me leave to go, which
he did.

Once outside, I saw that night had fallen;
24 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

and fearing that the town-gates would be closed,
I had one of the orderly officers called out to give
me a pass. M. de Mornay Soult presented him-
self, and reéntered the office to write out the pass.
He treated me all throughout with a politeness
quite exceptional in men obliged at all hours to
get rid of persons soliciting something.

I entered Metz freely. I went to dine at my
ordinary, and from thence dropped in for a mo-
ment at the café, where I was looked upon, as it
seemed to me, like a strange animal.

Boyenval not having reappeared, to avoid ac-
cidents I took the measures required by prudence.

I learnt, in fact, that the marshal had given
orders to the generals and to the gendarmerie
to take into custody, wherever they were found
in the camp, two engineer officers who were going
about spreading socialist doctrines in the army,
and exciting a spirit of insubordination amongst
the soldiers. This order left me in safety in the
town, where my service was. I nevertheless kept
hidden for two days, and redoubled my efforts to

raise the town.
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 25

But the arrest of Boyenval had cooled down
many people. When, after two days, I went dis-
guised to Clinchant’s camp, he would not see me,
and his aide-de-camp Kremer, who received me,
apprised me of the order of arrest, and of the
general determination to undertake nothing. He
did not, however, abandon the plan entirely; but
he would have nothing to do with such compro-
mising auxiliaries as ourselves, whom he had de-
termined to replace by others who were incapable
of compromising themselves.

My immediate chiefs had long looked upon me
as dangerous; they did not refer to my momentary
absence. My chief of Engineers, Salanson, who
belonged to the Frossard set, went sometimes to
Madame Cuvier’s house, where I met him; and
the chances of conversation often led me to ex-
press opinions very different from his own; hence
a certain hostility, disguised under the appear-
ances of cordiality. He knew that my colleagues
and myself would play the devil to avoid the ca-
pitulation, and to carry things to extremities.

From the 18th to the 20th, finding myself
26 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

completely isolated, I gave no attention to politics ;
but, to get through the time, I passed a night at
the outposts with a free company, who made war
upon the Prussians often successfully. An enter-
prising and prudent lieutenant, who was versed
in nocturnal warfare, led me with a strong patrol
to within forty paces of the enemy’s entrench-
ments, where several times, without loss, and al-
most without danger—thanks to the advantage
he took of the inequalities of the ground—we
were enabled to withstand a heavy fire. This is
one of my pleasant remembrances, and I should
have liked to have seen more service with those
fine fellows.

Meanwhile my service continued. It consisted
in having the drawbridge and gates of the town
arranged. I repaired, and even threw up anew,
almost all the earthworks of Saulay; and Colonel
Petit said one day, as he was walking about there,
that it was certainly the spot where the defensive
works were most developed. All that was only
for the benefit of the Prussians.

Towards the 27th, it appeared certain that the
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 27

capitulation would be signed. I had the conso-
lation to learn that it had been negotiated by
Changarnier at noon on the 28th. I found out
by chance that a meeting of Engineer officers, to
resist the capitulation, was being held at the café.
A colonel—a most worthy man, sharp and intelli-
gent, but incapable of a lasting resolution—stood
up and spoke vigorously against the notion of a
capitulation, and called upon all resolute men to
combine. General Clinchant promised to take
the command, if 20,000 men could be collected.
The question once laid down, the deliberation
grew confused; and 1 soon took the lead. On
dividing the officers present according to their
corps-(’armée, it was easy to perceive that but a
yery small portion of the army was represented.
We agreed to give notice to as many people as
possible, and that the following day Clinchant
would see how many men had been got together.
We were to write down our names in one of the
rooms of the Engineer offices, which we used as a
dining-room. Neither Clinchant, nor his aide-de-

camp, nor the other promoters of the meeting of
28 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

the previous day were present, but only two pupils
of the Polytechnic School, with Padovani and my-
self. The crowd was considerable. Many officers
had their names set down, especially regimental
officers. Some colonels had sent their adjutants-
major; and many officers came to get informa-
tion. Kremer put in an appearance in the morn-
ing, and promised that Clinchant would come at
one o'clock and address the officers present. After
breakfast the crowd was still greater than in the
morning; but every one wanted to see Clinchant ;
for whom we waited in vain until 3 Pan At this
moment the same colonel of Engineers who had
been so fiery the previous day appeared, looking
dismal and discouraged. He was of opinion that
resistance was impossible, and that there was no-
thing for it but to resign ourselves to cireum-
stances. In the midst of the tumult which arose,
certain officers began to deliberate on the possi-
bility of resistance ; but nothing could be agreed
upon; and this attempt ended in smoke. The
cannon and arms were being given up at the

arsenal. The officers called for a big epaulette
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 29

to lead them; and the big epaulettes showed the
white feather, as they have done so often.

In the evening I started off with my friend
Padovani to find the free company I had been
with some days before. We had rifles, ammuni-
tion, and provisions.

But the company was disbanded, and their
ams given up. The most enterprising of the
officers in command of it—my lieutenant of the

former night

 

had pushed a reconnaissance as far
as the Prussian vanguard, had conversed with
the superior officer in command, and had become
convinced of the impossibility of escaping with-
out exchanging shots. We returned home; and
the following day I resumed my gray overcoat
and round hat. Some worthy country-folks—a
husband and wife—took me to their village, at
the limit of the French and Prussian lines, Chatel
St. Germain, which was occupied by the Prussian
84th regiment. I aroused no suspicions amongst
the numerous regiments of the enemy whom we
met; and Sunday October 30th, after talking

with some Prussians, and learning that commu-
30 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

nications were reopened, I put a blue blouse over
my clothes, and set out for the north, through
fearful rain and deep mud. I arrived at Luxem-
bourg November Ist, at 7 P.M, without accidents,
but not without difficulties. The following day I

was at Brussels.
The Tours Government.

Camp at Nevers, Feb. 1871.
My DEAREST FATHER,

During my residence at Folkestone, a
letter or report, published by M. de Valcourt
under the direction of Gambetta, and in which
my name was mentioned, caused me to write to
Gambetta to explain clearly what my course of
conduct had been. That course of conduct, which
may appear singular to you when you consider
the nature of a subordinate officer’s duties, was
dictated to me from the commencement by a. posi-
tive conviction that our generals were completely
ignorant of their duty, and that 7c was necessary
to do everything to rescue the French army from
their hands. I have staked my head upon this
conviction as openly as possible.

Once out of Metz, I learnt more clearly what

had been going on in the world: the siege of Paris,
82 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

the pretended Republican Government which had
been constructed out of the fragments of 1848.
I saw that Paris would not be intelligently de-
fended; and as I advanced into France, things
looked less and less encouraging. What struck
me first of all was the disorder of our railroads:
the trains constantly stopped owing to the disor-
ganisation of the service; two days to send the
London courier from Dieppe to Tours; on the
central-station lines at Mézidon long strings of
engines laid up with fires out; carriages piled up
out of the line of circulation; in short, all the
signs that this powerful instrument of war was
lying useless in the hands of the Government.
From Mans onwards the stations were full of
officers and soldiers. What soldiers! and what
officers! One felt inclined to rub one’s eyes to
make sure one was not dreaming. It is true that
Thad fallen into the middle of a strategic move-
ment, which may serve to explain the disorder
I witnessed. The sight was more and more sad-
dening as you approached Tours. You could fully

convince yourself of the incapacity of the Govern-
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 33

ment. At Tours the streets were full of queer
uniforms: every one had lace on his hat, on his
foraging-cap, and on his greatcoat. Undisciplined
free-shooters strolled about the town. What were
they doing there? One of my schoolfellows—a
civil engineer, and Gambetta’s secretary —intro-
duced me to the minister on my arrival, or at
least on the day of my arrival. He was ordered
to present me without delay when I reached
Tours.

Some officers who had arrived from Metz had
spoken of me; and the minister on receiving me,
‘all business being interrupted,’ met me in a most
flattering manner. When I had told him what I
had done, and what I had desired to do, he asked
me where I wished to be employed, and where I
thought I should be useful. I answered simply,
that I could be of use if they employed me in the
organisation of armies and the direction of mili-
tary movements—both of which subjects I had
studied. The minister then gave me a letter to
M. de Freycinet, who held the post of Delegate at
the Ministry of War; and, armed with this letter,

D
34 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

I managed to obtain an audience of M. de Freyci-
net two days latex, at the hour at which he received
the public. Strange contrast! Just as much as
Gambetta had treated me as a man of importance,
just so much Freycinet treated me as a place-
hunter. Both of them were mistaken; for I was
neither a great personage nor a place-hunter. M.
de Freycinet was a grave, grayish -haired, tired-
looking man. ‘Suppose,’ said he, ‘that the War
Ministry had to be organised, what place would
you choose?’ The question was a strange one.
I had asked for nobody’s place; and, besides, I
had never learnt anywhere what places a minister
had in his gift. But I have already told you that
M. de Freycinet treated me like a place-hunter.

I did not need a place to be made for me.
I had one ready-made, since I was a captain of
Engineers. I only wanted them to give me state-
ments of position to make out, or maps to study.
I therefore replied, after having digested the dele-
gate’s question a little, to see if it meant anything,
‘That if all the places were to be distributed, I

should choose the sole direction of operations.”
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 35

He made me repeat my impudent answer, and it
was then his turn for reflection. I fancy the re-
sult of his reflection was, that he would never
employ me.

This is what they did under the Republic of
°70 with people they did not care to employ; they
gave them a mission. ‘I can’t manage to learn,’
said the delegate, ‘ what the position of the Army
of the North is, and what forces are available in
that region.’ And he offered me, in sufficiently
seductive languagé, a mission to the north, ask-
ing me at the same time what I could do there.
‘That depends, answered I. ‘Shall I have powers
and credit?’ He let me know that I should have
neither the one nor the other; and the mission
ended by being a mission of ‘study, to inform
him of what existed there, for he had not a single
description of the condition of that army. It is true
that Bourbaki had sent one in since he had en-
tered upon his duties, but that solitary document
had been lost in the ministerial offices. I shall
tell you but little of that mission. I made the

best of an essentially false position, knowing that
36 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

it was false, but not caring about that detail.
Before starting I saw, for propriety’s sake, Gene-
ral Véronique, who then constituted in his per-
son the whole committee of the Engineers. He
expressed to me his fear at seeing me accept
functions which would place me in contact with
officers of much higher standing and rank than
myself, under exceptional conditions. I never liked
the Committee, even when it honoured me with
its favour; I therefore soothed General Véronique
by assuring him that I should observe a due re-
spect for my superiors. This amounted to a rup-
ture with the Committee, the autocrat of the
Engineers—a rupture that came all the easier to
me, since I had long made up my mind for it,
especially since the blockade of Metz. When
I say rupture, J don’t mean to say that they
would not be delighted to see an ex-colonel of
the auxiliary army reénter the sheepfold; what
I mean is, that I shall never have anything to
hope for from the committee. And what had I
to hope for before the war, excepting to have my

share of danger after the favourites, my share of
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. a7

promotion after the favourites? ... Poor favour-
ites! they are in Pomerania.

I started for the north on the 18th of No-
vember, and remained there a fortnight. I there
again met my three messmates of Metz, who had
escaped from the Prussians after me, the last hav-
ing passed out in a coffin beside a dead body. I
gathered much information and many notes; I
saw very varied prefects, and very uniform gene-
rals. The prefects were all lawyers, the generals
all lay figures. After the first glance, I wrote to
the delegate that there was nothing good there in
the way of an army, and gave my reasons for
thinking so. After spending some days at Lille,
I went to Méziéres, which they said was block-
aded by the Prussians, without meeting a single
Prussian. You can’t imagine the effect produced
by the ghost of a Prussian. When I returned to
Lille, after four days’ travelling, the army I had
seen, or rather guessed at, had just got itself
beaten at Amiens. I hurried to Arras, where I
arrived with the fugitives; and towards the 3d

or 4th of December I returned to Tours by the
33 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

aviso on service from Boulogne or Calais to
Dieppe.

It was on my return that I learnt what a
quaint jest those missions were. M. de Freycinet
was always engaged, and always invisible. On
being admitted at last with the place-hunters, I
am received by the chief clerk.

‘It is hardly worth while to give an account
of your mission, said he; ‘the minister has no
time to see to details. I have put all your letters
on his desk’ (I had given a daily account of my
labours). ‘He hasn’t looked at them; see, they
are still in this bundle’

I undid the bundle; they were not there.

‘It’s strange, said he. ‘He must have read
them, then.’

This encouraged me to leave a ‘summary re-
port’ which I had prepared the previous night.
Then I took my departure, resolved to await or-
ders, and not to seek them again in the ante-
chambers.

Meanwhile the fruit of the first affair of Or-

leans—a victory obtained by an error—had just
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS, 39

been lost; the French army was retreating, and,
what was worse, operating an eccentric retreat.
There was a double reaction against the ignorant
strategists who had directed our movements: on
the one hand, Gambetta’s party, who would have
wished to give that minister a more direct share
in conducting hostilities, and to see him employ
generals and officers of his own choosing, instead
of doting generals and reactionary officers; on the
other hand, the reactionary party, who were de-
sirous of overthrowing Gambetta, by making him
responsible for the defeats, and of taking us back
to where we are now going. And meanwhile,
what was Gambetta doing? I don’t know: he
was rather a flag than a chief —a flag which the
Government hoisted to give itself a manly and
republican appearance, and of which the men of
action would have wished to make use, to be
manly and republican. He was a sort of Louis
XII. without a Richelieu; he made and unmade
prefects, whilst the fortunes of France were being
staked upon loaded dice.

As I was sitting in the café on the evening
40 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS,

of December 6th, in came Cavalier, my senior at
the Polytechnic, better known as Pipe en Bois—
a journalist and an orator at public meetings, and
for the moment Gambetta’s secretary. Cavalier
sat down with us, and, as a member of the Go-
vernment, was not long in proving to us that
everything was for the best in the army of the
best of republics. He found me incredulous,
grew animated, discussed, harangued, and swore;
and finding that I was still incredulous, began at
last to take what I said as serious; and this the
more readily, that he knew that at that moment
the armies of the best of republics were in rather
a straggling condition—the one towards the cast,
another towards the west, and a third towards the
south.

‘When a man has ideas of that kind,’ said he,
after listening to what I had to say, ‘he should
communicate them to the minister.’

And on my replying that the minister was not
accessible, he laid a bet that he would get me an
interview with him that very evening. It was

ten P.M., and we entered the ministry.
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 41

Here I am at the eleventh page of my letter,
and J have skipped three-quarters of my adven-
tures in telling them to you; but Destiny has
played such fantastic tricks with me, and, in fact,
with all of us, during the last few months, that
nothing any longer as‘onishes me; and I narrate
the romance of my wanderings as if it were the
simplest tale in the world.

But it is when I have to speak of Gambetta
that I feel most embarrassed. How am I to speak
ill of the energetic tribune who was the first to
proclaim the downfall of the Empire, and who,
during six months of a desperate crisis, was the
life and soul of ourimbecile government? On the
other hand, how am I to speak well of the un-
decided and ignorant minister, who was unac-
quainted with the condition and position of his
armies, and whose barren and ill-directed activity
could neither avoid disaster nor find remedies for
its effects ?

I sympathise with his vigour, with his aver-
sion for bloodshed, with his rapid conception of

facts, with his devotion to the Revolution; but I
42 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

detest his half-measures, his constantly-recurring
acts of weakness, and his concessions to the men
and to the things of the Empire.

I had got to the evening of December 6th.
We entered the room which served Gambetta
for an antechamber as it were, a room inaccessible
to the public, and where the minister’s private
secretaries sat. They were dictating despatches,
and talking and gossipping. Gambetta was close
by in his study. Cavalier, and then Cendre, an-
other of my seniors, begged him to grant me a
hearing: he promised for the following day; but
as in that country to-morrow means never, my
comrades insisted all the more. Meanwhile the
minister had come and established himself in an
arm-chair in the large room where we were sit-
ting. He was holding forth in his stentorian
voice about the crimes of some sub-prefect or
other; then seeing me at Cavalier’s table, he
came forward to wish me a good-evening.

‘And what are you doing there?’ said he, find-
ing us poring over a map of France.

‘We are making plans of campaigns, like the
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 43

rest of the world; you must have had more than
enough of them.’

“Come and talk to me to-morrow,’ concluded
he.

But Cavalier couldn’t make up his mind to
let me go. Hemanaged so well, that the minister
called me into his study towards midnight, and
kept me alone with him until nearly half-past
two A.M, talking of war and army organisation.
Knowing that I was speaking to an honest and
energetic man, I did not hide the truth from him.
He was specially taken by a system for combining
the Mobile National Guards, the mobilised, and
the troops of the line, something after the fashion
of the half-brigades of 1794. He wished me to
draw out the plan on the spot for the Army of
the Loire; and then, being fearful of disorgan-
ising that army before the enemy, he offered me
the command of the camp of St. Omer to try the
experiment. But it did not suit me to remove
so far from the spot where the decisive cast was
to be thrown. He returned to the notion of amal-

gamating the Loire Army, so as to have but one
44 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

description of infantry. But this war-minister
had neither statements of the condition nor of the
exact position of the corps of his principal army ;
and I declined to interfere with the existing or-
ganisation without knowing exactly what I inter-
fered with, and without having precise grounds
to go upon.

Perhaps with a little quackery on my part, I
might have obtained a firm hold of the minister’s
mind. I have sufficiently studied army organi-
sation to be able to juggle with the numbers of
battalions, and extemporise a system. But I had
too much respect for the man with whom I was
speaking, and for the interests involved. After
a long conversation, during which Gambetta was
really as amiable as a dictator could be to a
poor devil, he fixed an hour on the morrow for
studying the reorganisation of the army with me,
with the aid of real positions and figures. The
next day he did not receive me. Was it owing
to mistrust, prejudice, or weakness? I can’t say ;
but when I arrived, armed with a little sheet of

tracing-paper, my comrade Cendre told me that
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 45

the minister was attending a council, which was
not the case.

That evening I met at the café the same
General Vergne, who had offered me the place
of head Engineer officer in the camp he was about
to take command of; and I accepted the place,
partly out of pique. I arrived at Nevers on the
18th of December, after a sojourn at Bourges,
which was not without its episodes; and I have
set to work at forming Engineer companies. In
spite of the heedlessness which prevented the
troops from reaching this camp, I have collected
one by one twenty officers and 500 men. The
camp is now broken up, and peace is perhaps
concluded; but I have been able to convince
myself that my little troop, when acting on its
own resources, is much more disciplined, capable,
and serviceable than the battalions whence I
drew it.

Peace is concluded, it is said. Then I am no
longer a soldier. Before long I shall join you at
Paris, and shall either go in for politics in France,

or for industry in the United States; that depends
46 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

upon whether I am more or less disgusted with

our wretched country.
Good-bye, my dear father.

Your affectionate son,

ROSSEL.
Letter to ML. Gambetta.

December after Beaugency.

You were kind enough to receive me

on my return from Metz, and to promise to em-

ploy me on the organisation and the movements
of the armies.

I had hoped that the favourable reports you
received of my conduct at Metz, and the good-
will I had displayed in the defence of the country,
would have procured me an opportunity of dis-
cussing the direction of the present war with you,
and of pointing out to you the mistakes in organi-
sation and strategy which were being daily com-
mitted, and which were leading you to a defeat.

That defeat has been suffered. Served by the
same staff, and surrounded by ignorant specialists,
you are hurrying to a fresh disaster; and each
failure gives the enemy a shred of our territory,

destroys the last remnants of our military strength,
48 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

and this until you perish in defeat, and with you
the hopes of our country and of liberty.

In the name of our common faith in that
country and in that liberty, grant me a serious
interview; give me the means of proving to you
that I understand warfare, and of showing you
the causes of your past defeats, and of the failures
you are preparing for yourself. Is not the in-
capacity of your administrators and generals suf-
ficiently demonstrated to justify you in seeking,
without regard to seniority, the means of con-

tinuing the war with less misfortune?

ROSSEL.
The Camp at Nevers before March 18.

Camp at Nevers, Jan. 7, 1871.
My DEAR KREMER,

No news from you since our adven-
turous meeting at the Café de la Ville at Tours.
You were beginning to succeed; you have pro-
spered since then, and, in fact, I have followed
your example. The proverb is right, ‘Il faut
prendre du galon’ (One should wear gold lace).*
Don’t you think with regret, when admiring your
stars, that if, three months ago, we had been
in possession of those playthings, the Metz army
would be carrying on operations in France? We
were only wanting in gold lace.

The question of the national defence will per-
haps one day be put, like the question of the de-
* Quand on prend du galon, l’on n’en saurait trop pren-
dre:’ a French proverb, meaning that when you do anything

from interested motives, it is as well to get as much as you

can for your trouble.
+ Rank is indicated by the number of stars.
50 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

fence of Metz; if Paris falls, we shall see one of
those pretty movements of general cowardice with
which we are beginning to become familiar.* IT
don’t know if your opinion of me is still the same ;
you used to consider me too adventurous. I
should like to avoid all chances of peace, and I am
engaged in communicating this impression to my
friends, and in asking for their opinion.

Once Paris falls, the government you have
seen at Tours, and which has already negotiated
three or four armistices, will perhaps be disposed
to negotiate a serious one, one of those armis-
tices which are fatal to the vanquished, and which
follow upon great disasters. What will you do

then? I really don’t know why I ask you, a

* In another letter from the camp at Nevers, date Jan. 7,
1871, and addressed by Rossel to his comrade Cendre, the fol-
lowing curious passage occurs :

‘I have not given up my silly plan of predicting events,
and Ithink, 1. that our approaching military undertaking will
end in defeat, because it has been unmasked too soon, and
is too negligently conducted; 2. that Paris will fall unless
she has more than three months’ provisions; 3. that at the
moment of the fall of Paris, there will be a crisis of social dis-
organisation, of which the reactionists and the cowards will
avail themselves to swamp the national defence,
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 51

Lorrainer; I know perfectly well that you will
continue the war. Write me a line on this sub-
ject, if only to tell me that your ideas have not
changed since Metz and Tours.

You have in your neighbourhood one of my
old comrades, Bourras, lieut.-col. of Engineers, who
commands a corps of partisans. He is a sin-
cere patriot and a true soldier. If you come
across the 20th Corps, you will find in it our
friend Padovani, with whom we used to work at
Metz; he is still a captain of Engineers. Try to
remove him, and give him troops to lead. You
will rarely find a more daring fellow.

I am writing to you from Bois-Vert by Magny-
Cours (Niévre), I am head Engineer officer of
the camp at Nevers. I have a little kernel of
patriotic officers, to whom I give the mobilised to
make soldiers of, or, better still, Engineers. This
plan appears likely to succeed. We shall see
afterwards if they will stand fire. With a good
shake of the hand,

Yours sincerely,
ROssEL.
Camp at Nevers—The Head Engineer Officer.

To M. L——, LIEUTENANT COMMANDING THE 2D
Company OF ENGINEERS AT Bots-VERT.

Meance, January 29, 1871.

THE rumour of an armistice for twenty-

one days, and of elections for February 8th, is

getting confirmed. Hold your company in readi-

ness. Show no weakness to your men. Are you
sure of them?

You must not think of building barracks and
ovens, but of making soldiers, men, and citizens.

See to your non-commissioned officers, and give
them explanations as to what you require.

See that your officers look after the men, find
means to act upon them, and to make use of their
authority.

I can’t order firmg until our armament is
complete. How often have I mentioned these

details to you! You have got three lazy fellows
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 53

for armourers. The arms must be ready in three
days, or we shall fall out.

Buy grease for the shoes; I have got shoes
for you.

Go into the huts on Wednesday, soldiers and
officers! This is no time for shirking.

When I tell you to have belts made, it is be-
cause one hundred of your men are without them.
Your workmen are a parcel of old women. Have
less to do with carpentry.

If I were addressing you as an officer under
my orders, I should have no right to ask for im-
possibilities. Are you here as a soldier, or as a
patriot? Ifas a soldier, you are only fit to go to
Germany with your three or four hundred thou-
sand comrades. You are here as a patriot: I shall
ask for impossibilities, and you will accomplish
them. Try to get accustomed to the idea at
once.

Your friend,

ROSSEL.
Notes taken at the Camp at Nevers.

MmiTary operations have been constantly unfor-
tunate, owing to ignorance; the plans are always
defective, and the chiefs incapable. Chanzy alone
perhaps has shown any talent, and even he can
only be judged when we know what forces were
opposed to him; yet this general, who might have
inspired confidence, was taken off the board, and
engaged with insufficient forces in covering what ?
—Normandy, Bretagne, and Poitou.

Gambetta had rapidly become a politician ; he
should have become a soldier, and that was our
hope when shut up in Metz; we had penetrated
the nullity of our generals. Gambetta would not
follow that course; he abdicated his power in
favour of ignorant specialists, thinking perhaps
that war has mysteries requiring profound study,

or that you must have commenced as a soldier
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 55

to understand strategy. Yet in spite of this un-
fortunate determination, Gambetta has guessed
much; a little study—very little indeed—would
have taught him a hundred times more.

Instead of having a patriot at our head for
the supreme business of the defence, we have
obeyed reactionists of all colours; we have been
headed by all the gouty old fogies on the list.
They tore their hair with terror when they ac-
cepted the responsibility, and fell much more by
their own impotence than by the skill of their
adversaries.

All the operations have been defective—all!

The retaking of Orleans was the result of a
childish error, classed and catalogued in all trea-
tises on military art under the head of ‘concentra-
tion on a point occupied by the enemy.’

The second taking of Orleans has also a name
amongst grave errors. It is called a ‘divergent
retreat.’

The battle of \miens may be called a ‘pas-
sive defence,’ as well as the operations which pre-

ceded the retaking of Orleans by the Prussians.
56 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

Bourbaki’s march towards the East was blun-
dered. The crime of jamming an army up against
a neutral frontier, and uncovering the whole line
of operation for a distance of one hundred miles,
has no name in military science. If Gambetta
had acted for himself, instead of trusting to the
judgment of a worn-out old soldier, who only
marched against his will, the fine operation he
had planned would never have ended in a shame-
ful disaster.

The Republic is as criminal in this respect as
the Empire, for she has shown just as little intel-
ligence in the choice of leaders. It is fair that the
Bordeaux Government should recriminate against
the Paris Government, but it is also fair that we
should recriminate against the Bordeaux Govern-
ment.

Shall I say to what extent our organisation
has been defective, and to what fresh waste we
have subjected the unfortunate inheritance of the
Empire? We submitted to the distinction between
the Army and the Mobile, but it is we who have

invented the mobilised, multiplied uniforms and
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 57

systems, and excluded married men from the de-
fence of the country, under the groundless pre-
text that to employ them would ruin the country.
Is not the country sufficiently ruined now ?

And what incapable organisers! Their one
fear was, that there would be too many men to
instruct; they excluded as many people as pos-
sible from the recruitment. They neither knew
how to collect men, to command them, nor to
instruct them. And the Government multiplied
the work by unreasonably creating instruction
camps, the folly of which I could never get under-
stood.

Let us try now, however. The Government
had a definite task to accomplish, with a definite
period to accomplish it in, i.e. to instruct soldiers.
It added to this difficult task that of creating
simultaneously numerous camps. By creating new
corps it rendered necessary the creation, by inex-
perienced administrators, of so many new dépots ;
and by isolating the mobilised outside the towns,
after having taken from them all the old soldiers,

they deprived them of leaders and instructors.
58 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

The artillery would not sacrifice one nail of its
scientific and durable matériel. Its cannons and
carriages, its ammunition carriages and harness,
will last forty years, it is true, but will only be
ready when the war is over. As haste was neces-
sary, did we simplify our armament? No; we
complicated it by the adoption of the rifled can-
non. Our defeats were not caused by defective
weapons; they depended upon much _ higher
causes. Rifled cannon are good for cockneys; let
us have smooth-bores, and know how to work
them.

The cavalry has proved as methodical as the

artillery, and as incapable on the battle-field.
The Struggle to the Death.

Tue defence until death, the continuance of the
struggle until victory, is no longer a utopian idea,
is not an error. France still possesses an im-
mense war material and a large number of sol-
diers. The line of the Loire, which forms an
excellent frontier, is hardly touched until Bourges
is lost; but even if that town were in the hands
of the enemy, an attack on the southern provinces
is difficult, owing to the mountains of Auvergne,
which would oblige the foe to divide his efforts
between Lyons and Bordeaux. If the Prussians
were checked on either of those lines, they would
both be reopened.

