•ARIS COMMUNE ,83^4-5 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE PARIS COMMUNE. BY E. BELFORT BAX, Author of "The Religion of Socialism," "The Ethics of SociaHsm," "Life of Jean Paul Marat," " German Society at the End of the Middle Ages," " Manual of Philosophy," etc., etc. REPRINTED FROM "JUSTICES c THE TWENTIETH CENTURY PRESS, LIMITED, 37A, CLERKENWELL GREEN, EX. 1895. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2014 https://archive.org/details/shorthistoryofpaOObaxe PREFACE. The Commune of Paris is the one event which Socialists throughout the world have agreed with single accord to celebrate. Every i8th of March witnesses thousands of gatherings throughout the civilised world to commemorate the (alas I only temporary) victory of organised Socialist aspiration over the forces of property and privilege in 1871. The Commune, it is said, did little of a distinctively Socialistic character; it made made many mistakes; it was infatuated with the idea of decentralisation. All this is true. What constitutes the importance of the Commune in history is not certainly the measures that it enacted, is hot even its admirable conduct of the administration of a great metropolis under circumstances of extreme difficulty ; it is the fact that the Commune is a landmark as being the first administration manned by the working classes, having for its more or less conscious aim the reorganisation of Social conditions — the transformation of a Civilised Society into a Socialist Society. It is this question of aim as symbolised by the red flag, which is the central one. For, however nebulous may have been the views of some of ii those that took part in it that such was the aim of the movement has been recognised by friends and foes alike. What meant the blood-frenzy of the Versaillese ? What meant the tacit or avowed approval of the capitalistic press throughout the civiUsed world, at the most hideous carnage known to history, but the desperate rage of threatened class-interests ? We all recognise that those who died under the red flag in 187 1 died for Socialism, and a nobler army of martyrs no cause has ever had. In dedicating this little book to the Social-Democratic Federation, I should say that its initiation is due to my old friend Harry Quelch, now editor of Justice, in the columns of which journal it originally appeared in serial form. THE PARIS COMMUNE. I. INTRODUCTION. In an historical sketch of the events of the movement known as the Paris Commune of 187 1 it is desirable to start with the endeavour to fix that movement in its true historical perspective. Now, the Paris Commune occupies a peculiar position in the history of the proletarian movement. It forms the culmination of the first period of modern Socialism — a period in which the elements of prior movements were still clinging to it. The distinction between Socialism and Anarchism had not as yet fully emerged ; the Anarchistic- Individualistic doctrines of Proudhon still had adherents within the Socialist party ; while Bakounin was regarded as one of the pillars of the International. The old French Red Republican party, of which the Commune was the outcome and expression, was a very mixed concern. In addition to the elements above referred to, there were archaeological survivals of the ideas of '48, and even of the Jacobins of the Great Revolution. This first period of modern Socialism dates from the foundation of the Com- munist League and the issue of the Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels in 1847, and closes with the practical extinction of the eld International in 1873. After the great B 2 THE PARIS COMMUNE. work of the International in the Commune, it did nothing worth speaking of, although much feared by the authorities on the Continent. But apart from the Socialist move- ment in its proper sense, it is necessary, in order to fully understand the strains which composed the Paris Com- mune, to note more particularly its relation to the general revolutionary movement of '48 and to the French national revolutionary tradition. The European Revolution of 1848 was the culmination of the bourgeois revolutionary movement which began in the sixteenth century, and which in England partially, though very imperfectly, succeeded in breaking down the monarchical bureaucracy veneered with Feudalism — into which the mediaeval political system had become transformed — at the close of the seventeenth century. On the Continent, however, this transitional political order of things, based on the power of the reigning monarch (in Germany, prince or duke) and his functionaries, was not even " scotched," much less killed, before the end of the eighteenth century. In the general reaction which succeeded the French Revo- lution it was temporarily resuscitated with slight modifica- tions, but it suffered again a partial reverse in 1830-32, and from that time forward the irresistible wave of middle-class ascendancy gathered its forces till it swept all before it in the great revolutionary year. The middle-class was backed by the proletariat, as yet politically undifferentiated from it, and constituting, so to say, the body of the pro- gressive party, which the middle-class leaders claimed to direct as its head. One of the main features of the popular movement of '48 was " patriotism," by which was understood centralisation — the "United Germany," United Italy," "Independent Hungary" mania, and the rest. All the united, indepen- dent, and patriotic balderdash, over which so rnueh INTRODUCTION. 3 rhetorical froth and so many gallons of good black ink were expended, has since been realised. They have it now, all for which they strove. And what good has come of all the centralising bureaucratisation that the patriotic forty-eighter " orated, struggled, gushed, and wept for by turns as the goal of human aspiration ? These precious united " nationalities are now groaning under the united and independent military and administrative budgets of their respective beloved fatherlands. One would think, if one is to risk one's skin at all in a revolutionary enter- prise, it were better to save it for something more worth having than the sorry result for which most of the Con- tinentals of '48 were so eager to risk theirs ! In 1848 the present constitutional basis of Europe was established, and since then the middle-class " advanced " movements have become more and more moderate as the class itself has become politically dominant and settled down. The revolt of even the small middle-classes has, since '48, disappeared, its main object having been attained, such changes as the poorer section of the class demand, with few exceptions, having been striven for by peaceful and constitutional methods. In 1848, in short, the bourgeoisie, which had long been economically domi- nant, put the finishing touch to its political emancipation. Yet the '48 Revolution, though predominantly a middle- class concern is signalised by the first appearance of the proletariat in conscious opposition to the middle-class — to wit, in the German Communist League and the Paris in- surrection of June in that year. The former of these movements was the beginning of Socialism ; the latter, though, as above said, a conscious class-movement, was in its form and general character rather a survival of the original revolt of the French proletariat during the great Revolution than the beginning of any new departure on B 2 4 THE PARIS COMMUNE. the part of the French working-classes, notwithstanding that the immediate plank " was Louis Blanc's scheme. Indeed, at this time and for some years later, " scientific Socialism," as we understand it to day, was practically unknown in France, the brilliant essays of Proudhon being the nearest approach to anything of the kind. It remains to say a few words on the revolutionary tradi- tion in France. Amongst the working-classes of the large towns — notably of Paris, of course, but also of Lyons, Marseilles, and other places — the remembrance of the power and position of the then young proletariat during the great years of the Revolution, 1792 to 1794, had lingered on ever since, now and again bursting out in somewhat aimless revolt, and again slumbering for a while, but always there. The party of the people embodying this tradition, which, of course, from time to time absorbed new ideas of a Socialistic nature as they arose, became definitely constituted in 1848, and was known after that year as the Red Republican Party, from the fact that, in the June in- surrection, the red flag was adopted by the insurgents (I believe at the suggestion of Louis Blanc, when the national workshops system was the immediate question at issue) and everywhere acclaimed as the banner of the class-con- scious proletariat and of Socialistic Republicanism, in opposition to the tricolour, which was that of the middle- classes and of bourgeois or political Republicanism. Such was the origin of the flag which is now, the world over, the great ensign of the modern Socialist movement. In addition to the active Red Republican Party and its popular leaders, there has always existed in France a class of men who have made the history of the great Revolution their life-study. These men naturally conceive of every revolution as modelling itself on the lines of the French Revolution of 1789-96. Their influence has reacted on INTRODUCTION. S the popular movement and its leaders, and confirmed the natural bias of every Frenchman to try and re-live and re-act the greatest epoch in his national history, the general outlines and prominent names of which he is familiar with from his youth up. In addition to the foregoing influences, there was, of course, that of the International, and with it, the Marxists, who had been industriously propagandising among the Parisian working-classes for five or six years past, and who made their influence felt at the time we are speaking of. Such was the amalgam of tendencies and ideas — Proud- honism, neo-Jacobinism reminiscences of '48, with a recent infusion of the modern Socialism of Marx — which in various proportions went to constitute the mental back- ground alike of the leaders and the rank and file of the French Red Republican Party in 1871, at the time when it established the Commune of Paris. 6 THE PARIS COMMUNE. 11. PROLOGUE. The shoddy splendour and the all-penetrating corruption of the second French Empire had been overtaken by their Nemesis. After the defeat at Sedan came the Revolution of the 4th of September which gave the Empire its parting kick, and established, provisionally at least, the Republic. The Germans were soon in full march upon Paris, and the incapable and (from the point of view of its mandate) treacherous, "Government of National Defence" just established, was organising, Trochu at its head, the resist- ance. The members of the Government did not believe in the possibility of defending the capital, and wanted to capitulate, while the working classes, and a large pro- portion of the smaller middle-classes, were mad for war to the knife. It is difficult as to this point to feel much sympathy with either side. For my own part I am utterly unable to appreciate the enthusiasm of M. Lissagaray for the stupid chauvinistic frenzy of the general population of Paris in wishing to sacrifice untold thousands of lives in a more than doubtful attempt to drive back " les Prussiens for the sake of rehabilitating the tarnished military glory of " la patrie " ; while on the other hand nothing can excuse Trochu and his consorts, the bourgeois political nota- bilities, for accepting a definite mandate, and then not only not doing their best for success, but distinctly riding for a fall. On the 2oth of September Paris was invested and the four months' siege began. The popular excitement within the city, during the whole time was intense. The popula- tion resolutely declined to believe in the possibility of the PROLOGUE. 7 city being taken and at every reverse, threatening demon- strations against the impotent Provisional Government were made. Twice a revolution was on the point of being accomplished — on the 31st of October, 1870. and on the 22nd of January, 1871. Of course, resistance to the foreign enemy was what was uppermost in all minds and the demands of the Parisian masses for the establishment of a Commune were largely based on reminiscences of the wonders effected in this connection by the first Paris Com- mune in 1792-3. On the 31st of October the Hotel de Ville, the seat of the Government, was invaded by an angry crowd, some demanding a committee of public safety, some the revolutionary Commune. The National Guards, dis- gusted, refused to come to the Governmental assistance. The members of the Government were made prisoners, and Flourens and Blanqui, the two well-known popular leaders, for a few hours got the upper hand. But it was impossible to effect anything. Anarchical confusion and a babel of tongues reigned throughout the municipal head- quarters. Finally, towards evening the reactionists suc- ceeded in stirring up some battalions of the National Guard to release and reinstate the members of the Govern- ment. They used the names of Flourens and Blanqui as a bogey to scare the timid and the middle-class. Thus the day ended in a fiasco from a revolutionary point of view. The resuscitated Government was compelled, however, to proclaim an amnesty to all who had played a part in the proceedings, but subsequently, in violation of all pledges, Blanqui was arrested, and, after the siege, put on his trial for the share he had taken, and Flourens was arrested and im- prisoned within a few days. The result of the 31st of October was to strengthen the hands of the Government of National Defence, which, following the example of the de- posed emperor, demanded and obtained a plebiscite of 8 THE PARIS COMMUNE. Parisians in its favour. Hence the old useless sorties continued as before. Christmas came and the New Year, but the defence got no forwarder. At last, on the 20th of January, Trochu summoned the mayors of the twenty arrondissements of the city, and declared all further holding-out impossible. The chauvinist Parisians were struck dumb with indig- nation at the idea of surrender, but the next day the mayors were again summoned and informed that the general staff had decided not to make another sortie, and, in short, that it was absolutely essential to open negotia- tions with the enemy at once. On the night of the 21st the Government, after a heated and lengthy discussion of the situation, replaced Trochu by another General, Vinoy. Early the next morning found Flourens at liberty, his prison having been stormed by a friendly battalion of "Nationals." Meanwhile the authorities were taking every precaution against the threatened proletarian insur- rection. But by midday of the 22nd the call-drum was beating in the Batignolles district and elsewhere, and early in the afternoon the Hotel de Ville was surrounded by hostile National Guards and an angry crowd demanding the Commune. The Hotel de Ville was defended by gardes mobiles^ who were replied to by " Nationals," and a fusillade lasting three-quarters of an hour ensued, in- volving over thirty killed, after which a body of gendarmes appeared, and the insurgents retreated and dispersed, leaving about a dozen prisoners in the hands of the authorities. A few days later the city was formally sur- rendered, the terms having been signed, and on the 29th of the month the German flag was hoisted on the forts. The elections which were now held for the purpose of ratifying the terms of peace were carefully manipulated by the reactionary elements throughout the provinces — although PROLOGUE. 