Lissagaray

“ The great bourgeois of 1830, like him of 1790, had but one thought—to gorge himself with privileges, to arm the bulwarks in defence of his domains, to perpetuate the proletariat. The fortune of his country is nothing to him, so that he fatten. To lead, to compromise France, the parliamentary king has as free license as Bonaparte. When by a new outburst of the people the bourgeoisie are compelled to seize the helm after three years, spite of massacre and proscription, it slips out of their palsied hands into those of the first comer. ”

“ All Paris abandoned itself to the men of the Hôtel-de-Ville, forgetting their late defections, investing them with the grandeur of the danger. To seize, to monopolize the government at such a moment, seemed a stroke of audacity of which genius alone is capable. Paris, deprived for eighty years of her municipal liberties, accepted as mayor the lachrymose Etienne Arago. In the twenty arrondissements he named the mayors he liked, and they again named the adjuncts agreeable to themselves. But Arago announced early elections and spoke of reviving the great days of 1792. ”

“ The wretches dismembered his corpse with blows of the butt-ends of their muskets.
The Mount of Martyrs has no more glorious one than Varlin. May he too be enshrined in the great heart of the working-class! Varlin's whole life was an example. He had quite alone, by the mere force of his will, educated himself, giving to study the rare hours left him in the evening after the workshop; learning not with the view to push into the bourgeoisie, as many others, but to instruct and enfranchise the people. He was the heart and soul of the workingmen's associations at the end of the Empire. ”

“ From all quarters the same murmur of execration rose against the assassination of the prisoners and the ignoble scenes at Versailles. The incoherence of the first acts of the Council was hardly noticed while the ferocity of the Versaillese was the topic of the day. Persons coming full of indignation against Paris, seeing this calm, this union of hearts, these wounded men crying "Vive la Commune!" these enthusiastic battalions; there Mont-Valérien vomiting death, here men living as brothers, in a few hours caught the Parisian malady. ”

“ It was Lisbonne, who for six months had dragged about his wounds of the Château d'Eau. The same before the court-martial as during the Commune and at Buzenval, this bravest of the brave gloried in having fought, and only denied the accusations of pillage. Other judges would have been proud to spare such an enemy; the Versaillese condemned him to death.
Some days after, this same court-martial heard a woman's voice. "I will not defend myself; I will not be defended," cried Louise Michel. "I belong entirely to the social revolution, and I declare that I accept the responsibility of all my acts. ”

“ Do you understand, workingmen, you who are free? You now know what the whole situation is and what the men are. Remember the vanquished not for a day, but at all hours. Women, you whose devotion sustains and elevates their courage, let the agony of the prisoners haunt you like an everlasting nightmare. Let all workshops every week put something aside from their wages. Let the subscriptions no longer be sent to the Versaillese committee, but made over to loyal hands. Let the Socialist party attest its principles of international solidarity and its power by saving those who have fallen for it. ”

“ The firemen of the Commune had at first extinguished this conflagration, interfering with the defence of the St. Florentin redoubt, but it had soon lit up again, and become unquenchable.
Then began those nights of horror, where, amidst the roaring of the cannon, by the glimmer of burning houses, men sought each other in pools of blood. The Paris of the revolt had at length been roused. Her battalions descended towards the Hôtel-de-Ville headed by bands and the red flag. Small in number, a battalion perhaps two hundred strong, but resolute, these Federals marched on in silence ”

“ Named only to organise the National Guard, thrown at the head of a revolution without precedent and without guides, they had been able to resist the impatient, quell the riot, re-establish the public services, victual Paris, baffle intrigues, take advantage of all the blunders of Versailles and of the mayors, and, harassed on all sides, every moment in danger of civil war, known how to negotiate, to act at the right time and in the right place. ”

“ The civilians strove to outdo the military in levity. Such a one, who had ventured no further than the Café du Helder, recounted the taking of the Château d'Eau, bragged of having shot his dozen prisoners. Elegant and joyous women, as in a pleasure trip, betook themselves to the corpses, and, to enjoy the sight of the valorous dead, with the ends of sunshades raised their last coverings.
"Inhabitants of Paris," said MacMahon on the 28th at mid-day, "Paris is delivered! To-day the struggle is over. Order, labour, security are about to revive." ”

