The Downfall
Part III
Chapter VII
On the day succeeding the battle of Sedan the mighty hosts of the two German
armies, without the delay of a moment, commenced their march on Paris, the army
of the Meuse coming in by the north through the valley of the Marne, while the
third army, passing the Seine at Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, turned the city to
the south and moved on Versailles; and when, on that bright, warm September
morning, General Ducrot, to whom had been assigned the command of the as yet
incomplete 14th corps, determined to attack the latter force while it was
marching by the flank, Maurice's new regiment, the 115th, encamped in the woods
to the left of Meudon, did not receive its orders to advance until the day was
lost. A few shells from the enemy sufficed to do the work; the panic started
with a regiment of zouaves made up of raw recruits, and quickly spreading to the
other troops, all were swept away in a headlong rout that never ceased until
they were safe behind the walls of Paris, where the utmost consternation
prevailed. Every position in advance of the southern line of fortifications was
lost, and that evening the wires of the Western Railway telegraph, the city's
sole remaining means of communicating with the rest of France, were cut. Paris
was cut off from the world.
The condition of their affairs caused Maurice a terrible dejection. Had the
Germans been more enterprising they might have pitched their tents that night in
the Place du Carrousel, but with the prudence of their race they had determined
that the siege should be conducted according to rule and precept, and had
already fixed upon the exact lines of investment, the position of the army of
the Meuse being at the north, stretching from Croissy to the Marne, through
Epinay, the cordon of the third army at the south, from Chennevieres to
Chatillon and Bougival, while general headquarters, with King William, Bismarck,
and General von Moltke, were established at Versailles. The gigantic blockade,
that no one believed could be successfully completed, was an accomplished fact;
the city, with its girdle of fortifications eight leagues and a half in length,
embracing fifteen forts and six detached redoubts, was henceforth to be
transformed into a huge prison-pen. And the army of the defenders comprised only
the 13th corps, commanded by General Vinoy, and the 14th, then in process of
reconstruction under General Ducrot, the two aggregating an effective strength
of eighty thousand men; to which were to be added fourteen thousand sailors,
fifteen thousand of the francs corps, and a hundred and fifteen thousand
mobiles, not to mention the three hundred thousand National Guards distributed
among the sectional divisions of the ramparts. If this seems like a large force
it must be remembered that there were few seasoned and trained soldiers among
its numbers. Men were constantly being drilled and equipped; Paris was a great
intrenched camp. The preparations for the defense went on from hour to hour with
feverish haste; roads were built, houses demolished within the military zone;
the two hundred siege guns and the twenty-five hundred pieces of lesser caliber
were mounted in position, other guns were cast; an arsenal, complete in every
detail, seemed to spring from the earth under the tireless efforts of Dorian,
the patriotic war minister. When, after the rupture of the negotiations at
Ferrieres, Jules Favre acquainted the country with M. von Bismarck's demands—the
cession of Alsace, the garrison of Strasbourg to be surrendered, three milliards
of indemnity—a cry of rage went up and the continuation of the war was demanded
by acclaim as a condition indispensable to the country's existence. Even with no
hope of victory Paris must defend herself in order that France might live.
On a Sunday toward the end of September Maurice was detailed to carry a
message to the further end of the city, and what he witnessed along the streets
he passed through filled him with new hope. Ever since the defeat of Chatillon
it had seemed to him that the courage of the people was rising to a level with
the great task that lay before them. Ah! that Paris that he had known so
thoughtless, so wayward, so keen in the pursuit of pleasure; he found it now
quite changed, simple, earnest, cheerfully brave, ready for every sacrifice.
Everyone was in uniform; there was scarce a head that was not decorated with the
kepi of the National Guard. Business of every sort had come to a sudden
standstill, as the hands of a watch cease to move when the mainspring snaps, and
at the public meetings, among the soldiers in the guard-room, or where the
crowds collected in the streets, there was but one subject of conversation,
inflaming the hearts and minds of all—the determination to conquer. The
contagious influence of illusion, scattered broadcast, unbalanced weaker minds;
the people were tempted to acts of generous folly by the tension to which they
were subjected. Already there was a taint of morbid, nervous excitability in the
air, a feverish condition in which men's hopes and fears alike became distorted
and exaggerated, arousing the worst passions of humanity at the slightest breath
of suspicion. And Maurice was witness to a scene in the Rue des Martyrs that
produced a profound impression on him, the assault made by a band of infuriated
men on a house from which, at one of the upper windows, a bright light had been
displayed all through the night, a signal, evidently, intended to reach the
Prussians at Bellevue over the roofs of Paris. There were jealous citizens who
spent all their nights on their house-tops, watching what was going on around
them. The day before a poor wretch had had a narrow escape from drowning at the
hands of the mob, merely because he had opened a map of the city on a bench in
the Tuileries gardens and consulted it.
And that epidemic of suspicion Maurice, who had always hitherto been so
liberal and fair-minded, now began to feel the influence of in the altered views
he was commencing to entertain concerning men and things. He had ceased to give
way to despair, as he had done after the rout at Chatillon, when he doubted
whether the French army would ever muster up sufficient manhood to fight again:
the sortie of the 30th of September on l'Hay and Chevilly, that of the 13th of
October, in which the mobiles gained possession of Bagneux, and finally that of
October 21, when his regiment captured and held for some time the park of la
Malmaison, had restored to him all his confidence, that flame of hope that a
spark sufficed to light and was extinguished as quickly. It was true the
Prussians had repulsed them in every direction, but for all that the troops had
fought bravely; they might yet be victorious in the end. It was Paris now that
was responsible for the young man's gloomy forebodings, that great fickle city
that at one moment was cheered by bright illusions and the next was sunk in
deepest despair, ever haunted by the fear of treason in its thirst for victory.
Did it not seem as if Trochu and Ducrot were treading in the footsteps of the
Emperor and Marshal MacMahon and about to prove themselves incompetent leaders,
the unconscious instruments of their country's ruin? The same movement that had
swept away the Empire was now threatening the Government of National Defense, a
fierce longing of the extremists to place themselves in control in order that
they might save France by the methods of '92; even now Jules Favre and his
co-members were more unpopular than the old ministers of Napoleon III. had ever
been. Since they would not fight the Prussians, they would do well to make way
for others, for those revolutionists who saw an assurance of victory in
decreeing the levee en masse, in lending an ear to those visionaries who
proposed to mine the earth beneath the Prussians' feet, or annihilate them all
by means of a new fashioned Greek fire.