9 Paris remained stoutly Republican— and showed an enor- mous clerical and monarchical majority. This so-called " National Assembly," not content with fulfilling its man- date of settling the terms of peace, at once set about openly scheming for the overthrow of the Republic. The so-called pact of Bordeaux established a concordat between the two rival Royalist factions under the leadership of the old Orleanist minister, Adolphe Thiers, who was immedi- ately constituted chief of the Executive by the Assembly. The next thing to do was to deal with the armed popu- lace, the workmen and small middle-class, in the shape of the various bodies of National Guards throughout the country, above all the most numerous, most determined, and, owing to its position, most influential of them, the National Guard of Paris. In stipulating the surrender of Paris, Jules Favre, acting for the Government of National Defence, had arranged for the retention of their arms by the Parisian Nationals. This was not done out of any affection for the citizen soldiers, but because the Govern- ment well knew that any attempt to disarm this proletarian army would be met by a resistance they had no adequate means of dealing with, and which would not improbably have upset them and all their^schemes, especially the terms of surrender, which were regarded by all classes as already humiliating enough. But as soon as the conditions of peace were definitely settled the hostility of the new Assembly to Republican Paris became marked, and the intention of crushing all revolutionary elements, first and foremost the National Guard, was openly shown. The people organised on their side. The city, from the be- ginning of February to the i8th of March, was, as it were, sullenly standing at bay against the Assembly and the Government which did not as yet dare its great coup — the disarmament. 10. THE PARIS COMMUNE. III. THE I 8th of march. As already stated in the last chapter, the Assembly of reactionary bourgeois riff-raff and aristocratic fossils, hurriedly elected at the beginning of February for the sole purpose of concluding peace, had no sooner met at Bordeaux than it began insulting the deputies for Paris. The terms of peace ratified, it resolved to continue its functions as a legislative body in defiance of the limitations of its mandate. But this was not all. The insults to Paris culminated when the Assembly passed a resolution to decapitalise the Metropolis and transfer itself and the Government to Versailles. This was the last straw, which came on the top of a number of other things. Rumours were confirmed of the projected immediate suppression of the only resource of the workmen, their is. 3d. a day as National Guards, of their impending disarmament, and, as if of set purpose to drive them on to starvation and despair, of the undelayed enforcement of all overdue bills and all arrears of rent suspended during the siege. Throughout February the International and other work- men's and revolutionary associations had been active, and the indignation of the smaller bourgeoisie at the conduct of the Government of J^ational Defence, and their irritation at the attitude of the new Assembly as regarded Paris and the Republic, made them lend their passive, where not active, support to the popular movement. Various mass meetings were held and committees formed — the upshot of which was the constitution of the Central Committee of the National Guard, three members being elected for THE I 8th of march. II each arrondissement. There were also some sub-com- mittees, the most important being that of the Montmartre division^ having its office in the Rue des Rosiers, and which has sometimes been mistaken for the Central Com- mittee itself. The Central Committee was composed entirely of obscure men, till then utterly unknown to public life, but elected for their integrity and practical capacity by the comrades of their district. The suppression of Red-Republican journals by General Vinoy, the treacherous condemnation to death of Flourens and Blanqui for the part taken by them in the affair of the 31st of October, coming on the iith of March, the same day that the resolution to decentralise Paris became known, gave further edge to the popular fury and to the determination to resist. From this time, to the 1 8th the storm was visibly impending ; but the Central Committee, backed by the International and the workmen's organisa- tions, declared that the first shot should be fired by the other side. There were at this stage three distinct elements in the Parisian movement — (i) The element of Municipal patriotism, the desire to see Paris remain paramount in France, possessing a municipal council with extensive local powers ; (2) The determination to protect the Re- public, as such, from the obvious Monarchical conspiracy being planned against it ; and (3) The definitely Socialist Revolutionary element represented mainly, though not exclusively, by the International. The small middle-class, as might be expected, were in general moved by the first two objects ; but, as we shall see, as the Revolution pro- ceeded, its Socialistic telosy implicit from the first, came more and more to the fore, till in two or three weeks it had completely absorbed the whole movement. It is desirable to point this out, as there is a fatuous 12 THE PARIS COMMUNE. Fabianesque type of quibbler who has occasionally tried to exaggerate the first two elements, which had their share at the inception of the Commune, in order to discount its Socialistic character. It is this same sort of insufferable quidnunc who is always enlightening the public mind on the true significance of Socialism, explaining that it only means the General Post Office somewhat exaggerated — nothing more whatever ! Thiers and his ministers, members of the old National Defence gang, arrived in Paris on the isth of March, and at once set about their measures for the great step of the disarmament of the popular force of the Metropolis. The proceeding relied upon the gullibility or imbecility of the Parisians to an incredible extent. The Government had? at the most, 25,000 considerably demoralised and other- wise not very reliable troops, while the National Guard numbered nearly 100,000 men, and although some few batallions might possibly have been gained over to the Assembly, yet they were an insignificant number as against those loyal to the Central Committee. Under these unfavourable conditions, Thiers, prompted, it is said, by the big financial thimble-riggers of the Bourse, decided to begin operations. The first thing to be done was to seize the cannon ; and accordingly the order was secretly given, on the 17th, for 250 pieces of ordnance to be removed from Montmartre. It was all but executed by a surprise at 3 o'clock on the morning of the i8th by a couple of brigades of the regular army, scarcely any resistance being offered. But though the cannons were seized while the people were asleep, with a fatal want of foresight the Government omitted to provide any means of transport, and while this was under way Montmartre awoke and began to take in the situation. The walls were covered THE i8tH of march. 13 by a placard, in which the ominous word " order " appeared — a word which, as we all know, generally spells bloodshed. The women were the first to move, it is said, and surrounded the cannon, apostrophising the soldiers, who hesitated. Meanwhile the rappel was beaten by a couple of drums throughout the district, and bodies of Guards began to roll up. Stragglers of the regulars " joined them, and the whole throng penetrated up to the Buttes Montmartre, defended by a brigade under General Lecomte, some of the foremost men of which made signs of fraternisation. Lecomte seeing this, ordered the recal- citrants under arrest, at the same time threatening them with the words, "You shall receive your deserts." A few shots were exchanged between federals and regulars, with- out doing much harm, when suddenly a body of guards, the butt ends of their muskets up, accompanied by a motley crowd of women and children, debouched from the neighbouring street, the Rue des Rosiers. Lecomte gave the order to fire three times. His men stood immovable. The crowd pushed forward and fraternised with the troops, who immediately afterwards seized the ruffian with his officers. The soldiers whom he had just before arrested wanted to shoot him forthwith, but some Nationals rescued him and took him to the head-quarters of the staff of the National Guard, where they made him sign an order for the evacuation of his positions. Similar incidents occurred with the other brigades. There was hardly any resistance to the insurrection. The soldiers fraternised on all sides. In three hours, by II o'clock, all was over, almost all the cannon recaptured, almost all the battalions of the National Guard afoot, joined by numbers of regulars — in short, the insurrection master of the field. The Government, in spite of procla 14 THE PARIS COMMUNE. mations and adjurations, could do nothing ; a few hundred men were the most that rallied to them. Thiers, seeing the whole of Paris against him, insisted upon the immediate evacuation of the city, including the forts on the south, by the Government and remaining troops. He escaped by a back door from the Hotel de Ville to Versailles. The insurrection, it will be observed, now that it had come, was a purely spontaneous popular movement. The Central Committee did not meet till com- paratively late in the day. This lack of preparation and organisation had its drawbacks, however, in spite of the immediate success, as we shall presently see. At half-past four in the afternoon, a general who had had a hand in the slaughtermg of the insurgents in 1848, Clement Thomas by name, was arrested. There were many who tried to rescue him from a summary execution, crying, " Wait for the Committee ! " " Constitute a court martial ! " but without avail. The old martinet was thrust against a wall in the Rue des Rosiers, and riddled with bullets from twenty chassepots. Though the scoundrel doubtless deserved his fate, it is to be regretted that the formality of a trial was not observed, as the score against him was an old one. The same observation does not apply to Lecomte, who had been seized zn flagrante delicto in the morning, ordering a massacre. This cowardly miscreant, when the door of the room where he was confined was burst open by an angry crowd, grovelled on his knees, spoke of his family, and whined for mercy. What had he cared for the fathers of families among his would-be victims to the cause of " order " of a few hours before ? He was taken outside, and justice was summarily dealt out to him. Of course, the bourgeois journals every- where bellowed loudly at the execution of these two rascally bandits of their cause. THE I 8th of march. 15 The Central Committee and the staff of the National Guard now began to take measures for occupying the Government offices and the chief strategical positions. In the evening Jules Ferry slunk off after Thiers. Jules Favre subsequently made his escape. Late at night Vinoy succeeded in getting off his troops from the various barracks of Paris with their baggage and ammunition. Versailles was, of course, the rallying point of the whole crew. Albwing the Government and troops to slip through their fingers was the first serious mistake made by the Insurrection. This was owing to lack of discipline, organisation, and preparedness. Nothing would have been easier, if the Committee had been active and alert, than to have closed all the gates, arrested all the Governmental authorities, civil and military, to await their trial. The little man," Thiers, and all the rest would have been then under their thumb. This only proves that though a popular ebullition may indeed make a revolution, yet that without organisation it will very soon ma/:e a mess of it. 1 6 THE PARIS COMMUNE. IV. THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE AND THE REACTION. The 19th of March saw the red flag waving over the Hotel de Ville and all the public buildings of the city. The Revolution had triumphed, but it had made its first mistake : it had allowed the heads of the Government to •escape with the elements of an army. The Central Com- mittee was supreme, but stupefied by its sudden accession to absolute power. Two of the members alone had the presence of mind to suggest the only course to retrieve the previous day's mistake, viz., to march at once on Ver- sailles, then virtually at their mercy, disperse the Assembly, and arrest the ringleaders of the Reaction. The others hung on legal technicalities. Meanwhile the clearing of the Government offices and the transference of yet more military to Versailles still went on. But the Committee (to its honour in one sense) was too eager to abdicate its functions and proceed to the elections for the Commune, to think of shutting the gates, or indeed of anything else. In order to legalise the situation and put the Revolution right with the rest of France, the co-operation of the deputies for Paris and of the mayors was resolved to be sought, in •concert with whom the Committee wished to proclaim the elections. The Thiers crew now played out their last card, in the final number which they issued of the Journal Officiel^ alleging the Committee to have assassinated in cold blood the Generals Lecomte and Clement-Thoma-s, and asking whether the National Guard would take upon itself THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE AND THE REACTION. 