As a general rule, a defence until death can
never do harm to a people. The mistake we com-
mit in concluding peace is the same as that which
lost Carthage: a rich and rather sceptical na-

tion is always tempted to commit that fault. The
60 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

victor has then nothing to do but to go on un-
dermining it until ruin ensues.

Resistance, on the contrary, has often lucky
chances. Remember the battle of Canne; the
conquest of Holland by Louis XIV. at the head
of the four most powerful armies in Europe,
commanded by Turenne and Condé; the inva-
sion of Spain by Napoleon in 1808. Those three
situations were much more desperate and crush-
ing, and left much fewer chances for a favourable
issue, than our position after the fall of Paris.
And yet all three led to a fortunate issue; nor
is this the effect of chance, but rather of an
enduring law, of which one of the distinctest cha-
racters is the wasting away of victorious armies.

An army carrying on an active warfare de-
stroys itself, even with every facility for recruit-
ment. The recruits which arrive keep up the
numerical strength, but replace neither the old
soldiers nor the officers it has lost. Napoleon’s
army perished through want of officers; the same
was the case with Hannibal’s army; the same

will be the case with the Prussian army, and still
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 61

more rapidly, without considering the fact that
the death of Bismarck or of Moltke may at once
put an end to everything.

The saying of victorious Pyrrhus is not a
paradox. There is a moment which often comes
to conquerors when victory contains all the germs
of disaster. Canne or the Moskowa represent
that moment. Why should not the same thing
happen to the Prussians? It is only a question
of awaiting our opportunity—of wearing them
out and wearying them. Let them find Capuas
in our towns; but let us never come to terms with
them for our ransom.

We are wanting in patience; we conclude
peace as rashly as we went to war. The people
are too changeable and too sceptic. Eighty years
since they were capable of being roused to fana-
ticism by the notions of liberty, of equalitarian
propaganda, of universal democracy. What will
they believe in now?

ROSSEL.
A Letter to M. Gambetta.

February.

At last you have ceased to be a minister—to be
my minister. Without doubt you have been
seized with disgust; or else you have grown weary
of the powerless dictatorship you held; weary of
all the little intellects which surrounded you, of
all the petty ideas and petty anxieties which tram-
melled you.

Torn from the Government, where your energy
was a standing reproach to every one, you are
restored to the cause of the defence. No more
ambitions to restrain or gratify; no more Bour-
bakis to humour; no balance to be maintained any
longer between your men who were reactionists
and your ideas which were revolutionary. The
revolution must, perhaps, be entered upon afresh.
If this terrible tenure of office has not exhausted
you, I trust that we shall undertake it.

You are wanting in military understanding ;
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 63

that defect has proved your destruction. The
decision and boldness with which you overflow
are shamefully wanting in our generals; and yet
those are the true gifts of military men.

For my part, I could never understand what
you were doing in vour study. When I think
that a few hours a week sufficed for Napoleon to
get through the routine work to which you were
reduced, I side with the despot against you. He
made war, and you let others make it. Your
government has not proved a fighting govern-
ment; it was too like the preceding one—a
quantity of offices and a little police.

Never mind; you are no longer the govern-
ment. You are still the most determined and the
most intelligent man our party have given birth
to. For our sakes I bitterly regretted to see you
abdicate, or rather to see you little by little elimi-
nated from power. But the sympathy, mingled
with pity, which I felt for your government leads
me to excuse that fault; and I heartily desire to
assist you in exerting your influence in the coun-

cils which are about to be opened.
64 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

My illusions, and the hopes which I had built
upon you, date from the September Revolution.
Your young renown made me confident that you
would overcome the impotence of your decrepit
surroundings. I saw how readily you had become
a politician, and I flattered myself that you would
become a military man with equal rapidity. You
never even tried; chance made you acquainted
with some of the secrets of our profession, but
their general meaning escaped you, and you placed
yourself willingly in the hands of our imbecile
generals. Can I not assist you? More than

once
The 19th of March.

To THE MINISTER OF WAR AT VERSAILLES,

Camp at Nevers, March 19, 1871.
Mon GENERAL,
I have the honour to inform you that
I am about to proceed to Paris, to place myself at
the disposal of the Government forces which are
about to be organised there. Having learnt by a
Versailles despatch, published this day, that two
parties are struggling for mastery in the country,
I do not hesitate in joining the side which has not
concluded peace, and which does not include in its
ranks generals guilty of capitulation.

Whilst taking so grave and so painful a
resolution, I regret to have to suspend the duties
of the Engineer service of the camp at Nevers,
which had been confided to me by the Govern-
ment of the 4th of September. JI make over that

F
66 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

service, which no longer consists in anything but
the regulation of articles of expenditure, and
transfer the accounts to M. F., lieutenant of
Auxiliary Engineers, a man of honour and expe-
rience, who remained under my orders by General
Vergné’s command, in virtue of your despatch of
the 5th instant. By means of a letter addressed
to the Store Department, I give you a summary
account of the position of the service.
I have the honour to be, mon Général,
Your most obedient humble servant,

L. Rossen.
The Part I played under the Commune—
Cluseret, Delescluze, Se.

Versailles Prison, June 20-24, 1871.

BeroreE the 18th of March I had considered what
course I should take in the event of an insurrec-
tion in Paris. The condemnation to death of
several men of the democratic party for a move-
ment which took place during the siege, and the
suppression of several newspapers, had increased
my feelings of hostility towards those vanquished
men who showed themselves so incapable and so
humble before the enemy, and so bold and in-
solent when they had to do with political parties.
The journals had made out a list of the artil-
lery existing in Paris; I had especially remarked
more than 600 field- pieces. Small-arms and
ammunition were in still greater abundance. If
one knew how to make use of those enormous

stores, it was possible to snatch back victory. I
68 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

wrote in this sense to an intelligent man who had
taken an active part in the popular movements at
Paris since the beginning of the war. He ans-
wered by furnishing me with precise statements ;
but the general impression produced by his reply,
was the incapacity and want of organisation of
the party of action, and the impossibility of a
movement. His opinion on this point was final
and well supported, Nevertheless, the existence
of sufficient war material for a struggle, and the
presence of a party disposed for it, seduced me
in spite of everything.

I did not foresee the possibility of a civil war
which would go beyond street-fighting.

On the 19th of March a despatch from M.
Thiers, officially posted at Nevers, announced the
evacuation of Paris by 40,000 troops in good
order. Even had I not been favourable to the
Revolution, this last detail would have made me
side with the insurrection. The army had not
undergone sufficient shame during the war; it was
necessary that 40,000 men should leave Paris

without fighting, without a day’s strugele, in the
§ 8) iy SSle,
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 69

presence of so contemptible a foe as an insurrec-
tion must always be; and that too after having
had the advantage of the offensive, which is the
only really favourable chance for an insurrection-
ary movement.

That evening at dinner my host, M. de L.,
guessing that I had made up my mind, entered
upon a conversation, in which he endeavoured dis-
creetly and with the most friendly sentiments to dis-
suade me from the extreme course I contemplated.
If he remembers that interview, his testimony
may be useful tome. What he said touched and
saddened, without convincing me. I showed him
that, taken as a whole, this Revolution had been
made by the people—by those who suffer by the
present condition of society; that the crimes and
errors which stained the Revolution should not
prevent men of honesty and instruction from join-
ing their party at such a critical moment. In
short, my departure was rather a sacrifice than
anything else; and amidst the disaster and feeble-
ness of the whole country, the Parisian revolu-

tionary party was, in my eyes, the lesser evil.
70 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

T learnt the same evening the murder of Ge-
nerals Thomas and Lecomte. Such occurrences
are almost unavoidable in revolutions.

I left Nevers at night, and arrived at Paris
on the morning of the 20th.

On the first bill I read I saw the names of
Sullier and Assi. This is what caused my first
sensation of discust and disappointment.

I inquired where the Government sat, and
went to the Hétel de Ville to have my name put
down and ask for service.

On the 22d of March I was presented by some
friends to the Committee of the 17th district; and
the same day I was named by the Central Com-
mittee of the Hétel de Ville, and elected by the
Committee of the 17th arrondissement, chief of
the 17th legion.

The first days of my command were occupied
in taking measures against the reactionary move-
ment, which was being got up under the orders
of Admiral Saisset, and one of whose head-quar-
ters was at the St. Lazare terminus, close to my

district. Prisoners were brought in, who were
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 71

generally arrested in the trains starting for Ver-
sailles. Much animosity was shown towards them,
and I took every pains to protect them, being na-
turally averse to all the violence for which revo-
lutions are a pretext, and determined, whatever
the consequence, not to permit any. I caused
those who were detained, to be treated with hu-
manity; and I delivered as many as I could, ac-
companying them myself beyond the dissatisfied
crowds. Those people must feel some gratitude
to me, as they thought themselves very near being
shot.

Admiral Saisset’s retreat put an end to the
hopes of the reaction. The elections for the Com-
mune, directed by the care and authority of the
Federation of the National Guard, took place
almost immediately (March 26th),

I don’t know if the Federation made the Re-
volution of March 18th; but what is certain is,
that it had confiscated that Revolution, and ex-
cluded from all part in affairs the truest repub-
licans and the most active members of the Inter-

national Society, if they did not belong to the
72, ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

Federation. It is owing to this fact that disputes
arose from the very commencement between the
mayors and their adjoints, although both re-
publican and revolutionary, of certain districts,
and the battalion delegates who formed the Le-
gionary Council or District Committee. These
last confiscated the municipal authority in the
name of the Federation, and exercised it without
sagacity, and sometimes without honesty. This is
what took place in the 18th district, and in the
17th, where I was.

When this dispute was settled, fresh ones arose
between the delegates of the Central Committee
of the Federation and the District Committee
concerning the elections.

After the elections, it would have seemed that
everything should revert to the Commune. But
nothing of the sort: the same struggles continued
between the Communal delegates and the District
Committee (or Legionary Council).

As chief of the armed force, I was constantly
called upon to take part in these dissensions; and

I did not spare the District Committee, which was
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 73

certainly the most idiotic little piece of despotic
machinery that can be imagined. Finally, when
the municipality sent by the Commune wished to
establish itself, it was my duty to arrest the most
autocratic of those demagogues.

Whilst those quarrels were going on, I was
engaged in gaining over to the cause of the Revo-
lution the 33d and 90th battalions. I succeeded
without violence and without accidents. I also
turned my attention to the battalions in the out-
skirts near my district, from St. Omer to Suresnes.
The Revolution, after Admiral Saisset’s departure,
had some days of real progress; and I got so far
as to be able to count seventeen battalions in my
district, instead of seven, which it numbered when
I arrived. Some detachments of the army, left
without chiefs, came over to the Federation; and
I ordered elections, which led to good results.

The Central Committee, during its short tenure
of office, had forbidden the reélection of the whole
staff of the federated battalions. This order be-
came a real stumbling-block in the way of their

properly-organised command. The elections were
74 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

carried on in a most unenlightened spirit; the
convocations were impeded hy the military ser-
vice, with which the battalions overloaded them~-
selves, as if for their amusement. It was con-
stantly necessary to renew the elections, which
had been incomplete, irregular, or without results ;
and the end of it all was, that with great difficulty,
and after an infinite number of changes, chiefs
were elected who had neither influence, instruc-
tion, nor dignity. The staff was constantly chang-
ing, and the elections recurring, until the fall of
the Commune, or close to that period.

Thus ended the month of March. The dele-
gates of the Commune at the mayoralty of my
district were Malon, Gérardin, and Varlin. They
considered me capable of rendering important mili-
tary services to the cause of the Revolution, and
tried to get me into the Council, where military
questions were decided.

About this time the first engagement of the
civil war took place within my district. A re-
connoitering party, composed of two squadrons of

cavalry, drove a detachment of a suburban bat-
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 75

talion from the cross-roads of Courbevoie, and a
National Guard was sabred by an officer. This
reconnaissance was pushed as far as the bridge at
Neuilly, but fell back on seeing the resolute atti-
tude of another suburban detachment who occu-
pied the tcte de pont.

The following day I sent out a strong detach-
ment, which occupied without resistance the cross-
roads evacuated the day before; but it returned in
disorder a few hours later, having been abandoned
by its chiefs.

The next day the enemy returned with cannon,
placed a battery at the cross-roads, and cannon-
aded the Neuilly bridge, which was abandoned.
The shells reached the ramparts. This was pro-
bably the 1st of April. I made a plan for crossing
the Seine at the bridge at Asnitres the following
night, to go and retake Courbevoie and the bridge
of Neuilly by the line of the railroad. This would
have been a very serviceable movement, and well
timed up to the 15th of April, but the bad quality
of the troops prevented it from ever succeeding.

On the Ist of April, as well as ] can remem-
76 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

ber, I was summoned with the other chiefs of
legions to a council of war at the Place Ven-
déme staff-quarters. It was probably there that
the march on Versailles, which cost Flourens his
life, was decided upon. I remained there about
two hours; but seeing that nothing of importance
was being said, I went away, after having ob-
tained authority to carry out my projected attempt
upon Courbevoie.

This attempt ended in a most thorough failure,
perhaps on account of the defects in the plan it-
self, but principally on account of the bad quality
of the troops and officers. I started with seven
battalions, numbering altogether about 2000 men,
divided into three groups, under the orders of
Malon, the member of the Commune, of my
second in command, and of Gérardin, another
member of the Commune. At least two bat-
talions were completely drunk, and others com-
plained of not having eaten. The vanguard, which
I led, followed me in good order; but the other
battalions, whose officers had no influence over

their men, were not long in sitting down on the
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 77

side of the road, quarrelling and complaining.
Two or three panics took place—in short, the
most thorough disorder. The officers failed en-
tirely in doing their duty. Malon and Gérardin
exerted themselves, whilst for my part I did all I
could to achieve something; until at last, con-
vinced of the impossibility of leading such people
against an enemy, we resolved to take them back
to the town. But if it had been impossible to
make them advance, it was still more painful to
make them return. I passed a cruel night, and I
thought it would disgust me for ever of such un-
dertakings and such soldiers.

I had been followed the whole night through,
without my knowledge, by some of those jealous
republicans who consider it their first duty to ex-
ercise a rigorous control over the actions of men
in office. The result of this supervision was per-
fectly favourable to me, and the opinion they
formed of my character, joined to the opinion of
Malon and Gérardin, caused me to be chosen to
serve in the Ministry of War. I was very near

being shot at the bridge of Asniéres by my Na-
78 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

tional Guards. On reéntering the mayoralty, my
first thought was to impose a rigorous discipline
upon the legion, and to make a selection amongst
the officers, so as to exclude those who were in-
capable of commanding; but the first step I took
towards this end awoke the susceptibilities of the
District Committee, who arrested me, and three
delegates took me quietly to the Préfecture of
Police, where I was at once locked up. This took
place on the 2d of April, about seven A.M.

Iwas broken down with fatigue, and deeply
disgusted with the Revolution and the revolu-
tionists, with the National Guard as a body, and
the National Guards as individuals. I fell asleep
immediately, and was awakened at eleven o’clock
by the warder, who came to let me out as hur-
riedly as I had been put in. An officer who was
quite unknown to me had ordered my release.

I returned home, thinking only of leaving
Paris, and I slept all day, to set myself up after
ten days of constant fatigue. But the following
day (April 3d), the same officer who had caused
me to be set at liberty the day before, having
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 79

learnt my address in the office of the 17th dis-
trict, arrived with a letter from Cluseret, begging
me to be the head of his staff at the War Depart-
ment.

This is what had taken place. The military
authority, which had been confided to Eudes at
the end of the Government of the Central Com-
mittee, had afterwards been divided between
Eudes, Bergeret, and Duval. On the Ist of April
those three generals had planned, in the council
of war of which I have spoken, a march upon
Versailles, which took place at the same time as
my luckless movement upon the bridge at Asni-
éres. The results are known—the death of the
unfortunate Flourens and of Duval, and above all
a large number taken prisoners. The very day of
this scrimmage, the trio, Eudes, Bergeret, and
Duval, were set aside, and the command confided
to Cluseret. I have been told that my appoint-
ment was forced upon him by the War Commis-
sion, through the influence of the members for
the 17th district; for at bottom he always seemed

to entertain a certain jealousy of me, which was
80 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

mitigated by the feeling that I was necessary to
him. However that may be, the letter in which
he summoned me was very friendly in tone. They
had been looking for me for twenty-four hours,
and they had searched all the Paris prisons to
find me.

I obeyed the call at once, in spite of my re-
pugnance for staff duties and my previous disap-
pointments. I had hope in the Revolution, and
besides, I did not think it becoming to refuse.

From that time forward I was constantly tied
down and engaged in such a multiplicity of inco-
herent affairs, that it will be nearly impossible for
me to remember the principal ones, and, above all,
to put the dates aright.

The greater part of my time, when I was chief
of Cluseret’s staff, was certainly taken up by im-
portunate and useless individuals; delegates of
every origin, inquirers after information, inven-
tors, and, above all, officers and guards, who left
their posts to come and complain of their chiefs,
or of their weapons, or of the want of provisions

and ammunition. There were also almost every-
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 81

where independent chiefs, who did not accept or
did not carry out orders. Each district had a
committee as useless, as quarrelsome, and as
jealous as that of the 17th. The artillery was
sequestered by an analogous committee, also de-
pendent upon the Federation, and who formed a
rare collection of incapables. Every monument,
every barrack, every guard-house, had a military
commandant ; that military commandant had his
staff, and often his permanent guard. All those
spontaneous productions of the Revolution had no
other title or rule than that of their own pleasure,
the right of the first comer, and the calm preten-
sion to retain the place without doing anything.
You might see doctors promenading with a gene-
ral’s gold lace and escort; barrack doorkeepers
equipped like superior officers ; and all those fel-
lows had horses, rations, and money.

To make up for this, the National Guard was
often without chiefs. The former officers were no
longer obeyed, because of the orders for reélec-
tion. The rank of the new set was either dis-

puted or they were not elected; this served the
G
82 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

battalions as a pretext for not marching. The
elections of the chiefs of battalions were very
long; those of the chiefs of legions impossible.
An officer was no sooner elected than protests
against his election, and accusations against his
character and opinions, poured into the ministerial
oftices, from the committees of the Federation, of
the Commune, and of all imaginable authorities.
It was no child’s-play to make something out of
all that, to say nothing of the serious defects
in the organisation of the National Guard, the
legacies of preceding governments, which would
alone have sufficed to render abortive all our
attempts at organisation and defence. Our Na-
tional Guards had been carefully formed by des-
potism and for despotism; it was impossible for
us to make anything of them by liberty and for
liberty ; the transition was too sudden, the neces-
sity too imperious, and the events too hurried.
The staff of the War Department consisted, at
the beginning, of Cluseret and myself, with two
or three idlers in Cluseret’s suite. I made up the

necessary numbers by taking a few men of some
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 83

instruction who offered their services, and I gaye
my attention specially to the organisation of the
legions. The very first days it was necessary to
oust Bergeret, who was commandant of the city,
and would have wished to command everything.
Cluseret had to have him arrested, and replaced
him by Dombrowski, whose appointment I sup-
ported, and who was backed by Félix Pyat. It
was agreed that Dombrowski should direct the
movements of the troops and the military opera-
tions, whilst we organised the legions and saw to
the administration. Several things prevented this
idea from being carried into effect. In the first
place, Dombrowski established himself at Neuilly,
and paid no attention to the left bank; on the
other hand, Cluseret proved himself almost imme-
diately inferior to his duties, in activity, in the
power of taking the lead, and in capacity for or-
ganisation. The directions he gave were ill-con-
ceived; he did not indicate the means of carrying
them out, and, worst of all, he did not stick to his
plan once he had adopted it; his fickleness and

his uncertainty were great causes of difficulties.
84 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

He began by twice modifying the organisation
of marching companies, reistablished by his pre-
decessors; then he raised the daily pay of the
artillerymen to three francs. Both these measures
had unfortunate results. Other innovations he
introduced also augmented the disorder. The
complication of the government machinery be-
came extreme. There was a commission specially
charged with looking after Cluseret, of which
Delescluze and Félix Pyat were the most active
members. This commission ‘bothered’ Cluseret,
to use the truest word, and that was all they were
good for. They transmitted to us by telegraph,
frivolous notices or ridiculous questions, or sent
us with special recommendations, pitiful inventors
or drunken delegates. The commission, as a body,
often conveyed itself to the ministry, and dawdled
about Cluseret’s study with a most business-like
air.

The organisation of the Military Court stands
out alone in this chaos of remembrances. It sat
for the first time on the 14th and 15th of April.

This jurisdiction was constituted by the Com-
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 85

mune, at the pressing instance of Cluseret. Wild
acts of indiscipline and rebellion were daily com-
mitted with impunity; it was necessary to have
recourse to energetic measures of coercion. I was
named president of that court, and filled those
functions for about a week. That period is es-
pecially important with regard to the part I
played.

In the first place, the necessity of attending
the sittings of the Military Court prevented me
from seeing myself to the condition of the legions,
which was beginning to be more regular, and to
which I attended in the morning. The sittings of
the Military Court were held at night, and lasted
pretty late, and on getting home I had still busi-
ness to settle. I was therefore forced to confide
the morning report to an officer in whom I had
but little confidence, and who gave to this work of
organisation, which was of capital importance, a
bad direction, and perhaps one which he inten-
tionally made injurious to the success of the Re-
volution.

Besides which, the power with which these
86 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

functions invested me, aroused the susceptibilities
of the Commune, an assembly as suspicious and
timid as ever democratic assembly was.

Last of all, it was just at this moment that
Cluseret manifested more and more clearly his
intention of setting me aside in the conduct of
affairs, whilst still continuing to employ me, and
detaining me near him, to prevent me from being
elsewhere. It is known that the service of the
chief of the staff comprises the details of all the
services, and that he is the necessary medium for
transmitting his superior’s orders. Cluseret, on
the contrary, began to conduct the principal
branches of the service directly, and thus placed
me ina very false position, as I was charged with
the execution, explanation, and completion of
orders with which I was unacquainted. I have
since supposed that at that period Cluseret, whose
undecided mind was subject to the wildest delu-
sions, had his reasons for keeping me in the dark
as to the steps he took, and for suppressing the
involuntary control which a chief of the staff

exercises over his general. He nevertheless con-
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 87

tinued to treat me with courtesy; and he spared
me no praises as to the price he attached to my
services.

I return to the question of the Military Court,
a question which I shall treat more thoroughly
perhaps, and separately, if necessary.

To accept the presidency of that court was
the greatest sacrifice that I made, and could
make, to the Revolution. An enemy to revolu-
tions, circumstances had thrown me into a revolu-
tion. Whilst hating civil war, I was engaged in
civil war. I was now called upon to preside at a
revolutionary tribunal, a tribunal which would only
pass sentences of death.

If it be necessary for me to defend myself
against the charge of ambition, my painful ac-
ceptance of this office is perhaps the strongest
argument I can adduce. What interest can an
ambitious man have in soiling his hands? I must
have been very foolishly ambitious, or very ignor-
ant, to stain my name with blood in subordinate
functions. There is only one reasonable explanation

for my conduct, which was that I was sacrificing
88 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

myself to the Revolution. I had chosen none of
the posts which I had filled in succession, nor had
I refused to accept any post. In such moments
of crisis one must display a sectarian devotion. I
therefore accepted the presidency of a tribunal
which I was of opinion would only return sent-
ences of death, and only thought of fulfilling my
duties in the manner most serviceable to the re-
volutionary cause. In the same measure as the
military situation grew more pressing, the indis-
cipline and want of organisation of the troops
became more manifest. It would be out of place
to enter into full details with regard to that situ-
ation; it is sufficient to state that success was
hopeless as long as the troops showed no obedi-
ence, and could shirk their military duties with
impunity. We had abstained from giving a
proper organisation to the National Guard, which
would have been the best remedy; it now re-
mained to be seen what could be done by repres-
sion, and it was necessary that it should be prompt
and real.

Such was the object for which the Military
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 89

Court was constituted; its action was limited by
the clause of the decree which enjoined that no
execution should take place until the approval of
the Executive Commission, which was the execu-
tive power of the Commune, had been obtained.
In its first sitting the court issued an order
regulating the mode of procedure and the nature
of its punishments. That order was necessary
to complete the far from precise decree of the
Commune; it simplified the forms of procedure,
and assured to the accused the safeguards of
publicity and of defence; as for the punishments,
it simply laid down that the court should follow
existing laws and the rules of martial juris-
prudence. All the following orders were issued
without bearing upon any text of the law. All
the accused were federals charged with military
crimes or offences. The court neither judged
political cases nor cases of common law.

The following day a chief of battalion, guilty
of having refused to march against the enemy,
was condemned to death. The Executive Com-

mission commuted the punishment, at his de-
90 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

fender’s request, to imprisonment until the end of
the war.

The decision of the Executive Commission
which commuted this first sentence enervated the
Military Court. It judged three or four more
affairs, of which the two most important were,
the abandonment of a trench near the fort of
Vanves by a battalion from the 5th district,
whose officers were condemned to suffer various
penalties; and the affair of the 105th battalion,
which brought before the court a dozen or so
officers and guards who had refused to march
against the enemy, and who were guilty of
mutiny and assault upon a superior in the ser-
vice. This affair led to no sentence of death;
there were different condemnations, and some
acquittals, but no very serious consequences.

The action of the Military Court made the
Commune anxious; it feared this new power,
which condemned the guilty without regard to
their antecedents, as more or less distinguished
demagogues. It so happened, in fact, that our

most undoubted offenders were firm upholders of
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 91

the good cause. The commandant we had con-
demned to death was a revolutionary veteran ;
and the 105th battalion, which we had abused,
was the pillar of the Federation in the 7th
district. The Commune showed by the decree
that its members were only amenable to itself—
that it feared their being amenable to others.
It considered as an enemy a jurisdiction which
condemned, without distinction of persons, those
who would not go under fire, or came out from
under fire when they pleased.

T have said that the 105th battalion belonged
to the 7th district, which is the Faubourg St.
Germain, and which stretches along the banks
of the Seine towards the Champ de Mars. The
Federals were few in that quarter, but the 105th
was recruited at the extreme end of the district.
It federated itself in part from the commence-
ment, then proceeded to hold fresh elections, and
was the support of the revolutionary organisation
in that part of the town. The members of the
Commune there elected (Parisel and Urbain)

owed much to the 105th. To strike at that
92 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

battalion was equivalent to attacking the validity
of their election and the support of their power.
They referred the judgment of the Military
Court to the Commune, and the judgment was
quashed by a decree, one of the statements in
which was personally offensive to me.

My father, who lived in Avenue Latour
Maubourg, had commanded that battalion at the
period of the 4th of September; he had resigned
towards the end of the siege; his successor had
left Paris after the 18th of March; and the
actual commandant, a certain Witt, was impli-
cated in the affair, and acquitted. The Com-
mune decided that my relationship with the 105th
was sufficient to invalidate the judgment; and
without going to the bottom of the affair, which,
had they done, the sentence would have appeared
manifestly equitable and moderate, it quashed
the judgment. The decree had been made out
by Léo Meillet.

The order had been issued on the night of
the 22d April; it was quashed on the 25th or
26th. I learnt it by the Offciel, and at once
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS, 93

resigned my posts as president of the Military
Court and as chief of the staff to Cluseret.

For the second time my good fortune offered
me an easy opportunity and good and valid
reasons for abandoning, for detesting, that dis-
jomted Revolution —my bad fortune carried the
day.

I must go back a little, to speak of the events
which led to Cluseret’s arrest, and of that which
followed it.