Just previous to the 31st of October Maurice was more than usually a victim
to this malady of distrust and barren speculation. He listened now approvingly
to crude fancies that would formerly have brought a smile of contempt to his
lips. Why should he not? Were not imbecility and crime abroad in the land? Was
it unreasonable to look for the miraculous when his world was falling in ruins
about him? Ever since the time he first heard the tidings of Froeschwiller, down
there in front of Mulhausen, he had harbored a deep-seated feeling of rancor in
his breast; he suffered from Sedan as from a raw sore, that bled afresh with
every new reverse; the memory of their defeats, with all the anguish they
entailed, was ever present to his mind; body and mind enfeebled by long marches,
sleepless nights, and lack of food, inducing a mental torpor that left them
doubtful even if they were alive; and the thought that so much suffering was to
end in another and an irremediable disaster maddened him, made of that cultured
man an unreflecting being, scarce higher in the scale than a very little child,
swayed by each passing impulse of the moment. Anything, everything, destruction,
extermination, rather than pay a penny of French money or yield an inch of
French soil! The revolution that since the first reverse had been at work within
him, sweeping away the legend of Napoleonic glory, the sentimental Bonapartism
that he owed to the epic narratives of his grandfather, was now complete. He had
ceased to be a believer in Republicanism, pure and simple, considering the
remedy not drastic enough; he had begun to dabble in the theories of the
extremists, he was a believer in the necessity of the Terror as the only means
of ridding them of the traitors and imbeciles who were about to slay the
country. And so it was that he was heart and soul with the insurgents when, on
the 31st of October, tidings of disaster came pouring in on them in quick
succession: the loss of Bourget, that had been captured from the enemy only a
few days before by a dashing surprise; M. Thiers' return to Versailles from his
visit to the European capitals, prepared to treat for peace, so it was said, in
the name of Napoleon III.; and finally the capitulation of Metz, rumors of which
had previously been current and which was now confirmed, the last blow of the
bludgeon, another Sedan, only attended by circumstances of blacker infamy. And
when he learned next day the occurrences at the Hotel de Ville—how the
insurgents had been for a brief time successful, how the members of the
Government of National Defense had been made prisoners and held until four
o'clock in the morning, how finally the fickle populace, swayed at one moment by
detestation for the ministers and at the next terrified by the prospect of a
successful revolution, had released them—he was filled with regret at the
miscarriage of the attempt, at the non-success of the Commune, which might have
been their salvation, calling the people to arms, warning them of the country's
danger, arousing the cherished memories of a nation that wills it will not
perish. Thiers did not dare even to set his foot in Paris, where there was some
attempt at illumination to celebrate the failure of the negotiations.
The month of November was to Maurice a period of feverish expectancy. There
were some conflicts of no great importance, in which he had no share. His
regiment was in cantonments at the time in the vicinity of Saint-Ouen, whence he
made his escape as often as he could to satisfy his craving for news. Paris,
like him, was awaiting the issue of events in eager suspense. The election of
municipal officers seemed to have appeased political passion for the time being,
but a circumstance that boded no good for the future was that those elected were
rabid adherents of one or another party. And what Paris was watching and praying
for in that interval of repose was the grand sortie that was to bring them
victory and deliverance. As it had always been, so it was now; confidence
reigned everywhere: they would drive the Prussians from their position, would
pulverize them, annihilate them. Great preparations were being made in the
peninsula of Gennevilliers, the point where there was most likelihood of the
operation being attended with success. Then one morning came the joyful tidings
of the victory at Coulmiers; Orleans was recaptured, the army of the Loire was
marching to the relief of Paris, was even then, so it was reported, in camp at
Etampes. The aspect of affairs was entirely changed: all they had to do now was
to go and effect a junction with it beyond the Marne. There had been a general
reorganization of the forces; three armies had been created, one composed of the
battalions of National Guards and commanded by General Clement Thomas, another,
comprising the 13th and 14th corps, to which were added a few reliable
regiments, selected indiscriminately wherever they could be found, was to form
the main column of attack under the lead of General Ducrot, while the third,
intended to act as a reserve, was made up entirely of mobiles and turned over to
General Vinoy. And when Maurice laid him down to sleep in the wood of Vincennes
on the night of the 28th of November, with his comrades of the 115th, he was
without a doubt of their success. The three corps of the second army were all
there, and it was common talk that their junction with the army of the Loire had
been fixed for the following day at Fontainebleau. Then ensued a series of
mischances, the usual blunders arising from want of foresight; a sudden rising
of the river, which prevented the engineers from laying the pontoon bridge;
conflicting orders, which delayed the movement of the troops. The 115th was
among the first regiments to pass the river on the following night, and in the
neighborhood of ten o'clock, with Maurice in its ranks, it entered Champigny
under a destructive fire. The young man was wild with excitement; he fired so
rapidly that his chassepot burned his fingers, notwithstanding the intense cold.
His sole thought was to push onward, ever onward, surmounting every obstacle
until they should join their brothers from the provinces over there across the
river. But in front of Champigny and Bry the army fell up against the park walls
of Coeuilly and Villiers, that the Prussians had converted into impregnable
fortresses, more than a quarter of a mile in length. The men's courage faltered,
and after that the action went on in a half-hearted way; the 3d corps was slow
in getting up, the 1st and 2d, unable to advance, continued for two days longer
to hold Champigny, which they finally abandoned on the night of December 2,
after their barren victory. The whole army retired to the wood of Vincennes,
where the men's only shelter was the snow-laden branches of the trees, and
Maurice, whose feet were frost-bitten, laid his head upon the cold ground and
cried.
The gloom and dejection that reigned in the city, after the failure of that
supreme effort, beggars the powers of description. The great sortie that had
been so long in preparation, the irresistible eruption that was to be the
deliverance of Paris, had ended in disappointment, and three days later came a
communication from General von Moltke under a flag of truce, announcing that the
army of the Loire had been defeated and that the German flag again waved over
Orleans. The girdle was being drawn tighter and tighter about the doomed city
all whose struggles were henceforth powerless to burst its iron fetters. But
Paris seemed to accumulate fresh powers of resistance in the delirium of its
despair. It was certain that ere long they would have to count famine among the
number of their foes. As early as October the people had been restricted in
their consumption of butcher's meat, and in December, of all the immense herds
of beeves and flocks of sheep that had been turned loose in the Bois de
Boulogne, there was not a single creature left alive, and horses were being
slaughtered for food. The stock of flour and wheat, with what was subsequently
taken for the public use by forced sale, it was estimated would keep the city
supplied with bread for four months. When the flour was all consumed mills were
erected in the railway stations to grind the grain. The supply of coal, too, was
giving out; it was reserved to bake the bread and for use in the mills and arms
factories. And Paris, her streets without gas and lighted by petroleum lamps at
infrequent intervals; Paris, shivering under her icy mantle; Paris, to whom the
authorities doled out her scanty daily ration of black bread and horse flesh,
continued to hope—in spite of all, talking of Faidherbe in the north, of Chanzy
on the Loire, of Bourbaki in the east, as if their victorious armies were
already beneath the walls. The men and women who stood waiting, their feet in
snow and slush, in interminable lines before the bakers' and butchers' shops,
brightened up a bit at times at the news of some imaginary success of the army.
After the discouragement of each defeat the unquenchable flame of their illusion
would burst out and blaze more brightly than ever among those wretched people,
whom starvation and every kind of suffering had rendered almost delirious. A
soldier on the Place du Chateau d'Eau having spoken of surrender, the
by-standers mobbed and were near killing him. While the army, its endurance
exhausted, feeling the end was near, called for peace, the populace clamored
still for the sortie en masse, the torrential sortie, in which the entire
population of the capital, men, women, and children, even, should take part,
rushing upon the Prussians like water from a broken dyke and overwhelming them
by sheer force of numbers.