1 7 the responsibility for these assassinations." The Com- mittee, to its credit, did not allow itself to be bullied into disavowing these righteous, if too hasty, acts of popular justice ; but confined itself to inserting a note in the new number of the Journal Officiel (which from this day passed into its hands), explaining its true position with respect to them. The Governmental appeal had little effect on the National Guard, though it was followed by the defection of the QuartierLatin (the students), hitherto to the fore in all revolutions ; but the essentially bourgeois character of which, despite its Bohemian veneer, became now clearly apparent. The delegation of mayors who came to the Hotel de Ville, after much debating, failed to effect anything. Clemenceau, who was their spokesman, urged the Com- mittee to abdicate its functions to the deputies and mayors, who would use their best offices to obtain satisfaction for Paris from the Assembly. Varlin, one of the Committee, explained that what was wanted was no mere municipality, but a quasi-autonomous Paris, with police and legislative power, united to the rest of France by the bond of federal union alone. Even good Socialists like Milliere and Malon doubted the expediency of the Committee's initiative. It was finally decided that the Committee in its turn should send four delegates to the Radical deputies and mayors assembled in the town hall of the 2nd Arrondissement. This they did \ but after several hours' wrangling, in which Louis Blanc, Clemenceau, and other Radicals, to their shame, gibed at the Committee as an insurrectionary body, refusing to treat with it on an equality, no understanding was arrived at, and the dele- gates left. Next morning the mayors made a final attempt to get possession of the Hotel de Ville, and sent one of their number to demand it of the Committee. The c i8 THE PARIS COMMUNE. latter refused to abdicate until a Commune had been elected, and forthwith issued a proclamation that the elections would be held on the following Wednesday, the 22nd. It was only too obvious that a surrender to the deputies and mayors meant a complete knuckling down to Thiers and his Assembly. The next thing for the Committee to do was to re- organise the public services, purposely thrown into as much disorder as possible by their late occupants prior to their flight. The Government hoped thereby to render It impossible for their successors to carry on the administra- tion of the great metropolis. The newcomers, however, set bravely to work, and overcame all obstacles of this kind. But meanwhile the Committee, not realising that they were about to enter on a life-and-death struggle, had committed a military blunder which practically sealed the fate of the Revolution. Between Paris and Versailles, on a hill a little to the righr, lies the largest and most strategically important of the forts— Mont Valerien. This had been abandoned on an order from Thiers, made during his flight — he, with a civilian's lack of knowledge of fortifica- tion, believing it not to be worth holding. As a matter of fact, it was the military key to the whole position. For thirty-six hours it remained empty ; but the Committee, instead of at once placing a strong garrison there, regarded it as a matter of subsidiary importance, and contented them- selves with some vague and lying assurances (as the event proved) of its having been occupied, together with the other forts, given by a portentous, half-crazed officer named Lullier, who, by his swagger, had imposed upon them and acquired thereby the temporary com- mand. The military staff at Versailles, wiser in their generation, had meanwhile forced an order for its reoccu- pation from Thiers, and the morning of the 20th found THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE AND THE REACTION. 1 9 Mont Valerien well munitioned and occupied by i,ooo Versaillese soldiers. On the 2 1 St the Central Committee suspended the sale of pledged goods, forbade landlords to evict their tenants till further notice, and prolonged the voucher bills for a month. The same day the Radical deputies and mayors made a protest against the elections announced for the next day, as illegal — falsely alleging, at the same time, that the Assembly had guaranteed the maintenance of the National Guard, the Municipal elections at an early date, and other things. The Press and all the Respectability of the capital joined in a chorus of denunciation of the elections and of the Committee's action. A rabble of swell mobsmen and fancy men paraded the Place de la Bourse, shouting Down with the Committee ! " Long live the Assembly The hostility of a few of the arrondisse- ments was so great that it became necessary to postpone the elections till the following day. All this time Versailles, its recently-arrived Assembly, and all their hangers-on, were in a state of abject and grovelling panic. News came in of revolts in several towns of the departments, and there was an hourly dread of the approach of the battalions of the National Guard. The subsequently confirmed forger, Jules Favre, delivered an harangue in the Chamber, denouncing the insurrection in choice expletives and bristling with threatenings and slaughter at Paris — an harangue which the cowering crew of terrified reactionists applauded with wild extravagance, almost falling on the forger's neck in their enthusiasm. The next day the black-coated rabble spoken of above, together with some journalists and others, with Admiral Suisset at their back, again set forth, many of them with arms concealed in their clothes, this time towards the Place Vendome, the object being to expel the National c 2 20 THE PARIS COMMUNE. Guards from that position under cover of a peaceful demonstration. Spying two sentries of the National Guard, they made for them and nearly murdered them. Seeing this, about 200 Guards promptly took up their position at the top of the Rue de la Paix. They were greeted with savage cries, and sword-sticks were levelled at them. Bergeret, their leader, repeatedly summoned the rioters to retire, without avail. Finally, seeing the Nationals " indisposed to use force, the rioters took courage and drew their revolvers, killing two of the Guard and wounding seven others The muskets of the Na- tionals then went off, leaving a dozen dead, and a large number of revolvers, swordsticks, and hats in the street. The mob scattered in all directions, yelling. Of course, ever on the alert for a pretext for a howl at the movement, the bourgeois press everywhere made immense capital out of this incident. Punch's celebrated special constable — who says to the Chartist, " If I kill you, mind it's nothing ; but if you kill me, by George ! its murder " — wasn't in it with the journalists on respectable " middle-class news- papers on this occasion. THE ELECTION OF THE COMMUNE. 21 V. THE ELECTION OF THE COMMUNE. Notwithstanding the slight rallying of the bourgeois and reactionary arrondissements referred to in the last chapter, it was impossible for order " to effect any real foothold within the city. In a day or two the loyal " National Guards who were going to do such wonders for the Assembly melted into nothing. The Committee sent battalions of National Guards into all the reactionary quarters, and quiet if not " order " inside Paris at least, was re-estab- lished. A few days previously two members of the Committee, Varlin and Jourde, had, through Rothschild, obtained a million francs from the Bank of France. This was now exhausted with the initial expenses of organising the public services, and the wages of the National Guard. The Com- mittee again sent Varlin and Jourde to the bank for supplies, but this time they were received with insults, and gentle persuasion in the shape of a couple of battalions of the National Guard had to be forwarded in order to effect a disbursement. This question of the Bank was a crucial one. Its treatment at the hands of the Committee, and a few days later at those of the Commune, who followed in the same steps, showed a childish want of grasp of the situation, and constituted the third fatal blunder of the Revolution. There was enough in specie and in securities in the Bank to have bought up the whole of the Versailles Army. In addition to this there were ninety thousand titles of depositors to serve as hostages for the good behaviour of the Government as representing the middle- 22 THE PARIS COMMUNE. classes throughout France. The Committee, and after- wards the Commune, instead of seizing the whole concern allowed the management to remain, with its entire staff, barring the Chief Governor who had fled, and went cap in hand from time to time to solicit the requisite funds. The sub-governor by a little diplomacy succeeded before long in nobbling an old gentleman named Beslay, who though no more than a Radical bourgeois had had the pluck to stick gallantly to Paris, yet who, in spite of his personal honesty, had all the prejudices of his class when financial matters were concerned. He was nevertheless selected as go-between with the Bank and the Revolution. But to return to the days of March. The mayors now concen- trated all their efforts towards trying to further postpone the elections. These had, after two postponements, been definitely fixed by the Committee for Sunday the 26th of March. At last the insults toward Paris, and the general attitude of the Assembly having disgusted many even of the moderate Republicans there was a disposition to com- promise on the part of the mayors, and the 30th was pro- posed. The Committee however stuck to the 26th, and eventually five mayors, including Clemenceau and Floquet, finding resistance hopeless reluctantly signed a manifesto sanctioning the elections. The rest did not protest though they kept steadily aloof. The adhesion of the mayors, such as it was, gave the elections the cachet of technical legality. On the Sunday, 287,000 men accordingly went to the poll, and the Paris Commune was elected and proclaimed amid general rejoicing. On the Monday there was a muster of National Guards (arms piled up in front of them) and civilian electors, in the " place'' of the Hotel de Ville to greet the newly installed representatives of Paris. Salutes of cannon, bands playing the Marseillaise, and THE ELECTION OF THE COMMUNE. 23 enthusiastic shouts made the welkin ring. The spies of Versailles declared the whole of Paris infected. The members of the new Commune appeared again and again on the balcony of the Hotel de Ville in response to the deafening shouts which demanded them. Amongst the elected, although the majority were Revolutionists and, at least up to their lights. Socialists, there were a small number of bourgeois Liberals and Radicals chosen, but these very soon found an excuse for backing out of an enterprise which they saw they could not manipulate as they had hoped. At the first meeting of the Commune, the before- mentioned well-meaning bourgeois Beslay was chosen president by virtue of his seniority, and it must be admitted, made a not altogether bad opening speech. The Commune next day proceeded to apportion itself in com- mittees. There was an Executive Committee composed of Lefrancais, Duval, Felix Pyat (the old forty-eighter with a reputation which he owed to the rhetoric he talked and penned), Bergeret, Tridon, Eudes, and Vaillant (the Blan- quist, now member of the Chamber). The other com- mittees were Finance, of which Varlin and Jourde were members, Justice, Public Safety, Labour Exchange, Vic- tualling, Foreign Policy, Public Works, and Education. One of the first acts of the Commune was to grant a complete release from all rent from October, 1870 to July 187 1. Thus a vast number of poor people were relieved from a crushing liability which they were utterly unable to meet without ruin. This was all very proper as far as it went, but the Commune omitted to perform two impor- tant duties which the situation imperatively demanded, the first was to issue a clear and easily intelligible manifesto explaining its programme and plan of action. The second and if anything still more serious omission was not keeping in touch with the provinces, which immediately after the 24 THE PARIS COMMUNE. 1 8th of March had shown the most favourable signs of sympathetic action with Paris. Lyons, Marseilles, St. Etienne, Narbonne, Toulouse, and other towns started Communes, some of them, notably Marseilles and Narbonne, with considerable chances of success. But they received no support or even communications from the head-centre of the movement. As a consequence, isolated materially and morally, they most of them came to grief in a few days. Marseilles and Narbonne held out the longest, but in a fort- night the whole Communistic movement in the provinces was dead. Thiers and his Versaillese, again wise in their generation, left no stone unturned to detach the provinces from all sympathy with Paris, and issued notices to all the prefects, maligning Paris and the Revolution, misrepre- senting every fact and fabricating every lie. Having succeeded in rooting out the Commune in the pro- vinces Thiers proceeded to stop all goods trains for Paris and to cut off all the postal communications. Rampont, the post- master received orders to violate the undertaking he had entered into with Thiesz, the postal delegate of the Com- mittee, and to disorganise the postal service. The stupid Committee and Commune, hoping to the last that peace would be preserved, took no further steps for the eventu- ality of war. The Assembly on its side, proceeded steadily organising the isolation of Paris and consolidation of their army which was now strengthened by several regiments of released prisoners of war from Germany. By the end of March all the " moderate " members of the Commune had resigned with the exception of old Beslay. The inter- national character of the movement was accentuated by the unanimous confirmation of the election of Frankel, the Austrian, in the 13th Arondissement. Meanwhile, the " respectable " population, the friends of " order were migrating en masse to Versailles. THE WAR BEGINS WITH DISASTER. 