Cluseret, after having shown, during the first
moments of his tenure of the ministry, an exces-
sive activity, had been completely mastered by
the course of events. Some attempts he had
made to shake off the Commune had made him
neglect his daily business still more; he had
come out from those struggles vanquished and
lowered. Pyat and Delescluze, who were then
the most active members of the Executive Com-
mission, tormented him by their supervision, their
questions, and their childish anxieties. On the
other hand, he neither enjoved my sympathy nor

(so far as capacity went) the confidence of the
94 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

officers employed at the ministry. I have said
that his character was undecided, and his mind
open to the grossest errors. I could bring for-
ward facts, which would show that between him
and me there was more than the germs of dis-
sension. When I was named, on Cluseret’s pro-
posal, to the presideney of the Military Court, I
was obliged to leave, as I have already noticed,
the duty of making out the reports to an officer
not wanting in special knowledge, but whose
character inspired me with no confidence what-
soever. That officer availed himself of the op-
portunity to obtain from Cluseret, who had, how-
ever, been forewarned by me, the exclusive care
of the organisation of the legions; he conferred
numerous appointments, and surrounded himself
by a complete staff, and sent in daily reports to
Cluseret of a very summary nature, and quite
insufficient for ordering the service. By these
and other means he had arranged for himself
completely independent duties. This may appear
strange, but the whole truth was still stranger;

for such attempts at autonomy amongst the lowest
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. Qo

officials, far from being exceptional, recurred daily
everywhere. After Cluseret had tolerated several
of them, I offered him my resignation for the first
time, grounded upon the repugnance which the
despotic and unintelligent policy of the Commune
inspired me with. Shortly afterwards I offered
it to him again with sufficient persistence for him
to accept it; but he begged me, at the same time,
to continue in the exercise of my duties until he
could find me a successor. At last, after the
decree of the Commune quashing the order of the
AMlitary Court, I ceased all service on the 27th
of April.

Men are soon worn out in revolutionary pe-
riods. After a month of power, and, above all,
of struggling, Cluseret was completely worn out
— exhausted, in spite of the concessions of every
kind which he had constantly made to every one.
At first he had wished to be that which the
military chief in a besieged place, in an army,
in a camp, should be; that is to say, an absolute,
undisputed, and uncontrolled chief. He had com-

pletely failed with the Commune, and had erred
96 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

in retaining the command after that check. He
had at first undergone the assiduous control of
the Executive Commission, chiefly represented by
Pyat and Delescluze; then one of the numerous
Palace revolutions which occurred in the Com-
mune caused the Executive Commission to be
composed of all the delegates to the different
ministries, and a special War Commission to be
named, to look after Cluseret in the discharge of
his duties. Suspicions were accumulating against
him, and several times already the question of
his arrest had been raised.

Such was the situation of affairs when I ceased
to be at the head of the staff for carrying on
the war. My resignation pained such of the sin-
cere revolutionists as knew me. Gérardin, who
from the commencement had despised the Byzan-
tine discussions of the Commune—Gérardin, who,
on account of his continual presence at the ad-
vanced posts, had a much clearer idea of the
falseness of the situation than the folks at the
Hotel de Ville—confided to me a plan which he

had conceived for nullifying the Commune, by
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 97

having the power transferred to the hands of a
Committee of Public Safety, or some other Execu-
tive Committee, composed of young and resolute
members of the Commune, whom he named, and
in which I should share with Dombrowski the
conduct of military operations. In the mean time
the members of the War Commission chose me
for the confidant of their anxieties; and even sys-
tematic Republicans, who had not participated in
the proceedings of the Commune, offered me spon-
taneously their systems and their support. I thus
found myself the centre of an incoherent and
varied movement, whose unconscious watchword
was to ‘save the Revolution by annulling the
Commune.’

T let things take their course. I was as much
the enemy of the Commune as the sensible Re-
publicans were; yet I still thought that the Com-
mune could and ought to be beneficial. Through
Gérardin I was sure of the support of the ener-
getic and intelligent members of the Commune ;
others, whom I refrain from naming, because they
have not appeared on the revolutionary scene,

H
98 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

offered their financial experience ; and finally the
generals obeyed me willingly. Under such cir-
cumstances success was not impossible, and the
Revolution might save the country.

On the evening of the 29th I was summoned
before the Executive Commission. It was not
concealed from me that they would have no more
to do with Cluseret, and they put to me several
questions on the situation and on my own ideas.
I stated my opinion of the situation, which was
becoming more and more involved. The defence

was a mere nothing,

and the attack being inde-
pendent of the plans of the enemy’s generals, and
solely dependent on the talent of the subordinate
officers of Engineers and the courage of the rank
and file opposed to us, would necessarily make
continuous progress until the town fell. There
was no hope of success, save in a sweeping reform
in the system of salary (which, as at present or-
ganised, placed the people, combatants and non-
combatants, in the pay of the Commune); in the
reéstablishment of discipline by means of severe

examples, made chiefly amongst officers of high
Pies; A 5 2)
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 99

rank; finally, in the immediate organisation of
a small corps @armée, capable of acting in the
open country and of taking the offensive. When
I left, my appointment as provisional War-dele-
gate was signed by the Commission; it was an-
nounced to me the following day, at the same
time that Cluseret was arrested at the Commune.
I must here observe that I defended Cluseret
against the press and the Commune, from the
vulgar accusation of treason.

This change was the result of the efforts of
the War Commission, whose duty being to divide
the management of war business with Cluseret,
and who, considering that Cluseret neither did
nor chose to do anything—which was true enough
—had sought a successor for him, and had made
me acceptable to the Executive Commission.
Both the Commissions promised me their full
support, which consisted in good sentiments on
the part of the Executive and good-will on the
part of the War Commission. But neither the
one nor the other had broad ideas enough, nor

sufficient capacity, nor aptness for such excep-
100 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

tional and revolutionary work as that which pre-
sented itself to us.

Simultaneously with this change, the idea of
which Gérardin had spoken to me, had been car-
ried into execution by the overthrow of the Execu-
tive Commission, and the creation of a Commit-
tee of Public Safety, which was elected May Ist,
with the difference that in this Committee, in-
stead of resolute and intelligent men, Gérardin
was associated with the pitiful Félix Pyat, with
Léo Meillet, and two other stopgaps whose names
I don’t remember. This fiasco deprived me of
the support of the Executive Commission, and
placed on a pinnacle Félix Pyat, whose blunder-
ing activity would have rendered any undertaking
abortive, and whose brain—devoid of judgment
—was the receptacle of all the impure and un-
wholesome ideas that ferment in a revolution. I
learnt this news by an avalanche of despatches
which fell upon the War Department during the
night of the Ist of May, and by which he dis-
arranged all the military measures I had taken.

As soon as I reéntered the Department on
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 101

the evening of April 30th, I set to work at the
most urgent measures. It is not a matter of in-
difference to state, that during the night of the
29th a trench situated to the right of Fort Issy
had been surprised by the enemy with the battery
which held it. Mégy, the incapable commander
of the fort, seeing the enemy stretching out on
his right, had taken fright, and evacuated the fort
with the garrison. Cluseret, at this news, had
started for Issy, and, collecting some troops, had
led them back to the fort, which he had been the
first to enter. It was on his return from this
expedition that the Commission had had him
arrested. For my part, I confined Mégy, and
sent General Eudes to Issy, the importance of
which position he did not understand, and he
therefore proceeded thither much against his will.

I have said that the most pressing questions
were the pay, discipline, and the organisation of
active forces.

It was indeed a pressing matter to put an
end to the crying abuses which obtained under

the existing system of payments. I will give an
102 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

idea of them by stating that the same useful re-
sults might have been insured for a twentieth
part of the sum. On the Ist of May, having
convoked the Executive Commission, the War
Commission, and the general officers to a council
of war, I agreed with Jourde, the Finance dele-
gate, that we would study together that very
evening, a plan for reducing the allowance made
to the National Guard to the same rate as the
pay of the army, with something over, and for
allowing to women and children, by way of assist-
ance, a sum superior to the seventy-five centimes
hitherto allotted to the women, and this by way
of compensation, and to cause the reduction in
the pay of the National Guards to be admitted.
Jourde engaged moreover to find and to set at
work the necessary employds for distributing and
recularising the allotments of pay and for con-
trolling the disposal of the funds. Forty active
and honourable accountants were wanted at once.
Neither of the above plans came to anything.
The Executive Commission having been dethroned

in the same day’s sitting, Jourde struggled for
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 103

two days at the Commune against the creation
of the Committee of Public Safety; and the pay
question stood as it was when I arrived.

I had a commission of three members nomi-
nated to judge Mégy. Dombrowski, Eudes, and
Bergeret were those three members. The com-
mission never met.

On the 30th of April I drew up a plan for a
tactical and administrative group of five battalions,
commanded by a colonel and two lieutenant-colo-
nels, to serve as a basis for the organisation of an
active army. I instructed Bergeret to choose five
battalions, which were known to him, of from 400
to 500 effective men each, to form a regiment.
Eudes was to form two regiments likewise in Paris.
Dombrowski agreed to form three, and then a
fourth, within the limits of his command. La
Cecilia, who was going to take the command of
the centre, asked also for a regiment to form.
Each of those regiments was to return the nu-
merous flags and pennons of which the Federals
made such an abuse, and receive in exchange a

four-pounder gun or a mitrailleuse per battalion.
104 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

Thus I had put on the stocks, as far back as May
Ist, eight regiments, which were in reality active
brigades, of about 2000 men each, and forty field-
pieces. At the same time I destined to Wrob-
lewski, who commanded the left wing, all the
available cavalry, unfortunately but few in num-
ber.

Although I endeavour to exclude from this
memorandum all considerations of military art and
of politics, I must here observe, that this attempt
at organisation, destined to permit me to give
battle before Paris, was the sole chance of success
for the defenders. In confining oneself to a pas-
sive defence, one could only delay the fall of the
fortifications—the inevitable conclusion of a re-
gular attack. As for the mode of organisation
which I had adopted, let the purists in military
art decide whether it was fitted to the character
of the troops at my disposal, and to other circum-
stances. I had projected to add to it a battery of
twelve or sixteen cannon of the largest bore.

Whilst I was taking these measures, I divided

amongst the members of the War Commission the
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 105

principal services of the department. Avrial had
already taken charge of the artillery; Bergeret,
instead of Delescluze, who was ill, had charge of
the clothing; at the same time he set afoot the
manufacture of earth-bags for the defence, and
of provision-bags for the marching battalions.
Arnold undertook to institute an examining com-
mittee for the office, in order to get rid of all the
useless and ignorant wearers of lace who encum-
bered the town. Tridon, the most capable and
the most respected of them all, but whose ruined
health did not admit of regular work, took charge
of all that concerned the commissariat, and began
by imprisoning the brothers May, who were carry-
ing on that service. I must say, that all these
functions, accepted without hesitation, were exer-
cised with much lukewarmness.

T have said that I had sent Eudes to the fort
of Issy. The revolutionary notoriety of the man
had led me to make that choice. He had every
interest in defending the Revolution, and would
be nothing without it. I thought him too promi-

nently placed to show want of spirit. He went to
106 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

his post with regret on the Ist of May, leaving at
Paris the chief of his staff, Collet, and a portion
of his numerous staff itself, to organise his regi-
ments. No sooner was he arrived at the fort of
Issy, than his sole thought was how to get away
from it. He sent to the Commune, to the Com-
mittee of Public Safety, to the town, and to the
Ministry, despatches, in which he expressed in
warm terms, the impossibility of holding out any
longer, and the necessity for having reinforce-
ments, provisions, ammunition, clothes, tobacco,
cannons, &e. Pyat, who was in all the fervour of
his first day’s government, answered him by send-
ing me pressing despatches: ‘Preserve Fort Issy
at any cost.’

The 2d of May Gérardin informed me of the
assumption of power by the Committce of Public
Safety, and invited me to attend at the Commune,
after which I should dine with the new Govern-
ment. To describe that day’s business, it would
be necessary frankly to adopt the humorous style
which is suited to a tale at once grave and gro-

tesque. Let it suffice to say, that I brought down
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 107

volleys of applause from that tetchy assembly,
which was not insensible to truth spoken without
respect of persons and straightforwardly. I passed
the evening at the Hotel de Ville, with the mem-
bers of the Committee of Public Safety. I believe
those gentlemen expected me to submit to them
a plan of organisation or defence; and Félix Pyat
in particular spoke profusely on military matters,
which he viewed in the narrowest light. At last
one of the other members of the Committee hav-
ing spoken of the measures he was taking in his
district to establish the National Guard and re-
form abuses, ‘You, at least,’ said I, ‘are reason-
able. Pyat inquired sharply if J meant to say
that he was not so. I began laughing, and we
were mortal enemies.

The following day Eudes became more and
more pressing, and his urgent despatches made
me determine to go to Fort Issy, and make an
effort to relieve him. I took with me a part of
the battalion on guard at the department, which
was to wait for me at Vanves; but divers acci-

dents, and in particular a fall from my horse, de-
108 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

layed me so much, that I could only reach the fort
at night with three battalions which I had picked
up on the road, and whose presence served to
renew the courage of the defenders, I gave some
important instructions to Eudes, who had taken
up his quarters in the darkest and least-exposed
casemate of the fort, and who still complained of
the danger. One only of all my instructions was
carried out, and procured us a success.

But what was strangest in this adventure was
my meeting at the fort, Dombrowski, to whom I
had long since assigned the command of the right
bank, and who was as astonished by my arrival
as I had been by his presence; for he had just
received from the Committee of Public Safety an
order investing him with the command of all the
active forces, but leaving me the Ministry of War.

We were— Dombrowski and I—on the most
amicable terms. He therefore told me, whilst we
were eating a piece of bread in Eudes’ casemate,
not to interrupt my organising labours any more;
and that he would, in virtue of his new powers,

undertake all the active work.
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 109

I agreed with him, and told him that when
we had settled what operations were to be under-
taken, I should be very happy to confide their
execution to him. Already, in the course of the
month of April, Dombrowski had received full
powers to direct all the operations; but he had
established himself in Neuilly without giving a
thought to the southern line. The experiment
had, therefore, been tried; and I did not see any
reason for confiding the whole length of the line
to him.

On returning to the department, I wrote to
Gérardin, to reproach him for this surprise. The
next day I explained my motives, and the inop-
portuneness of a single military command. The
first decree was revoked, and Dombrowski again
became the commander of the attacked points of
the right bank. I cannot here fully discuss the
causes of my determination. It is certain that
these successive decrees were the cause of jealousy
between Dombrowski and myself.

Pyat’s government did not stop there. He

sent an order to Wroblewski, who commanded the
110 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

left wing from the Biévre to the Seine, to go to
the assistance of Fort Issy. Wroblewski, a care-
ful and methodical man, complained of receiving
orders from all quarters, but thought himself ne-
vertheless bound to obey the Committee of Public
Safety. He passed the night of the 3d at Issy;
and during his absence, the redoubt of Moulin
Saquet, which depended upon his command, was
surprised by the enemy, and the cannons carried
off. There was a stampede, a panic and emotion
in the town; and Wroblewski, in accounting to
me for the event, excused himself by his absence,
and the impossibility he had laboured under of
exerting his usual supervision over the advanced
posts. In fact, he was, as I have said, very
careful; and at all events, if he could not have
prevented the accident, his presence would have
diminished its effects.

Thad another cause of complaint against the
Committee of Public Safety. On the 2d of May
a Prussian, bearing a flag of truce, had come to
the Hotel de Ville, where I had seen him, to bring

a letter from his general to complain to the Com-
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 111

mune of the arming of the fort of Vincennes,
and claiming the right to visit the fort the next
day at two P.M. This arming was the work of a
blundering commandant, and I immediately gave
orders in consequence. I sent back without an
answer the truce-bearer, who had orders to wait
for one, and I suggested to Paschal Grousset,
the Foreign Affairs delegate, the sense of the
answer he was to give. He communicated to me
during the night the very proper letter he had
addressed to the Prussian general, in which he
begged him to observe that a general officer had
no right to correspond with the sovereign As-
sembly of Paris, but must communicate with the
military authorities. After this reminder as to
international propriety, he told him that the officer
whom the Prussians would send the following day
would be admitted and receive satisfaction. The
officer did come; but instead of referring to the
orderly officer whom I had sent, he found two
officers of the National Guard, under the direct
orders of Paschal Grousset, who showed him what-

ever he wished to see in the fort of Vincennes.
112 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

All those encroachments of the civil authority,
or rather all that disorder, had serious consequences.
The direct orders given by the Committee of Pub-
lic Safety paralysed and thwarted the action of the
war-delegate, who had no reason for existing if
every one save him directed operations. This is
what I went and told the Commune on the 4th;
and I especially attached myself to Félix Pyat,
reproaching him with the despatches with which
he overwhelmed the individual commanders, with-
out warning me, and making him answerable for
all the evil results which might follow. Pyat de-
fended himself like a pitiful fellow, and formally
denied ever having signed such order ; which state-
ment obliged me to produce the originals, and es-
pecially the order which had displaced Wroblewski
from his command. Those orders were produced
next day in the Commune by the members of the
War Commission, and obliged Félix Pyat to offer
his resignation as member of the Committee of
Public Safety.

All this constitutes a complicated narrative,

and one rather difficult to follow; but I have still
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 113

more intrigues and complications to tell of, and I
am certain that at the same time many others were
going on of which I had no knowledge.

The Central Committee of the Federation of
the National Guard—that same Central Com-
mittee which had managed the Revolution at the
beginning, though much enfeebled by the election
of its most influential member to the Commune—
still continued to exist, and had not ceased to give
underhand orders, to receive appeals and com-
plaints, and to proceed to elections. It considered
that the part it played in a revolution of which
it held itself to be the father, the guardian, and
the legitimate owner, was a very petty one. It
therefore availed itself of the change of system
which took place at the end of April to offer its
support to the new Government; and at the mo-
ment when I was speaking against Félix Pyat in
the Commune, the deputies of the Central Com-
mittee were awaiting the decision of the Committee
of Public Safety, who had made an appointment
with them to settle the question at issue.

When I left the Commune, Gérardin took me

I
114 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

to the Committee of Public Safety, and the de-
cision to be taken was left to me. There was
some discussion. The deputies of the Central
Committee, who were really the most intelligent
and the most resolute members of that assembly,
laid stress upon their power of acting upon the
National Guard, and the facility with which they
could cause to be accepted and carried out the
measures which passed through their hands. As
I pressed them with inquiries as to whether they
had enough resolute and experienced men to di-
rect the different branches of the service, ‘We
have felt our pulse, said one of them; ‘and we
are up to the mark.’

I therefore consented to make over to them
the administrative branch and the organisation
services dependent upon my department, for the
following reasons.

It was impossible for me to seek support from
the Commune, whose resolutions were constantly
fluctuating, and who showed but little inclination
for business, but exhausted themselves in barren

discussions and quarrels. The Executive Com-
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 115

mission, formed of delegates for the different
branches of the service, was without power and
without will, since it had been thrust into the
background by the invention of the Committee
of Public Safety. The War Commission was com-
posed of five members, of whom three alone did
any work, and even their labours were unpro-
ductive, on account of their want of capacity for
government. In their situation, it was less a
question of working themselves than of making
others work; and I believe that Tridon alone
might have had that gift. As for the Committee
of Public Safety, it was only the ghost of a power.
All those people never understood the old Revo-
lution; they never saw deeper than its rind, and
had no idea of the immense labour which insured
the success of the Revolutionists of 1793. I had
therefore nothing serious to lean upon: the re-
form of the pay-roll, and the mobilisation of an
army—the two things necessary to achieve suc-
cess—were set aside or adjourned; and I resolved,
as a last chance, to employ the Central Com-

mittee.
116 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

It is with unfeigned disgust that I return to
the rapid events of that short period, and this
sentiment prevents me, I fear, from giving all
the necessary details. The remembrance of all
those presumptuous revolutionists, devoid of study
and of energy, capable, perhaps, of a sudden
stroke, but not of exerting will and keeping to a
purpose,—their remembrance, I repeat, is a night-
mare for me.

The Central Committee of the Federation was
incapable of managing anything. Powerful to
impede and disorganise, because of the league of
which it was the centre, it proved absolutely in-
competent to create. The 5th and 6th I saw
some of its members; they were the most willing
(and, indeed, only the most capable were sent
to me), and had divided themselves into com-
missions for the different branches of the service ;
but the time for action was taken up by the
confused sittings of the Assembly, and, con-
sidered as a whole, the mass of the Committee
were neither intelligent nor enlightened.

Fort Issy was still the most threatened point
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS, 117

of the outworks. Eudes had abandoned it, leay-
ing it in charge of Collet, the chief of his staff,
a man of small merit. To make up for this I
had sent there an Engineer of talent and of
courage, who took advantage of every moment’s
respite left him by the enemy to repair the forti-
fications. I went twice again to this point of
attack, but without succeeding in getting the
troops to execute a movement. At last, on the
7th May, I had become convinced that I should
not succeed in collecting a sufficient number of
capable men for the department, and that the
Committee of Public Safety would or could not
assist me, either through want of energy or of
confidence. There was only one chance left of
improving the position of military affairs, which
was becoming very threatening, and that was
suddenly to take the offensive, with the troops
just as they were, to interrupt the progress of
the attack by inspiring the enemy with serious
anxiety.

My attempt at organising active troops had

meanwhile begun to be carried out, but it had
118 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

everywhere been met by obstacles. The name
of regiments, which I had adopted instead of that
of brigades, not to increase the number of gene-
rals, had given umbrage to the chiefs of legions,
who feared that arrangement would deprive them
of their authority.

The officer whose duty it was to report upon
the ministerial legions, and to centralise all that
concerned the organisation, fomented this mis-
trust to such an extent as to impede the com-
pletion of several regiments. I have said how
much I suspected that officer; I learnt at last
that he had, without orders, convoked the chiefs
of the legions and the heads of their staffs; upon
which I had him arrested. A commission of the
Central Committee undertook his duties.

It was probably on the 7th of May that I paid
my last visit to Fort Issy; I will speak of it with
some detail, and shall take this opportunity of
mentioning certain circumstances which may prove
serviceable for my defence.

General La Cecilia commanded at Little Van-

ves, where I had withdrawn, several days before,
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 119

the troops destined for the defence of the village
of Issy, so that they might rest with security.
Always anxious to attack the enemy’s posts, which
was the only way of rendering the defence effec-
tive, I had sent La Cecilia an order to collect his
troops at three or four o’clock in the morning. I
arrived at Little Vanves at the hour agreed upon,
but the troops were not assembled. It is a serious
business to collect National Guards at a given
time, and I was several hours with General La
Cecilia without his being able to assemble his
men. Whilst one battalion was arriving, another
disappeared.

It was there that I inflicted punishment on
several National Guards who had deserted their
post; an inoffensive punishment, but one which
made a deep impression upon them. I had their
right sleeves cut off, commencing with the offi-
cers. They were all sobbing, and the guard
which surrounded them was, perhaps, more af-
fected than it would have been for a capital
execution. I will say, with reference to this,

that, thanks to a strange chance much more
120 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

than to the effect of my will, I have never caused
the death of a man. I pronounced before the
Military Court a sentence of death, but it was
commuted without my interference. As great
an enemy to killing as to warfare, I nevertheless
accept all the consequences of the situations in
which I am placed. On the 7th of May I had
not sufficient faith in the efficiency of our re-
sistance to resort to repressive measures.

The same day I visited Fort Issy, which was
cruelly bombarded by the enemy. It rarely takes
place during a war, that the firmg should be so
violent as that which for a fortnight was poured
into that miserable building. I passed several
hours there in order to be acquainted with every-
thing. Collet then commanded, and his character
id not permit me to hope for a prolonged de-
fence.

I had ordered intrenchments to be dug at the
Issy Lyceum, which occupies a very good posi-
tion to the rear of the fort. I had hoped that it
would be possible to detain the enemy there some

time after the fall of the fort, and I had sent
ROSSEL'S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 121

out several detachments of barricade-makers, who
were navvies, or other workmen of the same class;
but they could not make up their mind to work
under fire, and my instructions were not carried
out.

I have come at last to the end of my story.
On the 8th of May the chiefs of legions assembled
to protest against the formation of regiments.
Several of them, who were sent to me to discuss
the subject, affirmed that their authority was suf-
ficiently well established to enable them to take
the field at once, and they promised me for the
morrow twenty-five battalions of 500 men each.
I had but little faith in this; but as a success was
essential, if only to give time for the defence, I
resolved, if they brought me a few battalions in
good order, to take them out and fight. I also
ordered out Bergeret’s regiment, which was more
advanced than the others. Bergeret promised it
to me, but excused himself at the last moment
for three battalions, who refused to march for
want of I don’t know what appurtenances. Seve-

ral chiefs of legions also came to tell me in the
122 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

evening that they would be unable to furnish the
troops they had promised.

It was then that I dictated my resignation, of
which I sent copies to the most widely-circulated
newspapers. A moment afterwards I learnt that
the tricolor flag was flying from Fort Issy, which
had been abandoned the day before by its garri-
son, and which I had vainly tried to have reoccu-
pied. I went afterwards, to satisfy my conscience,
to see the troops which the chiefs of legions had
collected, and I had them counted exactly. They
did not amount to 5000 men—and those were
pitiful troops. The Commune, on receiving my
letter, sent me two successive deputations to beg
me to withdraw my resignation. On my re-
fusal, it ordered the War Commission to take
the direction of the war delegation, and to arrest
me.

At the same time the Central Committee,
which was sitting at the Ministry of War, was
sending me deputation after deputation to ask me
to attend its sitting. I had to give way to this im-

portunity, and I gave them the information they
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 123

asked me for, explaining to them that I could
not do the whole work—be at once corporal and
general, and run right and left to bring back
under fire people who were tired of fighting;
whilst all those who ought to have been at work
were occupied in very ill-timed deliberations.
The Central Committee was stupefied. After
leaving them I went to dine with Dombrowski,
where I received an envoy from the Central Com-
mittee, informing me that they were going to ask
the Commune to grant me full powers.

At about ten o'clock I returned to the Minis-
try, where it was not long before I received
the whole War Commission, backed up by Jo-
hannard and Deleseluze. After the first com-
pliments Delescluze reproached me for having
posted up the fall of Fort Issy. I answered
sharply enough that the people should be the
first to get news of such importance. We argued
this point some time, as it was the most serious
grievance the Commune had against me; and
the Commission, which had brought the order of

my arrest, went away without communicating it
124 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

to me, and begged me to continue in the exercise
of my functions until the next day; which I only
consented to do on the condition that one of the
members of the Commission should remain in my
office, so that J should have nothing to sign.

The following morning the Commission, much
embarrassed at not having executed its formal
mandate, sent me two of its members to beg me
to accompany them to the Hotel de Ville in my
carriage; and I remained at the Questure until
five o’clock, neither free nor a prisoner. At five
o'clock Gérardin came and joined me with the
intention of demanding to be imprisoned with me.
The sitting of the Commune had been tumul-
tuous. No explanation was listened to, and a
decree of accusation had been passed against me.
A court-martial, of which Collet was to be presi-
dent, had even been named. I could not bear
the idea of appearing as an accused before that
Collet, whom I had seen cowering before the
shells at Issy, and it was then that I determined
to evade the justice of the Commune. I took

Geérardin in my carriage, which transported us
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 125

to the Boulevard St. Michel, and each of us went
in search of a hiding-place.

The new Committee of Public Safety, on
which figured the names of Arnaud, Billioray,
Eudes, and Gambon, did not cease until the last
day of their authority to attribute the fall of
Fort Issy to my treachery. Félix Pyat and Vallés
honoured me by opening the case against me in
the columns of their papers, and I was even the
subject of several leading-Pyats, in which it was
demonstrated that I had aspired to tyranny. Last
of all, a Versailles newspaper (Paris Journal) pub-
lished a fictive act of accusation against me, in
which it was established when, how, and through
whom, I had received 500,000 francs for perpe-
- trating that act of treachery.

Iam now at the end of the task I had un-
dertaken—to relate the part played by me in the
insurrection ; a task which has not been wanting
in bitterness; for I have had to go over again, one
by one, all my lost illusions, my disappointments,
and my unrealised hopes.

I served the Revolution faithfully, blindly,
126 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

until the day when I had experienced for myself
‘all the vanity of the hopes I had based on that
experiment. The Commune had no statesmen
and no soldiers, and did not wish to have any. It
surrounded itself with ruins, without having either
the power or the desire to create anew. An
enemy of publicity because it knew its own folly,
an enemy of liberty because it was so feebly
balanced that the least movement would upset
it, that oligarchy was the most odious despotism
imaginable. With but one process of govern-
ment, which consisted of keeping the people in its
pay, it squandered by its prodigality the savings
of democracy and its hopes, because it rendered
the people unaccustomed to work. When I saw
that the evil was hopeless — that every effort,
every sacrifice, would be fruitless—the part I had

to play in it ended.
Supplementary Notes.