And Maurice kept himself apart from his comrades, with an ever-increasing
disgust for the life and duties of a soldier, that condemned him to inactivity
and uselessness behind the ramparts of Mont-Valerien. He grasped every occasion
to get away and hasten to Paris, where his heart was. It was in the midst of the
great city's thronging masses alone that he found rest and peace of mind; he
tried to force himself to hope as they hoped. He often went to witness the
departure of the balloons, which were sent up every other day from the station
of the Northern Railway with a freight of despatches and carrier pigeons. They
rose when the ropes were cast loose and soon were lost to sight in the cheerless
wintry sky, and all hearts were filled with anguish when the wind wafted them in
the direction of the German frontier. Many of them were never heard of more. He
had himself twice written to his sister Henriette, without ever learning if she
had received his letters. The memory of his sister and of Jean, living as they
did in that outer, shadowy world from which no tidings ever reached him now, was
become so blurred and faint that he thought of them but seldom, as of affections
that he had left behind him in some previous existence. The incessant conflict
of despair and hope in which he lived occupied all the faculties of his being
too fully to leave room for mere human feelings. Then, too, in the early days of
January he was goaded to the verge of frenzy by the action of the enemy in
shelling the district on the left bank of the river. He had come to credit the
Prussians with reasons of humanity for their abstention, which was in fact due
simply to the difficulties they experienced in bringing up their guns and
getting them in position. Now that a shell had killed two little girls at the
Val-de-Grace, his scorn and hatred knew no bounds for those barbarous ruffians
who murdered little children and threatened to burn the libraries and museums.
After the first days of terror, however, Paris had resumed its life of dogged,
unfaltering heroism.
Since the reverse of Champigny there had been but one other attempt, ending
in disaster like the rest, in the direction of Bourget; and the evening when the
plateau of Avron was evacuated, under the fire of the heavy siege artillery
battering away at the forts, Maurice was a sharer in the rage and exasperation
that possessed the entire city. The growing unpopularity that threatened to hurl
from power General Trochu and the Government of National Defense was so
augmented by this additional repulse that they were compelled to attempt a
supreme and hopeless effort. What, did they refuse the services of the three
hundred thousand National Guards, who from the beginning had been demanding
their share in the peril and in the victory! This time it was to be the
torrential sortie that had all along been the object of the popular clamor;
Paris was to throw open its dikes and drown the Prussians beneath the on-pouring
waves of its children. Notwithstanding the certainty of a fresh defeat, there
was no way of avoiding a demand that had its origin in such patriotic motives;
but in order to limit the slaughter as far as possible, the chiefs determined to
employ, in connection with the regular army, only the fifty-nine mobilized
battalions of the National Guard. The day preceding the 19th of January
resembled some great public holiday; an immense crowd gathered on the boulevards
and in the Champs-Elysees to witness the departing regiments, which marched
proudly by, preceded by their bands, the men thundering out patriotic airs.
Women and children followed them along the sidewalk, men climbed on the benches
to wish them Godspeed. The next morning the entire population of the city
hurried out to the Arc de Triomphe, and it was almost frantic with delight when
at an early hour news came of the capture of Montretout; the tales that were
told of the gallant behavior of the National Guard sounded like epics; the
Prussians had been beaten all along the line, the French would occupy Versailles
before night. As a natural result the consternation was proportionately great
when, at nightfall, the inevitable defeat became known. While the left wing was
seizing Montretout the center, which had succeeded in carrying the outer wall of
Buzanval Park, had encountered a second inner wall, before which it broke. A
thaw had set in, the roads were heavy from the effects of a fine, drizzling
rain, and the guns, those guns that had been cast by popular subscription and
were to the Parisians as the apple of their eye, could not get up. On the right
General Ducrot's column was tardy in getting into action and saw nothing of the
fight. Further effort was useless, and General Trochu was compelled to order a
retreat. Montretout was abandoned, and Saint-Cloud as well, which the Prussians
burned, and when it became fully dark the horizon of Paris was illuminated by
the conflagration.
Maurice himself this time felt that the end was come. For four hours he had
remained in the park of Buzanval with the National Guards under the galling fire
from the Prussian intrenchments, and later, when he got back to the city, he
spoke of their courage in the highest terms. It was undisputed that the Guards
fought bravely on that occasion; after that was it not self-evident that all the
disasters of the army were to be attributed solely to the imbecility and treason
of its leaders? In the Rue de Rivoli he encountered bands of men shouting:
"Hurrah for the Commune! down with Trochu!" It was the leaven of revolution
beginning to work again in the popular mind, a fresh outbreak of public opinion,
and so formidable this time that the Government of National Defense, in order to
preserve its own existence, thought it necessary to compel General Trochu's
resignation and put General Vinoy in his place. On that same day Maurice,
chancing to enter a hall in Belleville where a public meeting was going on,
again heard the levee en masse demanded with clamorous shouts. He knew
the thing to be chimerical, and yet it set his heart a-beating more rapidly to
see such a determined will to conquer. When all is ended, is it not left us to
attempt the impossible? All that night he dreamed of miracles.
Then a long week went by, during which Paris lay agonizing without a murmur.
The shops had ceased to open their doors; in the lonely streets the infrequent
wayfarer never met a carriage. Forty thousand horses had been eaten; dogs, cats
and rats were now luxuries, commanding a high price. Ever since the supply of
wheat had given out the bread was made from rice and oats, and was black, damp,
and slimy, and hard to digest; to obtain the ten ounces that constituted a day's
ration involved a wait, often of many hours, in line before the bake-house. Ah,
the sorrowful spectacle it was, to see those poor women shivering in the pouring
rain, their feet in the ice-cold mud and water! the misery and heroism of the
great city that would not surrender! The death rate had increased threefold; the
theaters were converted into hospitals. As soon as it became dark the quarters
where luxury and vice had formerly held carnival were shrouded in funereal
blackness, like the faubourgs of some accursed city, smitten by pestilence. And
in that silence, in that obscurity, naught was to be heard save the unceasing
roar of the cannonade and the crash of bursting shells, naught to be seen save
the red flash of the guns illuminating the wintry sky.
On the 28th of January the news burst on Paris like a thunderclap that for
the past two days negotiations had been going on, between Jules Favre and M. von
Bismarck, looking to an armistice, and at the same time it learned that there
was bread for only ten days longer, a space of time that would hardly suffice to
revictual the city. Capitulation was become a matter of material necessity.
Paris, stupefied by the hard truths that were imparted to it at that late day,
remained sullenly silent and made no sign. Midnight of that day heard the last
shot from the German guns, and on the 29th, when the Prussians had taken
possession of the forts, Maurice went with his regiment into the camp that was
assigned them over by Montrouge, within the fortifications. The life that he led
there was an aimless one, made up of idleness and feverish unrest. Discipline
was relaxed; the soldiers did pretty much as they pleased, waiting in inactivity
to be dismissed to their homes. He, however, continued to hang around the camp
in a semi-dazed condition, moody, nervous, irritable, prompt to take offense on
the most trivial provocation. He read with avidity all the revolutionary
newspapers he could lay hands on; that three weeks' armistice, concluded solely
for the purpose of allowing France to elect an assembly that should ratify the
conditions of peace, appeared to him a delusion and a snare, another and a final
instance of treason. Even if Paris were forced to capitulate, he was with
Gambetta for the prosecution of the war in the north and on the line of the
Loire. He overflowed with indignation at the disaster of Bourbaki's army in the
east, which had been compelled to throw itself into Switzerland, and the result
of the elections made him furious: it would be just as he had always predicted;
the base, cowardly provinces, irritated by Paris' protracted resistance, would
insist on peace at any price and restore the monarchy while the Prussian guns
were still directed on the city. After the first sessions, at Bordeaux, Thiers,
elected in twenty-six departments and constituted by unanimous acclaim the chief
executive, appeared to his eyes a monster of iniquity, the father of lies, a man
capable of every crime. The terms of the peace concluded by that assemblage of
monarchists seemed to him to put the finishing touch to their infamy, his blood
boiled merely at the thought of those hard conditions: an indemnity of five
milliards, Metz to be given up, Alsace to be ceded, France's blood and treasure
pouring from the gaping wound, thenceforth incurable, that was thus opened in
her flank.
