Davy

“ If it is difficult to realize the present condition of Paris, it is still more difficult to describe it. We creep timidly about the streets, haunted by the constant dread, either of being arrested as belonging to the Commune, pressed into a chaîne, or struck by the fragment of some chance shell, and oppressed ever by the scenes of destruction and desolation that surround us ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The Louvre is not yet wholly gone, and perhaps the fire will not reach all its Courts. As well as we can make out through the flame and smoke rushing across the gardens of the Tuileries, the fire has reached the Palais Royal. Every one is now crying out, "The Palais Royal burns!" and we ascertain that it does. We cannot see Notre Dame or the Hôtel Dieu. It is probable that both are fast becoming ashes. Not an instant passes without an explosion. Stones and timber and iron are flying high into the air, and falling to the earth with horrible crashes. The very trees are on fire. ”

“ As though they had not suffered enough of mortification and defeat at the hands of the enemy, the Parisians have succeeded in emptying the cup of disgrace to the dregs by dragging down the monument of their military glory, amid hoots and hisses, and toppling over the effigy of their greatest soldier-hero on to a bed of mire, at the same time publicly tearing the tricoloured national flag which has for so many years led their armies to victory. ”

“ The wooden sentry-boxes in the square reeled round and fell, while a cloud of filth and dust obscured the fallen monster, and men looked awe-struck at one another like naughty children who had broken something which they ought not to have dared to touch. The moment of compunction was a short one, and a howling throng rushed with one accord into the noisome cloud, fighting and quarrelling for bits of bronze and stone, and a man near me drew back, half stifled for an instant, saying, with disgust, "See what a stench the Empire has!" ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Perhaps the strangest thing about a Paris street fight is that up to the very last moment one sees people running quietly along, utterly unconscious of danger, right between two lines of fire, with loaded mitrailleuses within a hundred yards of them. One minute before the fight I am describing began this morning, an old lady, with a large market basket on her arm, was leisurely walking down the Rue d'Aboukir between the barricades and soldiers mustering quietly at the corner of the Rue Montmartre. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The desire of appreciating de visu the results of a five month's siege in a town of two million inhabitants, unexampled in the annals of humanity, made me leave London on the twentieth of March.
Hardly landed in the Capital of France which I thought of finding tranquil and occupied in exercising its genius in repairing the disasters caused by the enemy, I heard with stupefaction that Paris, a prey to civil war, was under the blow of a fresh siege.
Sad change! the German helmets had given place to the French kepys; citizens of the same nation were going to cut one another's throats. ”

“ The gamins of Paris love to dabble in petroleum and play with lucifer matches, and revel in destruction and conflagration. More daring than their elders, they stick with their mothers to barricades after the father of the family has deemed it prudent to retire, and numerous are the stories of their heroism and courage. Unfortunately, their propensities for arson render them liable to be shot, and it is sad to see how many children are often comprised in a band of prisoners. ”

“ Of what importance to me, a simple citizen of Great Britain, were the disorders and furies of that people, in turn our most cruel enemy or our friend according to circumstances, as European politics or the interests of sovereigns make of them our adversary or our ally?—Why expose myself voluntarily to the heart-rending and often dangerous trials of a war that had none of my sympathies either on the one side or on the other of the enclosure? ”

“ 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 ”

“ The soil of Paris is strewn with corpses of the Insurgents. The frightful spectacle will, it is hoped, serve as a lesson to those insensate men who dared to declare themselves partisans of the Commune. Justice will soon be satisfied. The human conscience is indignant at the monstrous acts which France and the world have now witnessed. The Army has behaved admirably. We are happy in the midst of our misfortune to be able to announce that, thanks to the wisdom of our Generals, it has suffered very small losses."
The troops have captured the Hôtel de Ville, and have occupied Fort Montrouge. ”

“ 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 soldiery, looking at the pedestal on the Place Vendôme and at the numerous public buildings which in some form or other are associated with their military history, now all smoking ruins, can scarcely contain their rage, and not unnaturally vent it with ferocity on an enemy which deliberately planned the destruction of Paris as the price of victory to the conquerors, and who are even yet endeavouring to carry out their diabolical design of destroying the houses still uninjured by secretly introducing petroleum balls and fusées into the cellars. ”

“ 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 Curé 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. ”

“ The people indoors, as may be supposed, do not keep near them, as the bullets fired down the sides of the streets under cover of doorways or corner houses glance and ricochet about in the wildest way. Scarcely a window escapes if the fight lasts long, but adjoining streets running at right angles to the fighting ground are for the moment comparatively safe, and the people crowd about the doorways in these, the more venturesome getting close to street corners, and every now and then cautiously craning their necks round to see, if possible, whether shots tell. ”

“ They were all men. To-day no less than a hundred women were marched down the streets in one gang. The papers are so full of false reports that it is scarcely safe to give news which has not been verified. Thus, unless I had seen the Genius of Liberty on the top of the column in the Place de la Bastille, and visited the Jardin des Plantes, I might have reported the accounts, of which the papers are full, of the destruction of the figure on the Column and of the animals and rare plants in the gardens, which you will be happy to hear are all in a state of perfect health and preservation. ”

“ Every class of Parisian society was represented in the throng that swayed and hustled through the rooms, but the saddest sight of all was a knot or two of decrepit veterans from the Invalides who leant against the balustrade of the grand staircase, and gazed with pinched-up lips and dry eyes at the National Guards on duty, lounging and carousing down below. ”

“ The angry ring of the volleys of execution; the strings of men and women hurried off to their doom; the curses of an infuriated populace; the brutal violence of an exasperated soldiery, are sights and sounds calculated to produce a strange and powerful effect on the mind. Yesterday afternoon I drove over as much of the city already in the occupation of the Versaillists as was consistent with safety. ”

“ Thus we triumph over military despotism, that bloody negation of the rights of man. The First Empire placed the collar of servitude about our necks—it began and ended in carnage—and left us a legacy of a Second Empire, which was finally to end in the disgrace of Sedan. ”

“ These men had been killed in hard fighting, men and accoutrements were strewn thickly around, the houses were smashed and riddled with shot. The barricade, a formidable earthwork and battery, was pounded into a mere heap—everything betokened a bitter struggle; and, indeed, I had already heard from a Staff officer that the Line had lost more heavily at this point than elsewhere. Passing along the side of the canal, we endeavoured to reach the Bastille, but were stopped by a battery which was firing at Père-Lachaise, and which was receiving shells in reply from the cemetery. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Strewn over the streets were branches of trees; and fragments of masonry that had been knocked from the houses, bricks and mortar, torn proclamations, shreds of clothings half concealing bloodstains, were now the interesting and leading features of that fashionable resort; foot passengers were few and far between, the shops and cafés hermetically sealed, excepting where bullets had made air holes, and during my whole afternoon's promenade I only met three other carriages besides my own. ”

“ Men calling themselves Frenchmen have dared to destroy, under the eyes of the Germans, who saw the deed, this witness of the victories of our fathers against Europe in coalition. The Commune hopes thus to efface the memory of the military virtues of which the Column was the glorious symbol. Soldiers! if the recollections which the Column commemorated are no longer graven upon brass, they will remain in our hearts. Inspired by them, we know how to give France another proof of bravery, devotion, and patriotism. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”