Book: The Insurrection in Paris

A >> An Englishman: Davy >> The Insurrection in Paris




Yesterday, out of one of the houses from which a shot had been fired, an
innocent Englishman, who, being elderly and deaf, knew nothing of what
had happened, came downstairs unsuspectingly on to the pavement into the
middle of the crowd, and had a very narrow escape for his life. Some
ingenious self-constituted detective called out "That's the man," and
the crowd, having long waited in vain for somebody, were only too glad
to have a victim thus extemporized to their hands, and if a few of the
cooler and more humane bystanders had not interfered, the Englishman
might have been murdered in cold blood and in broad daylight. As it was,
he got off with no more serious injury than torn clothes and a mauling
which may keep him to his bed for a fortnight.

What, to those who have witnessed the recent transformation scenes in
the great Parisian melodrama, is newest and strangest is the crowd of
well-dressed holyday-making loungers streaming so thickly over the
broad pavement that it is no easy matter to get through them, and
occupying every available chair outside the adjoining _cafe_. Where in
the world do they all come from? Many of them have stories of their
recent experiences to tell which, well arranged, might make the fortune
of a theatrical manager--stories so sensational that one would feel
bound to refuse them credence if they were not in perfect harmony with
the sensational scenes of which every third man's personal experience
has supplied him with a specimen. One man has been close prisoner in a
cellar two days and nights while fighting has been going on all around
him and over his head. Another has had to fly amid bullets from the
suffocating smoke of burning buildings, his ears still ringing with the
cries of poor wretches who could not muster up their courage for the
rush, and who risked a lingering death under the fallen ruins.

Numerous corpses have been dug out of cellars over which had fallen
masses of burning houses, and many probably still remain, at which it is
impossible to get. In the Rue Royale and its immediate neighbourhood
last night the air was tainted with the unmistakable smell of putrefying
bodies, which, it was supposed, were lying under the huge masses of
smouldering woodwork and masonry still heaped upon them. The fire,
though the engines have been at work at it six days and nights, has not
yet been completely extinguished, and last night I and a friend,
although he had his wife to protect him, were compelled to take our turn
at the pumps. We in vain pleaded that we would not leave the lady alone.
The head of the pressgang who had kidnapped us would be delighted to
take care of her while we worked, and as soon as it appeared that we
were only to work a short time--not to be kept on indefinitely into the
small hours of the night--we were not sorry to lend a helping hand. A
fresh batch of captives, condemned to hard labour, shortly came up and
replaced us. One of our objections to being kept long at work was that
it was getting late, and that after dark it is no very easy or safe
matter to go about the streets.


JUNE 4th AND 5th.

Large crowds took advantage of the free permission accorded yesterday to
pass through the gates of Paris, and to-day the streets are filled to
overflowing with sightseers examining the ruins and other traces of the
siege. Many foreigners have already arrived, some for pleasure, some to
recommence business operations.

Arrests are still numerous of men and women, many of the arrested
apparently belonging to the respectable classes.

It has been proposed to set on foot throughout Europe a subscription to
restore the public buildings destroyed in Paris.

It is hoped that in two days the telegraphs will again be open to the
public. The post is already working well, thanks to the exertions of M.
Rampont.

All impediments in the way of entering and leaving Paris have been
removed, as I said; persons are only required to show their passports
when demanded by the police.

The military authorities have entertained favourably the requests of
theatrical managers for permission to re-open the theatres, but the
re-opening of the _cafes chantants_ has not yet been authorized.

Aubry, agent of the International Society and treasurer of the Commune,
was arrested yesterday.

It is said that, until further orders, no one is to be allowed to pass
the gates of Paris after 9 p.m. Patrols of cavalry traverse Paris and
the environs all night.

The _Figaro_ calculates the number of insurgents still at large in Paris
who have escaped military justice at 50,000 men. These persons will, it
thinks, always constitute a source of danger, and will only await a
favourable opportunity for exciting disturbances.