25 VI. THE WAR BEGINS WITH DISASTER FOR THE COMMUNE. On the ist of April Thiers officially declared war in a circular sent to the Prefects, and the same day, without any warning given to Paris, the Versaillese opened fire upon the town. The Parisians were in consternation at the re-commencement of the siege. No one had thought that matters would really come to this pass. Everywhere within the city was bustle and confusion. The military commission of the Commune placarded the following : — The Royalist conspirators have attacked — our moderate attitude notwithstanding. Our duty is to defend the city against this wanton aggression." That day but little was done. The Versaillese attacked and drove off an inade- quate garrison of Federals at Courbeovie, taking five prisoners, one a lad of fifteen, all of whom they murdered in cold blood. This was the beginning of the series of atrocities perpetrated by those fiends in human shape which culminated in that sublimest tragedy in modern history, the bloody week." After much discussion a sortie was decided upon by the military authorities of the Commune for the next day. That night Cluseret was appointed dele- gate of war, in company with Eudes, one of the military men of the situation. The National Guard, suddenly called upon to act, was in a state of great dis- organisation, often without staff officers or any guiding spirit, and much confusion resulted in consequence. At length, at midnight, three columns were got together. The 36 THE PARIS COMMUNE. plan was to make a strong demonstration in the direction of Reuil as a blind for a column under Bergeret and Flourens to operate on the right, while Eudes and Duval, respectively, were to command those on the centre and the left. Unfortunately, these excellent men had never commanded a battalion in the field before, in addition to which the sub-officering, as before said, was hopelessly defective. The elementary requisites of a campaign were neglected; artillery, ambulances, and ammunition-wagons were everywhere else except where they should have been. At about 3 o'clock on the morning of the 3rd of April, Bergeret's column, 10,000 men strong, but with only eight cannon, reached the bridge at Neuilly. They proceeded quite coolly on their way, under the range of Mont Valerien, every JSTational Guard believing it to be in possession of the Commune, when suddenly shells burst from the great fortress, spreading death and destruction in the ranks of the Federals and severing the column into two halves. Panic, confusion, and cries of treachery," over- whelmed everything. I well remember my astonishment at the headlong folly of the Federals' confidence in Mont Valerian being safe, since the English papers had days pre- viously published the information of its occupation by the Versaillese. It seemed incredible that what was known to us over here should have been utterly unknown to those on the spot and most immediately interested. The fact v^as the leaders did know that Mont Valerian was lost to the Commune, but hoped the troops of the line would refuse to fire, and so kept the fact secret. The memory of how the linesmen had fraternised on the i8th of March, and reports as to the untrustworthiness of the Assembly's soldiers, now reinforced by regiments from Germany, had deceived them. They forgot that for this THE WAR BEGINS WITH DISASTER. 27 important fort Thiers' military staff had selected their men, and they forgot, moreover, that insubordination in the interior of a fortess is a very different thing from insubordination in the open street under the moral pressure of a sympathetic crowd ready to protect the insubordinate from the vengeance of their superior officers. This deception, however well-intentioned it may have been, was little less than criminal under the circum- stances. Most of the Guards scattered in all directions, and finally found their way back to Paris, only about 1,200 remaining with Bergeret, and pushing on. They were supported by Flourens, who, with only a thousand men (the rest having also straggled off, such was the state of discipline), routed the Versaillese vanguard, and occupied the village of Bougival. A whole Versaillese army corps was directed against this detachment, and the Parisian vanguard had to fall back on Rueil, where a few men had held the position, the object being to cover Bergeret's retreat. Flourens was here surprised with his staff, and this noble-hearted people's hero was killed, his head cleft with a sabre. Poor Flourens was a type of revolutionist of whom we have few nowadays left. Many there are now who undertand the economic question better than Flourens, but none we know who have quite that old-world chivalrous devotion to the Revolution which this remarkable man had, and which so endeared him to the impressionable working-classes of Paris. Of a well-to-do middle-class family, Flouren's impulsive nature led him in his early youth to join an insurrection against the Turks in the Levant. During the latter part of the Second Empire he was, next to Rochefort, the most prominent people's agitator. His untimely death threw a gloom over all Paris, and heightened the effect of the defeat. The centre column under Eudes was not more success- 28 THE PARIS COMMUNE. ful than the others. Duval, through mismanagement, was left unsupported, and had to surrender. He was murdered by order of Vinoy, in spite of pledges given to the contrary. Crowds of Guards returned disheartened in the evening. The only good point, from a military point of view, in the day's proceedings was the sup- plying of Fort Issy with cannon through the energy and thoughtfulness of Ranvier. The disaster of the 3rd of April, however, notwithstanding all, had the effect of stirring up the whole latent resisting strength of the National Guard. Next day all the forts were manned. The Commune even gained a few points, within a day or two re-occupying Courbevoie, and holding the bridge of Neuilly, but it was not for long. There was no lack of heroism. The Porte Maillot held out for weeks under the fire of Mont Valerien. Yet to the onlooker versed in military lore it was evident that the situation meant a prolonged death agony for Paris. With Mont Valerien lost there was no hope. In a few days the Commune was everywhere on the defensive. Meanwhile strict care was taken by the Versaillese to prevent any tendency favourable to Paris from manifesting itself at Versailles. Officers who merely expressed regret at the fratricical struggle were secretly murdered by order of the villains with whom the whole of the respectable classes of Europe sided. On the 6th of April took place the funeral of those killed in the disastrous sortie of the 3rd, and an imposing sight it was. Two hundred thousand accompanied the catafalque to the Pere la Chaise cemetery. Five members of the Commune, headed by the old hero of '48, Delescluze, followed as chief mourners. At the grave, the aged man, the father of the Revolution, spoke a few words, after which the vast concourse dispersed. From this time forward the THE WAR BEGINS WITH DISASTER. 29 history of the Commune is largely a history of military blunders and incapacity allied with bravery and good intentions. We shall, however, deal very briefly with the purely military side of the movement, as that has mainly a local and temporary interest, and moreover cannot be properly understood without a large map of Paris and its environs. THE PARIS COMMUNE. VII. CONCERNING VARIOUS MATTTERS. Cluseret now entered upon his duties as delegate of war. His name was already known to Englishmen owing to his connection with the Fenian attack' on Chester Castle in 1867. He is regarded by many active participators in the Commune as at once insincere and incapable. The latter charge seems to be fairly made out, as to the former I am not prepared to offer any opinion. There were two main plans of defence possible to be adopted, that of the outer enceinte^ with its forts, redoubts, &c., but which required more men, more means, and more military experience than the Commune had at its disposal, and that of the inner enceinte, the ramparts, which if effectively carried out would have made Paris practically impregnable. Cluseret and the Commune adopted neither, but messed about with both, neutralising the one by the other. The cowardly assassinations of Flourens and Duval had excited everyone. In deference to public opinion the Commune ordered the seizure of hostages in fall accord- ance with the practice recognised by war. Unfortunately the best hostages they could have had had been allowed to escape at the outset of the movement. However, Darboy, the Archbishop of Paris, Lagarde, his grand-vicar, Duguerry, Cure of the Madeleine, Bonjean, Presiding Judge of the Court of Appeal, Jecker, a financial politician responsible for the Mexican expedition, and a few Jesuits were laid by the heels. A decree and a proclamation were then issued threatening reprisals in the event of any further CONCERNING VARIOUS MATTERS. 3 1 murders on the part of the Versaillese. But the decree remained a dead letter. The Versaillese continued their cold-blooded assassination of prisoners, and no reprisals were taken. As I propose devoting a separate chapter to the consideration of the whole question of the hostages I shall say no more here. The fatal incapacity and weakness of the Commune now for the first time became apparent in internal and external policy. Ever since its first sitting, however, it had become increasingly evident that it was below the the level of the situation. Beyond two or three comparatively unimpor- tant decrees a fortnight showed no constructive work done. Meanwhile immense heroism was displayed at certain points of the outworks by the Federal troops. The Porte- Maillot, a frightful position, exposed to the full fire of Mont Valerien, was held for seven weeks by successive relays of men. It was now that that marvel of self-devoting intrepidity, Dombrowski the Pole, appeared upon the scene. This man by his calm fearlessness and dashing courage performed incredible feats with the slenderest means. He swept the Versaillese from Asnieres, while his equally heroic brother took the Castle of Becon, and, what was still more, routed the troops of Vinoy when they attempted to recover it. But these isolated flashes of momentary success could not materially affect the situation. Talk of conciliation went on all the time, and many were the efforts made by well-intentioned persons {e.g. the Union Syndicale," and the League of the rights of Paris ") to bring about an understanding. But Thiers would have none of it. He would hear of no compromise, not even of a truce or armistice, nothing but unconditional surrender. On the 1 6th of April the complementary elections for the Commune — necessitated by the vacation of thirty-one 32 THE PARIS COMMUNE. seats through death, double elections, and resignations — were held. The change was very marked from the 26th of March. Instead of the 146,000 who had appeared at the polls in the same arrondissements on the previous occasion only 61,000 voted now. It was felt that all hope of peace was at an end, and that all who voted were voting for war to the knife with Versailles. The inactivity and vacillation of the Commune up to this time had also alienated many sympathisers. After these elections, on the 19th, it was finally decided to issue a political programme. This programme which was supposed to be drawn up by a commission of five members was mainly the work of a journalist, Pierre Denis, assisted by Delescluze. The former, a writer in Jules Valles Cri du Peuple^ was fanatical on the question of federal autonomy, and this he managed to place in the forefront of the new declaration which demanded the recognition of the republic, and the autonomy of the township orcommune(irrespectiveof its size) through- out France. In the first instance, however, it was only the autonomy of Paris which was called for. The rest of France was to follow suit as best it could. The rights of the Commune were defined as including the voting of the budget, of taxation, the organisation and control of the local services, magistracy, police, and education, the administration of communal wealth, &c., in short, to all intents complete autonomy. A central council of delegates from the various communes throughout France was referred to, but its functions were nowhere defined. It was apparently forgotten that without adequate safeguards such a council would have been a hopelessly reactionary body owing to the fact that the large majority of the small rural Communes would have voted under clerical influence. The idea was for the complete autonomy of Paris in all internal CONCERNING VARIOUS MATTERS. 33 affairs to be forthwith recognised, and that of the other Communes throughout France to follow, apparently as demanded. As an International Revolutionist I have been always strongly sympathetic with all movements for local autonomy as most directly tending to destroy the modern "nation'' or centralised bureaucratic State, and if the movement had been properly organised in co-operation with the other large towns in the earlier days of March a decentralising programme, properly worked out, might have formed the common political basis. Now, however, it was too late. The idea of constituting Paris a solitary island in the midst of the ocean of provincial France in the vague hope that other islands would spring up in time of themselves, and form an archipelago, was little better than a crude absurdity. The manifesto contained some good passages, probably the work of Delescluze, but as it stood it was ill-timed and not to the point. Nevertheless it was accepted almost without discussion by the Commune, so perfunctory had its proceedings become. There were now two distinct parties within the council of the Commune, the so-called "majority" and "minority." These originated in the first instance over a hot discussion on the question of the verification of the elections of the 1 6th, and tended, as is the wont of such factions, to become increasingly bitter and personal. The Commune soon became split up into cliques which alternately dominated, and which still further exacerbated the situation by their mutual recriminations and intrigues. In this way the defence was paralysed, and decrees, good or bad, re- mained more often than not an empty form. All this time the Versaillese were organising their attack, and getting into military order the reinforcements they were almost daily receiving from Germany, consisting of D 34 THE PARIS COMMUNE. troops who after their defeat and detention in German garrison towns were perfectly ready to take part in a successful campaign against anybody, no matter whom. The army of Versailles at the end of April amounted to 130,000 men, and more were coming in. Bismarck and the German military authorities had been only too anxious to offer Thiers and the French bourgeoisie every assistance within their power to crush their common proletarian foe. INTERNAL ADMINISTRATION. 