Late in February Maurice, unable to endure his situation longer, made up his
mind he would desert. A stipulation of the treaty provided that the troops
encamped about Paris should be disarmed and returned to their abodes, but he did
not wait to see it enforced; it seemed to him that it would break his heart to
leave brave, glorious Paris, which only famine had been able to subdue, and so
he bade farewell to army life and hired for himself a small furnished room next
the roof of a tall apartment house in the Rue des Orties, at the top of the
butte des Moulins, whence he had an outlook over the immense sea of roofs from
the Tuileries to the Bastille. An old friend, whom he had known while pursuing
his law studies, had loaned him a hundred francs. In addition to that he had
caused his name to be inscribed on the roster of a battalion of National Guards
as soon as he was settled in his new quarters, and his pay, thirty sous a day,
would be enough to keep him alive. The idea of going to the country and there
leading a tranquil life, unmindful of what was happening to the country, filled
him with horror; the letters even that he received from his sister Henriette, to
whom he had written immediately after the armistice, annoyed him by their tone
of entreaty, their ardent solicitations that he would come home to Remilly and
rest. He refused point-blank; he would go later on when the Prussians should be
no longer there.
And so Maurice went on leading an idle, vagabondish sort of life, in a state
of constant feverish agitation. He had ceased to be tormented by hunger; he
devoured the first white bread he got with infinite gusto; but the city was a
prison still: German guards were posted at the gates, and no one was allowed to
pass them until he had been made to give an account of himself. There had been
no resumption of social life as yet; industry and trade were at a standstill;
the people lived from day to day, watching to see what would happen next, doing
nothing, simply vegetating in the bright sunshine of the spring that was now
coming on apace. During the siege there had been the military service to occupy
men's minds and tire their limbs, while now the entire population, isolated from
all the world, had suddenly been reduced to a state of utter stagnation, mental
as well as physical. He did as others did, loitering his time away from morning
till night, living in an atmosphere that for months had been vitiated by the
germs arising from the half-crazed mob. He read the newspapers and was an
assiduous frequenter of public meetings, where he would often smile and shrug
his shoulders at the rant and fustian of the speakers, but nevertheless would go
away with the most ultra notions teeming in his brain, ready to engage in any
desperate undertaking in the defense of what he considered truth and justice.
And sitting by the window in his little bedroom, and looking out over the city,
he would still beguile himself with dreams of victory; would tell himself that
France and the Republic might yet be saved, so long as the treaty of peace
remained unsigned.
The 1st of March was the day fixed for the entrance of the Prussians into
Paris, and a long-drawn howl of wrath and execration went up from every heart.
Maurice never attended a meeting now that he did not hear Thiers, the Assembly,
even the men of September 4th themselves, cursed and reviled because they had
not spared the great heroic city that crowning degradation. He was himself one
night aroused to such a pitch of frenzy that he took the floor and shouted that
it was the duty of all Paris to go and die on the ramparts rather than suffer
the entrance of a single Prussian. It was quite natural that the spirit of
insurrection should show itself thus, should bud and blossom in the full light
of day, among that populace that had first been maddened by months of distress
and famine and then had found itself reduced to a condition of idleness that
afforded it abundant leisure to brood on the suspicions and fancied wrongs that
were largely the product of its own disordered imagination. It was one of those
moral crises that have been noticed as occurring after every great siege, in
which excessive patriotism, thwarted in its aims and aspirations, after having
fired men's minds, degenerates into a blind rage for vengeance and destruction.
The Central Committee, elected by delegates from the National Guard battalions,
had protested against any attempt to disarm their constituents. Then came an
immense popular demonstration on the Place de la Bastille, where there were red
flags, incendiary speeches and a crowd that overflowed the square, the affair
ending with the murder of a poor inoffensive agent of police, who was bound to a
plank, thrown into the canal, and then stoned to death. And forty-eight hours
later, during the night of the 26th of February, Maurice, awakened by the
beating of the long roll and the sound of the tocsin, beheld bands of men and
women streaming along the Boulevard des Batignolles and dragging cannon after
them. He descended to the street, and laying hold of the rope of a gun along
with some twenty others, was told how the people had gone to the Place Wagram
and taken the pieces in order that the Assembly might not deliver them to the
Prussians. There were seventy of them; teams were wanting, but the strong arms
of the mob, tugging at the ropes and pushing at the limbers and axles, finally
brought them to the summit of Montmartre with the mad impetuosity of a barbarian
horde assuring the safety of its idols. When on March 1 the Prussians took
possession of the quarter of the Champs Elysees, which they were to occupy only
for one day, keeping themselves strictly within the limits of the barriers,
Paris looked on in sullen silence, its streets deserted, its houses closed, the
entire city lifeless and shrouded in its dense veil of mourning.
Two weeks more went by, during which Maurice could hardly have told how he
spent his time while awaiting the approach of the momentous events of which he
had a distinct presentiment. Peace was concluded definitely at last, the
Assembly was to commence its regular sessions at Versailles on the 20th of the
month; and yet for him nothing was concluded: he felt that they were ere long to
witness the beginning of a dreadful drama of atonement. On the 18th of March, as
he was about to leave his room, he received a letter from Henriette urging him
to come and join her at Remilly, coupled with a playful threat that she would
come and carry him off with her if he delayed too long to afford her that great
pleasure. Then she went on to speak of Jean, concerning whose affairs she was
extremely anxious; she told how, after leaving her late in December to join the
Army of the North, he had been seized with a low fever that had kept him long a
prisoner in a Belgian hospital, and only the preceding week he had written her
that he was about to start for Paris, notwithstanding his enfeebled condition,
where he was determined to seek active service once again. Henriette closed her
letter by begging her brother to give her a faithful account of how matters were
with Jean as soon as he should have seen him. Maurice laid the open letter
before him on the table and sank into a confused revery. Henriette, Jean; his
sister whom he loved so fondly, his brother in suffering and privation; how
absent from his daily thoughts had those dear ones been since the tempest had
been raging in his bosom! He aroused himself, however, and as his sister advised
him that she had been unable to give Jean the number of the house in the Rue des
Orties, promised himself to go that very day to the office where the regimental
records were kept and hunt up his friend. But he had barely got beyond his door
and was crossing the Rue Saint-Honore when he encountered two fellow-soldiers of
his battalion, who gave him an account of what had happened that morning and
during the night before at Montmartre, and the three men started off on a run
toward the scene of the disturbance.
Ah, that day of the 18th of March, the elation and enthusiasm that it aroused
in Maurice! In after days he could never remember clearly what he said and did.
