Book: The Insurrection in Paris

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I went early this morning to Pere-Lachaise. Shells were still falling so
thickly near the Boulevard du Temple that no one was allowed to pass. I
had to go a very roundabout way to get to the Place Bastille, as at
numerous barricades everybody who passed was compelled to assist in
pulling them down. The barricades were of astonishing strength. Behind
the barricade on the Boulevard Mazas lay three bodies of National
Guards--apparently shot in its defence. A little lower down on the
Boulevard Voltaire lay seven men dead, as if they had there made their
last desperate stand. There were some old gray-headed men among them. We
were told that their bodies were left there for recognition, and women
occasionally came up and claimed them. The Regulars had also suffered
severely there, but their dead had been immediately removed. Further on,
the stone barricades had been protected by a second line of large sacks
stuffed with rags and papers, and piled upon each other. At the corner
of Rue Roquette lay over 70 corpses of men, executed for being found
with arms in their hands. They lay piled over each other, and the
pavement and gutters streamed with blood. The crowd were not allowed to
approach them. We entered Pere-Lachaise and found it full of troops,
chiefly of the Marine Brigade. There is no truth in the stories that the
cemetery was defended tomb by tomb. There had been no bayonet or even
fusillade fighting there, but the shells had shattered many of the
tombs, here and there laying bare the coffins below. The position was so
strong that the Marines could account for its abandonment only by the
fact that the Insurgents were utterly disorganized for want of leaders.
The shelling, however, had been sufficiently vigorous to compel the
troops to retire after they took it last night, and to return for
reinforcements. They retook the position early this morning. The
Insurgents had abandoned a battery of seven guns which commanded the
whole position. We could see from it that sharp fighting was still going
on at Belleville, probably the last stronghold. As we passed the prison
of La Roquette, we heard about ninety rifle-shots and then a
mitrailleuse, and were told by the troops that prisoners were being
executed. We had great difficulty in passing through the Faubourg St.
Antoine, and were stopped by at least five _cordons_ of sentries. They
told us that the Insurgents were _en fuite_, that the Quartier was
_suspect_, and that, therefore, nobody was allowed to pass. When we got
through, many people asked us to put their letters into the post for
them, as they were close prisoners. The streets were filled with arms
and equipments.

Only a few houses in Belleville still hold out. The Insurgents are
surrendering by thousands. The insurrection is considered over.

Most of those who founded the Comite du Salut Public have been taken.
The Insurgents are being shot by hundreds. In the Faubourg St. Antoine
great numbers of men and women were found carrying petroleum, and at
once shot.

The _Moniteur_ says that Felix Pyat and Paschal Grousset left Paris
yesterday in a balloon, which passed over Niort towards the sea.


MAY 29th.

By Saturday evening the various Corps of the Versailles troops, steadily
converging on the Insurgents from the North, South, and West, had forced
them into their last strongholds of Pere-Lachaise, and at the Buttes
Chaumont, in Belleville; and M. THIERS on Saturday announced that the
final attack would be made on Sunday morning. But the troops waited no
longer to finish their terrible work. On Saturday Pere-Lachaise was
taken by General VINOY; in the evening the Buttes Chaumont were carried
by General LADMIRAULT. The two corps united, and the remaining
Insurgents were forced into narrow space at the edge of the _enceinte_,
where they are hemmed in between the Versailles troops and the
Prussians, and must surrender or be killed. They have also been driven
out of all the Forts except Vincennes, and those who hold that Fort have
asked the Bavarian troops outside to permit their escape. At five
o'clock yesterday all fighting had ceased.