33 VIII. THE INTERNAL ADMINISTRATION AND POLICY OF THE COMMUNE. As already observed, the Commune had organised itself at starting into nine commissions or delegations. These consisted of a victualling department, a department of municipal services, of finance, of war, of public safety, of justice, of external affairs, of education, and of labour. The first, the provisioning department, did not offer any special difficulties until the end of April, when Thiers ordered the stoppage of all provision trains for Paris, and even after that it was possible to keep the town supplied through the neutral zone between the German and Ver- saillese armies. Besides, the city itself contained enough food to have sustained a long siege if necessary. The department of public or municipal services involved the general superintendence of public offices such as the Post Office, the Telegraphs, the Mint, the official printing press, the hospitals, the greater number of the subordinate members of the staff of which had been in- duced to remain or return. Theisz, a workman, took the direction of the Post Office, which involved the most trouble, owing to its having been intentionally thrown into disorder by its late director. The wages of all employes were at once raised, and the hours shortened. In well- nigh all these services the superior officials " had made off, thus leaving the work of directing them in the hands of the workmen administrators placed there by the Commune. Camelinat, bronze worker, took over the ^lint, and D 2 36 THE PARIS COMMUNE. admirably carried on the business of coining bullion and of engraving postage-stamps. The hospitals were reorganised and remanned by an old revolutionist named Treilhard. The Commission of Finance was presided over by Jourde, who had been a clerk and accountant. Varlin, a workman agitator, energetic and devoted to the cause^ was also an invaluable member of this Commission, which had the task of raising and distributing the requisite funds for the payment of all the services, including the National Guards, and .the war- expenses generally. The whole was managed by workmen and small clerks at workmen's wages, and not at the salaries of " boss " middle-class financiers. The department of war, with Cluseret at its head, seems unluckily to have been the worst conducted of any. Here everybody was at cross-purposes. Continual wrangling over the possession of the cannon resulted in a lot of artillery remaining useless. Ammunition of wrong calibre was often distributed. Important posts were left unrelieved. The commissariat was, moreover, hopelessly disorganised. The barricades which it had been decided to construct were made regardless of any intelligible strategical, plan. There was a fatal tendency for the several departments to overlap in their functions, which were not precisely enough defined. This was especially noticeable between the war and police (public safety) departments. The department last mentioned was under the direction of Raoul Rigault, an ardent young Revolutionist, but with- out experience and unfitted for such an important post. What was worse was that he had with him a lot of flighty young men who exacerbated matters. With such colleagues as these, Ferre, Regnard, the chief secretary of police (whose imposing appearance rests in the memory of some of us who used often to meet him in the British Museum at the end of the seventies), and such more solid men, were hope- THE INTERNAL ADMINISTRATION. 37 iessly handicapped in their influence. In the matter of the Picpus Convent, where racks, cages with women in a frightful state shut up in them, skulls with hair on, and other evidences of criminal practices were unearthed, no- thing was done beyond transferring the nuns to St. Lazare. Decrees of the Commune were not given efl"ect to. Journals suppressed in the morning were allowed to be sold in the evening. The only thing that was not forgotten by this department as by the whole movement was the humanitarian idea and the so-called Christian (?) principle of doing good to those that revile you and persecute you. The Com- mune through this delegation supported the wives and families of the men who were fighting against it, saying " the Commune has bread for all misery and care for all orphans." Allied with the Commission of police and public safety was that of Justice. The Commune ordered that every arrest should be at once notified to this department. As regards punctiliousness in the matter of property the depart- ment of Justice like the Commune showed itself almost pedantic, returning the cash-box of a gas company (!) seized in a search for hidden arms on the company's premises. It dismissed a commissary for having seques- trated, police-fashion, the money found on Gustave Chaudey when arrested for having ordered the firing from the Hotel de Ville on the 22 nd of January. The delegation of Justice further instituted a rigorous enquiry into the state of the prisons, and the motives for the arrest of all persons detained. This latter led to a conflict between the two departments and to the resignation of Raoul Rigault after having been admonished by Dele- scluze for his careless conduct of the important functions entrusted to him. With all his faults, however, it cannot be said that this young man erred on the side of harshness. 38 THE PARIS COMMUNE. The delegation of the Exterior was established mainly for the purpose of enlightening the provinces too long neglected and counteracting the influence of Versailles which diligently fed them with lies. By the time it got into working order, however, the important movements which followed the i8th of March had been crushed and it did little or nothing to give direction to, or even to keep alive, the sporadic agitation which broke forth in various places during the ensuing weeks. It dispatched a few emissaries indeed, but for the most part obscure Parisians utterly un- known in the localities where they were sent. Seeing that the sole chance of the Commune lay in creating powerful diversions by means of the armed populace of the large provincial towns, the lukewarmness of the action taken is simply incredible. It must be said nevertheless on behalf of the commission itself that the sum of 100,000 francs (;^4,ooo) allowed it by the Commune was ridiculously inadequate for the work of stirring up the whole of pro- vincial France, which was what it ought to have done. The Education Department, though it of course at once suppressed religious teaching and emblems in schools, never got beyond the stage of preparation in any constructive programme. It was supposed to be organising a scheme of primary and secondary education, but has left no trace behind it. Elise R^clus and Benoit Gastineau took excellent charge of the Bibliotheque Natioiiale, and Gustave Courbet, the painter, with a committee of artists, superintended the museums and picture-galleries. Some of the arrondisse- ments were more active than the Education Committee itself. One of them, at its own motion, instituted free clothing and feeding for the children. Another, in an ex- cellent memorandum, declared it the mission of the school of the Revolutionary Commune to teach children to love their fellow creatures, to love justice, and to bring home THE INTERNAL ADMINISTRATION. 39 to them the duty of improving themselves, not for the sake of personal advancement, but in the interests of all." At the same time teachers were instructed in future to ex- clusively employ " the experimental and scientific method, that which starts from facts physical, moral, and intellectual.'' The delegation which did most work and which suc- ceeded more than any other in giving expression to the Socialistic principles embodied in the revolution of the 1 8th of March was undoubtedly that of "Labour and Exchange," presided over by our Austrian comrade Leo Frankel. This delegation systematically set to work to collect and arrange information concerning the condition of labour, and the precise relations existing in all trades between employer and workman. It was also entrusted with the revision of the Customs and the transformation of the fiscal system. Its report recommended the return of pledges to all necessitous persons and the suppression of the pawnshops since the Revolution of the Commune implied the speedy establishment of a social organisa- tion giving serious guarantees of support to workmen out of employment." The Commune, it proclaimed, implied the rescue of workmen from the exploitation of capital. The Labour department further procured the prohibition of night work for bakers, and made fines and stoppages of wages illegal. At its instigation the Commune decreed the confiscation of factories and workshops not in actual use, and their immediate handing over to trade-syndicates of workmen to be conducted on a co-operative basis. This decree, although defective enough in its details, neverthe- less, for the first time in history, aiifirmed the principle of the expropriation of the capitalist class by the working class, and it is for this reason of epoch-making importance. Unfortunately time and circumstances did not allow of its being carried into effect. 40 THE PARIS COMMUNE. And what was the city of Taris like during the Commune ? Quiet, peaceful, and what is more, almost wholly free from crime. The last fact is admitted by friends and foes alike. Middle-class Englishmen with no sympathy for the Commune have been reluctant witnesses to the safety and good order maintained throughout the whole city during the two months that the Revolution was master. Quarters, where at other times when " order " prevails, assaults are of frequent occurence and prostitution is rife, could be traversed without molestation of any kind night or day. While the Versailles organs were daily demanding the wholesale slaughter of Parisians, one looks in vain through all the revolutionary journals for a single bloodthirsty suggestion. The churches, closed for the faice of a Christian worship, no longer seriously believed in, and be- come solely the instrument for maintaining popular ignorance and subserviency, we find transformed into public halls, in which the pulpits, hung with red, are occu- pied by preachers of the gospel, not of Christ, but of Revolutionary Socialism. Revolutionary hymns are sung to organ accompaniment. The Tuileries, the late home of the vulgar and ostentatious profligacy of king and emperor, are now used to serve as free concert rooms for the people. Such was the Paris of the Commune ! THE COMMITTEE OF PUBLIC SAFETY. 41 IX. THE FREEMASONS, THE COMMITTEE OF PUBLIC SAFETY, AND ROSSEL. The last serious attempt at conciliation between Ver- sailles and Paris was made by the Freemasons on the 2 1 St of April. They were received coldly by Thiers, who assured them that, though Paris were given over to de- struction and slaughter, the law should be enforced. And he kept his word. A few days after they decided in a public meeting to plant their banner on the ramparts and throw in their lot with the Commune. On the 29th, accordingly, 10,000 of the brethren met (fifty-five lodges being represented), and marched to the Hotel de Ville, headed by the Grand Masters in full insignia and the banners of the lodges. Amongst them the new banner of Vincennes was conspicuous, bearing the inscription in red letters on a white ground, " Love one another." A balloon was then sent up, which let fall at intervals, outside Paris, a manifesto of the Freemasons. The procession then wended its way through the boulevards and the Champs Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe, where the banners were planted at various points along the ram- parts. On seeing the white flag on the Porte Maillot, the Versaillese ceased firing, and the commander, himself a Freemason, received a deputation of brethren, and sug- gested a final appeal to Versailles, which was agreed to. 42 THE PARIS COMMUNE. The chief of the executive," of course, hardly listened to the envoys, and declined to further discuss the question of peace with anyone. They might have known before that such would have been their reception. The little smug bourgeois fiend was already scenting the proletarian blood he so longed to shed. This last formal challenge having been made and rejected, the Freemasons definitely took their stand as combatants for the Commune. Milliere, who had worked hard to organise the pro- vincials in Paris ever since the early part of April, induced the Republican Alliance of the Departments," consisting of provincials residing in Paris, to give a formal adhesion to the Commune, 15,000 men accompanying Milliere to the Hotel de Ville, after having voted an address to the departments. This was on the 30th of April. The same afternoon news arrived of the evacuation by the Federals of the fort of Issy, which had been the result of a surprise. A few remained behind, however, one of them a lad at the entrance, with gunpowder and a train, prepared to blow himself up rather than surrender the fort. As soon as the news was known reinforcements were sent, and the Versailles driven from the park surrounding the fort and the fort itself was reoccupied. This affair, notwithstanding that it had no immediate military consequences, turned a sudden light on to the way the defence was being con- ducted, and led to the arrest of Cluseret in the evening. It also led indirectly to the carrying out of a project mooted some days before, of the creation of a Commitee of Public Safety." Here we see the old revolutionary tradition asserting itself. It was formally expressed by that old votary of the revolutionary tradition, Felix Pyat, who gave as a reason for it that a " Committee of Public Safety" belonged to the period which first produced the Republic " and the Commune." This adoration of THE COMMITTEE OF PUBLIC SAFETY. 43 phrases and historical shibboleths is so thoroughly French, and has so often been the bane of French popular movements, that it is worth specially noting. However, whatever its name, the general feeling as to the necessity of some centralised power was for the moment paramount. The permanent Executive Com- mission of the Commune, in spite of its having been re- organised, had proved utterly ineffective in superintending things. In its latest form it consisted of Cluseret, Jourde, Viard, Paschal Grousset, Frankel, Protot, Andrien, Yail- lant, and Raoul Rigault. In the end, the establishment of the Committee of Public Safety was voted by forty-five to twenty-three. This question brought to an issue the quarrel between the so-called " majority " and minority on the Commune. The majority, led by Felix Pyat, and containing all the archaeological reconstructors and mere sentimentalists, as also the Blanquists (with the exception of Tridon), voted for the Committee. The minority, in- cluding the most clear-headed Socialists of the Hotel de Ville, voted against it. When the question came of select- ing the men to serve on it, the minority refused to take any part. Ranvier, Arnaud, Meillet, Gerardin, and Pyat were then elected by the " majority " alone. This squabble had the most disastrous effects outside, as it for the first time revealed to the world the dissensions and personal recriminations long brewing in the council- room. On the same evening that Cluseret was arrested (30th of April) Rossel was appointed Delegate of War in his place. Rossel was a disappointed young ofificer who had served during the Franco-German war, and thought himself unduly neglected by the military authorities. On the look- out for a job in which he might distinguish himself, and full of bitterness towards his old superiors, he came to 44 THE PARIS COMMUNE. Paris and took service under the Revolution. He neither knew nor cared anything for the cause, and frankly con- fessed, when interrogated by the Commune, that he did not understand what Socialism meant, but that he hated the Government which had signed away two French pro- vinces to the " Prussians," and was willing to support any movement for its overthrow. In the teeth of Cluseref s incapacity and, as some thought, treachery, a young officer with a certain military reputation, and able to talk with an air of authority on the situation, seemed a godsend to the men of the Hotel de Ville. Rossel wanted to carry things with a high hand in military martinet style, however, and from the first showed an utter lack of savoir faire in his dealings with the citizen-soldiery, the National Guard. In spite of his pretensions the improvement on the Cluseret regime was not obvious. Rossel gave orders one day and revoked them the next. He started on a system of barri- cades, connecting the three chief strategic positions within the city — Montmartre, the Trocadero, and the Pantheon — but never saw to its carrying out. The Versaillese had meanwhile opened new batteries, and the line of fire was slowly but steadily drawing closer round Paris. Matters were complicated by the Central Committee, the personnel of which had been almost entirely changed from what it was originally by trying to intermeddle and squabbling with the War Commission. Issy was in a few days reduced to a heap of ruins, and finally evacuated on the 9th of May. Rossel the same evening, with an indiscretion which had all the appearance of being intentional, had placarded all over Paris, as if it had been the news of a victory, the words, " The tri-colour floats over the fort of Issy abandoned by its garrison." He immediately after wrote a letter in which he endeavoured to clear his military reputation by abusing the organisation of the military services. These THE COMMITTEE OF PUBLIC SAFETY. 