First he beheld himself dimly, as through a veil of mist, convulsed with rage at
the recital of how the troops had attempted, in the darkness and quiet that
precedes the dawn, to disarm Paris by seizing the guns on Montmartre heights. It
was evident that Thiers, who had arrived from Bordeaux, had been meditating the
blow for the last two days, in order that the Assembly at Versailles might
proceed without fear to proclaim the monarchy. Then the scene shifted, and he
was on the ground at Montmartre itself—about nine o'clock it was—fired by the
narrative of the people's victory: how the soldiery had come sneaking up in the
darkness, how the delay in bringing up the teams had given the National Guards
an opportunity to fly to arms, the troops, having no heart to fire on women and
children, reversing their muskets and fraternizing with the people. Then he had
wandered desultorily about the city, wherever chance directed his footsteps, and
by midday had satisfied himself that the Commune was master of Paris, without
even the necessity of striking a blow, for Thiers and the ministers had decamped
from their quarters in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the entire government
was flying in disorder to Versailles, the thirty thousand troops had been
hastily conducted from the city, leaving more than five thousand deserters from
their numbers along the line of their retreat. And later, about half-past five
in the afternoon, he could recall being at a corner of the exterior boulevard in
the midst of a mob of howling lunatics, listening without the slightest evidence
of disapproval to the abominable story of the murder of Generals Lecomte and
Clement Thomas. Generals, they called themselves; fine generals, they! The
leaders they had had at Sedan rose before his memory, voluptuaries and
imbeciles; one more, one less, what odds did it make! And the remainder of the
day passed in the same state of half-crazed excitement, which served to distort
everything to his vision; it was an insurrection that the very stones of the
streets seemed to have favored, spreading, swelling, finally becoming master of
all at a stroke in the unforeseen fatality of its triumph, and at ten o'clock in
the evening delivering the Hotel de Ville over to the members of the Central
Committee, who were greatly surprised to find themselves there.
There was one memory, however, that remained very distinct to Maurice's mind:
his unexpected meeting with Jean. It was three days now since the latter had
reached Paris, without a sou in his pocket, emaciated and enfeebled by the
illness that had consigned him to a hospital in Brussels and kept him there two
months, and having had the luck to fall in with Captain Ravaud, who had
commanded a company in the 106th, he had enlisted at once in his former
acquaintance's new company in the 124th. His old rank as corporal had been
restored to him, and that evening he had just left the Prince Eugene barracks
with his squad on his way to the left bank, where the entire army was to
concentrate, when a mob collected about his men and stopped them as they were
passing along the boulevard Saint-Martin. The insurgents yelled and shouted, and
evidently were preparing to disarm his little band. With perfect coolness he
told them to let him alone, that he had no business with them or their affairs;
all he wanted was to obey his orders without harming anybody. Then a cry of glad
surprise was heard, and Maurice, who had chanced to pass that way, threw himself
on the other's neck and gave him a brotherly hug.
"What, is it you! My sister wrote me about you. And just think, no later than
this very morning I was going to look you up at the war office!"
Jean's eyes were dim with big tears of pleasure.
"Ah, my dear lad how glad I am to see you once more! I have been looking for
you, too, but where could a fellow expect to find you in this confounded great
big place?"
To the crowd, continuing their angry muttering, Maurice turned and said:
"Let me talk to them, citizens! They're good fellows; I'll answer for them."
He took his friend's hands in his, and lowering his voice: "You'll join us,
won't you?"
Jean's face was the picture of surprise. "How, join you? I don't understand."
Then for a moment he listened while Maurice railed against the government,
against the army, raking up old sores and recalling all their sufferings,
telling how at last they were going to be masters, punish dolts and cowards and
preserve the Republic. And as he struggled to get the problems the other laid
before him through his brain, the tranquil face of the unlettered peasant was
clouded with an increasing sorrow. "Ah, no! ah, no! my boy. I can't join you if
it's for that fine work you want me. My captain told me to go with my men to
Vaugirard, and there I'm going. In spite of the devil and his angels I will go
there. That's natural enough; you ought to know how it is yourself." He laughed
with frank simplicity and added:
"It's you who'll come along with us."
But Maurice released his hands with an angry gesture of dissent, and thus
they stood for some seconds, face to face, one under the influence of that
madness that was sweeping all Paris off its feet, the malady that had been
bequeathed to them by the crimes and follies of the late reign, the other strong
in his ignorance and practical common sense, untainted as yet because he had
grown up apart from the contaminating principle, in the land where industry and
thrift were honored. They were brothers, however, none the less; the tie that
united them was strong, and it was a pang to them both when the crowd suddenly
surged forward and parted them.
"Au revoir, Maurice!"
"Au revoir, Jean!"
It was a regiment, the 79th, debouching from a side street, that had caused
the movement among the crowd, forcing the rioters back to the sidewalks by the
weight of its compact column, closed in mass. There was some hooting, but no one
ventured to bar the way against the soldier boys, who went by at double time,
well under control of their officers. An opportunity was afforded the little
squad of the 124th to make their escape, and they followed in the wake of the
larger body.
"Au revoir, Jean!"
"Au revoir, Maurice!"
They waved their hands once more in a parting salute, yielding to the
fatality that decreed their separation in that manner, but each none the less
securely seated in the other's heart.
The extraordinary occurrences of the next and the succeeding days crowded on
the heels of one another in such swift sequence that Maurice had scarcely time
to think. On the morning of the 19th Paris awoke without a government, more
surprised than frightened to learn that a panic during the night had sent army,
ministers, and all the public service scurrying away to Versailles, and as the
weather happened to be fine on that magnificent March Sunday, Paris stepped
unconcernedly down into the streets to have a look at the barricades. A great
white poster, bearing the signature of the Central Committee and convoking the
people for the communal elections, attracted attention by the moderation of its
language, although much surprise was expressed at seeing it signed by names so
utterly unknown. There can be no doubt that at this incipient stage of the
Commune Paris, in the bitter memory of what it had endured, in the suspicions by
which it was haunted, and in its unslaked thirst for further fighting, was
against Versailles. It was a condition of absolute anarchy, moreover, the
conflict for the moment being between the mayors and the Central Committee, the
former fruitlessly attempting to introduce measures of conciliation, while the
latter, uncertain as yet to what extent it could rely on the federated National
Guard, continued modestly to lay claim to no higher title than that of defender
of the municipal liberties. The shots fired against the pacific demonstration in
the Place Vendome, the few corpses whose blood reddened the pavements, first
sent a thrill of terror circulating through the city. And while these things
were going on, while the insurgents were taking definite possession of the
ministries and all the public buildings, the agitation, rage and alarm
prevailing at Versailles were extreme, the government there hastening to get
together sufficient troops to repel the attack which they felt sure they should
not have to wait for long. The steadiest and most reliable divisions of the
armies of the North and of the Loire were hurried forward. Ten days sufficed to
collect a force of nearly eighty thousand men, and the tide of returning
confidence set in so strongly that on the 2d of April two divisions opened
hostilities by taking from the federates Puteaux and Courbevoie.
It was not until the day following the events just mentioned that Maurice,
starting out with his battalion to effect the conquest of Versailles, beheld,
amid the throng of misty, feverish memories that rose to his poor wearied brain,
Jean's melancholy face as he had seen it last, and seemed to hear the tones of
his last mournful au revoir. The military operations of the Versaillese
had filled the National Guard with alarm and indignation; three columns,
embracing a total strength of fifty thousand men, had gone storming that morning
through Bougival and Meudon on their way to seize the monarchical Assembly and
Thiers, the murderer. It was the torrential sortie that had been demanded with
such insistence during the siege, and Maurice asked himself where he should ever
see Jean again unless among the dead lying on the field of battle down yonder.