“ On the Sunday morning, Lefrançais, traversing the moat on the ruins of the drawbridge, at about fifteen yards distance, ran up against the Versaillese trenches. Struck by the imminence of the peril, he sent Delescluze a note, which was lost.
At half-past two, under the shade of the Tuileries, a monster concert was being given for the benefit of the widows and orphans of the Commune. Thousands of people had come; the bright spring dresses of the women lit up the green alleys; people eagerly inhaled the fresh air sent forth from the great trees. ”

“ For the tenth time since 1789 the workmen put France upon the right track.
The bayonets of Prussia had laid bare our country, such as eighty years of bourgeois domination had left it—a Goliath at the mercy of his driver.
Paris broke the thousand fetters which bound France down to the ground, like Gulliver a prey to ants; restored the circulation to her paralysed limbs; said, "The life of the whole nation exists in each of her smallest organisms; the unity of the hive, and not that of the barracks. The organic cell of the French Republic is the municipality, the commune." ”

“ On the one hand, young men who form the bourgeoisie have gone over to the people, faithful children of 1789, resolved to continue the work of the Revolution; on the other hand, working-men unite for the study and the conquest of the rights of labor. In vain the Empire attempts to split their forces, to seduce the working-men. These see the snare, hiss the professors of Cæsarian socialism, and from 1863, without journals, without a tribune, affirm themselves as a class, to the great scandal of the Liberal sycophants, maintaining that 1789 has equalized all classes. ”

“ Is not this the revolution of all proletarians? Is it not for the people to at last do justice to that great Polish race which all French governments have betrayed?
Dombrowski accompanies us across Passy as far as the Seine, and shows us the almost abandoned ramparts. The shells crush or mow down all the approaches to the railway; the large viaduct is giving way at a hundred places; the iron-clad locomotives have been overthrown. The Versaillese battery of the Billancourt Isle fires point-blank at our gunboats, and sinks one, L'Estoc, under our very eyes. ”

“ There remained to the Commune but two arrondissements intact, the nineteenth and twentieth, and about half of the eleventh and twelfth.
The Paris of Versailles no longer presented a civilised aspect. Fear, hate, and fiendish brutishness smothered all feelings of humanity. It was a universal "furious madness," said the Siècle of the 26th. "One no longer distinguishes the just from the unjust, the innocent from the guilty. The life of citizens weighs no more than a hair. For a cry, for a word, one is arrested, shot." ”

“ At Versailles the streets looked gloomy, gendarmes occupied the station, brutally demanded passports, confiscated all the journals of Paris, and at the slightest expression of sympathy for the town arrested you. At Paris everybody could enter freely. The streets swarmed with people, the cafés were noisy; the same lad cried out the Paris Journal and the Commune; the attacks against the Hôtel-de-Ville, the protestation of a few malcontents, were posted on the walls by the side of the placards of the Central Committee. The people were without anger because without fear. ”

“ Indefatigable, modest, speaking little, always at the right moment, and then enlightening a confused discussion with a word, he had preserved that revolutionary instinct which is often blunted in educated workmen. One of the first on the 18th March, labouring during the whole Commune, he was at the barricades to the last. His death is all to the honour of the workmen. It is to Varlin and to Delescluze that this history should be dedicated, if there were room in the frontispiece for any other name than that of Paris. ”

“ The friend of the people who will write the history of Liberalism in France will save us many a convulsion. Sincere Liberalism would be folly in a country where the governing classes, refusing to concede anything, constrain every honest man to become a revolutionist. But it was never anything else than the Jesuitism of liberty, a trick of the bourgeoisie to isolate the workmen. From Bailly to Jules Favre, the moderantists have masked the manœuvres of despotism, buried our revolutions, conducted the great massacres of proletarians. ”

“ The shells from Montmartre, which from the day before crushed Belleville and Ménilmontant, the cries, the sight of the wounded, dragging themselves from house to house in search of succour, the too evident signs of the approaching end, precipitated the ordinary phenomena of defeat. The people became fierce and suspicious. Any individual without a uniform ran the risk of being shot if he had not a well-known name to recommend him. The news that came from all points of Paris augmented the anguish and despair. ”

“ While they were thus bent upon resistance the rurals thought themselves betrayed. Every day they became more nervous, being deprived of their creature-comforts, obliged to camp in the lobbies of the castle of Versailles, exposed to all winds and to all panics. They felt weary of the incessant interference of the mayors, and were thunderstruck by the proclamation of Saisset. They fancied that M. Thiers was coquetting with the émeute, that the petit bourgeois, as he hypocritically called himself, wanted to cozen the monarchists, and, using Paris as his lever, overthrow them. ”