JUNE 6th.

A gang of prisoners passing down the Boulevard is a never ending source
of interest, and with some reason, for the prisoners now are not the
scum of Belleville and La Villette, swept at haphazard out of their
lanes and alleys, but the more prominent men, who have been lying hid
ever since, and are being discovered or denounced singly, so that there
are seldom more than two or three in a batch, and these are generally
persons of note. I saw two parties yesterday, one containing three men
and two women, all of quite a different type from the ragged hangdog
squads that used to be driven past between lines of cavalry. These were
well-dressed, gentlemanlike men and modest, respectable-looking women
who seemed by no means either afraid or ashamed of the position in which
they found themselves. On another occasion I observed two men, also of
the _bourgeoisie_ class, both of them very superior to usual prisoners.
One of them had his hands tied firmly behind his back. They both boldly
looked the crowd that followed them in the face; but the arrest which
caused the greatest interest was that of M. Paschal Grousset, who was
caught hidden and disguised as a woman at 39 Rue Condorcet, and who was
honoured with a conveyance and a cavalry escort to protect him from the
crowd. M. Pyat still succeeds in evading the authorities, and there is
even some doubt whether the numerous persons who went to see the body of
M. Deslescluze when it was exposed in the church of St. Elizabeth, and
who declared that they recognized it, were not the victims of a
delusion, and whether that gentleman may not still turn up like Sir
Roger Tichborne to discomfit the minds of his old friends, who now seem
uncertain whether they know him or not.

Monday being the first day when the gates of Paris, as well as the
railway stations, were open to the public, there was an influx and
efflux on a large scale, the people who swarmed in were people from a
distance who had taken refuge in the country, and were returning with
their baggage to their homes. Those who swarmed out were for the most
part sightseers whom events have kept close prisoners in Paris for the
last two months, and who are now flocking to the outside of the
_enceinte_ to visit their former haunts of pleasure in the immediate
vicinity, which are now desolate wastes, and to compare the condition of
the suburbs as damaged by the Germans with their present condition as
destroyed by themselves. An examination for arms and weapons to be
extended to every room in Paris is now being made, and the military
authorities continue their active _perquisitions_ for men and documents
with tolerable success. Upon two successive occasions, however, shots
have been fired within the last few days from a window in a house in the
Place Beauveau upon officers, fortunately without injury, but the
would-be murderer has not been found.


JUNE 7th.

Ten thousand incendiary bombs have been discovered in the catacombs. As
23,000 were manufactured by the Commune according to documents found on
prisoners, and of these not many were used, a large number are believed
to be still somewhere concealed.

Nearly all the missing pieces of the Colonne Vendome have been
recovered. It is thought the Column can be exactly restored.

A strange proposal is made to preserve untouched the ruins of the Hotel
de Ville. It is seriously discussed, and finds many advocates.

On the extradition question the more moderate journals suggest that
Government should content itself with demanding the surrender of those
Insurgents against whom it can make out some case of ordinary
non-political crime.

Crowds still flock from all parts into Paris.

Perfect tranquility prevails, though numerous arrests continue to be
made.

It is believed that the prisoners will be classified in three
categories, the first consisting of persons against whom only minor
charges are preferred, the second of those charged with offences which
entail transportation, the third of criminals of the worst class, some
of them being accused of offences which may be punished by death.

The funeral of the Archbishop of Paris and the other distinguished
hostages assassinated by the Commune is expected to be a very imposing
ceremony. A Commission of 50 Deputies will officially represent the
Assembly on the occasion, but a very much larger number of Deputies will
attend. The chief of the Executive power and the other members of the
Government will be present at Notre-Dame, where the funeral service
will be celebrated to morrow morning at 11 o'clock.