But it was not long before he knew the result; his battalion had barely reached
the Plateau des Bergeres, on the road to Reuil, when the shells from
Mont-Valerien came tumbling among the ranks. Universal consternation reigned;
some had supposed that the fort was held by their comrades of the Guard, while
others averred that the commander had promised solemnly to withhold his fire. A
wild panic seized upon the men; the battalions broke and rushed back to Paris
fast as their legs would let them, while the head of the column, diverted by a
flanking movement of General Vinoy, was driven back on Reuil and cut to pieces
there.
Then Maurice, who had escaped unharmed from the slaughter, his nerves still
quivering with the fury that had inspired him on the battlefield, was filled
with fresh detestation for that so-called government of law and order which
always allowed itself to be beaten by the Prussians, and could only muster up a
little courage when it came to oppressing Paris. And the German armies were
still there, from Saint-Denis to Charenton, watching the shameful spectacle of
internecine conflict! Thus, in the fierce longing for vengeance and destruction
that animated him, he could not do otherwise than sanction the first measures of
communistic violence, the building of barricades in the streets and public
squares, the arrest of the archbishop, some priests, and former officeholders,
who were to be held as hostages. The atrocities that distinguished either side
in that horrible conflict were already beginning to manifest themselves,
Versailles shooting the prisoners it made, Paris retaliating with a decree that
for each one of its soldiers murdered three hostages should forfeit their life.
The horror of it, that fratricidal conflict, that wretched nation completing the
work of destruction by devouring its own children! And the little reason that
remained to Maurice, in the ruin of all the things he had hitherto held sacred,
was quickly dissipated in the whirlwind of blind fury that swept all before it.
In his eyes the Commune was to be the avenger of all the wrongs they had
suffered, the liberator, coming with fire and sword to purify and punish. He was
not quite clear in mind about it all, but remembered having read how great and
flourishing the old free cities had become, how wealthy provinces had federated
and imposed their law upon the world. If Paris should be victorious he beheld
her, crowned with an aureole of glory, building up a new France, where liberty
and justice should be the watchwords, organizing a new society, having first
swept away the rotten debris of the old. It was true that when the result of the
elections became known he was somewhat surprised by the strange mixture of
moderates, revolutionists, and socialists of every sect and shade to whom the
accomplishment of the great work was intrusted; he was acquainted with several
of the men and knew them to be of extremely mediocre abilities. Would not the
strongest among them come in collision and neutralize one another amid the
clashing ideas which they represented? But on the day when the ceremony of the
inauguration of the Commune took place before the Hotel de Ville, amid the
thunder of artillery and trophies and red banners floating in the air, his
boundless hopes again got the better of his fears and he ceased to doubt. Among
the lies of some and the unquestioning faith of others, the illusion started
into life again with renewed vigor, in the acute crisis of the malady raised to
paroxysmal pitch.
During the entire month of April Maurice was on duty in the neighborhood of
Neuilly. The gentle warmth of the early spring had brought out the blossoms on
the lilacs, and the fighting was conducted among the bright verdure of the
gardens; the National Guards came into the city at night with bouquets of
flowers stuck in their muskets. The troops collected at Versailles were now so
numerous as to warrant their formation in two armies, a first line under the
orders of Marshal MacMahon and a reserve commanded by General Vinoy. The Commune
had nearly a hundred thousand National Guards mobilized and as many more on the
rosters who could be called out at short notice, but fifty thousand were as many
as they ever brought into the field at one time. Day by day the plan of attack
adopted by the Versaillese became more manifest: after occupying Neuilly they
had taken possession of the Chateau of Becon and soon after of Asnieres, but
these movements were simply to make the investment more complete, for their
intention was to enter the city by the Point-du-Jour soon as the converging fire
from Mont-Valerien and Fort d'Issy should enable them to carry the rampart
there. Mont-Valerien was theirs already, and they were straining every nerve to
capture Issy, utilizing the works abandoned by the Germans for the purpose.
Since the middle of April the fire of musketry and artillery had been incessant;
at Levallois and Neuilly the fighting never ceased, the skirmishers blazing away
uninterruptedly, by night as well as by day. Heavy guns, mounted on armored
cars, moved to and fro on the Belt Railway, shelling Asnieres over the roofs of
Levallois. It was at Vanves and Issy, however, that the cannonade was fiercest;
it shook the windows of Paris as the siege had done when it was at its height.
And when finally, on the 9th of May, Fort d'Issy was obliged to succumb and fell
into the hands of the Versailles army the defeat of the Commune was assured, and
in their frenzy of panic the leaders resorted to most detestable measures.
Maurice favored the creation of a Committee of Public Safety. The warnings of
history came to his mind; had not the hour struck for adopting energetic methods
if they wished to save the country? There was but one of their barbarities that
really pained him, and that was the destruction of the Vendome column; he
reproached himself for the feeling as being a childish weakness, but his
grandfather's voice still sounded in his ears repeating the old familiar tales
of Marengo, Austerlitz, Jena, Eylau, Friedland, Wagram, the Moskowa—those epic
narratives that thrilled his pulses yet as often as he thought of them. But that
they should demolish the house of the murderer Thiers, that they should retain
the hostages as a guarantee and a menace, was not that right and just when the
Versaillese were unchaining their fury on Paris, bombarding it, destroying its
edifices, slaughtering women and children with their shells? As he saw the end
of his dream approaching dark thoughts of ruin and destruction filled his mind.
If their ideas of justice and retribution were not to prevail, if they were to
be crushed out of them with their life-blood, then perish the world, swept away
in one of those cosmic upheavals that are the beginning of a new life. Let Paris
sink beneath the waves, let it go up in smoke and flame, like a gigantic funeral
pyre, sooner than let it be again delivered over to its former state of vice and
misery, to that old vicious social system of abominable injustice. And he
dreamed another dark, terrible dream, the great city reduced to ashes, naught to
be seen on either side the Seine but piles of smoldering ruins, the festering
wound purified and healed with fire, a catastrophe without a name, such as had
never been before, whence should arise a new race. Wild stories were everywhere
circulated, which interested him intensely, of the mines that were driven under
all the quarters of the city, the barrels of powder with which the catacombs
were stuffed, the monuments and public buildings ready to be blown into the air
at a moment's notice; and all were connected by electric wires in such a way
that a single spark would suffice to set them off; there were great stores of
inflammable substances, too, especially petroleum, with which the streets and
avenues were to be converted into seething lakes of flame. The Commune had sworn
that should the Versaillese enter the city not one of them would ever get beyond
the barricades that closed the ends of the streets; the pavements would yawn,
the houses would sink in ruins, Paris would go up in flames, and bury assailants
and assailed under its ashes.
And if Maurice solaced himself with these crazy dreams, it was because of his
secret discontent with the Commune itself. He had lost all confidence in its
members, he felt it was inefficient, drawn this way and that by so many
conflicting elements, losing its head and becoming purposeless and driveling as
it saw the near approach of the peril with which it was menaced. Of the social
reforms it had pledged itself to it had not been able to accomplish a single
one, and it was now quite certain that it would leave behind it no great work to
perpetuate its name. But what more than all beside was gnawing at its vitals was
the rivalries by which it was distracted, the corroding suspicion and distrust
in which each of its members lived. For some time past many of them, the more
moderate and the timid, had ceased to attend its sessions. The others shaped
their course day by day in accordance with events, trembling at the idea of a
possible dictatorship; they had reached that point where the factions of
revolutionary assemblages exterminate one another by way of saving the country.