“ Let the sceptics make room for those that believe in the Defence; let Paris regain possession of herself; let the Commune of 1792 be revived to again save the city and France. Every day this resolution sinks more deeply into virile minds. On the 27th the Combat, which preached the Commune in high-flown phraseology whose musical rhythm struck the masses more than the nervous dialectics of Blanqui, hurls a terrific thunderbolt. "Bazaine is about to surrender Metz, to treat for peace in the name of Napoleon III.; his aide-de-camp is at Versailles." ”

“ It was Garibaldi. At the call of his name, he wished to answer, to say in a few words that he resigned the mandate with which Paris had honored him. His voice was drowned in howls. He remained standing, raising his hand, but the insults redoubled. The chastisement, however, was at hand. "Rural majority! disgrace of France!" cried from the gallery a young vibrating voice, that of Gaston Crémieux, of Marseilles. The deputies rose threatening. Hundreds of "Bravos" answered from the galleries, overwhelming the rurals. After the sitting the crowd cheered Garibaldi and hooted his insulters. ”

“ Great volumes of smoke, clouds of sparks flying into the air, attested formidable explosions; every minute stars lit up and died out again in the horizon. These were the cannon of the fort of Bicêtre, of the Père Lachaise, and the Buttes Chaumont, which fired on the invaded quarters. The Versaillese batteries answered from the Panthéon, the Trocadéro, and Montmartre. Now the reports followed each other at regular intervals; now there was a continuous thunder along the whole line. They aimed at random, blindly, madly. The shells often exploded in the midst of their career ”

“ Violent reactionists would have spoilt all, precipitated Paris into a revolution. They applied subtle tricks in their subterranean work, watching Trochu's every movement, whetting his antipathy to the National Guard, penetrating everywhere into the general staff, the ambulances, even the mairies. Like the fisherman struggling with too big a prey, they bewildered Paris, now apparently allowing her to swim in her own element, than suddenly weakening her by the harpoon. On the 28th November Trochu gave a first performance to a full-band accompaniment. ”

“ Orangerie, striving to distinguish some one amidst the dimly seen herd. They tore their hair, implored the gendarmes, who thrust them back, struck them, called them infamous names.
The hell of open daylight was the docks of the plateau of Satory, a vast parallelogram enclosed by walls. The soil is clayey, and the least rain soaks it. The first arrivals were placed within the buildings, which could contain about thirteen hundred persons, the others remained outside, bareheaded, for their hats had been knocked off at Paris or at Versailles. ”

“ There at least was life, a lamp, not always bright, but always burning. What is the small middle-class contributing now? Where are their Jacobins, even their Cordeliers? At the Corderie I see the proletariat of the small middle-class, men of the pen and orators, but where is the bulk of the army?
All is silent. Save the faubourgs, Paris was a vast sick [Pg 27] chamber, where no one dared to speak above his breath. This moral abdication is the true psychological phenomenon of the siege, all the more extraordinary that it co-existed with an admirable ardour for resistance. ”

“ You have seen this Paris thinking, weeping, combating, working, enthusiastic, fraternal, severe to vice. Her streets free during the day, are they less safe in the silence of the night? Since Paris has her own police crime has disappeared. [177] Each one is left to his instincts, and where do you see debauchery victorious? These Federals, who might draw milliards, live on ridiculous pay compared with their usual salaries. Do you at last recognise this Paris, seven times shot down since 1789, and always ready to rise for the salvation of France? Where is her programme, say you? ”

“ They thus had a whole week in which to frame a mandate and select their mandatories. No doubt the resistance of the mayors and the occupation of the military posts kept away many of the revolutionary electors from their arrondissements, but there still remained enough citizens to conduct the work of selection.
Never had a mandate been more indispensable, for the question at issue was to give Paris a communal constitution acceptable to all France. Never did Paris stand in such need of enlightened and practical men, capable at once of negotiating and of combating. ”

“ In Paris, active and devoted men exhausted their strength in enervating struggles with the bureaux, the committees, the sub-committees, and the thousand pretentious rival administrations, often losing a whole day in order to obtain possession of a single cannon. At the ramparts, some artillerists riddled the line of Versailles, and, asking for nothing but bread and iron, stood to their pieces until torn away by shells. The forts, their casemates staved in, their embrasures destroyed, lustily answered the fire from the heights. ”