45; were bad enough in all conscience, but Rossel knew the position of affairs when he accepted the responsibility, and there is conclusive evidence that he did not make the best of things, even bad as they were. He wound up by sending in his resignation, and asking for a cell at Mazas/' 4.6 THE PARIS COMMUNE. X. THE LAST DAYS OF PARIS. In addition to their military operations, the Versaillese were not indisposed to rely on the work of spies in en- deavouring to affect an entry into the city by means of treachery. These gentlemen, however, quarrelled among themselves, mutually denounced each other to their employers, and, in spite of the big promises which each made in turn, they effected nothing beyond consuming «ome few hundred thousand francs of governmental money. They were most of them old soldiers," including •one or two naval officers, reactionary National Guards, and Chevaliers d' Industrie. Some of them having attempted to corrupt Drombrowski, they were denounced by him to the Committee of Public Safety. This was about the last attempt made by Thiers to gain over Paris by treachery. He sav^ it was no use. Meanwhile the discussions in the council-room between the " majority " and minority " in the Commune were, unhappily, going on more acrimoniously than ever. Rossel, in spite of his demand for a cell at Mazas," and of his parole not to escape, slunk off and hid himself in a safe retreat, whence he was to be fetched out some three weeks later by the Versaillese, by that time masters of Paris. His arrest was decreed, however, almost unani- THE LAST DAYS OF PARIS. 47 mously by the Commune at the opening of its sitting of the loth of May. The next item on the agenda on this occasion was the reconstruction of the redoubtable Com- mittee of Public Safety, which, after eight days* existence, had been, by general consensus of opinion, voted a failure. The " minority " seized the opportunity for holding out the right hand of fellowship ; but the " majority,'' led by F^lix Pyat, who was in the chair, persisted in their attitude of suspicion, and the schism in consequence became more accentuated than ever. The Committee was re-constructed, but again only with members of the majority." Ranvier, Gambon, Delescluze, Arnaud, and Eudes were the men chosen. Delescluze was afterwards made Chief of the War Office; Billioray, an insignificant member of the majority," occupying the vacancy thus created on the Committee ; Raoul Rigault again went into the Depart- ment of security," this time as Procurator of Police ; while Theophile Ferre was made Prefect, Cournet (son of an old Revolutionist of '48, killed in a duel in London), who had originally replaced Rigault in the Prefecture of Police, having resigned. The new Committee of Public Safety ordered the demo- lition of Thiers' house in Paris, which was forthwith effected. There was not much use in this, seeing that the Assembly was sure to have it rebuilt at the national ex- pense, and a decree was, of course, immediately passed at Versailles to this effect. The Commune, however, and all belonging to it, seemed to think it bore a charmed life ; and hence, without seriously applying them- selves to the one serious question of the hour, the defence of Paris, went on passing decrees of a useful and orna- mental nature — many of which were excellent in them- selves, but few of which were timely. Among the best of what may be termed the 48 THE PARIS COMMUNE. symbolical " measures, was a decree passed by the Commune on the 12th of April for the de- struction of the Vendome Column. Although preparations for carrying it out were forthwith set about, owing to various delays these were not completed for more than a month. Accordingly, it was not before the i6th of May that the great emblem of French Jingoism actually kissed the earth. Erected to celebrate the victories of the first ^^Tapoleon in his wars of wanton aggression, it was very properly regarded as a standing insult, not only to every other European nationality, but, before all, to a Revolu- tion based on the principles of Internationalism. So the afternoon of May i6th saw a large assemblage of Parisians in the Rue de la Paix and in the Place de la Concorde, the roofs of the houses and the windows being occu- pied with sightseers, watching anxiously, and not without apprehension, the operations, with the formidable array of ropes leading up to the final tug which should lay prone the emblem of aggressive patriotism. At five o'clock a national guard affixed the tricolour to its proper place, the gallery at the top of this piece of shoddy magni- ficence, and a few minutes later the national flag, the statue of Napoleon, and the column itself were alike lying in fragments on a vast bed of dung, appropriately prepared for them. The apprehensions proved unfounded, and the overthrow was accomplished without any noteworthy mishap. On the isth, the previous day, the dispute between the " minority " and " majority had reached a climax in the withdrawal of the former under cover of a manifesto anent the " Public Safety," which declared the Commune to have abdicated its functions into the hands of an irresponsible Committee. As for us," it went on to say, " we, no less than the ' majority,' desire the accomplishment of political THE LAST DAYS OF PARIS. 49 and social reconstruction ; but, contrary to its notions, we claim the right to be solely responsible for our acts before our electors without sheltering ourselves behind a supreme dictatorship which our mandate permits us neither to accept nor to recognise." The manifesto further went on to state that the signatories, in order not to give rise to further dis- sension in the Council room, proposed retiring into their arrondissements there to organise the resistance to the common enemy. The manifesto concluded with a generous expression of the conviction that " we all, majority or minority, notwithstanding our divergences as to policy, pursue the same object, political liberty, and the emancipa- tion of the workers." *^ Long live the Social Republic ! Long live the Commune ! " The manifesto bore the signatures of Beslay, Jourde, Theisz, Lefrancais, Girardin, Vermorel, Clemence, Andrieu, Serrailler, Longuet, Arthur Arnould, Clement Victor, Aurial, Ostyn, Franckel, Pindy, Arnold, Valles, Tridon, Varlin, and Courbet. Malon subsequently gave in his adhesion. The conduct of the minority in withdrawing at this critical juncture deserves the severest censure. The reason given was absurd. They had themselves voted for the second committee. This pedantic Parliamentarism and horror of dictatorship moreover was utterly ridiculous in the crisis through which the movement was passing. The composition of the Committee may have been open to objection, and, as a matter of fact, it proved itself suf- ciently incapable. But in principle there is no doubt whatever, that a strong dictatorship was just what the situation demanded. The Committee failed, if for no other reason than because it contained no man strong enough to dictate." There is no gainsaying that this: action of the minority in allowing their personal spleen E so THE PARIS COMMUNE. to get the better of them, even granting that provocation had been given, was a great blow to the influence of the Commune, both internally and externally, and was naturally the occasion of much crowing " on the part of the friends of " order " at Versailles and elsewhere. Most of the signatories seem to have felt they had committed a blunder almost as soon as the document was issued, and two days later, the 17th, saw the majority of them back at the Hotel de Ville notwithstanding their virtual resigna- tion. The public meetings they had called the previous evening in their arrondissements had by no means endorsed their action. This sitting of the 17th of May was the fullest the Commune ever had, sixty-six members answering to their names. Unhappily it was mainly occupied with personal recriminations between the two factions, till it was abruptly terminated at 7 o'clock in the evening by the blowing up of the powder manufactory in the Avenue Rapp, which shook Paris from end to end. Was this disaster due to an accident or was it the result of treachery? No one knows to this day. THE ENTRY OF THE VERSAILLESE. 51 XI. THE ENTRY OF THE VERSAILLESE. Sunday, the 21st of May, was one of those glorious spring days in which the avenues of the Champs Elysees and the Tuilleries Gardens show up in the clear air a splen- dour of young foliage, to which hardly another capital in Europe than Paris can offer a parallel. This afternoon a monster open-air concert was being held under the trees in the Tuilleries Gardens by order of the Commune, for the benefit of the widows and orphans of National Guards slain in defence of Paris. Thousands of Parisians in holiday attire thronged the grounds. At the close of the perform- ance a staff-officer of the National Guards announced from the platform another concert at the same time and place for the following Sunday. Alas ! What a different scene was that following Sunday destined to present — a murky rainfall, Paris enveloped in thick smoke, blood running in the gutters, corpses and human remains piled- up, encumbering the streets. How many of those workmen and their families then peacefully enjoying them- selves were never to see another Sunday ! At the very moment the above announcement was made the bandits of order '* were within the city, unknown to those responsible for its safety. This is how it happened. The defence had become more completely disorganised than ever since the defection of Rossel. A large extent of the enceinte, including several gates, was completely undefended. The Versaillese on their side had unmasked a formidable array E 2 52 THE PARIS COMMUNE. of breech-batteries on the previous day. The sound of these, hour after hour, on the defences was insufficient to make the Parisians realise that the end was at hand. The first detachment of Government troops entered at the gate of St. Cloud, one of the undefended points, at about 3 o'clock. Dombrowski, who for the last fortnight had been at the head of the now hopelessly disintegrated defence, was apprised of the state of affairs one hour later by an officer of the National Guard. He at once issued an order to the war office for seven cannon, for the immediate mobilisation of the best batallions, and had the Auteuil Gate occupied. Soon after, other points were occupied by National Guards, and the gate at the Jena bridge was barricaded. Dombrowski, of course, lost no time in communicating with the Committee of Public Safety, which in its turn sent Billioray to inform the Commune. At that moment the Commune was trying Cluseret, on the impeachment of one of its members, Miot, but the charge of treachery being supported only by loose gossip was already falling through before the arrival of Billioray. The message the latter brought was received with consternation^ the proceedings in hand were hurridly concluded, and Cluseret acquitted. But instead of at once entering upon a serious discussion of the situation which might have led to a decision as to some definite plan of defence, the council practically broke up into groups of desultory talkers till eight o'clock struck, and the chairman formally proclaimed the proceedings at an end. // was the last sitting of the Commune of Paris. Every member to his arrondissement was now the fatuous cry. Instead of at once passing a resolution declaring the Commune as sitting in permanence, which was the obvious thing to do — thereby giving a centre and rallying point to the defence — the Commune abandoned the Hotel de Ville, deliberately THE ENTRY OF THE VERSAILLESE. 