J ONLY wore uniform when it was strictly neces-
sary. I have even visited the forts and points of
attack in plain clothes. Up to the Ist of May I
had only once put on my uniform, for a sitting of
the Military Court. I had presided at the other
sittings in plain clothes, dressed as I am at pre-
sent,

My staff was composed only of subaltern offi-
cers; it was the least numerous of all, although
my functions were the most important.

I never took an escort, but only, when neces-
sary, platoons on horseback, without arms, to
hold the horses, and to carry the field-glasses and
the maps.

Rather a singular fact, which I remarked
several times—when the troops or Federal guards

saluted me as I passed with the cry of ‘ Long live
128 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

the Commune!’ I replied by a wave of the hand ;
sometimes also by crying, ‘Long live the Com-
mune! But the officers of my staff never ans-
wered otherwise than ‘Long live the Republic!

The Military Court, in spite of what the Report*
says, never pronounced but one sentence of death,
which was not carried out.

It is false that my orders were in perfect agree-
ment with the Commune. On the contrary, it
was the constant and incurable disagreement be-
tween my orders and the system of the Commune
which brought on my resignation. If there had
been perfect agreement between us, I should not
have left the Commune, and the Commune would
not have proscribed me.

The need for a democratic revolution certainly
exists. The inferior classes are too powerful not
to make their weight felt in the government of
the country, and too dissatisfied to refrain from

* This is the Report on which were founded the accusations
brought against him before the Versailles Court-martial. It
was in reply to this Report that Rossel drew up the preceding

memorandum and the greater part of the accompanying
notes, J. A.
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 129

claiming at every opportunity a larger share in it.
The well-to-do class, which has withheld the power
from them by means of the elective seats on the
one hand, and of the dynasties of officials drawn
from their body on the other, has made use of this
power in a manner most disastrous to the public
interest, by throwing the heaviest burdens on the
inferior classes.

For instance, amongst the direct taxes, trading
licenses are so organised as to favour the great
manufacturing interest; amongst indirect taxes,
necessaries bear the burden rather than articles
of luxury.

But J am better acquainted with the military
laws than with other branches of the subject. The
degenerate condition of our army is caused by
the alterations in our military institutions, which
have been incessantly introduced since 1830. The
wealthy classes, constantly favoured by the law of
substitutes, are withdrawn from the defence of the
country, which has been confided to the indigent
and to mercenaries. To recruit officers from the
ranks has become difficult, and non-commissioned

K
130 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

officers impossible. The army has degenerated
little by little.

The events of the past year are the result of
forty years’ misgovernment. When I saw the Bor-
deaux Assembly tending violently towards the
past, I thought that the fantastic future dreamt of
by the Paris democrats could not prove more per-
nicious than a retrograde movement.

It is a remarkable fact, and one not beside the
question, that the Commune constantly chose its
agents out of the minority, or what might be
termed the opposition. And this because the ma-
jority contained no capable, cultivated, or special
men.

Jourde, Delescluze, and Varlin belonged to
that minority which rendered itself indispensable
by its estimable character and its knowledge, but
which was constantly envied and assailed, and
which, on the other hand, did not spare the ma-
jority. It was only after I was proscribed that the
majority came into power by the renewal of the
Committee of Public Safety (Eudes is the most

characteristic name on the new committee), and
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS, 181

later by that of the War Commission. It was
then that the agitation rose to the pitch of in-
sanity.

For my part, I was brought forward and sus-
tained by the minority, which, to speak truth, was
deficient in men of capacity since the Avrials and
the Arnolds, men of little science and little cha-
racter, held the highest rank in it. I was always
opposed to the line of policy taken by the Com-
mune; it was at my suggestion, and by the pres-
sure I exercised through the Pere Duchéne, that
the publicity of its sittings was obtained. I often
told the members of the Commune who came
across me, that the people had not made the Re-
volution to be governed by the Commune, but to
govern themselves. I favoured publicity as much
as I could, and I never contributed to the publica-
tion of the false statements which were brought
forward by the Offciel. The journalists who ap-
plied to me—and they were principally the Eng-
lish, the Americans, and the ‘Sociale’-—had the
authentic despatches communicated to them. Pub-

-licity could only do us good.
132 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

Since I have known the Commune, I have
never hoped that the Revolution would triumph
by means of the Commune, but in spite of the
Commune.

‘Avrial is a dangerous dog,’ that trembler of
a Regére was wont to say; ‘but you have got a
firm hold on him.’

This is Avrial: ‘I enlisted at nineteen, I don’t
know why; I became a non-commissioned officer,
and took to thinking and meddling with politics.
Naturally I was ill-thought of in the army. At
twenty-five I left the service, also without know-
ing why. It was necessary to get a living: I
returned to my old trade as an engineer. And
fancy my folly! six months afterwards I married.
At the same time I went into business; but was
unfortunate, and after six months had lost 4000
francs. My wife had fortunately brought me
something—some 10,000 francs. But I also in-
vented things. I have invented a gas-machine
which is at Lyons at M. X.’s.

‘Ten months after my marriage all my furni-

ture and all my clothes were in pawn. I worked
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 133

five years before I could take them out again.
My furniture, though not costly, was pretty and
very neat, All this time I lived on the sixth floor,
sleeping on a mattress supported by chairs. No-
body entered my room, and the key was always
in my pocket, that it should not be seen.

‘I then worked at a gas machine, Lenoir’s
engine. It has often happened to me on Satur-
days, or even on Fridays, the eve of pay-day, not
to stay at home for breakfast, knowing that there
was barely enough for my wife and child. I went
out for a walk, and strolled about whilst the
others were breakfasting.

‘T worked hard at that time; I read everything
T could lay my hands on.’

Avrial was of herculean build; he was a mem-
ber of the War Commission, and from the first
had taken charge of the artillery. He followed
slowly but exactly all the suggestions I made to
him, but nothing more. The day before yester-
day evening in he comes, with the remainder of
the Commission, the order for my arrest in their

pockets, and they go away without executing it,
134 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

leaving the decision and signature of all military
measures still in my hands. Yesterday morning
Avrial comes up again with Johannard, and they
tell me the history of the order for my arrest, and
how embarrassed they felt—placed as they were
between the positive orders they had received,
and their equally positive resolution not to put
them into execution. They add, that all the
members of the Commission were as anxious as
themselves to have the honour of making this
communication to me, and that they all join in
begging me to repeat to the Commune the ex-
planation I furnished them with yesterday. Upon
this, I get up, give them breakfast, have the horses
put to, and drive them to the Hétel de Ville;
where we learn that the Commune has adjourned
its sittings from ten to one, and then from one to
two o’clock.

We go down to the ‘Chambre a coucher de
Valentine,’ where Eudes and another member of
the Committee of Public Safety are breakfasting.
I stretch myself on a sofa, and am soon left alone,

now with Johannard, and now with Avrial, who
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 135

have certainly declared that I am free to go if I
please; but who nevertheless consider themselves
to some extent responsible for my safe custody.
Twas there I talked at length with Avrial on the
social question ; and I am not sorry to put upon
paper the ideas of a man who has had bitter op-
portunities of studying the subject, and who has
had the privilege of seeing his theories put into
practice.

We talked of savings, salaries, tools, and capital.
Then he spoke to me of his studies, his attempts,
the money he had spent to buy books or to found
workmen’s associations, sometimes taking pride in
the partial success achieved, sometimes pretending
that their success was impossible.

‘T have founded three,’ he said; ‘and one still
exists —the Association of Working Engineers.
Unfortunately, we began during the siege, only
ten ounces of bread were allowed, and we could
not produce anything. Then we were stopped by
the want of money—10,000 francs from the Gov-
ernment, and 4000 francs some one had advanced

to me, were swallowed up by the larger implements;
136 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

we had to find the smaller ourselves.’ Then speak-
ing with greater confidence: ‘The same thing
takes place in those associations as in the National
Guard; the overseer and director are elected, a
meeting takes place on Thursday, speeches are
made, and the director is changed. Look at the
workshops belonging to the Commune at the
Louvre, for repairing arms; they have elected
their third director, and they do nothing. They
came to the Association of Working Engineers
whenever they chose, talked a good deal, and did
no work. There were one hundred wheels to be
greased, the engine eating coal and water at the
rate of one hundred workmen, instead of the fifty
who worked. They always answered, “Tl make
up for it afterwards ;” but they could not under-
stand that they would not be able to make up
the general expenditure. They have no head for
accounts. Do you know how many muskets we
made during the siege?

Here he mentioned an absurd figure—at the
rate of one musket for from thirty to fifty days’

work !
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 137

‘The other day,’ he added, ‘they went to Issy
to unspike the cannon, and asked for eightpence
each for the hour. I have still some influence
over them, so J told them that no one earns eight-
pence like that nowadays—the National Guards
get 1s. 3d. a day, and you are National Guards.
But as you may have been put to some expense
out there, here’s 4s. for you. Well, ’'m sure they
have a grudge against me for it.’

All this was not said without sadness.

This proves more against the Paris workmen
than against the doctrine of workmen’s associa-
tions; at all events, it is worth taking note of,
for it is the fruit of a bitter experience. The
quarrelsome soldier who has become a member of
the Commune of Paris, after feeling an inventor’s
inspiration and the anguish of the father of a
family who cannot get bread, must know a good
deal about the social theory—especially when, as
is the case with Avrial, he has swallowed up a
portion of his salary in the purchase of those in-
toxicating and perfidious books which promise an

easy success, as the result of a lame and fallacious
138 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

system; and has given up his time and life to
the construction of workmen’s associations, to end
with me on this trembling scaffolding of the
French Revolution.

‘Communism, he said, ‘is humbug. The
workers must not feed the idlers; he who earns
twelve should receive twelve, and he who earns
six should receive six. When I enter into an
association, either in America or elsewhere, it
shall be with one, two, or three friends, whom I

know well, and not with the first comers.’

May 11, 1871, Midnight.

MEGY was a stupid workman. It was the
30th of April; Cluseret had left the Ministry to
go to Fort Issy, whence he was to go to Mazas.*
I was told that Mégy had arrived. I had him
brought into the Minister’s room, where Seguin
came with me, and asked for an account of what

had caused him to evacuate the fort he com-

* A prison.
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 1389

manded. J could only get a few meaningless words
out of him: seeing that the enemy’s fire silenced
his artillery, he had spiked the cannon, hidden
the breech-pieces, sent out the garrison, and
had himself been the last to leave the fort. He
had stopped neither at the village of Issy nor at
the ramparts, and had reéntered the town, aban-
doning both the fortress and the garrison. As he
was trying to explain to me that it was impossible
to hold out, I reminded him of the instructions
I had given him by letter the day he assumed
command, and told him that I regretted that he
had not answered me as I had asked him to do,
for I might have explained obscure or uncertain
points. ‘For my part,’ said he, ‘I took it as a
joke. You spoke to me as one speaks to a child.’
This acknowledgment of a letter in which I had
treated that doubtful hero with a kind of defer-
ence, wounded me deeply. Mégy maintained the
same level during the remainder of the conver-
sation, pluming himself on a sort of resolution to
abide by all the consequences of his deeds. He

then remained confined to the Ministry, whence
140 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

Eudes took him to Issy. He is rather a hand-
some fellow, dark and young; he wears the dis-
guise of a colonel.

If you ask me, ‘ Which is preferable, Mégy or
Gallifet?’? I vote for Mégy, who after all has a

better right to be wanting in feeling.

May 11, 1871, Midnight.
THOSE fellows are not courageous. I think
there is but little courage amongst the wearers
of gold Jace. Real soldiers and real democrats—I
have seen some from time to time — despise
death, and even despise gold Jace. I could quote
pretty examples of timidity, cowardice, indiffer-

ence to duty, and mean and silly passions.
The Overthrow of the Commune.

THE rumour of the entrance of the regular troops
into Paris spread the same evening, and was con-
firmed the next morning. A kind of stupor
seemed to have fallen upon every one, and it is
probable that the army, by pushing forward, could
in the morning have occupied the town itself..
The first story was that the St. Cloud gate had
been surprised, or given up; the 93d battalion
of the National Guard was mentioned. The be-
sieger had made astounding progress in the south-
western district ; at the same time with the fall
of the outer line, we had been informed of the
occupation of the Trocadero, the Military School,
and the Invalides. Razoua and Vinot had fled
without fighting. The War Department had been
evacuated.

The military leaders of the Commune had
142 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

inherited from their regular predecessors that
mania for administrative centralisation which has
so often proved fatal to us. As despotic and cen-
tralising a Government as the foregoing one, the
Commune had left the almost exclusive monopoly
of furnishing bread to the soldiers to the estab-
lishment of the Quai de Billy. This was one of
the few services conducted by conscientious and
capable agents. The army found 40,000 loaves,
or 80,000 rations, at the establishment.

Colonel Henry had striven to collect the whole
matériel of the artillery at the Military School;
but the jealousy of the different leaders, the small-
ness of the means of action, and the personal
opposition of Colonel Rossel, who was formally
opposed to all centralisation, were so many ob-
stacles which prevented Colonel Henry from car-
rying out his plan.

Ever since the beginning of the insurrection
there had been at the school itself a considerable
number of large-bore cannon, mortars on their
stands, 24-pounders, smooth-bored and rifled, on

stands or trucks, and mitrailleuses of different
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 148

systems. At the Champ de Mars there was a
park of artillery-carriages, sufficiently numerous
to constitute, with the corresponding cannon, the
military wealth of a nation. The people, less
jealous of those appliances than of the cannon
themselves, had treated them with contempt.
There were numerous files of caissons, forges,
battery-chariots, and siege-carts, a great number
of loaded wagons, some of which bore a new set
of half-pontoons: there were also some caissons
on two wheels, and some baggage-wagons of the
auxiliary train. A certain appearance of order
reigned in that immense artillery-park, of which
the insurrection was incapable of making use.

The first progress of the army in Paris made
over to them, therefore, a large portion of the
resources centralised by the insurrection. The
riding ground of the Military School, the out-
buildings of the school, the dépét of the Rue
Beethoven at Passy, were ammunition magazines
containing great wealth. These last stretched, it
is said, under a great portion of the Trocadéro ;

it was a succession of vaults, and the inventory of
144 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

the ammunition they contained was never made.
At the school and the outbuildings, conscientious
officials had preserved order in the midst of the
squandering of the national wealth. The per-
sonnel of the artillery was also to have been cen-
tralised at the Military School; the cavalry and
the train artillery had their offices there. By a
strange touch of irony, of which similar instances
have often recurred in the irregular disasters of
our poor France, the Commune newspapers pub-
lished, the day after the fall of the Military
School, an official notice from Citizen Assi, to the
effect that ammunition should henceforward only
be made over on the receipt of orders viséd at'the
Military School.

The two banks had been penetrated at the
same time, and the first accounts related the ad-
venturous advance of a sergeant with four men,
who had crossed the viaduct at Auteuil, and had
advanced a good way on the left bank, talking
with the population, resting from their fatigues,
and receiving a glass of wine from some woman.

There is no better proof of the incurable ineffi-
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 145

ciency of the National Guard for regular service,
than this peaceful stroll of an enemy’s patrol
within the menaced ramparts.

The army’s first object seems to have been to
stretch out along the ramparts; it appears to
have made specially rapid progress on the right
bank; for it was soon announced that it had
turned the Montmartre mounds by the north,
having thus occupied the ramparts of the 16th,
lith, and 18th districts.

Towards midday, a certain activity replaced
the previous stupor. Paris was being covered
with barricades! But the barricade of 1871 is
really but a poor fortification. It is a wall of
paving-stones, from 5 feet to 6 feet in height,
and from 3 feet 4 inches to 5 feet in thickness,
sometimes faced and sometimes battlemented with
paving-stones. Once taken, this miserable in-
trenchment is turned against its defenders, as
both sides are alike. To construct them, the
passers-by were stopped, a battalion of National
Guards occupied the spot, and the sentinels

called upon the stroller, nolens volens, to furnish
L
146 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

his paving-stone for the defence. This was 2
vexatious and ineffectual proceeding: if the Na-
tional Guards themselves had set to work, in
spite of their laziness it would have got on much
faster and much better. It gave rise to scenes
of different characters. ‘Now then, citizen,’ would
a sentry say, ‘a paving-stone for yourself and one
for your wife.’ And the man called upon would
divest himself briskly of his coat, put it on his
wife’s arm, and furnish his share of work. There
were also those who resisted, and the Federals
were sometimes as many as eight to escort one
of those obstinate ones.

The night of the occupation was spent in col-
lecting all the forces of the Commune. The
drum beat all night; in the morning the bat-
talions began to assemble, and the imminence of
the danger restoring a little energy to the de-
fenders of the Commune, they were more numer-
ous than usual; the most Inkewarm had been
threatened and pointed out, and did not dare to
evade the call. On the other hand, the equip-

ment was more varied than ever, and more than
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 147

ever the question presented itself as to what had
become of the military clothing profusely dis-
tributed by the Commune. <A large number of
the Guards had blouses or frock-coats instead of
the uniform overcoat; several had on their work-
ing trousers, and even caps or hats.

The Parisian recovers in the war of barricades
the vigour in which he is deficient for defending
ramparts or in open warfare; the possibility of
taking flight and escaping the consequences of
defeat by going home, only to resume his arms at
a convenient moment, gives him the same feeling
of safety which regular troops derive from the
“shoulder to shoulder’ and the companionship
under their flag. It is not a paradox to say that
the uniform deprives the rioter of a portion of his
courage; the men in blouses have more energy,
more dash, and more military valour than the
National Guards, and especially than the officers
of National Guards.

In organising their last means of defence, the
Federals grew tyrannical and vexatious. Their

habitual mistrust was carried to an extreme, espe-
148 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

cially in the quarters where they felt sure of their
strength. The inhabitants had to open the vene-
tian blinds, shut the windows, and raise the cur-
tains; a partly open window, a face looking out,
provoked the cries of the sentries, and sometimes
even a search. The motive of all this fuss was
the fear lest the defenders of the barricades should
be killed from the windows by means of shots
fired from air-guns behind their backs. It is cer-
tain that balls were often heard to whistle through
the streets without any warning report; some-
times even National Guards were wounded in this
manner. This is caused by stray bullets, which
may come more than a mile, when fired from the
musket of some clumsy or scared marksman who
has pulled the trigger without aiming. Such
bullets are sometimes heard to whistle over the
houses.

Very soon the wine merchants were called
upon to furnish drink, and the bakers bread, for
nothing ; they had to comply with these demands,
but of course made as many difficulties as they

could.
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 149

On the 23d I learnt the progress of the at-
tack, and the burning of the Ministry of Finance,
which was at first attributed to the people of the
Commune ; but the party newspapers stated ‘that
they had succeeded in quenching the flames at
the Ministry of Finance.’

The 24th, the firing of the Hotel de Ville
made known the intentions of the Revolutionists.
Between nine and ten o’clock in the morning the
flames darted from the turrets, and were for seve-
ral hours the signal chimney of the fire; then
other fires broke out to the west of the first, and
it was known tnat the Préfecture of Police and
the Tuileries were burning under the protection
of the Federals.

The majority of the Commune may justly be
accused of those crimes. Félix Pyat and the
Blanquists were their instigators. On the 23d
Félix Pyat opened his newspaper with an article
entitled ‘What shall we do with the Tuileries ?’
The victors were already in Paris, and the scoun-
drel was thinking more of revenging defeat than

of snatching success from the enemies of the Re-
150 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

volution. The Palace of the Légion d’Honneur
was Eudes’ head-quarters, the Legislative Assem-
bly those of Bergeret, to whom the Cours des
Comptes had also been confided for the canton-
ment of a portion of his battalions.

The Ministry of War, on the contrary, was
preserved; because the majority of the Commune
could never find amongst its members any one
to whom to confide the management of the war.
Cluseret, Rossel, Delescluze, were dissidents, al-
most enemies; and as for Eudes, the minister
for the first days, his occupation never extended
beyond the kitchen.

It is very probable that the War Dépdt, the
Fortifications Dépét, and St. Thomas d’Aquin
have fallen intact into the hands of the regular
army; a large part of the military wealth of
those grand collections had been conveyed into
the provinces before the siege. The rest was
carefully protected by the war delegates, espe-
cially the model arms which were at St. Thomas
d’Aquin, and which the insurrection coveted.

The means of action possessed by the French
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 151

War Ministry, though barren in the hands of our
officers and barren in the hands of the insur-
rection, are powerful means of destruction, and
the ephemeral occupants of the Ministry were
sufficiently intelligent revolutionists, not to de-
prive future revolutions of weapons so formid-
able, when directed against society as it at pre-
sent exists.

The National Assembly manifested a violent
sorrow at the news of the Paris fires; the most
marked feature of those fires is, after all, only
the destruction of the Grand Livre de la Rente,
and even that can be made out afresh. At all
events, this sensibility may seem misplaced on
the part of an Assembly which agreed to the
ruin and defeat of France and the abandonment
of two provinces; which has pursued that work
in the midst of a social crisis and civil war; and
which has just consecrated it by a blind treaty,
at the very moment when it has accomplished
the defeat of the insurrection.

Another fact worthy of notice is the exagge-

ration of the news given to the public. The
152 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

burning of the Louvre and of the Sainte Cha-
pelle is contradicted, and other disasters attenu-
ated. The odious fact of those fires has no need
of exaggeration.

On the evening of the 24th, firing began in
the streets and lasted until midnight. Towards
seven in the morning some soldiers appeared.
The Federals had carried off their dead with
the exception of two, but had left a number of
muskets. The soldiers carried away a load of
them. Later, two soldiers and a sergeant of the
20th line regiment come and take away the
remainder; then a troop of twenty-four men
without an officer search the small streets. The
soldiers enter into conversation with a woman
and some inhabitants who have come down
into the street; yesterday every one wore some
military insignia; even the street boys had a
foraging-cap, or a hussar jacket, or striped
trousers; some wore the military shoes with the
white gaiters. To-day, on the contrary, ‘plain
clothes are insisted on,’ not the smallest appear-

ance of being warlike. The soldier looks con-
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 153

fident and good-natured; he forms a contrast
with yesterday’s National Guard, and the con-
trast is in his favour. He has not the dirty
and ragged look of the National Guard in uni-
form. His belt is well put on, and his cloak
does not make an ungraceful and uncomfortable
roll on the shoulders.

At about nine o’clock the regiment arrives:
the flag is planted on one of the barricades ;
the three colours look gayer than the sad red
flag; and yet this tricolor flag will be stained
with murders and summary executions more
atrocious than any sheltered by the blood-red
banner. The regiment passes on; those are
French officers, their gaiters are covered with
dust and mud, but in spite of fatigue they wear
their uniform with coquettish ease. It is a plea-
sure to look at them after those shabby officers
of the Commune hob-nobbing at a wine-counter
with some sergeant; ragamuffins dressed as offi-
cers, and who transform into a rag the uniform
into which they have been thrust: their trousers

all awry, their swords between their legs, their
154 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

belts over-hanging too wide a cloak, their filthy
shako crowning a filthy person, their eyes and
their voice affected by wine.

Such were the scamps who pretended to de-
liver the country from the rule of the sword,
and who could only substitute for it the rule of
delirium tremens. But however much pleasure
one may feel at getting rid of them, one must
do justice to those who replace them.

The officers have not improved during this
short campaign; they are still the vanquished of
Sedan. The first reconnaissances, though num-
bering at least thirty men, had no officers. The
troops have not taken advantage of the first
hours of the day; the columns are too long,
and show signs of disorder; the superior officers
do not head their men, and the staff-officers
only appear after the brigade has passed. At
last the general arrives—the last of all. He has
a strong voice, and avails himself of it for shout-
ing. He wants to have the barricades demolished,
and therefore they are going to search the houses

and bring down the inhabitants. They made the
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 155

barricades, and must unmake them. A section
sets off at once to carry out this order. The
general talks of nothing less than shooting those
who oppose any resistance to his wishes. Terror
has certainly not disappeared with the Commune;
it has only changed colours.

The vanguard company have brought up a
man; he had insulted an officer. The company
stops near the church, the man is placed close
to the railings, and a few shots stretch him dead
on the ground.

The general has taken up his quarters in the
café. Two men and a woman are brought in:
a moment later the prisoners issue forth; one of
them is pushed up to the market wall; he hides
his face, and tries to escape; a shot upsets him ;
he gets up, they finish him. Then the other meets
with the same fate. The woman who accom-
panied them is in the middle of the square; the
soldiers hold her back. ‘But it is my brother,’
she screams; ‘my brother!’ When the shots
have rung out, they let her go. Later, another

woman is brought in pale and bewildered; she
156 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

has insulted an officer; they had killed her hus-
band, and she called him an assassin. The officer
threatens to do himself justice; but she finds
mercy at the general’s tribunal, and goes off more
dead than alive.

They begin, however, to be disgusted with
killng. Two men have been brought in: the
general is under the porch of the house; in pass-
ing he condemns them; but as they are re~
moving them, the general’s eye catches the hor-
rified and frightened glance of a young girl in
the house. He changes his mind, and the two
men’s lives are saved. The general goes up-
stairs and asks to see the girl, to whom he is
grateful for the good impulse.

I have heard that sometimes the most feverish
Conventionnels caressed the daughter whilst they
had the father guillotined. This is one legend
of the Revolution. I like that assurance in ferocity
better than the indecision of the grotesque judge
who pardons for a look. Why, then, had he
condemned them ?

Later, a worthy man in spectacles, whose fat
’

ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 157

face is ashy with fear, is brought in; his ill-timed
head-dress is a captain of the National Guards’
shako; that shako was a day too late. The man
is led off to the Luxembourg. A lieutenant is
less fortunate; he is in full uniform. He is led
to the café; the general has gone to sleep, but
the tribunal does not strike work on that account;
the lieutenant comes out condemned. He marches
gaily to the market wall, and dies with a good
grace.

All this took place on the 25th. The fighting
which had raged the preceding day in the quarter of
the Hétel de Ville was appeased, or had moved on
farther. The flames had spread from the Hotel
de Ville to the houses situated above it. The
cannonading from the mounds of Chaumont and
the Pére la Chaise had increased in violence.

On the 26th the left bank, they say, is cleared.
The range of the insurrection is circumscribed.
The journals publish the names of a certain num-
ber of leaders of the insurrection who have been
arrested and chiefly shot. At the same time they
publish the assurance given by Thiers in the
158 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

Chamber, that the guilty will be judged and only
punished according to the law.

The 27th, General * * * has returned; he is
the hero of the market executions, but his col-
leagues won't remain behindhand with him. Two
hundred and fifty men are said to have been shot
together in the Champ de Mars. A gendarme
tells of executions at the Luxembourg, where the
prisoners have been shot in groups of four. The
general establishes himself; when he first passed
through, he had some men of the police with him ;
now he is surrounded by them, they have a voice
in his council. But a kind of reaction has taken
place in the mind of the troops with regard to
those summary executions. ‘Let us go, says a
soldier who sees them questioning twe prisoners ;
‘they are going to shoot them—lI don’t want to
see it.’ The officers recommend the soldiers to be
circumspect in arresting, and warn them that accu-
sations often serve to revenge personal grudges.

Two men have been brought to General * * *,
They admit that they are delegates of the Com-

mune; they are therefore condemned to death.
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 159

But it is not a ‘death without words,’ for they
are loaded with abuse, and silly abuse too. ‘It
is all your fault; you made the people march by
force, and now ’tis your fault that they are shot.’
O, logic! ‘Your soul must be as black as your
coat,’ says the general. ‘We will shoot you
without making you suffer,’ says an officer; ‘if
we were to give you up to the people, they would
tear you to pieces. The two patients bear these
insults stoically ; they are told to be silent, al-
though they answer nothing. One is a tall, dark
young man, the other a little bald man. They
embrace in silence. ‘Embrace your brother,’ says
the general, abusing them. ‘’Tis my son,’ says the
little old man. They go on abusing the unfortu-
nate men. ‘IfI were not afraid of defiling my-
self with your blood,’ continues General * * *, ‘I
would blow out your brains with my revolver.’
At last the two delegates are led away to the
Luxembourg, where the military court is sitting.

