Paris under the Commune. John Leighton
amongst you.' He gave his own name, it was Admiral de Chaillé. From that moment he headed the manifestation, which passed over the Pont de la Concorde to the Faubourg St. Germain. Constantly received with acclamations, and increasing in numbers, we paraded successively all the streets of the quarter, and each time that we passed before a guard-house the men presented arms. On the Place St. Sulpice a battalion drew up to allow us to pass. We afterwards went along the Boulevard St. Michel and the Boulevard de Strasbourg. During this part of our course we were joined by a large group, preceded by a tricolor flag with the inscription, 'Vive l'Assemblée Nationale!' From this time the two flags floated side by side at the head of the augmented procession. As we were about to turn into the Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle, a man dressed in a paletot and wearing a grey felt hat, threw himself upon me as I was carrying the standard of the Friends of Order, but a negro, dressed in the uniform of the National Guard, who marched beside me, kept the man off, who thereupon turned against the person that carried the other flag, wrested it from him, and with extraordinary strength broke the staff, which was a strong one, over his knee. This incident caused some confusion; the man was seized and carried off, and I fear he was rather maltreated. We then made our way back to the boulevards. At our appearance the enthusiasm of the passers-by was immense; and certainly, without exaggeration, we numbered between three and four thousand persons by the time we got back to the front of the New Opera-house, where we were to separate. A Zouave climbed up a tree in front of the Grand Hôtel, and fixed our flag on the highest branch. It was arranged that we should meet on the following day, in uniform but without arms, at the same place."
This account differs a little from those given in the newspapers, but I have the best reason to believe it absolutely true.
What will be the effect of this manifestation? Will those who desire "Order through Liberty and in Liberty" succeed in meeting in sufficiently large numbers to bring to reason, without having recourse to force, the numerous partizans of the Commune? Whatever may happen, this manifestation proves that Paris has no intention of being disposed of without her own consent. In connection with the action of the deputies in the National Assembly, it cannot have been ineffective in aiding the coming pacification.
Many hopeful promises of concord and quiet circulate this evening amongst the less violent groups.
IX.
What is this fusillade? Against whom is it directed? Against the Prussians? No! Against Frenchmen, against passers-by, against those who cry "Vive la République et vive l'Ordre." Men are falling dead or wounded, women flying, shops closing, amid the whistling of the bullets—all Paris terrified. This is what I have just seen or heard. We are done for then at last. We shall see the barricades thrown up in our streets; we shall meet the horrid litters, from which hang hands black with powder; every woman will weep in the evening when her husband is late in returning home, and all mothers will be seized with terror. France, alas! France, herself a weeping mother, will fall by the hands of her own children.
I had started, in company with a friend, from the Passage Choiseul on my way to the Tuileries, which has been occupied since yesterday by a battalion devoted to the Central Committee. On arming at the corner of the Rue St. Roch and the Rue Neuve des Petits Champs we perceived a considerable crowd in the direction of the Rue de la Paix. "What is going on now?" said I to my friend. "I think," said he, "that it is an unarmed manifestation going to the Place Vendôme; it passed along the boulevards a short time since, crying "Vive l'Ordre."
As we talked we were approaching the Rue de la Paix. All at once a horrible noise was heard. It was the report of musketry. A white smoke rose along the walls, cries issued from all parts, the crowd fled terrified, and a hundred yards before us I saw a woman fall. Is she wounded or dead? What is this massacre? What fearful deeds are passing in open day, in this glorious sunshine? We had scarcely time to escape into one of the cross-streets, followed by the frightened crowd, when the shops were closed, hurriedly, and the horrible news spread to all parts of terrified Paris.
Reports, varying extremely in form, spread with extraordinary rapidity; some were grossly exaggerated, others the reverse. "Two hundred victims have fallen," said one. "There were no balls in the guns," said another. The opinions regarding the cause of the conflict were strangely various. Perhaps we shall never know, with absolute certainty, what passed in the Place, Vendôme and the Rue de la Paix. For myself, I was at once; too far and too near the scene of action; too near, for I had narrowly missed being killed; too far, for I saw nothing but the smoke and the flight, of the terrified crowd.
One thing certain is that the Friends of Order who, yesterday, succeeded in assembling a large number of citizens, had to-day tried to renew its attempt at pacification by unarmed numbers. Three or four thousand persons entered the Rue de la Paix towards two o'clock in the afternoon, crying, "L'Ordre! L'Ordre! Vive l'Ordre!" The Central Committee had doubtless issued severe orders, for the foremost sentinels of the Place, far from presenting arms to the "Friends of Order," as they had done the day before, formally refused to let them continue their way. And then what happened? Two crowds were face to face; one unarmed, the other armed, both under strong excitement, one trying to press forward, the other determined to oppose its passage. A pistol-shot was heard. This was a signal. Down went the muskets, the armed crowd fired, and the unarmed dispersed in mad flight, leaving dead and wounded on their path.
But who fired that first pistol-shot? "One of the citizens of the demonstration; and moreover, the sentinels had their muskets torn from them;" affirm the partisans of the Central Committee, and they bring forward, among other proofs; the evidence of an eye-witness, a foreign general, who saw it all from a window of the Rue de la Paix. But these assertions are but little to be relied upon. Can it be seriously believed that a crowd, to all appearance peaceful, would commit such an act of aggression? Who would have been insane enough to expose a mass of unarmed people to such dire revenge, by a challenge as criminal as it was useless? The account according to which the pistol was fired by an officer of the Federal guard from the foot of the Place Vendôme, thus giving the signal to those under his orders to fire upon the citizens, improbable as appears such an excess of cold-blooded barbarity, is much the more credible. And now how many women mourn their husbands and son's wounded, and perhaps dead? How many victims have fallen? The number is not yet known. Monsieur Barle, a lieutenant of the National Guard, was shot in the stomach. Monsieur Gaston Jollivet, who some time ago committed the offence, grave in our eyes, of publishing a comic ode in which he allows himself to ridicule our illustrious and beloved master, Victor Hugo, but was certainly guilty of none in desiring a return to order, had his arm fractured, it is said. Monsieur Otto Hottinger, one of the directors of the French Bank, fell, struck by two balls, while raising a wounded man from the ground.
One of my friends assures me that half-an-hour after the fusillade he was fired at, as he was coming out from a porte-cochère,[18] by National Guards in ambuscade.
At four o'clock, at the corner of the Rue de la Paix and the Rue Neuve des Petits Champs, an old man, dressed in a blouse, still lay where he had fallen across the body of a cantinière, and beside him a soldier of the line, the staff of a tricolour flag grasped in his dead hand. Is this soldier the same of whom my friend Monsieur A—— J—— speaks in his account of the first demonstration, and who was said to be an employé at Siraudin's?
There were many other victims—Monsieur de Péne, the editor of Paris-Journal, dangerously wounded by a ball that penetrated the thigh; Monsieur Portel, lieutenant in the Eclaireurs Franchetti, wounded in the neck and right foot; Monsieur Bernard, a merchant, killed; Monsieur Giraud, a stockbroker, also killed. Fresh names are added to the funereal list every moment.
Where will this revolution lead us, which was begun by the murder of two
Generals and is being carried on by the assassination of passers-by?
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 18: Porte-cochère (carriage gateway).]
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