The body of the Archbishop will be removed from the Archiepiscopal
Palace, in the Rue de Grenelle, at 10 o'clock. It will be carried on a
bed of state by seven Deacons. The seven Suffragan Bishops of the
Archdiocese of Paris will act as pall bearers.

Monseigneur Darboy will be interred in the tomb of the Archbishops of
Paris in the vaults of the Cathedral See.

The Abbe Duguerry will be burried in the vaults of the Madeleine, and
the other hostages in the Cemetery of Pere-Lachaise.

The cause of the delay in opening the courts-martial at Versailles to
try the Communist prisoners is that a supplementary act of indictment
has been rendered necessary by the discovery of important documents on
several of the recently-arrested members of the Commune.


JUNE 8th AND 9th.

The inhabitants of the second Arrondissement have been warned that
everybody who does not give up his firearms may be tried before a court
martial.

An Anglo-Indian ex-officer is said to be gravely compromised in the
Insurrection, but the number of British subjects engaged in it appears
to have been ludicrously exaggerated:--not 20 have had cases made out
against them.

The number of Communists belonging to the International and similar
societies is estimated at 120,000. Arrests are still numerous. One of
the men who shot the Archbishop, and for whom the police had long looked
in vain, was yesterday arrested at his funeral.

The _Journal officiel_ publishes a circular note of M. Jules Favre,
dated the 6th inst., in reference to the causes of the Parisian
Insurrection. The principal of these is the collecting together of
300,000 workmen who were brought to Paris by the works executed under
the Empire, and who were led away by Jacobin agitators, and who were
vanquished on the 31st of October.

After that came the action of the International Society composed of
working men, the doctrines and dangers of which are explained in the
circular.


JUNE 10th.

It is calculated that 70,000 travellers entered Paris between Saturday
and Tuesday by the Northern line alone. Many had to travel in luggage
vans. Paris, notwithstanding, does not appear full. Most of the
visitors make a very short stay. The dull condition of trade is loudly
complained of.

The idea of burning the corpses which have not been properly buried has
been abandoned; it is proposed to exhume all those buried in the Parc
des Monceaux, the Jardin du Luxembourg, and other temporary burial
places, and to transfer them to a new cemetery beyond Fort Vanves.

One hundred and fifty pretended firemen were executed yesterday at
Versailles.

The Commander of the 9th Army Corps of Paris has issued a notice,
stating that the surrender of arms has been slow, and the last delay has
expired. The military authorities will, therefore, treat the offenders
with severity. Active searches have been made in the Rue St. Honore
to-day.

The Courts-martial at Versailles will try the prisoners exclusively for
offences against the common law, and will not consider them as political
offenders.


JUNE 11th.

The close inspection which has been made of the sewers in Paris has
already led to the discovery of large quantities of weapons and
ammunition, and also of many ex-Federalist combatants, who, despairing
of escape from the regular troops, sought refuge in the subterranean
passages with whatever provisions they could secure. The greater part of
these miserable creatures are in a most deplorable condition from hunger
and the poisonous atmosphere of their hiding places. On Friday, at the
angle of the Rue Vavin and the outer Boulevard, the scavengers found
five bodies in the sewer, one that of an officer, and all mutilated by
rats. The bodies were brought out by means of ropes, and after search
for papers and documents, were interred in the Mont Parnasse Cemetery.


JUNE 12th.