The general is gone off to the ramparts with
the officers. They also belong to the vanquished
of Metz and of Sedan.
160 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

De Cissey commands on the left bank, and
Ladmirault on the right; those are good selec-
tions. Clinchant also commands a corps d’armée
on the right bank. The same troops are mar-
shalled under the same leaders as before the cap-
tivity; but they have assumed temporary num-
bers, at least in some cases.

Terror reigns everywhere. People are shot in
masses on doubtful accusations; it is almost im-
possible to move about. The Prussians have cut
the railways by removing a hundred metres of
rails; they give up to the victors, the Federals
who try to escape, and shoot, it is said, those who
have succeeded in crossing their lines. The Com-
mune has but few friends in Europe, but, to do it
Justice, it did but little to deserve to have any.
Spain and Belgium, who have a just fear of the
red flag, will consider the refugees of the Com-
mune as malefactors.

Meanwhile the Versailles Assembly is enter-
ing into an unfair competition with the Com-
mune. It has decided that the Venddme Column

shall be rebuilt, and selects the inscriptions in
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 161

Japidary’s style which are to be engraved on the

pedestal.

Saturday, May 27, 1871.

THE question of the pay of the National Guard
was one of the most important during the Paris
Revolution. No control of the funds was organ-
ised, and the public money was constantly sub-
jected to pillage. The ‘ plebs’ were in the pay of
the Revolution, which did not dare to dismiss
useless servants.

The services rendered should have been paid
for, and the allowances and pay at military rates
properly modified. The defects of the preceding
system should have been avoided; all charities
made over to the municipalities, and organised on
the most liberal footing; but pay ought only to
have been given for efficient service.

The Commune wished to assume the skin of
the defunct government. It had a ministry of
finance, a ministry of war, and a commissariat-
general; all that was wrong in principle, and still

M
162 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

more wrong for the Commune, to whom it availed
but little.

Is it true that the Parisian people fought for
their fifteen-pence? The Central Committee and
the Commune believed it; they at least believed
that they would not fight without their fifteen-
pence. They were mistaken: the Parisian people
fought for a settlement of the social question ; that
problem for which history has found no solution,
and which the ‘abstractors of quintessence’ have
not given up seeking. The revolutionary leaders
were unworthy of the revolutionary army; they
were afraid of it; they led it to pot-houses and
to places of ill-fame, and completed the moral dis-

solution they might have put an end to.

May 28, 113 P.M.
Durine the last days of their rule the Fede-
rals availed themselves with revolutionary free-
and-easiness of private as well as of public pro-

perty. The wine-merchants, the grocers, and the
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 163

bakers were mulcted to the utmost; there are
some shops which do not reopen for want of
goods.

The victors have closed the wine-shops. The
wine-shops are permanent clubs, ’tis there that
the National Guards love to open their hearts.
To a certain extent, revolutions are there manu-
factured, a constant exchange of ideas takes place,
chiefly to the advantage of the mercanti. The
wine-shop is like an office of public wit for the
use of democracy. But if revolutions are there
got up, tis also there that they are demolished.
Tis there that the rioter contracts that spirit of
heedless independence, that confidence in his own
strength and judgment, which often takes the
place of the feeling of duty and the spirit of sa-
crifice which may have inspired him during the
first moments of the struggle, and which no
longer are to be found, save in certain supreme
crises.

It must not be forgotten in studying our re-
volution, that the people wants something, and

knows what it wants. It has all the strength of
164 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

natural forces, and is, perhaps, not unconscious as
they are. For eighty years the French nation
has risen periodically in immense tides: surround-
ing everything and covering everything with foam
and sand, it breaks everything that resists its im-
petuous current; but soon it retires, deadened,
and as if defeated, to the foot of the rock which
limits its flood. It would seem as if the rock were
stronger than the wave; but which is victorious
in the end, the rock or the wave ?

Conceit, want of discipline, and drunkenness
were the companions of the French army during
the war of 1870, and of the National Guard of
Paris in the revolution of 1871. Both the one
and the other have perished miserably.

The people who led the revolution of the 18th
of March seem only to have looked upon it in the
light of an immense pot-house. For the National
Guard it was the question of the fifteen -pence
a day; the legionary committees took out their
share in boxes of alimentary preserves and in
current yards of gold lace. The Central Federal

Committee was the champion of those noble privi-
ROSSEL'S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 165

leges; they went in for orgies, champagne, and
the rest of it. Félix Pyat treated himself to
Thiers’ house; Courbet upset the Column. Trahit
sua quemque. . . Beyond that, no thought for the
future, no anxiety for victory.

The defeat of the Revolution of Paris is, per- .
haps, not a misfortune for democracy. It was a
vanguard engagement badly entered upon and
lost, but the reserves were not engaged ; the main
body itself was not affected. More than one seri-
ous democrat fought beside the Paris Commune ;
many abandoned it at various stages of its mad
career; the more vigorous did not enter the arena,
so badly was the combat commenced.

The victory will, of course, be taken advant-
age of at first by the most extreme amongst the
victors; this is usual. Already they are shooting
beyond measure in the public places, and singing
Te Deums in the churches ; but the very exercise
of victory will wear out the extreme right.

Thus the ground will be cleared, on the one
side, of the demagogical drunkenness of the Pari-

sians, ever fatal to the cause it pretends to serve,
166 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

and on the other hand of the white party, who
will work their victory till it leads to their own
destruction.

Tt is wonderful to observe how those intem-
perate people who rise periodically in Paris have
invariably been fatal to the cause of democracy.
The pretended Revolutions of 1830, 1848, and
1871 were immediately made the most of by un-
worthy or incapable men, and have constantly
strained our institutions in a sense which has
nothing democratic in it.

The International Society was never seriously
engaged in the Paris Revolution; it sent, it is
said, money (the Commune never mentioned the
fact), but it was evidently only a very uninflu-
ential minority in the Government of Paris.

The Central Committee was always very ex-
clusive. This is sometimes a source of strength ;
for it, and for the Revolution, it proved a cause
of weakness. It did not seek to assimilate the
external revolutionary forces; it excluded and
combated them with a narrowness of judgment

which was its own condemnation. Vanquished
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 167

by its own incapacity, it proceeded to elections at
a moment when victory was far from certain.
Having once made over to the Commune the
care of completing the Revolution, it gave the new
Assembly no power, and only abandoned the posi-
tions whence it was driven. The Central Com-
mittee dragged on its existence at the Hotel de
Ville, and the Artillery Committee did the same
thing, whilst the sub-committees continued to get
all they could out of the district administration.
They had all to be got rid of; and on the 10th
of April the Commune delegates were not yet
masters of the mayoralties.

The death of Raoul Rigault is confirmed.
Jaroslaw Dombrowski, it is said, was struck by a
bullet, which penetrated the intestines. He was
transported in the first instance to Lariboisiére, and
then to the Hétel de Ville, where he sank rapidly
beneath acute peritonitis. The death of Ladislas
Dombrowski is also affirmed. The Petite Presse
of May 29th related the discovery of the body of
Delescluze, and spoke in offensive terms of that

old man, who suffered so much, and who, in spite
168 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

of physical weakness, his sufferings, and his in-
firmities, devoted himself to his cause until his
last hour.

Raoul Rigault had, it is said, great capacity.
However that may be, he ought, in order to have
been useful to his cause, to have refrained from
debauchery and waste of time. At the Prefecture
of Police he led the scandalous existence of a
spendthrift rake, surrounded by useless persons,
and giving up the greater part of his time to de-
bauchery.

Jaroslaw Dombrowski was never quite frank ;
he accepted the advances of the Committee of
Public Safety and of the Assembly of the Chiefs
of Legion at the very moment that he was obey-
ing the War Delegation. Those intrigues were
more than once injurious to the cause of the de-
fence.

Ladislas Dombrowski was a brave soldier.

Delescluze, if he had not been weakened by
age and by illness, might perhaps have been
the man of the Revolution. His presence at

the War Ministry was marked by several good
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 169

measures, which might have restored order in the
conduct of military affairs. As to technical ques-
tions, he was quite ignorant of them. It does not
appear either that he was much of an administra-
tor. All things considered, he was a worn-out
man. On the 9th of March he was just recover-
ing from a fortnight’s illness; a long exile had
destroyed his health, he no longer spoke, he
hardly breathed; he was an ambulating corpse.
In accepting authority he sacrificed the miserable
remnant of his life, and yet he accepted it; he
accepted from the majority of the Commune, to
whose party he did not belong, but whom he
overawed by the greatness of his past, an im-
possible part condemned before it was undertaken,
and in which he was not supported. He fell
behind a barricade, but he had already broken
down beneath the burden of his task. His corpse
was found disfigured by a fearful burn caused by
a beam fallen from a neighbouring house. The
victors found words with which to insult his

death.
170 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

May 28, 11) P.M.

CLUSERET was tall, about forty-four years of
age, with a white skin, black hair and beard, and
a coarsely handsome face. He must have been
rather a favourite with women. He had the
fluency of a journalist, and knew how to intro-
duce misplaced declarations of principles. His
handwriting was very clear, his style much less
so, which gives the lie to those analysers who
pretend to judge the man by his handwriting.
Cluseret’s character was especially wanting in
clearness and his mind in decision. He appears
to have possessed neither fixed principles, deep
knowledge, nor sound experience. He was, per-
haps, a good and intelligent captain of infantry ;
perhaps the chances of his life after leaving the
French army may have weakened his character
without enlightening his mind. Distinguished
as a youth, he was second-rate as a man. His
career as a general in the United States is of a
very doubtful nature; he had served there but

a short time, and that in a corps thought but
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 171

little of, both for its conduct and military worth:
the choice of that leader injured the Commune
in the estimation of the whole United States.
As war delegate he neither knew how to will,
nor how to persist in the attainment of what
he had willed; he could not submit to the
secondary part imposed upon him by the want
of intelligence of the Commune, nor did he
know how to shake it off. At the beginning
he appeared anxious to secure the mastery; he
was once even prepared to stake everything on
a single cast; but seeing that he was about to
lose, he skilfully withdrew. From that moment
forward he wore to shreds his ministerial position,
he perhaps even made a profit out of it. He
had his own agents, who were concerned neither
with politics nor with warfare, but with con-
tracts, and through the hands of whom passed
more than 24,0007. Those agents have disap-
peared since his arrest.

Cluseret was brave under fire. He never
once put on his uniform; he marched in front

in a round hat and jacket, and was followed.
172 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

When he led a garrison back to Fort Issy, an
officer was seriously burnt beside him by a petro-
leum shell.

He had no idea of choosing men; all those
he favoured were perfect mediocrities. Rosselli,
his chief Engineer officer, and Mayer were the
most disastrously so of them all. The measures
he took were completely disconnected, and as
void of reason as of the means of execution;
besides which he was apt to reconsider a measure
after it was taken. In one word, he was beneath
his situation. What man can answer for himself
under the same circumstances? Cluseret had
moments of energy, but no will. After having
entered upon the struggle against the Commune
and having been worsted, he should have retired.
He was no true revolutionist; he was but a
superficial Frenchman with a Yankee tinge, and
one who, of the whole Yankee philosophy, had

understood but little beyond the word ‘dollar’
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 173

May 28, 11} P.M.

CoLoNEL LEPERCHE, who was wounded before
Fort Issy, was, from certain points of view, a
distinguished officer. He began brilliantly at the
schools, but I hold him incapable of leading forty
sharpshooters—indeed he proved so. He was
attached to the staff of Bourbaki, who thought
much of him; he found his general again at
Lille, and was made a lieutenant-colonel by him.

The summons sent by him to Fort Issy was
quite out of place, and the action as well as the
man deserved the sharp answer Colonel Rossel
sent him. So extreme a summons was prema-
ture, for Leperche was certainly not in the posi-
tion to shoot the garrison after a quarter of an
hour. He had proof of it himself in an argu-
mentum ad hominem, for two days afterwards he
was wounded in the trenches before the fort.
At that stage of the attack his message must
be looked upon as a stratagem or as an attempt
at intimidation; and either of the two justified

Colonel Rossel’s answer, the justice of which was
174 ROSSEL'’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

not understood, but which was highly successful
in a humorous point of view. The Gazette de
France remarked spitefully that the laws of war
do not authorise the shooting of truce-bearers.
The good old lady was mistaken. The flag of
truce can only be kept sacred, if the abusive pur-
poses it may be turned to by the Leperches are
severely punished.

Lullier, they say, has been shot, but there is
hardly an insurrectionary leader of whom the
same has not been said. He is supposed to
have been taken as he was firing at the soldiers
through a skylight. JLLullier was perhaps the
only man in Paris who could have turned the
flotilla to account; unfortunately his physical
and moral health were too deeply affected by
drink for one to repeat the unfortunate experi-
ence of his faculties made by the Central Com-
mittee. It appears that even a moderate use of
liquors brought on furious excitement. In repose
and even when observed his look had a moment-
ary wildness. He violently desired the command

of the seventeen gunboats possessed by the Com-
ROSSEL'S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 175

mune, and explained with a real superiority the
purposes to which they might be turned. Rossel,
who was then head of the staff, might perhaps
have been rash enough to gratify this lucid fancy ;
but Cluseret affected to be guided by Delescluze
and Pyat, who trembled at the very notion of
employing Lullier. The unfortunate man pur-
sued that hope with all the tenacity of a mad-
man. When he was obliged to give it up, he
wrote against the management of the war dele-
gate some articles which were not wanting in
truth.

The Government of the French Revolution
was from beginning to end a kind of Council of
Ten. The Central Committee, and later the
Commune, were conscious of their shameful in-
feriority; if they did not publish the report of
their stormy meetings, which could hardly be
called deliberations, it was not systematically, but
through a just sense of shame. The discussions
were carried on, the mind of that sovereign As-
sembly was enlightened by a process for which

there is no name in the dictionary; but if the
176 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

party who governed Paris for two months were
to recover their authority, it would be absolutely
necessary to introduce the word ‘slanging’ into
the language of parliamentary reports.

Paris, so to speak, has no need of that com-
plete and vast system of publicity, which seems
one of the necessities of existence for a free na-
tion. Paris is intelligent enough to guess what
is not told to her, to rectify that which is half
hidden from her. Like a man accustomed to
live in darkness and to distinguish the real shape
of things by the sense of touch, Paris has mys-
terious organs which enable her to read between
the lines of her emasculated newspapers, which
lead her to guess the meaning of silence and
scent a false piece of news. Take it for all in
all, however, publicity is better, especially for the
Government, which has never yet chosen to un-
derstand that the truth, whatever it may be, will
be less injurious than the interpretations of its
silence.

Colonel Rossel was perhaps the only revolu-

tionist who had any notion of the power of the
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 177

press, and sought to turn it to account. He re-
ceived journalists with a degree of consideration
proportioned to the circulation of their newspaper,
and did not hesitate about placing in their hands
authentic documents concerning the most recent
events. His relations with the Pere Duchéne ori-
ginated from the reciprocal need of information
on the one part, and of publicity on the other.
Community of views and frankness of demeanour
and behaviour led to reciprocal confidence, and a
kind of familiarity. The Commandant * * * re-
proached Rossel one day with the eagerness with
which he received that ‘scoundrel’ Pére Duchéne
at any hour he chose to call. ‘Sixty thousand
copies,’ answered Rossel; and the reason was as
unanswerable as the ‘without dowry’ of the Avare.

This intimacy might, besides, have had useful
results for the Revolution. The first time that
Eugéne Vermersch came to the Ministry, Rossel
spoke to him energetically on the necessity of
making the sittings of the Commune public. Ver-
mersch instantly caught at an idea; and his pun-
gent wit expressed it with a surprising lustre and

N
178 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

brilliancy, By a rapid operation of his mind he
showed you your own ideas transformed into fire-
works sparkling with rockets and catherine-wheels,
and studded with those flourishes which the Aca-
demy and good society forbid, and which fur-
nished so much ‘copy’ to the Pére Duchéne.
Three days after that interview the Commune
granted the publication of analytical reports of
its sittings—which publication was not, however,
a faithful one.

The Pere Duchéne and the Avant Garde of
Jules Vallés had the most readers of all the Pa-
risian newspapers. The lot d’ Ordre was the best
newspaper. The .1vant Garde belonged to the
Jacobins, who led and lost the Revolution.

Rochefort and Pére Duchéne were, on the con-
trary, the adversaries of that party, which ex-
plains their spontaneous understanding with Colo-
nel Rossel. Rossel and the editors of the Jot
d Ordre never met; but tacit and natural ex-
changes of services and politenesses—prolonged, on
the side of the Alot d’ Ordre, after the fall of Ros-

sel—took place between them.
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 179

The bad language with which Pere Duchéne
dressed up his wares to catch the public taste was
a simple side-dish. Twenty days ago an amiable
woman who read the Pere Duchéne—then a happy
woman, now an unfortunate widow—I mean Ma-
dame Dombrowski, observed to me, that after
erasing from the pages of that strange journal the
flowers of style with which it was decorated, there
remained a language which had something elo-
quent in it sometimes, and sometimes something
touching.

The French have always loved the rim of
the cup from which they drank truth to be
slightly lubricated. Why should the process which
served Rabelais against the papegaux, and Vol-
taire against the bigots, be considered out of place
against the prigs of our own times? Why should
it now be looked upon as illegitimate ?

Pére Duchéne has something more serious on
his conscience than all his bad language and ob-
scenity. Once, in the rather wild activity of
the manufacture of his newspaper, an accusation

slipped in, which borrowed from the language in
180 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

which it was couched an energy and a violence
which insured its success. Gustave Chaudey, an
editor of the Stcle, accused of having fired upon
the people on the 22d of January, was arrested
and imprisoned. There was a storm in the press,
and another private storm under the cap which
covered the triple head of the Pere Duchéne ; for
the accusation had been introduced without the
knowledge of Vermersch and another of his fellow-
labourers. Being caught in the fact, however,
Pére Duchéne capitulated with his conscience,
and prided himself upon the accusation he would
have wished to erase. Gustave Chaudey was shot
at the same time with the most prominent pri-
soners of the Commune.

If anything could save the Revolution, keep up
the revolutionary agitation, and purify and pre-
serve it from error, it was liberty of the press, and
the organisation of publicity. It had no disad-
vantages from a military point of view; for any-
thing that could be said of the military opera-
tions of the Commune could only magnify them:

through the mirage of journalism its hordes would
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 181

become battalions and corps-(’armées, its agitation
would look like activity, and the hazards it ran
like well- considered undertakings. Everything
would become great and appear formidable. Li-
berty of the press would have been an excellent
speculation.

In a political point of view, liberty of the press
would have served as an outlet for ill-humour. It
would also have been a moderator; and that inex-
perienced Government needed it more than any
other; for it had nothing of the sort. No in-
stitution had survived the Revolution of March
18th; but the press is an institution which has
every interest in being enlightened, and which
may be seduced and turned to bad purposes if it
be limited.

With a free press and an active money-market
the Government is more enlightened than by the
remonstrances of a parliament of legists, or the
labours of a council of state. The press is a par-
liament and a council of state which cost nothing ;
and the rates of the market are more instructive

than the best police-report.
182 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

Colonel Rossel, who thought a great deal more
than he acted—which was a great mistake—ob-
served, after having sounded the incompetence of
the men who surrounded him: ‘I will make the
people my staff? He was for doing everything
through the medium of the press. Time, or the
will, failed him. Besides which, he was always
badly seconded by the Journal Offciel.

The Journal Officiel of the Commune was
venal, in all respects an unfaithful servant; it was
inaccurate, and not intelligent.

The Afot d@ Ordre was a powerful newspaper
to carry on a struggle. Rochefort lavished on it
that bitter wit, those cutting words, that humour
which gives to common sense the appearance of
a paradox, which make him one of the first
polemical writers of the day. He was also a ser-
vant of the Revolution, and an enemy of the Com-
mune.

In speaking of the power of the press, it is
necessary to draw distinctions. A journal is an
echo, and not under all circumstances a support.

A real newspaper, which lives by its publicity, is
ROSSEI,'§ POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 183

constrained to follow the evolutions of its readers,
the evolutions of the public mind. It may, there-
fore, leave unsustained, at a critical moment, the
public man who forestalls or braves opinion.

Nobody was ready: not one of the servants
of the Commune had studied his part for the great
stage; want of study, want of talent, want of
decision, and want of lasting boldness. When a
burglar wishes to break into a house, he first walks
round it, studies its doors and its locks; he knows
where the cupboards are, and how to force them
open. The Commune is like the novice-burglar,
who is obliged to Kill in order to steal, and
who finds himself afterwards oppressed by useless
crimes; for he knows not where the hiding-places
and secret drawers are.

This comparison takes my fancy, and J stick
to it. Paris, in the hands of those savages, was
like a strong-box with a secret lock. The house
was broken into, the people waited under the
windows; and the Commune, scratching its head
before the bulky strong-box which contained the

social wealth, was obliged to put up with the cop-
184 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

per coin; but, for the satisfaction of its conscience,

it set fire to the house before leaving it.

Some Anecdotes concerning the Taking of Paris.

AT the Strasbourg terminus, a woman was
brought in by an artilleryman, and accused of firing
the cannons. She was a tall handsome woman,
neatly dressel—a working woman, not a drab.
Led before an officer, she was made over to two
corporals—one of whom was half drunk—who
pushed her towards the guard-house; and there,
after she had entered, they killed her, without any
warning, by a gun-shot from behind. Her corpse
served as a subject of ridicule for the soldiers,
until one of the railway officials had it covered
over.

In the same quarter, during the struggle, there
was a scamp of fifteen who fired out of the win-
dows at the troops. Every one of his shots told.
He hoisted a red flag at the window of which he
made his head-quarters, and removed it with him

when he changed his window.
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 185

The summary executions have nearly ceased.
They say that we are indebted to General Ladmi-
rault for that order. He is said to have threatened
to shoot any officer who acted without his orders.
The fact is, there was a moment when every one’s
life was at the mercy of a sergeant’s whim.

The regular executions take place after a sum-
mary examination before a military court. If sen-
tence is passed, the forms observed in carrying it
out are nearly similar to those of what history
calls the September Massacres of 1792.

An avowal which might be made use of for
the defence of the vanquished is to be found in a
despatch of Thiers to the provinces, dated May
27th, 7.15 P.M.: ‘Commandant Ségoyer, of the
26th Foot Chasseurs, having advanced too far,
was taken by the wretches who defended the Bas-
tille and shot immediately, without any respect
for the laws of war.’

Delescluze sought for death when the barricade
he was in was abandoned. He was shot through
the heart.

The Temps of May 30th contains preciou
186 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

formation as to the taking of Paris. On the even-
ing of Sunday 21st, the corps of Generals Douay,
De Cissey, and Vinoy were at Paris. The Troca-
déro was carried during the night, as well as the
Arc de Triomphe, at the same time with the 15th
district. On the 22d, in the morning, De Cissey
occupied the Champ de Mars, and marched upon
the Pantheon. On the right bank, Vinoy’s corps
rested on the Seine; then came Douay’s; and
Clinchant’s formed the extreme left. Tuesday
23d, the barracks of the Pépinitre and the St.
Lazare terminus, Monceau and the Batignolles,
were carried. At the same time that one army
was penetrating inwards, Montandon’s division
was advancing in the neutral zone by St. Ouen.
On the 23d, Ladmirault occupied the Northern
terminus; and the mayoralty of the 18th district
was likewise taken.

The Commune, in taking up arms, obliged
France to remain armed. Ladmirault, De Cissev,
and Du Barrail have been advanced to high com-
mands; the eyes of the sincere friends of the country

have been long fixed on those officers. No less than
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 187

two revolutions and the pressing wants of the
siege of Paris were needed for General Fournier
to play a military part. The vanquished armies
of 1870 would never otherwise have borne the
promotion of that man of science and energy.
In all probability it was he who took Paris.

Amongst the leaders of the corps @armée of
the civil war, there is only * * * who has given
proofs of notorious incapacity. Let the above
names be compared with those of the army of Metz.

The soldiers have not improved; they have
been encouraged by the hope of an carly deliver-
ance; a feeling which loosens all the bonds of
an army, and destroys beforehand all mutual con-
fidence and emulation. The officers fought, but
their victory over an ignorant enemy cannot be
expected to have added much to their knowledge.
Two months of defeat before the Prussians would
have been of more avail than two months of suc-
cess against the Commune.

In promising to the soldiers their deliverance
after the fall of Paris, the reactionists have served

the cause of liberty.
188 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

Here are some notes giving an idea of the
spirit of the repressive measures practised by the
reactionists against the partisans of the Commune.
They are taken from the Petite Presse of May 31st.

“Yesterday a long stream of blood might have
been seen following the course of the Seine, and
passing under the last arch of the bridge near
the Tuileries. This stream was running con-
tinuously.’

Under the title the ‘Furies,’ the same news-
paper publishes the following statement: ‘ Rue
de Bretagne—A. woman was passing near a group
of soldiers ; she began to address them in violent
language, callling them assassins. An officer in
command of the detachment drew his sword and
slashed the vixen’s face ; she was finished off by
bayonet wounds.’

One should read the Paris Journal’s account
of Dereure’s execution. It is frightfully free and
easy.

The officers find pleasure in playing a part
in these murders; military regulations have, how-

ever, carefully forbidden them an active share in
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 189

executions. Now an officer finishes off an exe-
cuted man, and then another blows out a fugitive’s
brains; but the most distinguished is certainly
the one who slashes a woman’s face for insulting
him. The newspapers relate all this without
anger—I am wrong—with a bitter anger against
the victims.

“A military court is established in the Chatelet
theatre in the public waiting-room. It is pre-
sided over by a lieutenant-colonel. Persons re-
cognised as guilty and condemned to death are
taken to the Lobau barracks, behind the Hétel
de Ville, under the escort of a detachment of
the 10th Foot Chasseurs. The shooting - parties
await the condemned in the barrack court, and
justice is done as soon as they enter.’

The following is a farther extract from the
Journal de Paris, which appeared in several papers :
‘The following was the mode of procedure of a
military court held at the Luxembourg and pre-
sided over by a superior officer of gendarmerie.
The accused underwent a summary examination,

after which the president pronounced judgment.
190 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

If he were declared ordinary, he was taken back
to prison and thence sent off to Satory; if, on the
contrary, he were declared to be elassed, he was
led into an adjoining room, and was allowed a short
interview with a priest before he was executed.’

Jules Favre’s circular concerning extradition
is worthy of a government of madmen, as is
also the bloody system of repression they have
adopted. The proceedings of the Commune with
regard to the hostages and the monuments were
war measures, extreme but regular. The burn-
ing of the Louvre appears much less scanda-
lous to me than the burning of Bazeilles; and
yet M. Jules Favre would hardly think, on ac-
count of that occurrence, of asking for the extra-
dition of the Emperor William. The demand of
extradition is not based upon a right; to refuse
a political character to the insurrection of Paris
is a sophism none but our illustrious rhetorician
would have cared to risk.

‘We are assured,’ says the Siccle of May 30th,
‘that summary executions ceased this morning,

except in the case of members of the Communes
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 191

incendiaries, and soldiers taken in the insurgent
ranks.’ Why this exception in favour of mem-
bers of the Commune? I am far from setting
up as their apologist, having always been their
adversary ; but how are you to judge of the cha-
racter of an insurrection if you shoot, as a first
measure, those who were chiefly responsible for
it? Valin, Jourde,* and Rigault are put to death,
and Assi, Eudes, and others, notorious for their
insignificance, are preserved. If Europe is to
judge of the insurrection by the answers of Mésy
and Assi before a military court, the Commune
will be looked upon as an assembly of desperate
imbeciles. The Versailles Government makes use
of the ‘chassepot’ to suppress the testimony most
essential for throwing light on the subject of
dispute.

M. Beslay, or Citizen Beslay, a member of the
Commune, saved the Bank, where he commanded

for the Commune, from the hands of the incen-

* The date of these words, written, so to say, in the midst
of the mélée, explains errors as to the fate of the persons

mentioned. J. A.
192 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

diaries. Will he be shot without a trial? His
example shows that there may be Communists
of very different stamps and varied kinds. If
every one is impartially shot without discussion,
if the most intelligent men of the Commune are
put to death, and a few samples chosen from
amongst the most depressed skulls are preserved
for the sake of a good trial, the repression will no
longer be a work of justice, but a party measure.

Avoine jils has been shot at Belleville; he
was one of the few theorists of socialism.