"The Revolution is crushed;" but at what a cost, and amid what horrors!
"Peace," says M. THIERS, "is about to be restored, but it will not
succeed in relieving all honest and patriotic hearts of the profound
sorrow with which they are afflicted." We know not, indeed, how or when
such relief is to come; for ruin has been wrought and crimes have been
perpetrated which will leave on Paris and on Frenchmen an ineffaceable
brand. After the first appalling news of the great conflagrations, a
faint hope had arisen that the ultimate result might prove less
disastrous than had been apprehended, and it is true that a few of the
noble buildings which were thought doomed have escaped. But the almost
universal wreck would of itself almost obliterate for the moment the
sense of relief, and the material ruin now constitutes the least horror
in the scene. It is sufficiently distressing to picture every Quarter of
the great Capital, which but the other day was the beauty of the world,
scarred by conflagrations, torn by shells, pitted with musketry, and
stained with blood. It is terrible to think that in a city "like Paris"
fire and sword, and instruments of destruction still more hellish, have
swept from West to East, and from South to North; that most of its noble
palaces are but gaunt and blackened walls, and its finest streets laid
in heaps of as utter ruin as the mounds of Nineveh. The mind is
overwhelmed by the mere physical spectacle of this whirlwind of blazing
destruction suddenly bursting over a noble city so near us, which we
knew so well, and the inhabitants of which were but yesterday our
neighbours and our friends. But even this is overpowered by the awful
human ruin which it expresses and reflects. On both sides alike we hear
of incredible acts of assassination and slaughter. The Insurgents have
fulfilled, so far as they were able, their threats against the lives of
their hostages as mercilessly as their other menaces. The Archbishop of
PARIS, the Cure of the Madeleine, President BONJEAN, with priests,
gendarmes, soldiers, and other victims to the number of 64, have been
shot, and 168 others were only saved by the arrival of the troops. This
massacre of distinguished and inoffensive men is one of those crimes
which never die, and which blacken for ever the memory of their authors.
But in the spirit of murder and hatred it displays the Communists seem
not very much worse than their antagonists. It sounds like trifling for
M. THIERS to be denouncing the Insurgents for having shot a captive
officer "without respect for the laws of war." The laws of war! They are
mild and Christian compared with the inhuman laws of revenge under which
the Versailles troops have been shooting, bayoneting, ripping up
prisoners, women and children, during the last six days. We have not a
word to say for the black ruffians who, it is clear, deliberately
planned the utter destruction of Paris, the burning of its inhabitants,
and the obliteration of its treasures; but if soldiers will convert
themselves into fiends in attacking fiends, is it any wonder if they
redouble the fiendishness of the struggle? Fury has inflamed fury, and
hate has embittered hate, until all the wild passions of the human heart
have been fused into one vast and indistinguishable conflagration.

So far as we can recollect there has been nothing like it in history.
The siege of Jerusalem may afford some parallel, but Roman soldiers
never so utterly lost their self-control as the Versailles troops appear
to have done. We are beggared for words to describe the scene, and
exclaim that it is hell upon earth. It is nothing less. There are all
the physical and all the moral accessories. Fire and brimstone, storm
and tempest, torture, insult, hatred, despair, all forms of malice,
murder, and destruction, have been raging in Paris during the last few
days. Women forgetting their sex and their gentleness to commit
assassination, to poison soldiers, to burn and to slay; little children
converted into demons of destruction, and dropping petroleum into the
areas of houses; soldiers in turn forgetting all distinctions of sex and
age, and shooting down prisoners like vermin, now by scores and now by
hundreds,--all combine to enact on civilized ground, and within the
sight and hearing of their fellow-men, scenes which find a parallel only
in the infernal regions imagined by prophets and poets. This is what
human nature is capable of; for Frenchmen are men, and we shudder for
our race. But, at all events, what hope is to be seen for France in
this seething abyss? This tragedy is the end of eighty years of
revolutions, of an eighty years' struggle after Liberty and Fraternity,
eighty years of attempts again and again renewed to rebuild French
Society on a new and harmonious basis. The end is a fiercer hatred,
deeper divisions, wilder passions, and more eternal distrust. Will these
six days of savage devastation tend to heal the existing breach between
the lower and the middle classes of France? Will the mutual slaughter of
soldiers and citizens tend towards that essential condition of a happy
State; mutual confidence between the Army and the People? Will the blood
of another butchered Archbishop sow the seeds of peace between the
Priests and their Socialist foes? That which we seem at present to see
in this outbreak of hell is the permanent creation of yawning abysses
between classes, institutions, memories, and men. Paris may, perhaps, be
rebuilt; but what is to wipe out the blood with which every street of
Paris is now stained, and when will women cease to hand down to their
children the envenomed hatreds of May, 1871? Where, above all, are the
signs of that combined generosity, firmness and foresight in statesmen
or soldiers which alone could lay the first stone of reconciliation? The
prospect is too black for France and for Europe for us to dare look
forward. We have no heart at present to balance the faults and crimes of
the two sides, or to assign the relative blame. We only see the worst
outburst ever yet displayed of human passions; we see it at the close of
fifteen centuries of Christian civilization; we see it in one of the
most gifted races of the world, and we know not where to look for hope
or consolation.