On Wednesday the Commissary of Police for the Quartier Saint Victor
received information that the ex-General of the Commune, Rossel, was in
concealment at the Hotel Montebello, upon the Boulevard St. Germain. The
Commissary proceeded to the hotel, and upon searching the place found in
a room on the third floor a person dressed in the uniform of the Eastern
Railway service. Upon being questioned this person stated that his name
was Tirobois, that he was an engineer living at Metz, but had been
summoned to Paris by the railway managers on account of the pressure of
traffic on the line. 'Are you sure of that?' asked the Commissary.
'Parbleu.' 'Well, in the name of the law I arrest you. You are Rossel.'
'I? not at all.' The prisoner was taken to the Prefecture de Police
established at the Barracks of the Cite, and thence in a boat to the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where the head-quarters of the municipal
police are established. During the whole of the journey thither, being
closely pressed with questions by the Commissary, the pretended Tirobois
continued his denials. Upon being further interrogated at the Ministry
of Foreign Affairs, he replied, 'I have told you all I know about
myself. Do not ask me any more.' Tirobois was then conveyed to the
Ministry of War, where he was confronted with a number of persons who
were detained in custody. Some of these declared that he was Rossel, but
others, the majority, denied that he was the Communist ex-General. About
10 o'clock at night the prisoner was formally questioned as to his
history. When the customary question, 'What is the name of your mother?'
was put, he became confused, turned red, and, suddenly springing up,
exclaimed, 'Why carry on this pretence any longer. Of what good is this
acting and these lies. Yes, I am Colonel Rossel.' After this avowal the
prisoner was removed under escort to the depot of the Prefecture. Upon
being searched there was found 225f. in notes, a political article, and
a longitudinal section of the different public monuments in Paris. The
next day he was taken to Versailles and lodged at the Grandes Ecuries.
His real description is Louis Nathaniel Rossel, born at St. Brieuc
(Cotes du Nord), September 9, 1844, of Louis and of Sarah Campbell. The
_Figaro_ states that the artist Courbet was captured at the house of one
of his friends, a pianoforte maker in the Rue St. Gilles. He was
concealed behind a bedstead, and, upon being threatened with a revolver,
gave himself up without attempting resistance.

The destruction at the Gobelins has not been so extensive as had been
apprehended. Only a small portion of the buildings has been burnt, and
work has already been resumed in the parts which have been spared. Even
in those rooms which have been destroyed not all the works of art have
been lost, and especially the "Dead Christ" after Philippes de
Champagne, and the portrait of Louis XIV, after Rigault, have been
saved. The collection of ancient patterns has also been preserved.


JUNE 13th

Some disquieting rumours about the condition of La Villette have caused
the troops quartered there to be strongly reinforced; nevertheless,
perfect tranquility so far prevails.

Business is greatly improving, orders for _articles de Paris_ coming in
pretty freely, and the fine weather bringing increasing crowds of
visitors.

Some further important arrests have been made, including Urbain, alleged
to have been the principal instigator of the massacre of the hostages.


JUNE 14th.

Paris is rapidly resuming its old appearance. The Cafes and Concerts in
the Champs Elysees recommence to-morrow, and various theatres are
re-opening.


JUNE 15th.

People, in France, are discussing the causes of the late insurrection,
and measuring the consideration to which the Insurgents, whether as
rebels or refugees, are justly entitled. That the tendency of opinion
should be strongly against the Communists is natural, for the
justification of their revolt appears difficult, while their last acts
have excited universal abhorrence. It is, indeed, perfectly true that
they had no grievance against the Government which they defied, for
though, perhaps, the National Assembly might not have voted for a
Republic, no Republic which could have been voted by any Assembly of
Frenchmen would have satisfied the Insurgents of Paris. The political
leanings of the Assembly may be put out of the question in searching for
the origin of the Civil War. That war was hatched in the brooding minds
of Parisian workmen, intent on one single object, and it became
practicable when the Revolution of September last put arms in their
hands and the capitulation of February left them there still.