The Paris Guard has been reéntering Paris
since the 28th. That is an imprudence on the
part of the victors, who show no consideration.
It was easy to organise under the uniform of the
line, infantry, or cavalry, some chosen corps who
might usefully have been substituted for the
former Guard. If it were possible to kill the in-
surrection, it might have been opportune to bring
back that detested uniform; but such a moye-
ment cannot be slain, though it may be beheaded,
‘in spite of the stream of blood which runs con-

tinuously into the Seine.’
Notes and Thoughts.

For a moment it was possible to believe in the
Commune—that was on the first day of its exist-
ence. One only desired to think it capable, honest,

and intrepid, and to follow and obey it.

The Central Committee, which has the credit
of having made the insurrection, and which go-
verned for a week, was so profoundly incapable,
that it was a real relief when the Commune was
elected on the 28th of March. The Committee,
after some reluctance, made over its powers in a
pompous ceremony to the new Assembly ; but it
had no intention of abdicating on that account.
It established itself at the Hotel de Ville, where
it indulged in orgies instead of decrees. ‘They
spend 4000/. a day,’ said M. * * * with disgust,
about the 30th of March.
194 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

The Internationals were not bad people; so
far as I could judge, they were the best men in
the Revolution. Gérardin, Malon, and Avrial are
those I saw the most of. They were very honest
fellows, who were devoted to the public cause,
and to whom a firm will and a sure doctrine were

alone wanting.

I can’t say as much for the Blanquists. I
have not the honour of being acquainted with
Blanqui, but I consider him a very capable and
a very energetic man. But, owing either to a
peculiar tendency of his character or the neces-
sity of the moment, he surrounded himself only
with incompetent men, unworthy servants of
liberty, and narrow and selfish minds, capable of
a sudden stroke, but incapable of courage.

IT can’t help bearing him a grudge for having
raised pedestals to those ignoble beings, and for
having held them up to the admiration of credu-
lous crowds, who are not yet undeceived, perhaps.

That is why I bear Blanqui a grudge. Why
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 195

have they chosen out from amongst the millions
who aspired to a more perfect freedom, men of such
narrow minds, and of such undignified characters ?
I won’t believe the working population of Paris
does not number more generous hearts and more
open minds than those people. If Blanqui had
the gift of inspiring men with a spirit of self-
devotion, and of employing them, why did he not
constitute himself a staff of worthy men, instead

of the Bergerets, Eudes and Mégys?

Raoul Rigault and his acolytes shot a Galli-
can prelate and a Liberal senator; and they de-
stroyed the archives of civilised society. What
more could they have done, if they had wished to
serve the Ultramontane party? They would have
set fire to a church not to make the trick too com-

mon,

Well-to-do people won't believe that the work-
196 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

men have any difficulty in getting a livelihood.
But it is not a bare livelihood they lay a claim to ;
they ask (and they are right in so doing) that it
may be easier for them to achieve well-being and
riches,

It is said that if the workmen had fewer fail-
ings and more instruction, it would be easier for
them to attain to well-being. They may reverse
the argument, and say, ‘If it were easier for us to
achieve well-being, we should haye, or at least
our children would have, fewer failings and more
instruction.

The workman has enough for his food. ‘True,’
I answer ; ‘but he must also have enough to feed
his caprices and passions, since you, the aristo-
crats of industry, finance, and politics—you nour-
ish your own so richly and so amply in the broad
daylight of Paris,’

When the enlightened Lowrgeoisie made the
Revolution of 1789, it did not make it alone. It
called in the peasant to burn the castles, and the
workman to overthrow the bastilles. The labourer

performed his work; he now demands his hire.
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 197

Accomplices of the Revolution, share its profits
with him!

The workman, called a socialist, a Communist,
or a member of the International Society, knows
perfectly what he wants, but he does not know
how to obtain it.

He wants it to be made easier for the working
man to acquire property.

He doesn’t want every one to be poor; he
wants every one to be rich. But rather than sub-
mit to too crushing an inequality, the workman,
and especially the Paris workman, who sees very
well how the world goes, would prefer to blow up

society.

What have the governing classes of French
society done in favour of the poor? What have
they done in order to lighten the taxes for those
who earn less, and to give every one a tolerably
equal share in the immense development of public

wealth ?

The French Chambers have been profoundly
198 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

selfish. They have constantly favoured their re-
lations, their friends, and their eguals. They
have never borne the strain of the law of con-
scription ; they have made the indirect taxes bear
upon necessaries, and have given privileges to the
great manufacturing interest in the distribution of

direct taxation.

You don't understand why revolutions are
made. Read the few lines which show the pro-
ceeds of the different branches of the revenue,
and you will see how the legislator strikes at the
necessaries of the one class, and spares the super-

fluities of the other.

When bees find a dead rat in their hive, as
they cannot remove the corpse, they embalm it
with wax.

The English have a social system which pro-
duces a great number of paupers, but that system
has a remedy of its own. The pauper is taken,

glued up in a workhouse, or some other system of
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 199

benevolence, and he ceases to stink in the nostrils
of society.

The French legislators have shown less prud-
ence. Their social system produces less human
detritus than the English one, and yet society is
more infected by it. You see myriads of con-
sumptive and stunted men, who some fine morn-
ing take up a musket, and send their complaints,
loaded with ball, through the windows, and some-
times through the heads, of happy and healthy
people.

*Tis a detestable system, and yet no one seems
to weary of it. It has lasted eighty years, and

the future is full of similar promises.

We have agreed that the men of order mono-
polise civic virtues and even courage. It must,
however, be admitted that the men of disorder are
numerous, and cannot all be killed.

What is to be done?

If I held the place of the men of order, I
200 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

should reflect seriously. I should remember that
the riots during Louis Philippe’s reign were in-
significant, that the days of June amounted to a
disaster, and that the affair of the Commune was
a revolution.

If I held the place of the men of order, this
crescendo would furnish me with subject for

thought.

Amongst the battalions which I had the hon-
our of commanding, some were painful to look
at. Weak, ugly, small, and deformed men, whose
uniform only showed off their bad appearance.
As I passed before those unfortunates, I said to
myself, ‘These people have good reason for fight-
ing; they fight that their children may be less
puny, less scrofulous, and less full of failings than

themselves.’

In spite of the defeat of the Commune, the
dilemma which the Communists put to society

remains entirely unanswered. ‘Either society
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 201

must condescend to find means to make our lives
convenient and easy, or we shall destroy society.’
You see clearly, imbecile legislators, that you
must throw the portals of society wide open to the
horde which is besieging it. If not, that horde
will make for itself a society outside of yours. If
the nations do not open their doors to the work-
ing classes, the working classes will fly to the

International.

There is a numerous class of society which is
industrious and powerful, because it is homogene-
ous, to which do not apply your laws concerning
property, concerning inheritance, and concerning
the family.

Change your laws, or else that class will try
obstinately to create a society for itself, in which

there will be neither family, nor inheritance, nor

property.

It seems to me that I have no prejudice in
favour of the Communists; and yet I must say

that I prefer, in spite of all the shame of the
202 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

Commune—I prefer to have fought with those

vanquished ones, rather than with these victors.

What is called the Conservative class is un-
worthy and incapable of governing, because its
principal motive is fear.

Whatever you please, excepting danger; such

is the political faith of the ‘ friends of order.’

There were in Paris on the 18th of March
(this is an account for the accuracy of which I
can vouch) sixty revolutionary battalions, and
nincty entirely Conservative battalions, The re-
mainder were divided, and incapable of exerting a
decisive action.

The ninety Conservative battalions were of
older standing, better equipped, and better armed
than the revolutionists ; they were equally numer-
ous, better commanded, and better disciplined.

But those unworthy citizens are accustomed to

trust entirely to the army and to the police, whose
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 203

duty it is to get killed for the cause of order. But
there are moments when the police is worn out,
and when the army does not clearly understand on
which side its duty lies, or whether it be not its duty
to remain quiet. At those moments the streets of

Paris are at the mercy of the first comer.

I shall never regret having tried to demolish
that bastard oligarchy, the French bourgeoisie. We
may have been beaten, but nevertheless our can-
non-shots have told; and I hope that the cause of
democracy may find, at some future period, less un-
worthy and less incapable servants than ourselves.

Undoubtedly I was duped by the movement
of the 8th of March; but I was much more duped
at Metz, when I constructed works which were
never to be attacked; when I put new gates to
the town—gates which were destined to be thrown
wide open. All the money which I spent there
was spent for the King of Prussia.* I was also

* Punning on the French proverbial expression which is
used to express the idea that something has been done fruit-
lessly.
204 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

duped at Nevers, when I wore myself out in exer-
cising soldiers and forming officers to defend a
country which did not wish to defend itself. IfI
had been aware that all that was humbug, and
would end by a good capitulation, I would have
gone and spent my time with some corps of free-
shooters, instead of teasing the life out of those
poor mobilised devils whom I ended by transform-
ing into soldiers.

If I had my free choice again, it is possible
that I should not go and serve the Commune, but

it is certain that I should not serve Versailles.

I confess that I thought myself thoroughly
done when I came to know the Revolutionary
Government.

I was in search of patriots, and I found folks
who would have given the forts over to the Prus-
sians, rather than surrender to the Assembly. I
was in search of liberty, and I found privileges
established at every street-corner. I was in search

of equality, and I found the complicated hierarchy
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 205

of the Federation, the aristocracy of the old poli-
tical prisoners, and the feudal system of stupid
officials, who trammelled all the living strength of
Paris.

But it was something different from all that
that most surprised me. We had suffered from
the reign of a police-government; and the Com-
mune managed to be a police-government; and
Raoul Rigault, a sufferer by that form of govern-
ment, establishes himself at the Prefecture of
Police, and becomes the real head of the Com-

mune.

Ihave known Delescluze and Félix Pyat. I
never sufficiently esteemed Delescluze; and I

never shall sufficiently despise Félix Pyat.

There is one point on which I consider the
Commune as a complete experiment, that is, the
incompetence of the working classes for govern-
ment. It is necessary—it is necessary that, until

things are changed, the exercise of the functions
206 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

of government should remain in the hands of the
instructed classes, or, rather, it is necessary that.
the government should remain in the hands of the
bourgeoisie, until the working classes are possessed
of sufficient instruction.

Let the people then acquire instruction, if they
wish to have their legitimate share in the conduct
of business and the distribution of fortunes. But,
for the present—I will speak the word without
mincing it—the people are too stupid to govern
us. They have not sufficient sound ideas, and
they have too many false ideas.

I am not accusing; I am stating a fact. I
know that it is not the fault of the people, but of
our legislators, if the people remain in this inferior
position; I know that the French people —and
those of Paris in particular—are intelligent and
clever. But all that does not suffice; for the
treatment of such serious questions as the man-
agement of political affairs, a deep and sound in-
tellectual culture is necessary. The present Gov-
ernment is incompetent, faulty, and faithless. I

know it well; for I have striven most heartily to
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 207

overthrow it. But I must say that the people
of Paris, after having got rid of their government,
had the appearance of a blind man deprived of his
dog.

Not only is the instruction of our workmen
insufficient —it is also ill-directed. They study
with good faith the works of those philosophical
day-dreamers who promise them a paradise upon
earth. That’s a mere loss of time. They are
desirous of suddenly transforming the organisa-
tion of labour; of getting rid of the masters, and
of suppressing the intermediate class; but they
are not strong enough to replace the masters and
the gu-betweens, and three-fourths of the time
are the dupes of their innovating experiments.

Incapable of improving the management of
their own affairs, they are still more incapable of
managing public affairs. I did all I could, when
I served the Revolution, to find amongst the
working classes, or amongst the small tradesmen
who were partisans of the Revolution, men capable
of commanding or administering; I did, I repeat
it, all I could. Well, then, I formally declare that
208 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

I only found capable auxiliaries in the instructed

classes.

There is no occasion to discuss whether aristo-
cracy as a political system is superior or inferior
to democracy. It is sufficient to prove that France
is now under a democracy; that there are no solid
aristocratic elements in the country; and that,
willingly or unwillingly, we must avail ourselves
of the democratic system.

The stumbling-block of democracy has always
been despotism. When Roman liberty perished,
the aristocrats were found to have been its de-
fenders. The Catos and the Brutuses, whom our
democratic republicans select nowadays for their
models, were the last champions of the old Roman
constitution. Against whom? Against the ‘plebs’

led by the Mariuses and Cesars.

There is nothing less rational than the idea of

a constituent assembly as we understand it in
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 209

France. Imagine to yourself an assembly of phy-
sicians seated at the patient’s bedside, and discuss-
ing whether his temperament shall be bilious or
sanguine, or ordaining that henceforward it shall

be nervous or lymphatic!

There is one thing about which our Govern-
ments have all agreed, and concerning which they
have pursued their work with a unity of spirit
vainly to be sought for elsewhere: I refer to the
suppression of all political intermediate groups
between the citizen and the state. The editors of
the last law on the conseils - géncéraue were as
determined on that point as Louis XIV. or the

Convention could ever have been.

It is probable that political prosperity cannot
be established without a certain autonomy of the
towns and provinces.

The Tiers Etat asked in 1614 that there should
no longer be more than twelve governors of pro-

vinces.
210 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

The departments are administrative circum-
criptions, which correspond neither with the geo-
graphical distribution nor with the ancient pro-
yinces. Besides which, the military cireumscrip-
tions do not correspond with those of the courts
of appeal, nor those last with the archiepiscopal
circumscriptions.

From this point of view, the revolutionists
continued Louis XI. and Louis XIV. They have
annulled and rendered impossible all political
grouping within the state.

Their system, conceived to make head against
civil and foreign foes, proved very efficient for
depriving the rebels of all support, and for con-
centrating the national forces in the hands of
Government. But this accession of strength on
the part of the Government is one of the causes
of the political poverty of the country.

France can easily be divided into from twelve
to fifteen natural circumscriptions or provinces,
each of which would comprise from four to nine

departments.

Those provinces would correspond in extent
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 211

and population with the natural agglomerations
spread all over the surface of Europe, with the
states of Spain, and with the European states of
the third order—such as Switzerland, Belgium,
and Holland. They would answer to the ancient
French provinces wherever they were formerly
constituted.

It is probable that the department, which must
serve as the basis of a similar modification, would
disappear in certain provinces, or at least leave
the first place to the arrondissement or district.
In ‘other parts of the country, the department
would remain as the natural medium between the
province and the canton. The canton is perhaps
one of the most strongly constituted elements in
the political geography of France.

This transformation would be much more sim-
ple to carry out than it appears, if the govern-
ment were at any time in the hands of men suffi-
ciently resolute not to confound the public interest
with the interests of officials desirous of retaining

their posts.
212 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

The legislative and judicial power may un-
dergo interruptions; but the executive power may
not. It must neither have sessions nor vacations ;
it must be prepared for every event.

The false notions of public sovereignty which
obtain amongst us, prevent us from seeing the
immense disadvantages of impeding the executive
power, either by ill-understood revolutions, or by
confiding it to the hands of an assembly. This
error is not confined to the revolutionary party
alone; and the Assembly of Versailles very often
reminds me of the Commune in this respect.

For instance, it confides the control of the
executive power to a commission, and the right
of pardon to a commission. Those are either
superfluities or impediments: either the executive
power will act alone, or else business will suffer.
Can Ferré, who for two months has been awaiting
a ‘solution, be put to death without cruelty at
the end of those two months?

There are affairs which must receive an im-
mediate solution, either a good or a bad one, other-

wise a temporary svstem is established, the ulti-
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 213

mate rupture of which, even for a good solution,
is injurious, because it gives a shock to the social
organisation. I have taken the example of a man
condemned to death, because it has a special in-
terest for me at the present moment. Law, cus-
tom, and humanity demand that a sentence of
death should be carried out without delay. If you
carry it out after two months, you violate the law,
you offend humanity. Ifyou do not carry it out
for the sole reason that two months have elapsed,
you enervate, you ruin the law—which, it is true,
is open to discussion— which institutes capital
punishment.

Nothing shows a weak society so much as this
systematic indifference and this division of respon-
sibilities. An individual possessing only a tenth,
a hundredth, or a thousandth part (as is the case
in an assembly of more than 500 members) of in-
fluence in the solution of a debated question, will
form an opinion upon grounds ten, one hundred,
or one thousand times less conclusive than if he
had the whole responsibility.

The malady of democracies is the division of
214 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

responsibility. Under that system, nothing but
what is petty can be carried out. Observe, how-
ever, that this malady does not form an inherent
part of the democratic system, but is only one of
its tendencies. Observe, also, that this tendency
is excessively favourable to petty despotism and

gross peculation.

What would well-thinking people in France
say, if they knew that the affair of the Commune
had, according to my conviction, been nothing
more than a skirmish of outposts?

I can speak on the subject with full know-
ledge. Behind the wild zealots and madcaps of
the Commune, I caught sight of formidable theo-
rists, of vigorous and resolute men of action,
who looked on without joing in the combat,
either because the struggle had been clumsily
entered upon, or else because, according to their
taste, the fruit was not yet ripe enough to be
gathered.

God grant that, without its coming to a strug-
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 215

gle, society may make the necessary concessions

to the lower classes!

The Spanish Government is taking steps
against the International Society. The Spanish
Government must be in a very bad way. When
you take to seeing ghosts and to fearing them,

there must be something wrong with your head.

The Commune burnt everything; the idea
would have had some reason in it, if that course
had been taken on the 18th of March, to an-
nounce a deliberate purpose of erasing and de-
stroying the past. As a beginning, it would
have been a master-stroke from the point of
view of the more frantic innovators; as an act

of despair it was a piece of roguery.

After seeing the success of the sailors, and
especially of the general officers of the navy, once
ashore, one is tempted to inquire why Trochu,

Vinoy, and others of our land generals did not
216 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

go and serve in the fleet? Our navy might then
have achieved something, and certainly the de-
fence of our territory would not have been in-

juriously affected.

Rossel must have very stubborn convictions
and a very wild imagination to have fancied that
the Commune would make war upon the Prus-
sians. Such is the opinion of those who foresee
events after they have occurred; and they are
perfectly right, since the Commune did not make
war upon the Prussians. But the judgment of
those who will go back to the 18th of March may
be different. On the 18th of March I had no
country left; France had given way beneath our
feet: all courage, patriotism, and honour had
vanished. On the 19th of March I learn that
a town has taken up arms, and I cling desperately
to that fragment of my country. The insurgents
were unknown to me, but I knew against whom

they were arrayed, and that sufficed for me.*

* See the letter of March 19, to the Minister of War.
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 217

That the Commune (there was no Commune
on the 18th of March, but only a revolution)
should not have declared war against the Prus-
sians is not astonishing. But it is certain that
the moment the Revolution had a chance of suc-

cess, Prussia would have declared war against it.

Re-read the manifesto of Brunswick in 1792.
It might have been placed almost untouched in
the mouth of M. Thiers on the Ist of May. I
have never mentioned this analogy, but I have

often thought of it.

On a Vignette by Gustave Doreé.
October 9, 1871.
Don QUIXOTE is seated at the table of an
inn. He has laid down his arms for a moment,
but he has not laid down with them his thoughts
and his mission. Grave, with head erect, over-
awing his audience, he has entered upon one of
those discourses in which his knowledge and his

logic, but. above all his goodness, shine forth with
218 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

brilliant light. A deep wrinkle furrows his brow:
for a long time ere he furbished his armour, for
a long time ere he entered upon his wanderings,
he had suffered for all the injustices and sorrow
he had met with in the world of his books; for a
long time he had pondered over all that sorrow
and injustice,—thence the wrinkles on his brow.
And now he has entered upon his task, and his
adventures have commenced, and that evening,
the day having by chance ended with supper,
he is relating to the haphazard guests collected
round the table his thoughts, his system of
morality, and the wondrous examples he has met
with in his books. Every one listens and no
one laughs; some few are really attentive, and
seek to remember or to understand; others are
pensive, for they feel that there is some chord
in their nature which vibrates as they listen to
those tales of the world of folly and of goodness.
Two damsels look a little startled; such grave
language is new to them, and their precise sense
of reality warns them that all those discourses

are chimerical. A serving-man who is removing
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 219

the dishes barely turns round his head. As for
the host, he is engaged in the study of the phe-
nomenon; he stands there in his lusty obesity,
with arms akimbo, gazing with inquisitive and
distrustful eyes at the worthy knight. He is
thinking, perhaps, that a man so rich in ideas
is probably poor in doubloons; and he is seeking,
perhaps, what interest guides a guest so different
from all those whom he has seen in his inn.

Which is the madman, which the sage? The
host has a bestial jowl, an enormous belly, and
hanging cheeks; the knight a proud countenance,
and a deep and somewhat sorrowful glance.

The one is occupied with his estate, and fills
out his paunch; the other is occupied with the
sufferings of the world, and seeks for wrongs to
redress. The one serves his own interest, which
he knows; the other serves the interest of his
fellows, of which he is ignorant. Which is the
madman and which the sage? What matters
it? Arise, Don Quixote! those folks understand
thee not. Come, don thine armour; let us issue

forth together and encounter windmills.
220 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

The Convention held its ground against three-
fourths of France in insurrection, at the same
time that it carried on a foreign war. It was
far easier to resist a single enemy who had only

conquered one-third of France.

October 9th, 1871,
‘Do you deem the Athenians so cowardly as
to surrender because they have seen their country
ravaged?’ said Archidamus to the Laceedemo-

mans. (Thucydides, book 1.)
Sept. 1st. Man is a conscious phenomenon.

‘A statesman, says Henri Martin, with refer-
ence to Fouquet’s trial,—‘ a statesman devoted to
a great idea and strong in the purity of his in-
tentions is often led away to too much laxity in
the choice of means.’

To be as resolute in one’s actions, once a de-
cision has been come to, under urgent circum-
stances, as if the opinion in virtue of which one

acts were certain to be right. (Descartes.)
Timothy : a Folly.*

In those days every one was actively, not to say
frantically, engaged in the election of a President
for the Republic, which was to take place in a
fortnight. The principal candidates were —M.
Guizot for the Liberal-Conservative party, and
M. Thiers for the Young-Liberal party; besides
which, there were two Princes from each of the
unemployed royal and imperial houses—the ones
coming forward in the name of hereditary right,
the others in the name of monarchical principles.
All these candidates were distinguished for their
frankly republican proclamations, protestations,
and declarations; the elder branches even had a
tendency to Socialism. Finally, amongst the can-
didates were to be found 128 generals, 233 bar-

* An especial interest will attach to this delicate political
satire, when it is known that it was written in prison by

Rossel on the 20th September, twelve days after he had been
sentenced to death. J. A.
229 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS,

risters — of whom one was an orator — several
patented pharmacists, and a very large number of
citizens of all colours and all professions.

The whole country was in a state of fever, and
had a feverish thirst. The wine-shops of Paris and
the taverns of the smallest boroughs were driving
a golden trade. Paris especially—Paris, the head
and heart of France—was distinguished by the
vivacity of her political anxiety. It was not only
at the wine-counters that the presidential election
was discussed. In the most aristocratic circles
the election had replaced the game of bouillotte ;
stakes were laid on candidates as if they were
race-horses. A. special betting-book was opened ;
chances rose and fell capriciously; Thiers stock
was sold out, and Gagne stock bought in; opera-
tions were carried on for fixed terms or for cash.
It was the gambling-house, the Derby, and the
stock-exchange combined into a game, all the
more attractive in that it was more fanciful; for
arrangements had been made to enable players
to decide their bets without awaiting the event;

and every evening fortunes were made and un-
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 223

made according to the variations in opinion. The
middle classes did the thing less expensively: they
went in for politics at the cafés or the beershops.
Whole trainsful of beer from England, Lille, Stras-
bourg, and Munich reached the immense capital
daily, and proved insufficient for appeasing the
insatiable thirst of its numerous orators. At mid-
night, when masters and waiters, worn out by
the day’s fatigue, had turned out the discussing
hordes, and managed to close doors and shutters,
the debate continued on the pavement, by star-
light; and the coming dawn discovered, stretched
out upon the Boulevard benches, unconscious ora-
tors and solitary disputants, who even in sleep,
disturbed by generous dreams, still argued in fa-
your of their pet candidate.

’Twas a moment full of charm and delirium.
Every one understood the Republic; every one
loved liberty; and not a French citizen (save the
unemployed Princes) would have exchanged his
share of liberty for an empire.

One of the principal organs of the national

public life—perhaps the principal organ; for it
224 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

penetrated into palaces and into cottages, into the
chamber and the hospital—one of the most read
and most appreciated newspapers, the celebrated
Petit Journal, had then for its principal editor,
who played the first part in every style, a writer
of an easy and fertile talent, the illustrious Timo-
thy Primm—who must not be mistaken either for
Trimm, or for Grimm, or for the celebrated Ge-
neral Prim. Every one knew that the Petit Jour-
nal might have a serious influence. It had been
questioned and sounded, but found impenetrable.
Apparently indifferent to the great game which was
about to be played, the Petit Journal kept proudly
to its usual course, giving their daily mouthfuls to
its hundred thousand readers, talking of the fine
weather, of the rain, of roses and distributions of
prizes; touching upon sentiment, science, moral-
ity, erudition, eloquence, and wit, all in a pleasant
manner, easy to be taken in, even on a journey,
very comfortable, and at no great cost. Thus,
whilst every one in France was agitated, breath-
less, and overwhelmed by the great anxieties of

the choice of a master, Timothy, free, airy, and
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 225

at his ease, continued sowing the flowers of his
amiable rhetoric in his six daily columns. To the
deuce with politics! he would seem to say to those
indiscreet ones who sought to gain him over, or to
convince him. But the candidates were distrust-
ful; and people who plume themselves on their
sharpness, and know how to explain the things
they cannot understand, affirmed aloud that Tim-
othy had his plan.

A fortnight before the election, the leader of
the Petit Journal was headed as follows: ‘Of
Presidential Elections in Ancient Times.’

In ancient times! Why not? Has not a
volume been written on the newspapers of ancient
times? It is true that the ancient republics had
no presidents; but in the hands of a skilful writer
the most ungrateful elements undergo a trans-
formation, ‘like clay in the hands of the potter.

Timothy most justly began with the Deluge:

‘The patriarchs were presidents—presidents
of purely patriarchal republics. They went from
pasturage to pasturage, driving their flocks before
them, sacrificing to God the Creator, and making

Q
226 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

war upon hostile tribes. The only thing was, they
were not elective; for they were hereditary.’

Timothy then cast a passing glance at Amasis’
foot-bath, in which he saw an undoubted trace of
popular intervention in the choice of the organs
of public sovereignty. After which he piled up
the Archons and Ephori, ‘before whom kings rose
from their seats.’ Then the Suffetes, the Vergo-
breiths, and other Brummagem magistrates. Then
he came to the consuls. This was his principal ,
dish. Bouillet is not more learned. There were
even touches which Bayle would not have dis-
owned; and for good reasons.

Then, to omit nothing, he did not fail to men-
tion the celebrated Don Sylvius, who was three
times Roman consul. He jested airily about the
candidate’s name, and about the homely simplicity
of the Romans, who were satisfied to attract the
public attention by putting white upon their
clothes. Such a trick would never have succeeded
with the Athenians. They had less barbarous
modes of setting up a candidate—such as cutting

off the tail of one’s dog, for instance.
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 997

Those Athenians never did anything like other
people. They had a custom called ostracism, be-
cause the voting-ticket was an oyster-shell, on
which the candidate’s name was inscribed.

What a singular people!

Then they counted the voting - tickets — I
mean the oyster-shells. They doubtless made use
of oyster-women as counters. It is true that the
Athens oyster-women were better up im politics
than the statesmen of other countries. Take, for
instance, the market-woman who criticised Theo-
phrastes language. Well, then, they counted the
voting-tickets; and whoever obtained a majority
—was exiled!

What a singular people!

People were candidates for transportation, just
as at the present day they are candidates for the
presidency ; and it was equally honourable!

What a singular people !

This usage may perhaps have had a deeper
meaning; for nothing is superficial in the customs
of a great people. The Athenians perhaps in-

tended by that symbol to remind their statesmen
228 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

of the fable of the oyster and the pleaders. They
said to them: ‘Power is an oyster of which we eat
the flesh, and of which we give you the shells.’
Things are changed nowadays. Statesmen too
often eat the oyster, and give the shells to the

people.