MAY 30th.

Paris is perfectly tranquil. Shops are opening. The streets are crowded
with people examining the amount of damage done. Prisoners in groups of
a hundred are being marched under escort down the Boulevards. Fighting
ceased about 3 yesterday afternoon. A few shots were fired from the
windows at Belleville, where frightful scenes are said to have been
enacted. The more desperate characters, felons and escaped _forcats_ of
the worst description, turned at the last moment on their own comrades
because they refused to continue the fight. Some women murdered with
knives two young men for the same reason. In consequence of the firing
from the windows, an immense number of executions occurred. The park of
the Buttes Chaumont was strewn with corpses. The soldiers were so
furious that the officers found it necessary to warn strangers of the
danger of incurring suspicion. A few of the inhabitants of Belleville
were declaring openly to passers by that the affair was not yet over,
and that terrible reprisals would be wreaked upon the soldiers. These
boasts have not yet been fulfilled, but general apprehensions are,
nevertheless, entertained that those of the insurgents who have escaped
justice will try to inaugurate a secret system of arson and
assassination. Constant discoveries of petroleum are still being made.
The danger is increased by the fact that women, who, on account of their
sex, are more likely lo escape notice, are really the most desperate.
Great precautions are taken at night. The streets are full of sentries
and all circulation is strictly forbidden. Any one who ventures out
without the password runs the risk of being locked up all night. There
are diversities of opinion relative to the Archbishop's fate even now.
Some people affirm that he has escaped; but the evidence is in favour of
his having been murdered at La Roquette.

Fears are entertained of an epidemic consequent upon the hurried burial
of so many dead under the pavement of the streets.


MAY 31st AND JUNE 1st.

The search for Insurgents from house to house is still going on
vigorously. It is still very hard either to leave or even to enter
Paris, Gourde, the Communist Minister of Finance, has been found. It is
said by Insurgents that Cluseret ought to be among the last batch of
prisoners taken at Fort Vincennes. This being their last place of refuge
it is expected that many other ringleaders will be discovered.

The Communist commander of that Fort sent to the Bavarian General a list
of his officers and men, requesting for the former passes into
Switzerland, for the latter passes into France. After various
negotiations, the affair was left in the hands of General Vinoy, and it
was agreed that all the garrison of Vincennes, having never fired a
shot, should be detained prisoners only temporarily; but that all
fugitives who had taken refuge there should be surrendered
unconditionally. The garrison eagerly consented to the terms, and at
once put their chiefs in prison. Orders were found on many of them,
signed Ulysse Parent, for the burning of the Hotel de Ville, the Bourse,
and other places.

The Luxembourg is to replace temporarily the Hotel de Ville, and the
Staff has already moved there. Everything is going on quietly enough in
most parts of Paris, but in the Belleville Quarter life is still unsafe.
Not only shots are fired from windows, but occasionally Insurgents fire
off revolvers upon officers at a few yards' distance. Many fear that,
notwithstanding the large numbers of the Insurgents caught, and the
terrible example made, enough have escaped to give further trouble, if
not by open resistance, at least by arson and secret assassination. The
severities, moreover, exercised by the military authorities have
produced a pretty strong feeling of reaction against them, and in some
of even the least revolutionary Quarters the troops are scarcely
popular, certainly not so popular as when they entered Paris. The
Insurgents find many sympathizers to hide them, and assist their escape
from Paris.

The policy of England with reference to those who have escaped is
watched with great anxiety.

Active measures are being taken to cleanse the streets and rid them of
the dead bodies, some of which had been buried where they fell under the
barricades, with a foot or two of soil over them. Passers-by are pressed
into the service as burying parties, and the English Embassy has
received complaints from Englishmen of having been seized for this
purpose. The smell of corpses in some places is offensively strong, and
it is feared this hot weather following upon the heavy rain may breed a
pestilence.