The one fixed idea of the workmen of Paris was that work entitled them
to something more than wages. They had so long and so intently
contemplated the relations between labour and capital that they knew
nothing of any other elements of human society, or of any other classes
beyond employers and employed. They saw that a hundred workmen got their
five francs a day each, and that the single person who hired them got
his thousands a year. We are not aware that, as a rule, they were
ill-paid or overworked, or in any way oppressed. We should infer rather
that they were in the receipt of good wages, that they possessed
education as well as skill, and that they had leisure enough and to
spare for discussion and thought. The misfortune was that they thought
of one subject only, until at last their conceptions grew actually
monstrous. It was not all at once that they reached the doctrines
recently declared. There is a wide difference between the ideas of 1871
and those of 1848. At the latter period the labourer was held simply to
be worthy of his hire, and nothing was proposed beyond such an
organization of labour as would insure a constant supply of work for all
who wanted it, at wages determined rather by considerate adjustment than
unrestricted competition. But the men of the Commune had advanced far
ahead of such old Tories of Socialism and Democracy as LEDRU ROLLIN and
LOUIS BLANC. Still occupied with the one single prospect of their daily
life, and regarding the relations between capital and labour as the
be-all and end-all of existence, they had reached the conclusion that
all capital should be transferred bodily to themselves; that they alone
ought to constitute society, that all other classes should be
dispossessed as worthless, and all established institutions abolished as
effete. They began their demolition with the nation itself. They would
have no nation, no France, no French Government. They renounced not
only all Kings and Emperors, but all Presidents, all Conventions, and
all Parliaments, the latter especially. In the place of such authorities
they proposed to substitute Committees of working men, and to cut up the
country into such areas as Trade Unions might conveniently govern. For
their own particular Union they thought Paris might serve well enough,
and so they stipulated for their own sovereignty within these limits
under the title of the Commune. On those terms--every other species of
authority and power being excluded--they believed they could put into
practice their one idea of turning their own little world upside down
and making the working class everything and other classes nothing. As
they never looked beyond their own workshops, they considered that none
but working people had ever done any duties or suffered any wrongs, and
that no others, therefore, were entitled to any rights. The one object
of their hatred, envy, and antagonism was capital, and they resolved to
take capital into their own hands. For the future they would lead easy
lives, and be the lords instead of the slaves of their old and detested
enemy.

In those pretensions and those desires originated the Revolution just
suppressed. The war thus undertaken was a Civil War, conducted without
the least respect to any laws of war at all. The flight of the
Government left the entire Capital not only with all its resources, but
with all its treasures and all its inhabitants, in the hands of the
insurgents. With these advantages they preferred their demands. They
asked for the Capital of France to be delivered over to them as an
estate or province within which they might proscribe the worship of GOD,
appropriate every form of capital, and depose all authority and all
ranks in favour of their own. Failing this, and in the event of their
being defeated in the actual war, they asked for amnesty and liberty to
depart. At first they reckoned on victory, for the Assembly appeared
disorganized and its armies wavering; the support of other great towns
was anticipated, and the outlaws of every country in Europe--the
veterans of the universal Revolution--had carried their swords to the
service of its latest and ripest expression--the Parisian Commune.
Moreover, they had tremendous means of extortion in their hands. They
held possession of all that was precious and admirable in the Capital of
France, and they declared that, if they were neither allowed to prevail
nor permitted to escape, they would spare nothing in their vengeance. In
preparation for the worst they stored combustibles in the noblest
edifices of the city, and then, laying their hands on some of the most
eminent and venerated of its inhabitants, they penned them in a body for
the contingency of prospective slaughter. They had no more personal
animosity against Monseigneur DARBOY than against any statue in the
Tuileries or the Louvre. Animate and inanimate objects were marked for
destruction on precisely the same grounds--the necessity of putting
stress upon the enemy; and the threat was actually executed because its
execution might improve the effect of terrorism another day. Of laws or
of rules of war these men took not the slightest account. The military
leaders of the insurrection had been trained in combats where every
imaginable expedient had been held lawful, and the Committee of the
International thought no price too high for the realization of their
fixed idea. Soldiers and workmen alike were prepared for any extremity
of outrage either in pursuit of victory or prosecution of revenge.