The Pett Journal had, therefore, entered the
arena. To speak truth, its article was rather a
radical one; but it prejudged nothing, and ex-
cluded no one. Each candidate hoped that the
popular paper would back his candidature. I
have heard that Primm was offered from different
quarters three hundred prefectures, twenty-two
posts in the Cabinet, and eight embassies to St.
Petersburg.

Timothy, who was already a diplomatist, lis-
tened to everything, refused nothing, and repulsed
no one; but excused himself on the plea of its
being absolutely necessary for him to write his
daily article, which was entitled ‘ Presidential
Elections in the Middle Ages.’

‘The two halves of God, the Pope and the
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 229

Emperor, were the subject of this second article,
Timothy, however, did not lose his way amidst
the philosophical considerations which might have
seduced some minds; he only cast a faint light
upon the fearful prospect of elections playing the
principal part in the origin of modern society.
Indulgent and even amiable towards the conclave,
he surrounded the imperial elections with purple
and with gold. Then he winged his way lightly
to Scotland, where he seated himself on the fa-
mous stone used in the election of kings. On his
return to France—and it was there that his di-
gressions took the character of high immediate
interest—he represented Robert the Strong as an
elected chief, and gave to the symbolical applause
that accompanied the consecration of the kings of
France the character of a real election.

Poor Timothy! Between three stars and a
dash he boldly decided the question of divine
right. How many enemies that paragraph was
about to make for him, and what remorse awaited
him! <A storm of threats replied to this crime,

repeated in a hundred thousand copies.
930 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

Timothy paid no attention to them. His plans
were made; and those plans, strange to say, he
carried out. That very evening, at the Stupe-
fied Club, an eccentric character bet for Timothy
against all the candidates for the presidency. He
was looked upon as mad; and his bets were taken.

‘Presidential Elections in Modern Times’ fur-
nished provender the following day for the myriads
of readers of the Petit Journal. This was a page
of Tocqueville, chopped up fine, and seasoned with
agreeable sallies of wit, whose principal merit
consisted in their reference to the topics of the
day.

But, truly, it would be an ungrateful task to
attempt to analyse faithfully the fifteen articles
which ran through the fifteen last days before the
election.

When the twelfth day arrived, Timothy turned
boldly round. ‘A cottage and her heart?’ —such
was his theme.

‘Farewell to politics!’ he said; ‘farewell for
ever! They divide minds; they harden hearts,

and dry up the source of tender sympathies. That
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 231

which I seek is condemning myself to the crush-
ing bondage of publicity; that which seduces me
and carries me away, is the opportunity it affords
me of unveiling myself to hearts which respond to
my heart, and to souls in which my soul finds
a sister spirit. A man of the fields and of na-
ture, a blade of grass, a drop of water, suffice for
my happiness; and that blade of grass, that drop
of water, that honest, though perhaps simple, ad-
miration, I only aspire to share with a hundred
thousand hearts like my own.

‘Alas, what a poor protection are the purest
intentions against hatred and envy! Led away
by the general feeling of the public to talk with
my readers of that which excites every one’s pas-
sions, I suffered myself to touch from afar off
upon a political question. I spoke honestly and
timidly; I said what my heart impelled me to
say; and that heart they have calumniated. A
thousand anonymous letters, a thousand threaten-
ing visits, have been my reward for a few words
which were too sincere. I said that there were

formerly elective monarchies. I said it because
232 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

I believed it. If that statement displeases you,
there is an end of it. Ah, if it were but possible
—perhaps it may soon be so—if it were but pos-
sible, far away from the deceitful world, in a cot-
tage with green blinds, half hidden amidst foliage
wet with dewdrops, to hide myself from every
look save only one, to shut my heart against every
heart save one alone—but that one a heart which
would understand me!’

Timothy cooed out several variations of this
theme, in which he demonstrated that he had
never been a political man, that he had never
busied himself with the affairs of his country ;
that, consequently, he could only have good in-
tentions, but that those intentions had been ma-
ligned. He was esteemed and pitied.

He kept on in this style until the eighth day
before the election. To borrow the politic ex-
pression of a man of the period, ‘The fever was
at its apogee. Suddenly Timothy ceased his
conversation about cottages, and headed his arti-
cle, ‘ Politics and Government’

In that article he showed clearly that a go-
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 233

vernment should never busy itself with politics ;
that politics have been the stumbling-block of
every government; and that if the government,
instead of busying itself with politics, looked after
the affairs of the country, there would never be
any revolutions, and everybody would be richer.
What are politics good for, especially for a go-
vernment? They are only good for breeding
discontent. Honest folks keep aloof, and disre-
putable people come forward and make speeches.
Would it not be better to busy oneself with the
maintenance of friendly relations with neighbour-
ing countries, and. to make good commercial
treaties which would allow every one to sell at
high rates and buy at low, and to employ one’s
whole time in the administration of the country,
in such a manner that the general profits should
augment and the expenditure diminish? Would
not an honest government, anxious for the welfare
of the people, find enough to occupy its time in
seeking that result, without busying itself with
politics ?

Let taxation be diminished, until the time
934 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

comes when it can be done away with altogether.
Let railroads be made everywhere, and good mac-
adamised roads where there are to be no railroads;
and telegraphs and post-offices, and tobacco-
shops* and theatres, and hospitals and boule-
yards, and fountains and cattle- troughs, and
everything that every one needs. And when all
that is done, then you may lose what time is left
in politics.

But in the mean while, what is necessary for
our Government is not political men. They only
serve to muddle our business. What we need is a
government of worthy folks who love the people,
who know them and understand their wants.
There is no need of law-quibbling and politics for
that.

The following day, Timothy received several
disinterested and sincere letters, inquiring why he
should not himself come forward as a candidate
for the presidency. He refrained from publishing

those letters, and from replying to their hints;

* The management of which in France is confided to an
fficial in government pay.
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 235

but he insinuated with a shade of sadness, that to
hold power it was necessary to live with one’s
brains, and for his part he lived the life of the
heart.

The sixth day, he sounded the praises of
good King Henry, that king who wished every
Frenchman had a fowl in his cooking-pot, —
the only king whose memory lives amongst the
people.

The fifth day, he wrote at the head of his
newspaper: ‘If I were the President of the Re-
public.’

Ah, if Timothy were the President, what
golden days those would be for the people! Rest,
tranquillity, and good food; such would be the
privileges of the poorer classes. As for the well-
to-do classes, every one would have a piano, a
carriage, and a box at the Italian opera.

The monarchy promised a fowl in the cook-
ing-pot once a week. It promised, and did not
give it; for good King Henry was fond of draw-
ing the long bow.

The republic is more generous. For the re-
236 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

public 1s everybody’s government, as the monarchy
is the government of one man.

‘If I were President of the Republic, the
people would have a fowl in their cooking-pots
every day. Yes, every day; only on Fridays
that fowl would be a carp. Religion must be
respected.’

But why should the fowl be in the cooking-
pot? Ah, I see there another proof of the mean-
ness of the good king. You only put old fowls in
the cooking-pot after they have laid for years, and
dragged on a bony old age on their deserted
perches. That shows how kings treated the
people! <A little wretched fowl-broth once a
week ; and the best of kings did not even suc-
ceed in that.

Such is not the treatment which a republican
people has a right to expect from a worthy go-
vernment !

‘If I were President of the Republic—I would
that the printer could engrave these words in
golden characters —if I were President of the

Republic, the people should have two dishes of
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 237

meat at their choice, a dish of vegetables, and des-
sert with wine at their pleasure, like at a re-
staurant. And I should not busy myself with
politics. But I shall never be President !

The following day, Timothy said to his readers :
‘Why not?’

The next day : ‘ You demand it.’

The third day before the elections, his article
was headed: ‘It must be.’

Never did a ready-made-clothing emporium
for men and youths employ a more coercive sys-
tem of propaganda.

The three last articles were dithyrambic. I
don’t mean to say that they were in verse, but
they were in rhymed lines, divided into couplets,
to be sung to the tunes of ‘ Jenny l’ouvriére, and
‘T’en souviens tu, disait au capitaine.’ Such
effusions cannot be reproduced; one must be satis-
fied with a short account of what they contain.

During the last three days, the legion of
carriers of the Petit Journal, which formed an
independent gendarmerie, distributed to the sub-

scribers with each paper a sheet of tickets bear-
238 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

ing Timothy Primm’s name. They added to them
picture-books printed at Epinal, and_ cleverly
coloured, representing the history of France in
twenty-four pictures, with the title of Timothy
Primm’s History of France. The first picture re-
presented the anointment of Clovis at Rheims.
Then the Soissons vase, Roland at Roncevalles,
Jean Bart, Napoleon, and many other things.
The last leaf was entitled ‘The President of the
Republic” This was a personage represented sit-
ting, crowned with laurels, and surrounded by an
atmosphere of electric light ; he held a pen in his
hand, and was writing Le Petit Journal. But the
highly practical part of this invention was, that
between each picture and the following one was

a voting-ticket, free, with the inscription :
‘ Election of August 30th.

For President of the Republic,

TrmoTHy Priva.’

And the cover bore beneath the title the follow-
ing information, that none might remain in ignor-

ance ;
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 239

“It is the first duty of a citizen to place his
vote freely in the electoral urns in order to exer-
cise his rights, and to contribute according to his
power to the government of his country.

‘To exercise the right of voting, he must
freely choose in this copy-book one of the tickets
which it contains, fold it in four, with the writing
inside, so that what it contains may not be seen,
and deposit it in the electoral urn, according to
the law.

‘Paris, August 30, 18—.’

Is it necessary to say it? Timothy Primm
was elected by a large majority. Far from being
unpopular in the towns, this election was received
in the large and populous centres with a regular
explosion of good-humour.

A. certain number of tickets were found in
the ballot-boxes which puzzled the searchers ex-
tremely. In the whole of France, 53,310 ‘Anoint-
ments of Clovis at Rheims, 1,933 ‘Jean Barts,’
and 14,719 ‘Presidents of the Republic,’ were

discovered, and all this in coloured engravings.
240 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

Some levelling journalists did not fail to enlarge
upon the intelligence of the country people; but
more enlightened minds affirmed that the 53,000
‘ Anointments of Clovis’ were a witty protest pro-
ceeding from men deeply attached to unchanging
principles, and who thought it ingenious to answer
the presidential election by slipping into the urn
a picture of the most august ceremony of the
hereditary monarchy.

When the result of the voting was proclaimed
at Paris, a joyful crowd, whose gaiety had taken
the shape of enthusiasm, rushed to the offices of
the Petit Journal, to carry the new President in
triumph. Je submitted to it with the simplicity
of a truly great man. He was in his office re-
ceiving the congratulations of some of his friends ;
he only asked for a moment, took a dozen of
manuscript sheets out of his desk and _ slipped
them into his pocket. The cashier of the news-
paper, a hunchback filled with malice, bent to-
wards him, handing him his hat.

‘Well,’ said he in the ear of the triumphant

hero, ‘ the farce is played.’
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 241

‘Not at all,’ said Timothy, in the tone of a
president; and then, lowering his voice, ‘ What
farce?’ and he winked at the little hunchback as
if he were still a humble journalist.

When Timothy took up the helm of the state
he did not forget his origin. He continued to
enrich the Petit Journal with his prose even whilst
attending to the business of the country.

‘Let me alone,’ said he to Timothy Frime, a
young athlete ambitious of replacing him; ‘’tis
only for fifteen days, that I may let off fifteen
articles I had got ready beforehand.’

The first of those articles was entitled ‘ If I
were King ;’ which has been set to music. The
flexible talent of the President shone forth in all
its elasticity in his clever variations on an already
worn-out theme.

‘It’s a bit of malice on the part of the chief
editor, said he to the Privy Seal, who was com-
plimenting him; ‘he’s taking advantage of my
old copy.’

Timothy, in fact, gave himself up entirely to
the conduct of public business. Inaccessible to

R
242 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

all diversions, as grave as an ambassador under a
reprimand, he held the reins of the chariot of
state with the most imposing maestria. But every
evening he produced from his pocket a carefully
numbered sheet, sent it to the Petit Journal, which
printed the presidential prose in large characters.
Each of the articles entitled ‘If I were King’ de-
veloped with exuberance all the arguments in
favour of royalty which may be found in fable or
in history.

Let us add, for the sake of justice, that the
President was in no respect the accomplice of the
journalist, and even seemed rather ashamed of
sharing in his individuality. In his speeches, in
his messages, in his familiar answers, the Republic
was the string upon which he harped. But what
then? He had but one voice, whilst the Petit
Journal had a hundred thousand, a thousand times
more than the ‘ Rumour’ of the ancients.

One has no idea of the strength of reiteration ;
*tis only nervous people, who are familiar with the
effects of a barrel-organ, who can form some

vague conception of the excitement produced on
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 243

the mass of the nation, already enervated by the
agitation of the election, by the daily repetition,
accompanied by the whole orchestra, of the grand
air, ‘If I were Xing’

The sneering curiosity of the towns, the be-
wilderment of the country, the indignant but
measured astonishment of the press, had changed
at the end of a week not into enthusiasm, but into
anger, and into that nervous exhaustion which fits
or rage induce in individuals.

‘There must be an end to this.’ Such was
the universal opinion; business was coming to a
stand-still, the army was growing anxious, the
country was suffering.

On the morning of the ninth day, a deputation
of generals met a deputation from the Court of
Cassation in the President’s antechamber. The
object was to implore him to accept the throne;
and they were very nearly coming to blows on a
question of precedence, such was the tendency of
the nervous fluid accumulated in the nation to
seek a violent outlet. At the same moment, each

of thé legislative chambers spontaneously, with-
244 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

out seeking advice, drew up in secret committee
an address inquiring of the President if he would
deign to accept the title of king.

‘J will do as the nation desires,’ answered
Timothy to everybody; and published his ninth
article.

On the tenth day, a law prepared, drawn up,
and voted as a matter of urgency, summoned the
people to the poll on the thirteenth day. Timothy,
after dispatching his prose to the newspaper, and
ordering the voting-tickets, wrote a few words to
Messrs. Christofle, goldsmiths and manufacturers
of plated wares, and slept the sleep of the just.

On the fourteenth day, the result of the vot-
ing was declared; it was universally favourable,
two hundred and some thousand weaklings having
alone had the baseness to oppose the national will.

The same day, Messrs. Christofle sent the new
king the complete set of regalia he had taken care
to order beforehand; not that that celebrated
house had had the time in three days to prepare
so much jewelry, but fortunately in its work-

shops were found ready for expedition regalia in
KOSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 245

the most exquisite taste, quite solidly enough elec-
tro-gilt for the usual duration of a French sove-
reign’s reign. They were just going to pack
them up for Caffraria—the English Government
had ordered them for a king of that country; but
it could not be helped, the negro would have to
wait, and a little extra wadding in the crown suf-
ficed to adapt it to the French king’s measure.
They say that when Timothy, on his return
at night to his apartments, after leaving the
council of ministers, saw the ornaments which
had been unpacked and spread out; when he
saw the joyful plate sparkling in all its lustre,
with the brilliancy and bloom of virgin and un-
touched gold still fresh upon it—that great prince
manifested the only sign of singularity which can
in the least degree detract from the glory of his
public life. His valet, who was alone present
on the occasion, relates (and they have since
published the story in Holland) that the king,
letting his portfolio fall, burst out laughing ; he
then stuck his crown knowingly and firmly on

his head, laid hold of the sceptre, and broke
246 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

into a thoroughly Parisian step, tossing his sceptre
about like a drum-major does his cane, and sing-
ing the ancient song:
‘The flies they held the floor,
Till with laughter they burst ;

Till with laughter they burst, lon, la,
Till with laughter they burst!’

It will be asked, what is the moral of this
history? It has no moral, for it is not a fable.
It will then be asked, how it ended? Like all
similar undertakings.

If you go to Brussels, to the Café dAlle-
magne, in entering by the passage you will see
opposite to you, stuck on a bench, looking at the
window-panes with a wandering eye, an old man
smoking an old pipe.

That man, whose face is not deficient in a
certain majesty, is worn out rather by over-work
than by age. He passes the whole of his days
in silence: but every day at a regular hour he
asks for pen and paper, and dashes off feverishly
a dozen pages; then he reads his work with satis-

faction, corrects the slips of the pen, polishes
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 247

the style, and becoming gloomy again, cuts the
written pages into long spills, which he uses as
pipe-lights until the following day. He hates
newspapers. If you unfold one near him, he re-
tires anxiously into his corner; if you lay it on
the table, he will go away, unless the waiter re-
moves the disturbing object. He is said to be
‘made of gold’ Talk to him, he will answer you
discreetly and cleverly; make inquiries about his
life, about the past, he will grow taciturn, and
getting up to go away, will answer, ‘T have killed
the goose with the golden eggs.’

The waiter at the café pretends that he is a
French banker who has been unsuccessful. The
French minister at Brussels alone knows that it is
the ex-king Timothy I, the head of the seventh
or eighth dynasty. If the old man could learn
to forget, he might be happy in his home; he has
married in Belgium a Flemish woman, an excel-
lent housekeeper, who makes pastry remarkably
well, and who has made him the happy father of

twelve pretenders.

Versailles, Sept. 20, 1871.
For my Parents.

I.
Saturday, November 25, 1871.

TuHE history of this day is certainly worth re-
lating: it is one of the days of my life in which
I have most suffered. Since I left the Commune,
I have only suffered one moment’s anguish; that
was in the month of May, when I was hiding in
Paris from the pursuit of that unpleasant As-
sembly. .A Versailles newspaper published an
act of accusation, as well got up, certainly, as
in a feuilleton novel, which proved that I had
received under such and such circumstances a
certain number of hundreds of thousands of
francs for giving up Paris to M. Thiers. That
impudent accusation overwhelmed me for a mo-
ment; I feared to be unable to purge myself

from the calumny. But since that time, since
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 249

my arrest by the victors, every phase of the trial,
every attempt of my adversaries against me, has
shown my character in its true light; so that, if
they put me to death now, it will avail them
nothing, and they will have committed a murder
most dangerous to themselves, their system, and
their children.

I am very quiet in my prison, worrying myself
but little and seldom as to the decision which
will be come to concerning me.

Nine days ago the Commission of Pardons
met, and its secret, not to say shamefaced, de-
liberations ended yesterday.

The result is not yet known; but the man-
ner of those poor devils shows clearly that they
mean to have recourse to rigorous measures: no-
thing is so terrible as frightened people. Three
days ago a report of my execution and of that of
Ferré was published. It was only, says the Presse,
a ‘trial-balloon,’ to test opinion. Yesterday, at an
appeal from the Constitutionnel, several young men
came over to Versailles from Paris to ask for my

pardon, and intercede in extremis. Respectful and
250 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

discreet, they chose to represent them five of their
number, who could only see M. Thiers for a mo-
ment, but were received by M. Barthélémy St.
Hilaire. Thiers, who was getting into his car-
riage, refused to hear them. ‘This step can only
be injurious to those you wish to save,’ said he,
with some emotion, it appears, in spite of the
small number of the petitioners. Barthélémy was
more explicit; his teeth were chattering: ‘You
will prevent the Assembly from returning to
Paris!) You have a Republic; what more can
you need? You are exasperating the Commis-
sion of Pardons! After all, you are not so very
numerous.’

In reply to this faithful expression of the
thoughts and policy of the Government, and in
particular to the last sentence, my friend Baihaut
answered: ‘If you don’t think us sufficiently
numerous, ten thousand of us will come to-mor-
row, if that suits you,

To-day Joly came to see me, Iie knows
nothing, excepting that the Commission separated

definitively last night, adjourning to December 4th,
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 251

after having decided the ten appeals which had
been submitted to them.

I saw my relations the day before yesterday
morning. My mother and my sister came in all
haste, to warn me that a rumour was gaining
ground amongst the members of the Commission
to the effect that I had asked the War Minister,
shortly after March 10th, for a step which he
had refused me. I at once wrote a letter, ad-
dressed to my mother, giving the lie to that
rumour, intended to calumniate me at the last
moment.

Yesterday I saw them again in the parlour.
My mother and sister had passed the preceding
evening in waiting for the members of the Com-
mission ; they had broken up their sitting very late,
and my relations saw them pass without daring
to goup tothem. They did not look like people
who had just pronounced a death-warrant ; they
walked lightly, being very hungry and in a hurry
to get to dinner. No, they did not look wicked!
Very late in the evening an English journalist

had sent a line to my parents to say that all was
252 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

well, and that he would not leave Versailles with-
out letting them know it. My father went at
once to communicate this news to M. Passa. ‘I
have come to tell it you, that you may have a
good night’s rest.’

To-day, when they arrived in the parlour, my
sister's face was quite upset, and she had just
dried her tears. ‘She has got a bad cold, my
mother said. My mother looked very pale, quite
pale. Little Sarah kept her veil down, as if from
coquetry, and tried to look as if she had been
quite calm; from time to time I caught a con-
traction of the lips, but she did not cry. My
father remained in the background as usual; his
face shows no emotion; but I love him too well
not to understand that he suffers all the more at
bottom; and I bitterly repent having caused such
deep and cruel sorrow to my beloved father.

I can’t bear them to make my parents suffer.
For my part, I am thick-skinned; and I feel so
little anxiety about the possibility of my approach-
ing death, that I sometimes wonder if it be not

morbid insensibility on my part. But what I can-
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 253

not understand is, that by thus deferring their
decision, and hiding its purport when they have
arrived at it, they should make my parents un-
dergo a long agony—they, whose only crime is to
have taught me to love my country.

Something has been decided, and silence is
kept, therefore the decision must be a fatal one;
such is the conclusion arrived at by my parents.

‘Don’t exasperate the Commission of Pardons.’
That speech of Barthélémy’s is worthy of being
tramed. What! here is a commission let loose
into the arena like an infuriated bull, excited by
the cries of the spectators, bewildered and mad-
dened, and you go and speak to them of pardon!
You must wish to provoke and to defy them!
“Do not exasperate the Commission of Pardons.’

The sight of my parents cuts me to the heart.
My mother was telling me of steps taken yester-
day—all of a sudden she stopped short: ‘I can’t
go on! I don’t remember! I am going mad!’
My sister, who was calmer, took up the story,
which I no longer listened to. I saw them and

heard them—that was everything. I cared but
254. ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

little for the remainder. To-day it’s my mother’s
turn to be calm and my sister’s to lose her head.
Yet we were quiet last night; M. Passa had
reassured us. ‘But I feel confident, said my
mother, ‘I feel confident they won’t harm you.’
‘Father, speak of something else, of Fort St.
Margaret, of my last drawing, of the one I am
making; my mother has made me promise her
two, and I am just doing the second to-night. I
am so happy to be able to do anything for her’
The little girl is not actually crying, but her heart
is full. ‘And you, too,’ said I; ‘you, too; they
have made you suffer! Thereupon she bursts
out sobbing; her strength has come to an end.
My poor little god-daughter, my poor little friend;
they are tearing her poor little heart. But the
wound will close, my little darling; I know that
no one will take your old brother’s place; but
there is room enough in your heart for many a
new friendship. But take good care of the others:
they have been so long used to love me, that I
fear—I fear much for them when they will no

longer have me to devote themselves to.
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 255

The parlour is a little cage about a metre
square and three metres high. Behind it there
is a door; on the sides, brick partition walls; in
front, waist-high, a double grating formed of wire
netting, with meshes about an inch in diameter.
The two gratings are about half a metre apart.
Opposite to this cage is a slightly deeper box,
which opens also breast-high, but without a grat-
ing, on an intermediate passage, where the warder
is placed. They are all four in that box. When
we are in a good-humour, we call it our Punch
theatre, because all the personages are squeezed
as close together as on the stage where the great
drama of Punch is represented. But the drama
now being played is of a different character. The
warders charged with the control of our wards are
not bad fellows. Generally, it is an old soldier
who has served in the Crimea, or under Lamori-
ciére, and who now gains his bread at that pitiful
trade.

When the regulation half-hour has elapsed,
he goes and opens the door behind my relations:

‘Ladies and gentlemen, time is up.’ Then my
256 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

sisters hang each in her turn to the first grating,
press their faces against it, and send me a kiss,
which I return through the second grating; and
then each in turn has the right to be the last to
go out, so as to see me a little longer. ‘Until the
day after to-morrow,’ we say when we separate.
Tears are kept for the outer passage.

To-day those poor dear faces were downcast
and discouraged. ‘We have been patient so long,
said my mother, ‘we have no strength left.’ She
says but little; but she looks at me with a con-
centrated attention, as if to engrave my features
on her memory. For a moment the warder leaves
us to admit other visitors. She clings with her
hands to the grating, pressing as close to it as she
can. ‘My son, my good son, my darling, I love
you! They won't harm you!

When the half-hour has elapsed, I am allowed
to embrace them in the office. They only come
two at a time, that supervision may be easy.
Those embraces cause them anxiety: they might
bring me poison. The director of the prison is a

faithful administrator. So many pounds of living
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 257

flesh have been confided to his care. He must
make over that living flesh either for the hulks,
or for the executioner, or even, should it so hap-
pen, for liberty; and I feel certain that is what
would please him best. To commit suicide, to
destroy oneself, would be to commit a bad action,
to deprive him of his position, to ruin his pro-
spects, ‘and, said he, ‘you would not wish it.’
He confides his anxieties to me; he tells me how
much confidence he has in me; and yet he takes
his precautions. This evening I was sewing on a
button. The needle bent under my fingers. I
look at it. It is a handsome brand-new needle,
which they have put in the place of the two old
steel needles I had. They have even taken the
trouble to thread it like the others.

I shall see my relations to-morrow. ‘I have
comforted your mother,’ said the director. ‘That
poor lady asks me questions which embarrass me
extremely. She asks me if I know anything. I
know absolutely nothing, I give you my word of
honour. But I comforted her. “ You will see
your son to-morrow,” I told her. “ To-morrow is

Ss
258 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

Sunday ; and executions never take place on Sun-
day—the law forbids it. So you may make your
mind easy.”’ If that does not comfort my mother,
she must be very hard to please.

M. Passa came after my relations. He brought
me some chocolate; and if they were to shoot me
to-morrow, they would find my pockets full of it;
for I had already a quantity of it. He brought
me something better also—his true friendship and
his good heart. We are really fond of one an-
other; we understand each other. It is a true
happiness for me to have met him. He has every
form of delicacy. My dinner was on the table...
He did not wish to disturb me; but after one
or two mouthfuls, the remembrance of my dear
parents and of their sadness seized me by the
throat. I got up, and I began to shed tears.

To die young, by a rapid death, by an honour-
able death, to leave a respected name and a cour-
ageous example, is not a fate to be bemoaned.
My death will be a hundred times more useful
than my life has been—more useful than a long

and well-filled career. I have nothing to com-
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 259

plain of. But why do they torture my parents
and my sisters? It is so easy to kill a man—
such quick work. Why, then, do you hesitate to
unsheathe the rusted sword of your justice?

11 P.M.

II.
Evening of November 26th.

I am broken down with sorrow. It is an effort
for me to pronounce a single word. Yesterday
evening, whilst I was writing, I was copying a
drawing for my mother; and I gave it her to-day.
It represents a poor woman with three little chil-
dren. She is suckling the youngest; another one
has climbed up on her back; and the oldest is
standing beside her. When we were children we
gave names to the personages of pictures. I said
to myself, as I was copying this one: ‘’Tis my
mother, with her three little children.’ The little
boy is clad in poor clothes, which look like a
theatrical costume—a little jacket with flaps, a
laced waistcoat, and above all a very large mis-

shapen felt hat hanging down his back, in which
260 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

is piteously stuck a small feather. That shabby
feather on the head of the poor little shivering
vagabond reminds me of our miserable joys—the
ornaments with which we deck our heads, our
minds, or our bodies, and beneath which we shud-
der with cold, weariness, or sorrow.

Towards eleven o’clock I had finished drawing
and writing. Then, when I was pacing up and
down my cell, I remembered a speech of my mo-
ther’s. ‘Do you think,’ said she, clinging to the
grating, ‘do you think they would help you to
escape if we gave them money —if we gave
20,000 fr.? We have got that sum.’ Poor mother!
You have 20,000 fr., you have made money of
all your poor resources, and you want to know if
it is enough for the ransom of your son. No,
my mother; it is not enough. If I had sold my
country, and delivered up her army to captivity,
then we should have millions; and that would
suffice. No one would be found to condemn us,
no one to execute us, no one to arrest us. But
20,000 fr.—you are joking!