Cluzeret had become suspected, then Dombrowski, and Rossel was about to share
their fate. Delescluze, appointed Civil Delegate at War, could do nothing of his
own volition, notwithstanding his great authority. And thus the grand social
effort that they had had in view wasted itself in the ever-widening isolation
about those men, whose power had become a nullity, whose actions were the result
of their despair.
In Paris there was an increasing feeling of terror. Paris, irritated at first
against Versailles, shivering at the recollection of what it had suffered during
the siege, was now breaking away from the Commune. The compulsory enrollment,
the decree incorporating every man under forty in the National Guard, had
angered the more sedate citizens and been the means of bringing about a general
exodus: men in disguise and provided with forged papers of Alsatian citizenship
made their escape by way of Saint-Denis; others let themselves down into the
moat in the darkness of the night with ropes and ladders. The wealthy had long
since taken their departure. None of the factories and workshops had opened
their doors; trade and commerce there was none; there was no employment for
labor; the life of enforced idleness went on amid the alarmed expectancy of the
frightful denouement that everyone felt could not be far away. And the people
depended for their daily bread on the pay of the National Guards, that dole of
thirty sous that was paid from the millions extorted from the Bank of France,
the thirty sous for the sake of which alone many men were wearing the uniform,
which had been one of the primary causes and the raison d'etre of the
insurrection. Whole districts were deserted, the shops closed, the house-fronts
lifeless. In the bright May sunshine that flooded the empty streets the few
pedestrians beheld nothing moving save the barbaric display of the burial of
some federates killed in action, the funeral train where no priest walked, the
hearse draped with red flags, followed by a crowd of men and women bearing
bouquets of immortelles. The churches were closed and did duty each evening as
political club-rooms. The revolutionary journals alone were hawked about the
streets; the others had been suppressed. Great Paris was indeed an unhappy city
in those days, what with its republican sympathies that made it detest the
monarchical Assembly at Versailles and its ever-increasing terror of the
Commune, from which it prayed most fervently to be delivered among all the
grisly stories that were current, the daily arrests of citizens as hostages, the
casks of gunpowder that filled the sewers, where men patrolled by day and night
awaiting the signal to apply the torch.
Maurice, who had never been a drinking man, allowed himself to be seduced by
the too prevalent habit of over-indulgence. It had become a thing of frequent
occurrence with him now, when he was out on picket duty or had to spend the
night in barracks, to take a "pony" of brandy, and if he took a second it was
apt to go to his head in the alcohol-laden atmosphere that he was forced to
breathe. It had become epidemic, that chronic drunkenness, among those men with
whom bread was scarce and who could have all the brandy they wanted by asking
for it. Toward evening on Sunday, the 21st of May, Maurice came home drunk, for
the first time in his life, to his room in the Rue des Orties, where he was in
the habit of sleeping occasionally. He had been at Neuilly again that day,
blazing away at the enemy and taking a nip now and then with the comrades, to
see if it would not relieve the terrible fatigue from which he was suffering.
Then, with a light head and heavy legs, he came and threw himself on the bed in
his little chamber; it must have been through force of instinct, for he could
never remember how he got there. And it was not until the following morning,
when the sun was high in the heavens, that he awoke, aroused by the ringing of
the alarm bells, the blare of trumpets and beating of drums. During the night
the Versaillese, finding a gate undefended, had effected an unresisted entrance
at the Point-du-Jour.
When he had thrown on his clothes and hastened down into the street, his
musket slung across his shoulder by the strap, a band of frightened soldiers
whom he fell in with at the mairie of the arrondissement related to him
the occurrences of the night, in the midst of a confusion such that at first he
had hard work to understand. Fort d'Issy and the great battery at Montretout,
seconded by Mont Valerien, for the last ten days had been battering the rampart
at the Point-du-Jour, as a consequence of which the Saint-Cloud gate was no
longer tenable and an assault had been ordered for the following morning, the
22d; but someone who chanced to pass that way at about five o'clock perceived
that the gate was unprotected and immediately notified the guards in the
trenches, who were not more than fifty yards away. Two companies of the 37th
regiment of regulars were the first to enter the city, and were quickly followed
by the entire 4th corps under General Douay. All night long the troops were
pouring in in an uninterrupted stream. At seven o'clock Verge's division marched
down to the bridge at Grenelle, crossed, and pushed on to the Trocadero. At nine
General Clinchamp was master of Passy and la Muette. At three o'clock in the
morning the 1st corps had pitched its tents in the Bois de Boulogne, while at
about the same hour Bruat's division was passing the Seine to seize the Sevres
gate and facilitate the movement of the 2d Corps, General de Cissey's, which
occupied the district of Grenelle an hour later. The Versailles army, therefore,
on the morning of the 22d, was master of the Trocadero and the Chateau of la
Muette on the right bank, and of Grenelle on the left; and great was the rage
and consternation that prevailed among the Communists, who were already accusing
one another of treason, frantic at the thought of their inevitable defeat.
When Maurice at last understood the condition of affairs his first thought
was that the end had come, that all left him was to go forth and meet his death.
But the tocsin was pealing, drums were beating, women and children, even, were
working on the barricades, the streets were alive with the stir and bustle of
the battalions hurrying to assume the positions assigned them in the coming
conflict. By midday it was seen that the Versaillese were remaining quiet in
their new positions, and then fresh courage returned to the hearts of the
soldiers of the Commune, who were resolved to conquer or die. The enemy's army,
which they had feared to see in possession of the Tuileries by that time,
profiting by the stern lessons of experience and imitating the prudent tactics
of the Prussians, conducted its operations with the utmost caution. The
Committee of Public Safety and Delescluze, Delegate at War, directed the defense
from their quarters in the Hotel de Ville. It was reported that a last proposal
for a peaceable arrangement had been rejected by them with disdain. That served
to inspire the men with still more courage, the triumph of Paris was assured,
the resistance would be as unyielding as the attack was vindictive, in the
implacable hate, swollen by lies and cruelties, that inflamed the heart of
either army. And that day was spent by Maurice in the quarters of the Champ de
Mars and the Invalides, firing and falling back slowly from street to street. He
had not been able to find his battalion; he fought in the ranks with comrades
who were strangers to him, accompanying them in their march to the left bank
without taking heed whither they were going. About four o'clock they had a
furious conflict behind a barricade that had been thrown across the Rue de
l'Universite, where it comes out on the Esplanade, and it was not until twilight
that they abandoned it on learning that Bruat's division, stealing up along the
quai, had seized the Corps Legislatif. They had a narrow escape from
capture, and it was with great difficulty that they managed to reach the Rue de
Lille after a long circuit through the Rue Saint-Dominique and the Rue
Bellechasse. At the close of that day the army of Versailles occupied a line
which, beginning at the Vanves gate, led past the Corps Legislatif, the Palace
of the Elysee, St. Augustine's Church, the Lazare station, and ended at the
Asnieres gate.