Such was the cause and such the conduct of this two months' war; but a
war, nevertheless, it was, waged by a political insurrection on behalf
of a political object. It is very true that the Insurgents aimed at no
form of polity known to the world, and that it would have been
impossible to content them by any measure of civil freedom or political
rights. Their chief and most peremptory demand was, not for any rights
of their own, but for the suppression of the rights of others. They
denounced the extension of the suffrage to the rural population, and, as
they were in a very small minority themselves, they protested against
the right of any majority to outvote them, though they were preparing
all the while to impose their own will on a constituency of ten times
their number.

Such are my summary reflections concerning that gigantic insurrection.

Now, my Dear, that I have brought my daily correspondence to an end,
happy shall I be, if such as may happen to read my small volume can find
the perusal of it as interesting as you told it was to you.

I don't expect to stay much longer abroad: I shall soon return to
England but quite heart-rent at what my eyes have witnessed, and
notwithstanding my admiration for the noble qualities of the french
nation, more than once, I fear, I shall not be able to refrain
exclaiming: _Poor France!_


THE END.




HISTORICAL INFORMATIONS ABOUT THE PRINCIPAL BUILDINGS BURNT


The Palais Royal, built on the site of Cardinal Richelieu's Palace,
faces the Louvre, and adjoins the Place des Victoires. Given by Louis
XIV, to his brother the Duke of Orleans, it passed from him to the
Regent Duke. Here, but not in the existing edifice, the Regent and his
daughter held their incredible orgies; here lived his grandson Egalite,
who rebuilt the palace after a fire, and relieved his embarrassments by
erecting the ranges of shops. The Palais Royal Gardens were the nursery
of the First Revolution; they were the favourite resort of Camille
Desmoulins and the other mob orators not yet sitting in Convention; and
in them was unfurled, on the 13th of July, 1789, that tricolour flag
which was to prove even a deadlier symbol than the red and white roses
plucked once for England's woe in our own Temple-gardens. At the Palais
Royal Egalite hatched the plots which ended in his execution, when it
was disposed of by lottery, to be bought back, repaired, and beautified
by the Orleans family after the Restoration, and inhabited by them till
the second death of the Monarchy, in 1830, removed them to the
Tuileries. In 1848 the palace was plundered and the interior destroyed
by the mob, who at the same time burnt Louis Philippe's fine library.
The Palais was turned into a barrack, but when the new Republic
developed into an Empire, it naturally changed back again into a palace.
The Emperor made it over to his uncle Jerome, who left it to Prince
Napoleon, by whom it was fitted up in sumptuous style. The great
staircase and its balustrades and the Galerie des Fetes were fine in art
and in general effect, but nothing that may have been destroyed can be
half so great a loss as the Library which went in 1848, or as the Hotel
de Ville, a magnificent structure, dating in part from 1628. The
additions of 1842 to this municipal palace cost 640,000_l_., and some of
the saloons were the most gorgeous in Paris, perhaps in the world. Here
in the days gone by, the Prefect of the Seine was wont to entertain his
7,000 guests in the great gallery, with its gilt Corinthian columns and
3,000 wax lights, the whole suite of rooms measuring more than 1,000
yards in length. In and about the building were some 500 statues of
French celebrities, from Charlemagne to Louis XIV, in a full-bottomed
wig. Painting, gilding, carving, glass, and velvet here had done their
utmost, and as a specimen of magnificence in the modern French taste
the furniture and decorations of the Hotel de Ville were unrivalled. The
building, however, was far from depending altogether on its sumptuous
upholstery. Not only was the architecture worthy of all praise and the
art of much of the decoration as intrinsic as its gold, but here had
been enacted many famous and infamous scenes in the history of Paris.
Here the first Commune held its bloody sittings; here Robespierre took
refuge with his partisans, and was found by the soldiers with his broken
jaw; the "Citizen King" was presented here to the people by Lafayette
from a central window; here the soldiers were quartered in 1848; and
here in 1871 was the stronghold of the last Commune, less bloody in its
life but more desperate in its death than the first.

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