Traffic in the streets at night is getting easier, though the _cafes_
have to be closed at 11. The unpopularity of the troops is no doubt, in
part due to the deeply-rooted Parisian dislike of military rule and the
abolition of the National Guard--a measure which, however necessary,
under no circumstances is likely to be welcome.

The firemen of Havre who came to Paris to aid in extinguishing the
recent conflagrations have returned home to-day.

One of the most important of the "hostages" who suffered death at the
hands of the Commune--the most important person of their lay victims--M.
Bonjean, was President of the Court of Cassation, and it was only the
fact of his holding a high position, and being respected by all persons
whose respect was worth having, that can have rendered him odious. He
was a very old man, as old at least as the Abbe Deguerry. It was chiefly
as a Judge and not as a politician that his name was known to the world,
yet, all that was known of him as a politician was in his favour.
Indeed, he enjoyed the rare distinction of being, perhaps, the one
Liberal member of an Assembly so bigoted and so subservient as was the
Senate under the Empire. Notwithstanding his advanced age, he remained
firm at his post during the siege and during the far more perilous
period of the conflict between M. Thiers and the Comite Central. His
arrest was, so to speak, an accident, as he happened to be paying, or
expected to pay, a visit, by appointment, to the house of his friend,
the Procureur-general, when the police of the Communists were taking
possession of the house of the latter officer. He bore his imprisonment,
old as he was, with patience and resignation, remarking that for the
last 40 years he had been self-condemned to upwards of 12 hours' hard
labour a day over his books and papers, and that he could work as well
at these in a prison cell as in a palace.

JUNE 2d, AND 3rd.

Two days ago I was so fortunate as to meet Mons. Petit, the Secretary of
the late Archbishop, who had only escaped from the prison in which he
had been confined with the unfortunate Prelate the day before. M. Petit
did not himself see M. Darboy executed, though he saw the procession
pass and heard the firing. Out of 16 priests and 38 gendarmes confined
in the prison, 26 were shot, and the fate of the remainder had been
decided upon when an attempt to escape made by the criminal prisoners,
who were the original occupants of the gaol, succeeded, and with the
help of one of the gaolers the whole body made an attack upon the
Insurgent guard, who, in fact, did not wait for it, but abandoned their
post as soon as they perceived that all their prisoners were at liberty.
The priests succeeded in changing their clerical costume, but not in
sufficiently disguising themselves, for M. Petit saw four of his
companions shot at the first barricade they reached; he therefore fled
back to his prison, and, finding a common prison shirt, he reduced his
costume to that garments and took refuge in a bed in the hospital ward.
The prison was not again guarded, but those who casually passed through
it supposed him to be a sick prisoner not worth notice; and here he
remained until Sunday evening, when his suspense was put an end to by
the arrival of the soldiery. In the Chapelle Ardente of the Madeleine
lies the body of the _cure_ of that church, who was shot by the side of
the Archbishop, and a stream of persons, mostly women, with saddened,
awe-struck faces passed through it all yesterday afternoon. The body of
the Archbishop has been recovered, and is at the Palace.

I have now explored Paris in every direction to judge with some degree
of accuracy of the extent of the damage done, but I will spare you any
detailed account of those scenes of havoc and ruin, that I have partly
described already which differ in their character according to the agent
of destruction, and which consist of ruins caused by shells and ruins
caused by fire. Houses which have been destroyed by shells present a far
more ghastly appearance than those which have been burnt, and the aspect
of the street at Point du Jour is calculated to strike the imagination
of those who are now entering Paris for the first time from Versailles
by that gate. The same may be said of the houses on both sides of the
Avenue de la Grande Armee, and in the neighbourhood of the Porte
Maillot; but nothing that I have seen equals the Auteuil Railway
Station, where the building, the line, and the railway bridge have all
been crumpled up together, as if some giant hand had squeezed them into
a shapeless mass. The iron bridge still spans the road, but with rails
and girders so contorted and covered with _debris_ that we were afraid
to drive under it for fear the slight concussion caused by a carriage
passing beneath might bring the tottering mass down on our heads. A
little beyond, a sentry is placed to prevent people passing beneath a
house which is on the verge of crumbling to the ground. It is a lofty,
handsome building, elegantly furnished, and quite new, which has been
completely cut in two, and the furniture of each successive story is
thus exposed. One room on the fourth floor was apparently a boudoir, for
the rich crimson-covered furniture stands trembling at the edge of the
"_parquet_," and a heavy armchair threatens with the least jar to come
down with a crash into the middle of the road. It was reserved for
French artillery to complete the work which the German artillery began.
I drove round this same road some days after the first siege, and,
compared to their present condition, these suburbs might then have been
considered well preserved and habitable. Looking at the long _enceinte_
of fortifications with its battered breaches and crumbling embrasures,
one is puzzled whether M. Thiers deserves more credit for the skill with
which he put it up or for that with which he has knocked it down.