53 committed suicide, and with this act of self-destruction sounded the death-knell of revolutionary Paris. The last hope lay in a strong, well-organised rally of all the forces at the disposal of the Commune within the city, with the construction of a system of barricades connecting the three chief strategic points, Montmartre, the Trocadero, and the Pantheon. Instead of a concentrated effort, all was confusion at this critical moment. Everyone left the Hotel de Ville for his arrondissement. Energy was not lacking, but it showed itself when too late and was dissipated in isolated disorganised action. The Committeee of Public Safety fairly lost its head, not knowing which way to turn. Delescluze at the War Office remained calm, and quieted the Commune with the assurance that the street- fight would be favourable to the Parisians. The chief of the general staff, Henri Prudhomme, then sent for the commander of the observatory on the Arc de Triomphe, who declared he could see nothing of the Ver- saillese, whereupon a placard was issued casting doubt on the fact of the entry. At 1 1 o'clock at night, however, a member of the Commune riding down one of the outer streets near the enceinte^ the Rue Beethoven, found the lights out and his horse stumbling in pools of blood. Ominous black figures lay against the wall, which proved to be corpses of murdered National Guards. At midnight General Cissey with a body of men scaled the ramparts at another undefended point and entered without encountering any resistance. They then opened several gates from the inside, and by dawn the Versaillese army was streaming into the city at five distinct apertures. Paris woke to find the fifteenth arrondissement captured, Passy and the Trocadero occupied by Versaillese, and Versaillese shells even falling in the centre of the city. There was a veri- able suave qui peut from the outposts yet held. This is a 54 THE PARIS COMMUNE. war of barricades " was the cry, " each man to his own arrondissement.'' Such little discipline as had survived was now at an end. The anarchic element came everywhere to the front. A suicidal placard was issued by Delescluze (one is sorry to say) full of claptrap about the naked arms of the people being more than a match for all the military strategists in the world, pouring contempt on organisation and "learned manoeuverers," and, in short giving official sanction to the scatter-brained idiocy of the impromptu demagogue and the worst elements in the National Guard. Early in \he morning the war office was evacuated, Henri Prudhomme neglecting, by a piece of criminal carelessness, to destroy the official documents, and thereby sending thousands to death and exile. The shopkeepers were beginning to take down their shutters in the inner parts of the city, not even yet fully realising the state of affairs, but soon closed up again, upon reading Delescluze's pro- clamation and finding that the roar of the cannon came not from outside but from within the fortifications. Barri- cades were hurriedly thrown up in different quarters without any system, and for the most part only just as the Ver- saillese were seen to be threatening the position. At 9 o'clock a few members of the Commune, in- sufficient to form a quorum, presented themselves at the Hotel de Ville, and separated after a desultory conversation without anyone so much as suggesting any definite scheme of defence. Proclamations abounded on every wall— calls to arms, assurances of victory, demands for barricades. It would be useless without a map of Paris to describe in detail the slow but steady progress of the invaders on this day (Monday, May 22nd). Suffice it to say that the same characteristics were apparent in the street defence, only in an acuter form, that we have recorded as present when the battle was raging round the enceinte — the same THE ENTRY OF THE VERSAILLESE. 55 limitless bravery, in some cases young boys fighting with desperation, the same impossibility of getting reinforce- ments, cannon, and ammunition when and where required. The heights of Montmartre were the main stronghold left to the Commune, now that the Trocadero was gone and the Pantheon threatened. As a position Montmartre was very strong, and, with a properly directed defence, might have held the enemy at bay for many days. But everywhere was the same cry " we must defend our own quarter.'' Nevertheless, as evening drew near barricades sprang up in every direction. Paris did indeed seem to be rising en masse. This deceived many who even still sincerely believed in victory. Meanwhile the ferocious Assembly was voting by acclamation that the " Chief of the Executive " and the army had merited well of the country, and hilariously exulting in the orgy of carnage promised them by the infamous old man. 56 THE PARIS COMMUNE. XII. THE BARRICADES. The night of Monday-Tuesday was a night of silent preparation (all too late) and of gloom. In all quarters the pickaxe was to be heard removing paving stones and digging the foundations of barricades, which rose by the hundred. Men, women, and children were at work. Now began that enthusiasm, that limitless courage and con- tempt of death —displayed in defence of an ideal — the colossal proportions of which dwarf everything similar in history, and which alone suffices to redeem the sordidness of the nineteenth century. Here was a heroism in the face of which the much-belauded Christian martyrs cut a very poor figure. The Christian died believing that the moment the tooth or claw of the panther tore open his throat was the moment of his transition to a new and endless personal existence of honour and glory. His steadfastness was purely selfish. The Communist workman believed that the moment the ball of the Versaillese soldier struck his heart his personal existence came to an end for ever. Yet he was willing to surrender himself completely for a future that meant the happiness of his class and a nobler life for humanity, but which he himself would never see. Yes, this unparalleled devotion, this gigantic heroism of the whole working-class of Paris, was indeed magnificent, but, alas ! it was not war. Had Cluseret, had Rossel, had the Committee of Public Safety but organised a comparatively simple system of barricades and made due preparations THE BARRICADES. 57 beforehand, a few well-equipped battalions of National Guards might have saved the situation. But no one had taken the trouble to see to this. Everything had been let run to confusion. Finally, the senseless cry of Every man to his arrondissement ! when every man ought to have been out of his arrondissement at strategical points, settled matters. An immense number of barricades were thrown up, without system, in each arrondissement, and heroically defended, without method, with the inevitable sequel of capture and massacre, and thus was the Paris of the Revolution annihilated piecemeal. It is useless to go in detail over the sad tale of barricade after barricade, pro- tected for hours, sometimes for two or three days, by a handful of men only at last to be overwhelmed by a whole regiment of regulars,'' or maybe taken in flank, as often happened with barricades impregnable to direct attack. So incredible did it appear to the enemy that the defenders of Paris should have made no effective prepara- tions for his reception, that they should have had no organised plan of defence, that up to Tuesday evening it was only with great hesitation the Versaillese pressed forward. They suspected their unresisted entry and capture of important positions to hide a trap for the anni- hilation of the whole Versaillese army once fairly inside the city — by means of ambuscades, underground mines, or what not. Unfortunately, their fears were utterly groundless and their caution wholly unnecessary. At one time on the Monday a few well-directed shells from Montmartre and the Pantheon might have annihilated two of the main columns of the Versaillese army, which had met each other and got entangled with their artillery on the Place de Trocadero. But Montmartre remained silent. At lo o'clock on the Monday night the Ministry of Finance behind the Tuilleries blazed up, the first of the great con- S8 THE PARIS COMMUNE. flagrations. It took fire from the Versaillese shells directed against the Federal entrenchments on the terrace of the Tuilleries, the vast masses of documents in the upper storeys supplying combustible material which effectually spread the flames. Early on the Tuesday morning Bis- marck surrendered the neutral ground and the Porte St. Ouen to another division of the Verseillese army which poured into Paris — a proof, if such were needed, of the hollowness of the sham sentiment called " patriotism as against the solidarity of real class interest. The " patriotic " French bourgeois was ready to lick the boots while imploring the aid of the hated Prussien " against the French proletaire. Meanwhile, before the common danger the men of the Commune rose above the petty squabbles and personalities of the council-room, the public meeting, and the street. Members of the " majority " and minority" met in generous rivalry who could do the most. But how little there was to be done ! Cluseret was powerless ; La Cecilia, an old general of Garibaldi's and a man of some military capacity, was not obeyed, and could not get artillery or ammunition for important posi- tions. Montmartre, the almost impregnable fortress, was defended by a few hundred disorganised Federals. The few pieces of artillery on the height had been allowed to get into disorder, and were little better than useless. Before mid-day on Tuesday Montmartre was captured in a mere walk-over, scarcely one effective blow having been struck in its defence. The Batignolles had been already occupied earlier in the morning. On Montmartre took place the first of the wholesale massacres of the bloody week." Forty-two men, women, and children were taken to the Rue des Rosieres, and butchered as a holocaust to the manes of the scoundrels Lecomte and Clement- Thomas. The soldiers tried to force them all to kneel ; THE BARRICADES. 59 but one woman with a child in her arms refused to kneel, shouting to her companions, " Show these wretches that you know how to die upright ! On the south side of the Seine the forces of the Com- mune made a rather better show. A Polish exile named Wroblewski who knew something of military matters ex- temporised a rough system of defences which served to keep the enemy at bay for a while over a considerable area. Wroblewski's ultimate idea was to concentrate the whole defence on this left bank under cover of the forts, the gun boats of the Seine and the Pantheon, and he proposed this plan to Delescluze. But it was impossible to rally matters in accordance with any tactical scheme extending beyond the material immediately at hand and the exigencies of the moment, so complete was the dis- integration of the defence. Lisbonne, the member of the Commune, commanded a body of Federals in the Pantheon quarter. He achieved wonders with small means, defending the approaches to the Luxembourg for two whole days. The Committee of Public Safety issued a placard calling upon the Versaillese soldiery to refuse to fire on their brothers of Paris. The "Central Committee" did the same. But it was of no avail. By the Tuesday night scarcely the half of Paris remained to the Commune. The Versaillese, no longer apprehensive of snares, were pushing boldly forward in every direction. In the course of the evening Raoul Rigault, maddened by the horrors he saw perpetrated on all sides by the friends of " order," but acting on his own responsibility alone, went to St. Pelagie and ordered Gustave Chaudey, accused of having instigated the firing from the Hotel de Ville in January, to be taken out into the prison yard and shot, together with three gendarmes. They had all been taken as hostages> '6o THE PARIS COMMUNE. and their lives had been forfeited a thousand times, but the Commune had spared them with its usual criminal good nature in such matters. Things were now going from bad to worse with the defenders of the Commune. To absence of superintendence insufficiency of ammunition was now added, in many cases want of food. Conflagra- tions now broke forth in all quarters of Paris, lighting up the midnight sky, some caused by the shells of the Versaillese, some caused by the action of the Communards to defend themselves from unseen enemies on the roofs and upper storeys of houses whence they were fired upon. THE "COMMUNE OR DEATH.'' XIII. THE "commune or DEATH." The horror of these nights cannot be described. The glare of a hundred conflagrations reflected in pools of blood ; corpses and human remains wherever the eye lighted; the half of Paris one vast, hideous, dreamlike hell, against the reality of which Dante's imagination seems feeble 1 Such a scene of horror was barely known to history before ; the proscriptions of Sylla, the destruc- tion of Jerusalem, the Sicilian Vespers, St. Bartholomew,, the sacking of Magdeburg — all pale before this blood orgie of the propertied class of France, which had the approval, tacit or avowed, of the same class throughout the world — a class that, while it could day after day witness unmoved the indiscriminate torture and butchery of countless hecatombs of human beings whom it imagined were hostile to its class- interests— could, nevertheless, with a refinement of cynicism, pretend to snivel and caterwaul over a single archbishop ! ! One corpse lay that night of Tuesday-Wednesday in the Hotel de Ville on a bed of blue satin, a solitary taper at its head, before which the hurry and scurry of the head-quarters was stilled ; before which all involuntarily bowed their heads. It was the body of Dombrowski, who had been mortally wounded during the afternoon. Towards morning the corpse was transferred to the Pere Lachaise Cemetery. As it passed the barricades all Federals presented arms. At the July column a halt was made, and hundreds of National Guards crowded round to get a last sight of their 62 THE PARIS COMMUNE. devoted commander. Thus did this valiant soldier of the people pass into history. The Tuilleries were blazing all this night, as also the " Legion of Honour," the " Council of State," and other public buildings. From early morning of the Wednesday desperate battles were fought at the Palais Royal, the Bank, the Bourse, and the Church of St. Eustache. At 9 o'clock a.m., while a few members of the Commune, who had assembled at the Hotel de Ville, were discussing the situation and contemplating the abandonment of the Municipal Palace, flames shot forth from the roof — how and by whom kindled nobody knew. In an hour the whole place was one vast furnace. The Hotel de Ville destroyed, everything was now transferred to the Mairie of the nth Arrondissement. This day (Wednesday, the 24th), the official journal of the Commune appeared for the last time. All surviving semblance of organisation, discipline, or plan was thenceforward practically at an end. Frenzied despair, panic, and anarchy reigned supreme. What re- mained of the defence was now further hampered and obstructed by the sham-equality craze so congenial to ignorant minds of an anarchist turn. Officers going with important messages which brooked not a moment's delay were seized and compelled to carry hods for barricades, with the words, " There are no more epaulettes to-day," and Why shouldn't you help to make barricades as well as we ? " and the like foolery. To argue that such a thing as division of functions " was necessary to the success of any social undertaking would, of course, have been useless. So one more nail was hammered into the coffin of the Parisian defence. The shooting of spies, real and supposed, occurred now and then ; for at last the good-natured and long-suffering Paris workman had been driven mad with rage THE "commune or DEATH." 