Iwas deeply touched by that mad determina-
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 261

tion to save me by all possible means. ‘Could
you not file the bars of your window? Could
you not get out of the prison in M. Passa’s place,
when he comes to see you?’ When I thought of
all that, and, above all, of the idea of collecting
20,000 fr., and of offering them to buy my life, I
was moved almost to tears. But the door of the
cell has a small window in it, where the warder
on his rounds frequently comes and looks in.
Must those people be made the confidants of my
sobs? They are honest folks. Though they be
jailers, they would be capable of trying to console
me: ‘Now then, M. Rossel, you must not believe
that. I don’t believe it.... And then, you know,
there is nothing certain as yet. I put out my
candle, and walked up and down by the light of
the night-lamp which, according to regulations,
is placed in every cell. "T'was then that I cried
and sobbed to my heart’s content, stopping in the
corner close to the door, where one can’t be seen,
resting my face against the wall, and crying out in
a low voice, ‘O, my mother, my poor mother! ...

Tears are painful to me—’tis so in our family
262 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

—they won't flow. I would have wished to sa-
tiate myself with tears; but my sorrow accumu-
lates within, and does not reach my eyes.

Towards midnight I went to bed; and almost
immediately the course of my ideas underwent a
change. After all, thought I, how many mothers
every day lose a beloved son without being able
to resist death! The world is full of similar sor-
rows. AndJI, what better death could I wish for?

‘And yet, how many things in me are opposed
to death?’ said I. ‘Though I do not complain, I
feel that I have a right to be pitied. I have not
lived enough. T want to work, to think, to act,
to love—above all, to love. My lungs are made
to breathe for a long time yet, and my heart to
beat. It is not natural to die thus.’

My thoughts fly so swiftly that I can hardly
follow them. I am thinking how rapid are these
last hours, and how the perspective of the past
and the future are changing constantly. I am
no longer what I was yesterday; whole pages, as
it were, are erased from my memory. An air of

Mozart has just passed through my brain. What
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 268

business have those joyful notes here? ~Was it I
who knew and liked that air? I no longer re-
member it, and seek it in vain.

How many sensations, how many sentiments
are thus erased, never to reappear! But how
much sorrow, how much anguish has also dis-
appeared! How many incorrigible faults of which
I shall not again be guilty, how many bitter
reveries which will no longer come to worry me!
I salute Death the deliverer: what he brings me
compensates me for that which he takes away....
And yet I thirst to live and to love.

I have heard the third quarter after twelve
strike. I study in my mind the elements of the
great problem—heing, self, the organic tissues,
the result of the action of the organs, the result of
the impressions of the affections, of the motions—
where is the effect and where the cause. I fall
asleep in dreaming of all this.

I dream. I dream that I am walking in the
narrow prison-court, and that my parents are
brought to see me. I dream that I have thrown
myself in my clothes on the bed in my cell, and
264 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

I have fallen asleep; it is one o'clock in the morn-
ing, voices are heard at the door, it is opened,
they come in; I am instantly on my feet. They
seem vexed to have found me dressed. A thin
and aged priest, whose face is unknown to me,
enters the room. I hold out my hand to him;
behind him enters old Breuil, the ordinary warden
of my passage. He says a few words to me, and
tries to get me to look out of the window; but I
watch him, and see that he wants to throw himself
upon me to slip on the strait-jacket; the priest
holds my hand. My first thought is, ‘Then the
execution is definitively decided upon?’ I struggle
with Breuil, who does not succeed in seizing me;
the priest has sought refuge at the bedside. I throw
myself upon my back, and kick out at Breuil.

At that moment I awake in reality. It is not
yet daylight, but the flourish of the réveillée
sounds forth from the neighbouring barracks, and
its joyous notes are several times repeated. I fall
asleep again, and do not wake until ten in the
morning.

My relations are to come towards eleven. I
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 265

shall be allowed to see them without the gratings,
and even to converse with them. It will be in
an empty cell: the director will be present, and
it is probable that M. Passa will come. At a
quarter past eleven they come for me; ’tis the
Abbé Ferrand, my good Abbe Ferrand. He does
not resemble the priest of my dream. He knows
nothing, he is full of hope; he has read my book,
and compliments me about it. He would like to
have time to talk to me, and I should also like
it; but they come and warn us that my relations
are there, and press him to end his visit. We
are both miserable at being obliged to separate
thus and without telling each other anything.
They come to lead me to the parlour to put
me in cell No. 2, where they have placed chairs.
They arrive and we seat ourselves. The director
has quite.got over his fears, and allows me to sit
between my mother and sister. My father is not
there; he is gone to M. Thiers. M. Passa takes
his seat somewhat farther off; little Sarah before
me, on my right. They have promised not to

cry. M. Passa has told them that I shed tears
266 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

yesterday, and has made them promise to be
calm; he has taken the little one to spend the
evening with his children.

My father arrives. M. Thiers could say no-
thing to him; ‘he knows nothing, and he is not
the master.’ Father had asked to be shown up
to him; he was told he must speak with M. Bar-
thélémy. He entered, and said to M. Barthélemy,
‘I must see M. Thiers. M. Barthélémy hesi-
tated, oscillated, sought to put off. ‘I won’t
wait to defend my son until all is over. I
won't go away without having seen M. Thiers:
you can turn me out, if you like. I shall wait
until the guards arrive. M. Thiers comes in.
My father speaks to him forcibly; he tells him
I have not had judges, but assassins, and gives
him proofs of it. He has written to him twice
the previous day, to set forth the moral side of
the question, and he brings him a third letter
completing his statements. He will publish those
letters. ‘France must judge; you can’t assassinate
a child! How great my father is, and how good!

How energetic he proves to be on important
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 267

occasions, and how peaceful in his daily life! In-
different to what is petty, incapable even of seeing
the pettiness of others.

A newspaper declared that my sentence was
commuted to twenty years’ imprisonment with
hard labour. Hard labour! The very notion
makes the director indignant. We are not
shocked by it in the least, neither my parents
nor myself. Who can sully my honour? Is it
not superior to such trifles? My relations would
be only too happy were I condemned to hard
labour: it would mean that I should live.

Joly came to see me towards four o’clock ; he
said, like M. Passa, like my relations, as I say
secretly to myself perhaps, ‘It is impossible!’
But he is also dreaming of impossible expedients.
He has seen M. Thiers, he is going to return to
the Prefecture and try to find out something.
He has written, ‘The sentence is illegal, con-
trary to law; the Commission is incompetent,
one-fourth of the seats of the Chamber were
vacant when it was named. The meeting of

the Assembly must be waited for. It will take
268 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

place on Monday week; but Monday is very far
from me.

We enter into conversation. What will be
our future and the country’s? We are in the
hands of the soldiers! You will repent—you,
the Republicans—that you did not act as I did.
One must be very ignorant of the nature of our
Revolutions not to understand the necessity of
joining the most extreme party. On the 18th of
March, the army, France, and the Republic were
with the Republicans; on the 19th they were
with the incapables of the Central Committee!...
The army is not formidable in itself; it is com-
posed of citizens.... Who knows if I do not carry
to the grave with me the secret of those questions
which I have been studying for years ?

What a mistake it will be, if they kill me!
Once I am dead, I shall be unassailable. Death
is my triumph. I have broken the deceitful bond
which binds soldiers to their leaders, treacherous
and infamous though they be. I have proved
that that yoke may honourably be thrown off.

If courageous and patriotic officers yielded to un-
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 269

worthy demands, accepted flight, capitulation, and
civil war with every one, it was not owing to the
fear of death, but to the fear of dishonour. You
have no longer that resource: all will have learnt
from me that there are moments when a disci-
plined soldier may and should disobey without
fear of degradation.

Joly asks permission to embrace me when we
part; he is much moved. We refer to our next
meeting. In the course of conversation I had said
to him, thinking of my dream, ‘I trust that
when the final order comes they won’t put me in
a strait-waistcoat. He has spoken of it to the
director, who came shortly afterwards to my cell,
and talked to me lengthily; he managed to ex-
plain to me, lengthily also, that the strait-waistcoat
was never used except in cases of madness or fury.
I could hardly make myself heard; my voice was
weaker than usual, and a little hoarse.

The most difficult moment in the whole day
to get through—I have often felt it in this soli-
tude —is the moment which precedes nightfall.

If one were happy, one might love that moment
270 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

when external objects fade away into night, and
when deep thoughts have double strength on that
account. One is more completely oneself; and
tis then that I feel the most dejected. But that
dejection disappears when the lights are lighted ;
and I have felt a real relief in writing down all
these sad remembrances.

‘Those trials are strengthening,’ said M. Passa
this morning. ’Tis true they are strengthening
and wholesome. I have never enjoyed better
moral health than when enduring hard trials;
during those bitter moments all mean and frivo-
lous things grow indifferent to me.

What did he want? What did he aim at?
What was his ambition? How am I to reply to
those questions? In hands other than my own
my ideas seem utopian. Besides which, I have
not studied how to teach or to write, but how to
act. I do not classify methodically, in a theo-
rist’s pigeon-hole, every element of action which
J examine in books, or in the experience of men,
but Iseek for its present application, which under-

goes a daily transformation. Were I older, my
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 271

ideas would have taken a definite form, and I
might have put them in writing; at present I
could only have put them in practice.

When I went to join the insurrection, I did
not reckon upon its success, and I did not expect
to hold one of the highest ranks in it. I was
fulfilling a political duty; when a civil war has
commenced, every citizen must stand by his party.
As a Republican, my party was at Paris. There
are some who call themselves Republicans, and
who were nowhere at that time: they let me die
to-day, and to-morrow they will set up my corpse
as a flag or as a weapon. Let them learn that
I am not of them. I am of those who fight ;
and I would rather join the Virgin’s Zouaves than
those colourless democrats, who can only give vain
words, but not their arms, to their country. I
hate nothingness, though it be adorned with the
name of Republic or country.

How shall I thank those who have loved me,
who have sought to save me, and who have
suffered with my sufferings? The first days that
I spent here I used to stop to laugh at myself,
272 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

at my folly, and my devotion to ideas. ‘They
are going to shoot you,’ I said. ‘It serves you
right ; “tis the just reward of such flightiness.’
But one day I learnt that at Metz they were
signing a petition in my favour. That piece of
news moved me most deeply—more deeply than
anything else, until yesterday.*

After learning that, I walked up and down
my cell with a full heart, and, leaning against
the wall, I said, ‘It is not then a vain thing to
devote oneself to others.’

I wish, above all, to thank my comrade and
friend Baihaut. They calumniate him now for
having stood by me. I know how much sym-
pathy for my misfortunes was felt in his home,
and how they shared my sufferings; I wish I
could—I wish I dared—say how consoling it was
for me to be thus sustained, and what pleasure
I feel in guessing so much discreet sympathy.
How many unknown people have thus hoped
and feared with me! JI can’t thank them—I can’t

* The 25th, when he learnt the step taken in his favour by
the students. J. A.
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 273

4

prove to them that I would be worthy of their
kind and unmerited confidence; but I wish at
least that they should learn that, as I became
acquainted with the efforts they were making on
my behalf, I no longer felt alone, and that the
life I lived was almost a happy one, surrounded
as I was by so many unknown friends. Nothing
could have produced the dejection of the two
last days but the crushing slowness of the de-
lays and uncertainties which overwhelmed me,
the rapid alternatives of hope and resignation,
and, above all, the sight of my relations’ sorrow,
and of their last desperate and fatally barren
efforts.

I would have saved my country; I can only
die for her. “Tis a highly honourabie, and per-
haps a very useful fate. Each of us does what
lies in his power; some have done nothing more
than die, and are still illustrious. A year ago—
flying from conquered Metz and the captive
army —I passed through Brussels. In crossing
a square, I leant out of the carriage to read the
mscription engraved on the pedestal of a two-

T
274 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

fold statue, representing two young men em-
bracing one another. There were a few words
in two languages. Den Graafen von Egmont und
von Hoorne. ‘To the Counts Egmont and Horn,
unjustly put to death on this square by the orders
of the Duke of Alba, the... .’ I read the in-
scription respectfully, and I perceived, in replacing
my hat on my head, that I had saluted the statue.
Was it sympathy with their fates? Was it re-
spect. for that blood so nobly shed, and perhaps
not without results? That remembrance has
often sustained me: nations, after many centuries,
remember those who loved them and died for
them.

Each time the bell is rung and the great
gate of the prison opened, I say to myself that
they are coming for me; that they are coming,
perhaps, to assist me to escape. Some one has
dared to mention the subject to M. Thiers. ‘It
is too late,’ he said.

Poor Monsieur Thiers, it will be still later
when my blood is on your hands!

‘But,’ said they, ‘you let Beslay go.’
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 275

‘I should not have had Rossel arrested, if I
had only known.’.

If I had only known! It is too late! How
many times and by how many poor devils have
I heard those words repeated whilst France was
sinking! And they know less and less, and
they wait more and more, and it is always too
late.

Suffering and deliverance ; those are the feel-
ings which predominate in me as the decisive
moment draws near. This excitement and this
artificial ending are the slightly forced image of
every natural physiological action.

The excitement, however, is not continuous.
It has only been developed after repeated shocks
and an over-vivid and prolonged expectation. It
was Cinq-Mars, I think, who fell into the hands
of a clumsy executioner, whose trembling hands
multiplied the sword-strokes on his neck. The
Commission of Pardons is that clumsy executioner.
Besides which, the crisis is intermittent. In the
first place, it would be very wonderful if I did

not get my eight or ten hours’ good and sound
276 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

sleep; and then I read, I write, I think of the
subjects which habitually interest me—of tactics,
literature, and politics. I have even, in the midst
of my anxiety, gay moments and humorous whims,
inspired by the very nature of my situation. But
at bottom I am sad, dismal, cut to the heart. My
physical health is slightly affected. A sentence
of death is a real illness. J suffer from weariness,
loss of appetite, a little fever, and slight agitation.
One ends by wishing it over.

Am I really here? It must be a dream. Are
they implacably seeking to compass my death in
the name of the law? I had dreamt of growing
old, of being surrounded by a family, of loving, of
bringing up children. I lived upon my dreams.

Have my dreams deceived me, then? The
reality, perhaps, may be sweeter.

But let us make an end of this.

My darling mother has sent me this evening
two pairs of socks and two towels. She refuses
to fear: she would consider the slightest doubt a
crime. Let us hope, my dearest—let us hope that

what you have sent me will be of use to me; that
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 277

will carry us over that famous Monday when the
Chamber meets.

I bless you, my mother, my good mother, for
all the little attentions you have ever shown me;
for the great and holy affection you have lavished
on me, and of which I have failed to avail myself
to be happy.

How many fragments, how many interrupted
undertakings, how many incoherent notes I leave
behind me! How many useless sketches! I hope
they will not be made known; or if they be made
known, that it will be remembered that I died
young; and that at my age one has not yet

learnt to fix and find formulas for one’s thoughts.

November 27, 2 P.M.

Ir was not to take place this morning. Yes-
terday, after having read and written rather late,
J remained for a few minutes leaning on my table,
thinking of nothing, but experiencing a sensation

of great satisfaction. I had difficulty in getting
278 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

to sleep; and was suddenly aroused by shouts, like
those which pass from sentry to sentry. The
first shout seemed to proceed from the sentinel
on the outer wall, and the last from the one in
the passage. I opened my eyes; there was a glim-
mer, like the first faint light of a winter dawn.
I thought they were coming to take us. Us means
Ferré and I; strange associates, certainly! Then
T vaguely heard a distant clock striking two.
When I tried to fall asleep again, the shouts
recommenced ; scraps of sentences and howls fol-
lowed; it lasted until about three. I heard them
open my cell; then there was a tumult, and the
shouts, grown more distant, lasted a little longer.
Those unusual noises, and the fitful drowsiness
consequent upon them, made me feverish. I was
again awakened by the réveillée, then by every
trumpet -sound in the barracks, then by every
ring at the prison-bell, thinking each time that
perhaps they were coming to fetch us. At last,
at ten o'clock, I got up.

The director comes in to see me; he knows

nothing as yet, and speaks of either possibility.
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 279

The man I heard during the night was a prisoner

seized with an attack of madness.

5 in the Evening.

THE internal crisis I have been going through
since the day before yesterday has much de-
creased in violence, it has even almost come to
an end. Certainly, this agitated night has hast-
ened the solution. I have occupied my mind a
part of the day with mechanical work, which has
certainly acted as a sedative, working out loga-
rithms: it leads to nothing and means nothing,
but it occupies and reposes. I feel much better
this evening than yesterday, but I am going to
bed earlier; the sleep I get in the morning is
too fitful and broken. And besides, on the whole,
I am less afraid to-day than yesterday to be
awakened to go ‘under fire.’ This morning there
was a reason for it: the so-called Commission of
Pardons had broken-up on Friday after M. Thiers’
departure for Rouen; it had therefore been im-

possible to execute its sentence on Saturday.
280 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

There are no executions on Sunday; therefore
this morning was the first and probable day.
This morning gone by, we fall under the arbi-
trary rule of delays.

M. Passa paid me a good visit; he is full of
confidence. His letter having been published by
most newspapers, he has received numerous con-
gratulations. Public opinion is undergoing a
change, he said. My father came to him at
four o’clock in the morning with M. Amigues*
to ask for news. He comforted them, and kept
M. Amigues to sleep in his house. My father
went back to Paris at seven o'clock in the morn-
ing, and did not return here until four P.M.; so
that I have only been able to see my relations
for a moment, as it was near nightfall when they
came. They seem a little calmer. The longer
it is put off, the more they hope. They must
drive the poor director mad by the warmth of
their embraces: yesterday he thought he saw my
mother slip something into my pocket; he spoke

on the subject to M. Passa, who comforted him.

* The Editor of the French edition.
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 281

Otherwise, he is perfectly kind; but the feeling
of responsibility slightly tempers his confidence.
If I were already dead when they wanted to kill
me, it would impede the action of the law; and
he would be made accountable for it. I shall see
my relations to-morrow morning. These two
last days have certainly somewhat steeled me.

To be prepared for everything, let me note
down my last impressions as to the art of war.
The group of 250 men, the Prussian company,
has sound tactical qualities to which I have long
been insensible. It is well adapted to the new
weapons. But the battalion of 1000 men does
not appear to me to have an equal value, and I
much prefer our battalion of 700 effective men at
most. I have been more than once unjust with
regard to the merits of the Prussian armies during
the last war. I still feel convinced that we might
and ought to have beaten them; but I must admit
that they thoroughly understand the politics of war,
a science we have forgotten; that they give to
logistics all the care they deserve, and thus manage

to realise results worthy of being studied. I see
282 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

no genius in the last war, but an undoubted talent
which would always have preservetl them from
falling so low and so shamefully as we have

fallen.
Last Wishes.

THE papers concerning my fission in the Northern
Region areto be sent to the War Ministry, with
asum of about 269 fr. 30c., if I remember rightly.
Amongst those papers will be found a note ex-
plaining the expenditure of 230 fr. 70¢., which
would make up the sum of 500 fr. advanced to me
for the expenses of the Mission. But against the
above sum must be set that to which I am en-
titled according to military regulations, for my
pay from the date of my indictment, June 8th,
until the day of the execution (or of the final
judgment).

The papers were confided by me to M. Brisson,

banker at Bourges, and must be in his chest.

November 26, 1871.
To my Father, Mother, Bella, and Sarah.

Evening of November 26,

Ipon’r wish to point out, my kind darlings, the
use to be made of the few things that belonged
to me. I leave so few things, that it is hardly
worth while to speak of them. I deeply regret
having been unable to contribute to your well-
being, and not being in a position thus to thank
you for all the love you have lavished in vain upon
me. I feel unhappy at the thought that I have
all my life been a burden to you. Well, if that
life is ended, ’tis not perhaps a misfortune either
for you or for me.

My father has so few wants, that I hardly know
which of my things would please him. I hope he
will keep for his use all that is good amongst them;
it will give me pleasure.

My mother has got into the habit of wearing
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 285

my watch-chain; I hope she will keep it. I dare
not return to her the little Chinese figure in jade
which has gone through so many adventures with
me. It will be found on my body at the last
moment, and I will speak of it to M. Passa; I
shall keep it on my breast until the end. I also
give specially to my mother the five volumes of
Monteil she used to like to read.

Bella will take out of my books the six volumes
of Bouillet (two Antiquities, two History, two
Sciences); Anacharsis, five volumes and an atlas;
a recently published Ancient History in two vo-
lumes in 12mo, which she began to read at
Paris.

Sarah will keep, of course, the little Don
Quixote, which is much more hers than mine.
She will also take the very pretty little Chinese
figures, which are in one of the compartments on
the left side of my desk, wrapped up in cotton.

Bella and Sarah will divide my books between
them, each of them choosing according to her
taste, and giving way to the other when both wish

for the same book. Bella will keep, besides her
286 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

share, the thoroughly tiresome books, such as

Greek dictionaries, geometry, &c.

R.

Evening of November 26.

I Trust, my kind darlings, that you will return
to Nimes directly after the event, without delay-
ing to mourn here; for were you to remain here
some time, one grows so foolishly fond of the places
where one has suffered, that you would have diffi-
culty in tearing yourselves away. At Nimes, on
the contrary, you will find yourselves in a sym-
pathetic circle, which will help you to bear your
sorrow. If you remain at Versailles, the sight of
all those officers and judges and deputies, of all
those people who continue their business after
you have ceased to hope, will only have the effect
of souring you and rendering your sorrow harder
to bear, and perhaps even detract from its dignity
and sincerity, by turning it aside from the re-
membrance of your son, and changing your regret
into spite and hatred against society.

Therefore, having settled all business matters
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 287

as quickly as possible, go back to your friends
It is even better to go at once, leaving to M
Passa and M. Larnac the care of arranging all
that you may have to arrange here and at Paris.
I will add that the climate of Nimes suits my
father and the children, and I am sure that it
will have a favourable influence on the health and
development of my little god-daughter.

I advise you to have me buried here. You
love me deeply enough not to need the sight of a
tomb to remind you of me; I would rather that
you should remember your Lisé* of every-day
life than that you should seek a material sign,
which would rather recall to you my misfortunes
and my execution than my character and my
affection for you. "Tis my life and not my death
that you must remember. I will add, that you
will probably not obtain permission to remove me
or to have a tomb built for me, which I consider
the emptiest things in the world.

I am very quiet, my dearest ones, whilst I am
writing all this. I only suffer on your account ;

5

* Diminutive for Louis, Rossel’s pet name in his family. J. A.
288 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

as for myself, it is not distasteful to me to die,
and to die asI die. I trust in your energy and
your virtue under the circumstances ; sustain one
another, and do not give way to too much regret.
Each of you has need of the assistance of the
others, and ’tis specially to my sisters that I
intrust their parents, and, above all, my dearly
loved father.

It is only when I think of him that the tears
come into my eyes; for I know how great and
good he is. I know well that his affection is all
the deeper in that it is less prodigal of demonstra-
tions, and I bitterly repent that I shall inflict so
great a sorrow on him. If I have time, I will
write to each of you; but you are so thoroughly
united in your love for me, that I do not divide
you in the love I return.

May God bless and console you, my kind, my
best friends !

I love you.

L. NATHANIEL Rosseu.
Vizxerunt.

UNDER the above title, M. Jules Amignes, the
French editor, adds the following sketch, which he

found amongst Rossel’s papers :

The senators of the time of Cicero remind me
of the legislators of the present year; but it must
be admitted that consuls and legislative assemblies
have greatly degenerated since those days.

When Cicero was consul, or, in better words,
head of the executive power of the Roman Re-
public, a Communist, named Catiline, wished to
make at Rome something in the nature of an
18th of March ; pillage and arson were the least
of his plans. The history of them was faithfully
related, shortly afterwards, by the victors them-
selves.

One auspicious evening, the Chief of the Exe-
cutive Power, seeing that the time was come, had

U
290 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

the principal of the agitators seized and shut up
in the public prisons.

But ’tis here that it is easy to perceive the
superiority of the ancients over the moderns. At
Rome, like in France, the social system is giving
way. There, like here, the possessors of land, of
slaves, of political influence, strive to maintain
their position. On their side is the entire organ-
isation of the public forces; they have a leader,
who naturally is the first magistrate of the
state.

That legitimate chief lays hold of the dis-
turbers, and locks them up. But locking up is
not everything ; how are they to be got rid of?
The law is a sacred thing in a republic; and the
Chief of the Executive Power, should he dare to
decide the fate of the accused, would be encroach-
ing upon the public rights. On the other hand,
it is impossible to comply with the forms of justice
in such a case; the very trial of so many and such
remarkable culprits is a crisis in the state. . .

The following morning, when the consul was

asked for news of the prisoners, he found a
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 291

charming answer, worthy of that great lawyer ;
one of those euphemisms dear to polished anti-
quity. He did not say that he had put them to
death, for a consul, in Rome, had no right to put
a citizen to death; if he did so, he was nothing
more than a common assassin. Cicero did not
even say, ‘They are dead;’ that funereal word
not being fit for polite ears. He said, ‘They
have lived.’

The Roman Republic is saved! .. . It was
saved ; but the sequel deserves relating.

Some years afterwards, the social question
clumsily put by Catiline received a solution; the
ex-Chief of the Executive Power, as well as the
majority of the legislators he had saved by his
eloquence and by his axe, were proscribed in their
turn.

They perished, and history has kept a terrible
remembrance of the human hunt carried on in
the streets of Rome, in the residences of the citi-
zens, in the splendid villas of those sovereigns of
the world. Old Cicero, he who had formerly had

the unheard-of courage to put Roman citizens to
292 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

death without a trial, cared but little to preserve
the remains of his glorious life. He made an effort,
however; he started off in his litter from his beau-
tiful house at Tusculum, and went as far as the
sea-shore, where a vessel was waiting to take him
to a place of safety.

But sea-sickness frightened the old man; he
got into his litter again, and was going home, when
he met the soldiers furnished with the Triumvir’s
order. Nowadays a detachment of gendarmerie
would have been sent on the same duty. At a
sign from the brigadier the porters stopped, and
the old man, putting out his head, saw how the
case stood. ‘Approach,’ said he to the veteran
charged with the fatal order; ‘approach, and show
how you can strike.’

In those days heads were cut off, and it was
only when they were produced that the slayer re-
ceived his salary, the premium fixed upon each
dead man. The head was taken to the Triumvir
Anthony. Lawyers often say imprudent: things.
Cicero had formerly spoken ill of Anthony’s wife,

whose name was Fulvia, I believe,
ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS. 298

Fulvia, when she saw the head, took a long
pin from her hair, a gold pin, and pierced the
tongue. The orator’s head was then exposed on
the tribune, whence harangues were delivered.

Cicero had saved Rome from Catiline. What
would Catiline have done worse than Octavius ?

There are days when one likes to tell oneself
old stories. The day after to-morrow, fifteen legis-
lators will discuss whether or not they shall put
me to death to save the Republic.

The old story is not ended. When that gene-
ration had passed away, the social revolution was
consummated. The old structure had perished,
but the plebeians, tired of getting knocked about
in following the Gracchi, or Mariuses, or Cesars,
the plebeians had withdrawn from public life. If
they gave them bread and pleasant amusements,
they were only too glad to keep quiet.

As for the bourgeoisie (I say the bourgeoisie,
and not the nobility), however much Cicero’s
exploit may have saved them, their reign was
ended. They retained their fortunes, their rank,

their magistracies; with this difference, that
294 ROSSEL’S POSTHUMOUS PAPERS.

amongst the citizens there was a man. called
Cesar, or the Emperor, or the Prince, who, from
time to time, would send to a rich or influential
bourgeois, to let him know he was to kill him-
self ; and that bourgeois, who may have been
called Seneca, had leave to assemble a few friends,
give them a good dinner, and talk quietly with
them whilst his veins were being opened. The
plebeians looked on and cared not at all; they no
longer had any interest in the government of the
country.

’Twas thus that Cicero the Consul saved the
Roman Republic. He committed a crime, ’tis true ;
but the greatness of the results obtained served as

his excuse and added to his glory.

November 1871.

THE END.

LONDON:
ROBSON AND SONS, PRINTERS, PANCRAS ROAD, N.We