Anxious to see to what condition the conquerors have reduced the
Insurgent stronghold at Belleville, I have returned from penetrating its
disagreeable recesses. As usual, even in peaceful times, the lower part
of the Faubourg du Temple was densely crowded with an agitated,
restless throng, composed principally of women. Most of the shops were
shut, probably because their owners were either shot or in prison. Those
who lounged in their doorways looked surly and suspicious; nor is this
much to be wondered at, for during the last two days every domicile has
been searched in this Quarter from attic to cellar, and every street
swarms with denouncers and soldiers. As we approached Menilmontant the
crowd became thinner, and the soldiers more numerous, until they almost
lined the street on either side. Here and there were piles of broken
arms and heaps of National Guard coats and trousers. The road was
literary strewn with caps, which had been torn from the heads of
prisoners and flung in the mud. Old women were rummaging in the heaps
for something worth taking away which was not of a military character,
as their operations were closely watched by the soldiery, who were by no
means of an amiable type. Here were no signs of fraternization or
amicable intercourse. At one place at least a dozen omnibuses were
collected and crammed with arms and military stores, a magazine of which
I saw in the process of being emptied. Three thousand Orsini bombs were
also found. I have specimens of two kinds in my possession; one is
circular, flat, and hollow, about six inches in diameter and an inch and
a half thick, and fitted all round its edge with little hammers, which
play upon a glass case inside filled with nitro-glycerine. Whichever way
the bomb falls it is sure to strike one of these hammers, which explodes
the nitro-glycerine. The other is a zinc ball, rather smaller than a
cricket ball, filled with powder and covered with nipples, upon which
are percussion caps. It cannot fall without striking a cap and
exploding. It is natural that the discovery of such objects should
exasperate the soldiery, for whom they were intended, and who cannot yet
walk with any feeling of security along streets filled with a population
who employ such diabolical engines of destruction. Hitherto, in most of
the instances in which they have been used, the culprit has been a
woman; more reckless and vindictive than the men, they have, in many
instances, literally courted death, forcing their fate by acts of
violence when escape was evidently impossible. Near the top of the steep
hill which leads to the Mairie of Menilmontant were several _cordons_ of
sentries, through which we had some difficulty in passing, owing to a
commotion which had scarcely yet subsided, and which showed how
combustible were the materials of which the population here is
composed. There had been an altercation between a sergeant of the Line
and a citizen, in which the latter had offered some violence and had
been shot on the spot; his body was still palpitating on the pavement as
I came suddenly and unexpectedly upon it, and we were warned, by an
angry cry of "_au large_" from a sentry, that it would be a very simple
matter in the then temper of the soldiery to meet the same fate. It is
easy to imagine the scowling looks and stifled curses of the men and
women glaring from doorways and windows at the execution of a friend
before their eyes, and we began to feel that we were objects of equal
suspicion and dislike on either side. At every step we were challenged,
and the fact that we had a military pass made it clear to the
Bellevilleites that we were their enemies. We had now reached the crown
of the hill--the very heart of Belleville, and the last stronghold of
the Insurgents. It was crowded with soldiery: an hour in Belleville
under existing circumstances is enough to satisfy the morbid appetite
for excitement which may tempt people to go there. Notwithstanding the
crowds on the Boulevards, many of the shops are still shut, in
consequence of the absence of their owners from Paris. The difficulties
of entering and leaving the city are still so great that many days must
elapse before the ordinary population can return. Meantime, the want of
gas makes the streets as they were in the darkest moments of the siege,
and the gloom after dark, combined with the dangers of arrest, does not
tempt people to remain abroad much later than 10 o'clock.

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