63 and suspicion as the accounts poured in of the fiendish orgy of blood which for four whole days had been carried on in the occupied quarters with the applause of the mis- creants at Versailles, who, through their spokesman Thiers, dared to say of this horde of cowardly assasins, Our valiant soldiers conduct themselves in a manner to inspire the highest esteem " (!). In order to give a plausible colour to the inclusion of women in the massacres, the myth of the Petroleuses was now invented. Relationship to a National Guard, a mere expression of horror, a tear shed for a friend, was an excuse for instant butchery. The murderers, officers and men, developed a collective blood- lust which seems almost incredible, and before v^hich the possibly mythical figure of the notorious Whitechapel murderer dwindles into insignificance. To compare these wretches with any members of the animal kingdom, let alone with human savages, would be more than unjust to the beast or the savage. They were incarnations of the criminal instinct in civilised man. At last, what was left of the National Guards of Paris, who for well nigh two months past had been turning the other cheek to the smiter, pulled themselves together. They bethought them of the three hundred hostages, taken as a guarantee that the laws of war should be observed but not a hair of whose heads had been touched, notwithstanding that prisoners had been murdered without intermission at Versailles during the whole time, and that now, to crown all, for four days every quarter of Paris occupied by the Versailles army had been converted into a shambles, with its thousands of victims — men, women and children — whose mutilated corpses lay heaped up pell-mell in the streets. These three hundred hostages were under lock and key at the prison of La Roquette, whither they had been removed the previous 64 THE PARIS COMMUNE. day from Mazas. As a last resort Theophile Ferre, the head of the Public Security Department, decided to try and stem the tide of butchery by a reprisal. But did he follow the example of the assassins of order" and command the whole three hundred hostages to be shot out of hand ? Certainly not ! He selected only six of the most prominent of the bulwarks of " order." These he indicated to be led out and executed. When the question arose as to who should form a platoon, dozens crowded round, each with a dear relation or friend to avenge — one a father, another a brother, a third a wife. Finally, a firing party of thirty was selected. The six hostages, the Archbishop Darboy, Bonjean, the presiding judge of the Court of Appeal, Daguerry, cure of the Madeleine, and three Jesuits were led out into the Quadrangle. That distinguished father-in- god, " Monseigneur " Darboy, rather collapsed under the weight of the crown of martyrdom (as presumably he regarded it) about to be bestowed upon him. He did not show any special eagerness to enter the heavenly kingdom. Bonjean, the High Court judge, fainted and had to be carried out. Before giving the order to fire Ferre pointed out to them that it was not the Commune which was responsible for their deaths, but their friends of Versailles, who were deliberately playing the part of fiends.* Meanwhile the conflagrations increased wholesale. Theatres and churches were alike involved. One whole bank of the Seine showed up like a wall of flame. But the quarters where the red flag was displayed became fewer and fewer. Everywhere was the tricolour. Immediately a barricade was taken the tricolour was hoisted. The defence was now mainly in the hands of Wroblewski, who did his utmost to piece together the shattered fragments, but, of course, in vain. A Versaillaise officer was caught spying round the Bastille and was shot, an event announced THE COMMUNE OR DEATH." 6s by the arch-villain Thiers at Versailles with brazen im- pudence as without respect to the laws of war/' On Friday evening, the 26th, at sunset, poor Delescluze, half dead with illness and fatigue, seeing all was hopeless, walked out of the Mairie of the nth Arrondissement with his scarf round his waist arid a cane in his hand, and mounted the barricade at the Chateau d'Eau, only a moment afterwards to fall under the hail of bullets directed against it. He could not survive another defeat, he had said a few hours before, referring to the June days of '48. Thus this noble old Revolutionist died, in death, as in life, true to his faith. Delescluze perhaps never quite intellectually grasped the meaning of modern Socialism. But his true instincts throughoul his dis- interested public career more than made up for any lack of intellectual clearness. Let us hope that one day the Place du Chateau d'Eau, where he died, may bear his statue— the day when Paris is one of the centres of a Socialist Europe. F 66 THE PARIS COMMUNE. XIV. THE COMMUNE IS DEAD I As the defence receded, the tide of massacre rose higher and higher. Denunciations poured in on all sides. Organised hunts were made in the occupied quarters, and every available building was choked with prisoners, who were taken out in batches and shot, in some cases being mowed down with the Mitrailleuse, and buried half-dead. Through the night was heard the agonised cries of the wounded and mangled. From the Friday evening the whole defence centred in Belleville. Saturday showed a murky fog and rainfall, brought on by the firing. The heroism grew with the hopelessness of the situation. Barricades were defended to the last man. Asked by an English journalist what he was dying for, one of the defenders promptly replied, " For Human Solidarity On this day Milliere was taken and shot on the steps of the Pan- theon by order of General Cissey. They tried to force him on his knees as a homage to the Capitalistic Civilisation he had attacked. His last cry was long live Humanity." Milliere had taken no part in the Commune, but had been untiring in his endeavours to bring about an under- standing. He had, however, exposed the misdeeds of the villain Jules Favre, and that was a sufificient ground for his murder. The Bastille was captured at 2 o'clock on the Friday. THE COMMUNE IS DEAD ! 67 Scarcely more than Belleville and La Villette now re- mained. The nth arrondissement had been evacuated at midnight on Thursday. By the terms of a Convention arranged between the Duke of Saxony and the Versaillese, the Germans now cut off the Federal retreat on the North and East. Thus did the heads of the French Government conspire with their official enemy to destroy Paris. Ranvier was now the soul of the defence, by word and deed encourag- ing all. The news every minute arriving of the blood-lust of the Versaillese vampires which spared neither the doctors nor nurses, and promises of immunity on surrender being treacherously violated, lashed the defenders to a frenzy of suspicion and rage. In the evening forty-eight of the hostages, ecclesiastics and gendarmes, imprisoned at La Roquette, were removed along the Rue Haxo to the Cite Vincennes. The crowd insisted upon their summary execution, even threatening some members of the Com- mune who tried to at least obtain a respite for them. They were accordingly shot in the quardrangle. It must be remembered that these men represented the corruption and oppression of the Empire in their worst forms. All this time it may be mentioned, too, the Ver- saillese prisoners taken were simply interned in churches and other places, not a hair of their heads being touched. Many of the supposed members and officers of the Commune were shot by the wretches of Versailles in the persons of passers-by who happened to bear a slight resem- blance to them, sometimes several times over. Poor Raoul Rigault unfortunately was not to escape. He was recognised in the Rue Gay-Lussac entering a house, was dragged out, and taken to a Versaillese officer who interro- gated him. Rigault's only reply was, Long live the Commune ! Down with the assassins." He was imme- F 2 6S THE PARIS COMMUNE. diately thrust against a wall and shot. In spite of his faults he was as irave and devoted to the Revolution as any, and his heroic death will doubtless be remembered to him in ages to come. Perhaps the most pathetic of all the deaths of prominent men in the Commune vras that of Varlin. wh?. was seized in the Rue Lafayette and dragged t: :he Za::es : . : n:n;a:::e. In is hands tied behind his back, ana sn; ec:ea :: a haii : :iows, insults, and sabre-cuts, for a - e - - T - - : : e:': :e arriving at his destination one n:ass :: :i: :c. the eye ::rn from the ; ::':hr nn.y he v.- as carried, unable the Rue ces Rosiers the wretches with the but: ends of their muskets, workman who had devoted all his a :"ever organiser, and one of the n e n : e r s of the Commune . n.y a portion of Belleville remained nvarky rainfall and dense clouds of mirnin^: d:s:losed but a few streets Lendon that Sunday morning was : n the south side showing in their ?:r: tg still went on from behind a le.v jarricades in the eaiiy hours of Sunday, and it was not in :a:t tiii near tniiaay that the last barricade, that of the Rue de Paris. • a_^ tai;en. This street will be memorable as the last entrenchment :t the partisans of the Commune. It w:.5 dtier.czi :y a sinrie n an ::r a tnarter of an hour, Vintennes airne remained new — a si'iirary outpost — and that surrendered at discretion on the following day. iNIon- THE COMMUNE IS DEAD I 69 The Commune was now dead. Order reigned in Paris. Smoking ruins, corpses, and desolation were all that met the eye. One side of the Seine ran red with blood. The gutters ran blood. The roads were red with blood, as though the soil had been London clay. Clouds of flesh- flies rose from the heaps of corpses ; flocks of crows hovered over the charnel house. Paris now subjugated, the assassins could organise the slaughter at their leisure. It has been proved that these massacres were arranged at Versailles before the entry of the troops, and, indeed, the utterances of Thiers were of themselves quite sufficient to show this. Strange it is that to an extent unparalleled in any other movement the vilifiers of the Commune suc- ceeded immediately in travestying the situation and giving currency to the grotesque notion among the unthinking of the Commune as responsible for the horrors of its own suppression ! Never before has a murderer been so suc- cessful in casthig the obloquy of his own foul crime upon his innocent victim whose mouth he has closed in death. It began immediately even on the spot. Paschal Grousset has related to me how, passing through a courtyard, he heard a woman with a child in her arms saying in a tone of indignation, " Oui^ oui^ j?io?i petit, nous 7ious rappelerons la ComviiDie, n'est ce pas ? " Yes, yes, my child, we shall remember the Commune, shan't we ? ' ). This was within sound of the mitrailleuses as they were slaughtering the hapless partisans of the Commune wholesale. To think that the Commune, whose chief crime was its ill-judged mildness and humanity, should ever have become regarded as the agent of bloodshed by anyone ! The city was now divided into four military districts, under the commands respectively of Generals Vinoy, Ladmirault, Cissey, and Douai. In each numerous pre- 70 THE PARIS COMMUNE. votal courts were established which worked all day organising the butcheries. The property of the murdered men was plundered by the soldiery. It sufficed to wear a blouse, to have deplored the carnage, let alone to have ever spoken or written a word in favour of the rights of workmen, to be drafted into one of these murder dens and instantly dispatched. Everywhere might be seen columns of prisoners being led to the shambles. Foremost among the wretches who took a delight in the fiendish work was the debauched Bonapartist scoundrel Gallifet. The description by the Daily News correspondent of this monster's deeds of blood as witnessed by him has been often quoted. He ordered some hundreds of old men, women and children out of a column of which he was in charge, and had them shot down. This dastardly ruffian now occupies a high position in the French army. At last all prisoners were taken to one or two specially appointed places to be mowed down. These wholesale massacres went on till the 3rd of June, when they were stopped mainly from fear of pestilence through the accumulation of corpses, which it was impossible to dis- pose of. The executions of those condemned by the permanent tribunal, which took place on the plain of Satory, outside Paris, continued till the end of the year. Meanwhile, with 30,000 proletarians butchered in cold blood crying for vengeance, the Assembly assisted in a solemn thanksgiving service for the restoration of order." THE CIVILISED WORLD AND ITS "THRILL OF HORROR." 7 1 XV. THE CIVILISED WORLD AND ITS "THRILL OF HORROR." We have seen that the Commune had one special fault, that of a fatuous moderation in all its doings ; we have seen that probably never since history began have any body of men allowed themselves and theirs to be treated as lambs in the slaughterhouse with more lamblike for- bearance and absence of retaliation than the Commune and its adherents ; we have seen this illustrated by the incredible fact that up to the last, amid all the slaughter- ings of Communists, the vast majority of the hostages and prisoners in its hands remained unscathed. We have seen on the other hand the Versaillese, under Thiers, organising with a cold-blooded deliberation and ferocity an orgy of blood for weeks in advance, keeping their hands in the while by isolated murders of prisoners of daily occurrence, in short, deliberately planning and carrying out a crime unexampled in history, compared to which the worst Anarchist " outrage of our days is but as the pressure of a suckling's gums is to the rending of a tiger's maw. Having seen this, it remains to consider, in view of the facts, the attitude of the " civilised world " as expressed in its accredited organs, in other words the public opinion of bourgeois society. Now this public opinion, judging by its indignant eloquence over the infantile attempts of silly 72 THE PARIS COMMUNE. youths and others to feebly emulate the exploits of Thiers and the miscreants of Versailles in the line of cold-blooded murder {e.g,, at the Liceo theatre and the Cafe Terminus) we might have imagined would have been animated at the very least to some energetic remonstrances. Such an expectation would have shown an ingenuous ignorance of the ways and the manners of a class public opinion, and its hired press lackeys. Not only was there no remonstrance, but as if by a concerted action, " Society " and its press began, not in France alone, but equally throughout the civilised world,'' to pour forth abuse, not on the murder- ing Versaillese, but on the murdered Communards. The orgy of carnage perpetrated by the Versailles troops was everywhere hailed as a glorious victory of order." The Commune " was at once stamped as a bye-word of breath-baiting unutterable horror. The execution of a handful of hostages out of some hundreds, the single act of retributive justice exercised by the adherents of the Commune was a godsend to the bourgeois classes, as they wanted something to hang their vituperation upon, and otherwise they would have had to go on ranting anent the execution of their sainted heroes Lecomte and Clement Thomas, or else on the wickedness of the National Guards in the Rue de la Paix in daring to resent being prodded with sword-sticks, and riddled with the revolvers of the ^'respectable" mob which attacked them, both of which incidents were getting rather worn. It is true it did not much matter, as the " respectable " world was prepared to swallow anything against the Commune, and with or with- out the hostage business the villany of the Commune would have been equally great in its eyes. But still, the death of the hostages came as a good stalking horse " for the '