The next day, Tuesday, the 23d, was warm and bright, and a terrible day it
was for Maurice. The few hundred federates with whom he was, and in whose ranks
were men of many different battalions, were charged with the defense of the
entire quartier, from the quai to the Rue Saint-Dominique. Most of them
had bivouacked in the gardens of the great mansions that line the Rue de Lille;
he had had an unbroken night's rest on a grass-plot at one side of the Palace of
the Legion of Honor. It was his belief that soon as it was light enough the
troops would move out from their shelter behind the Corps Legislatif and force
them back upon the strong barricades in the Rue du Bac, but hour after hour
passed and there was no sign of an attack. There was only some desultory firing
at long range between parties posted at either end of the streets. The
Versaillese, who were not desirous of attempting a direct attack on the front of
the formidable fortress into which the insurgents had converted the terrace of
the Tuileries, developed their plan of action with great circumspection; two
strong columns were sent out to right and left that, skirting the ramparts,
should first seize Montmartre and the Observatory and then, wheeling inward,
swoop down on the central quarters, surrounding them and capturing all they
contained, as a shoal of fish is captured in the meshes of a gigantic net. About
two o'clock Maurice heard that the tricolor was floating over Montmartre: the
great battery of the Moulin de la Galette had succumbed to the combined attack
of three army corps, which hurled their battalions simultaneously on the
northern and western faces of the butte through the Rues Lepic, des Saules and
du Mont-Cenis; then the waves of the victorious troops had poured back on Paris,
carrying the Place Saint-Georges, Notre-Dame de Lorette, the mairie in
the Rue Drouot and the new Opera House, while on the left bank the turning
movement, starting from the cemetery of Mont-Parnasse, had reached the Place
d'Enfer and the Horse Market. These tidings of the rapid progress of the hostile
army were received by the communards with mingled feelings of rage and terror
amounting almost to stupefaction. What, Montmartre carried in two hours;
Montmartre, the glorious, the impregnable citadel of the insurrection! Maurice
saw that the ranks were thinning about him; trembling soldiers, fearing the fate
that was in store for them should they be caught, were slinking furtively away
to look for a place where they might wash the powder grime from hands and face
and exchange their uniform for a blouse. There was a rumor that the enemy were
making ready to attack the Croix-Rouge and take their position in flank. By this
time the barricades in the Rues Martignac and Bellechasse had been carried, the
red-legs were beginning to make their appearance at the end of the Rue de Lille,
and soon all that remained was a little band of fanatics and men with the
courage of their opinions, Maurice and some fifty more, who were resolved to
sell their lives dearly, killing as many as they could of those Versaillese, who
treated the federates like thieves and murderers, dragging away the prisoners
they made and shooting them in the rear of the line of battle. Their bitter
animosity had broadened and deepened since the days before; it was war to the
knife between those rebels dying for an idea and that army, inflamed with
reactionary passions and irritated that it was kept so long in the field.
About five o'clock, as Maurice and his companions were finally falling back
to seek the shelter of the barricades in the Rue du Bac, descending the Rue de
Lille and pausing at every moment to fire another shot, he suddenly beheld
volumes of dense black smoke pouring from an open window in the Palace of the
Legion of Honor. It was the first fire kindled in Paris, and in the furious
insanity that possessed him it gave him a fierce delight. The hour had struck;
let the whole city go up in flame, let its people be cleansed by the fiery
purification! But a sight that he saw presently filled him with surprise: a band
of five or six men came hurrying out of the building, headed by a tall varlet in
whom he recognized Chouteau, his former comrade in the squad of the 106th. He
had seen him once before, after the 18th of March, wearing a gold-laced
kepi; he seemed by his bedizened uniform to have risen in rank, was
probably on the staff of some one of the many generals who were never seen where
there was fighting going on. He remembered the account somebody had given him of
that fellow Chouteau, of his quartering himself in the Palace of the Legion of
Honor and living there, guzzling and swilling, in company with a mistress,
wallowing with his boots on in the great luxurious beds, smashing the
plate-glass mirrors with shots from his revolver, merely for the amusement there
was in it. It was even asserted that the woman left the building every morning
in one of the state carriages, under pretense of going to the Halles for her
day's marketing, carrying off with her great bundles of linen, clocks, and even
articles of furniture, the fruit of their thieveries. And Maurice, as he watched
him running away with his men, carrying a bucket of petroleum on his arm,
experienced a sickening sensation of doubt and felt his faith beginning to
waver. How could the terrible work they were engaged in be good, when men like
that were the workmen?
Hours passed, and still he fought on, but with a bitter feeling of distress,
with no other wish than that he might die. If he had erred, let him at least
atone for his error with his blood! The barricade across the Rue de Lille, near
its intersection with the Rue du Bac, was a formidable one, composed of bags and
casks filled with earth and faced by a deep ditch. He and a scant dozen of other
federates were its only defenders, resting in a semi-recumbent position on the
ground, infallibly causing every soldier who exposed himself to bite the dust.
He lay there, without even changing his position, until nightfall, using up his
cartridges in silence, in the dogged sullenness of his despair. The dense clouds
of smoke from the Palace of the Legion of Honor were billowing upward in denser
masses, the flames undistinguishable as yet in the dying daylight, and he
watched the fantastic, changing forms they took as the wind whirled them
downward to the street. Another fire had broken out in an hotel not far away.
And all at once a comrade came running up to tell him that the enemy, not daring
to advance along the street, were making a way for themselves through the houses
and gardens, breaking down the walls with picks. The end was close at hand; they
might come out in the rear of the barricade at any moment. A shot having been
fired from an upper window of a house on the corner, he saw Chouteau and his
gang, with their petroleum and their lighted torch, rush with frantic speed to
the buildings on either side and climb the stairs, and half an hour later, in
the increasing darkness, the entire square was in flames, while he, still prone
on the ground behind his shelter, availed himself of the vivid light to pick off
any venturesome soldier who stepped from his protecting doorway into the narrow
street.
How long did Maurice keep on firing? He could not tell; he had lost all
consciousness of time and place. It might be nine o'clock, or ten, perhaps. He
continued to load and fire; his condition of hopelessness and gloom was
pitiable; death seemed to him long in coming. The detestable work he was engaged
in gave him now a sensation of nausea, as the fumes of the wine he has drunk
rise and nauseate the drunkard. An intense heat began to beat on him from the
houses that were burning on every side—an air that scorched and asphyxiated. The
carrefour, with the barricades that closed it in, was become an intrenched camp,
guarded by the roaring flames that rose on every side and sent down showers of
sparks. Those were the orders, were they not? to fire the adjacent houses before
they abandoned the barricades, arrest the progress of the troops by an
impassable sea of flame, burn Paris in the face of the enemy advancing to take
possession of it. And presently he became aware that the houses in the Rue du
Bac were not the only ones that were devoted to destruction; looking behind him
he beheld the whole sky suffused with a bright, ruddy glow; he heard an ominous
roar in the distance, as if all Paris were bursting into conflagration. Chouteau
was no longer to be seen; he had long since fled to save his skin from the
bullets. His comrades, too, even those most zealous in the cause, had one by one
stolen away, affrighted at the approaching prospect of being outflanked. At last
he was left alone, stretched at length between two sand bags, his every faculty
bent on defending the front of the barricade, when the soldiers, who had made
their way through the gardens in the middle of the block, emerged from a house
in the Rue du Bac and pounced on him from the rear.
For two whole days, in the fevered excitement of the supreme conflict,
Maurice had not once thought of Jean, nor had Jean, since he entered Paris with
his regiment, which had been assigned to Bruat's division, for a single moment
remembered Maurice. The day before his duties had kept him in the neighborhood
of the Champ de Mars and the Esplanade of the Invalides, and on this day he had
remained in the Place du Palais-Bourbon until nearly noon, when the troops were
sent forward to clean out the barricades of the quartier, as far as the Rue des
Saints-Peres. A feeling of deep exasperation against the rioters had gradually
taken possession of him, usually so calm and self-contained, as it had of all
his comrades, whose ardent wish it was to be allowed to go home and rest after
so many months of fatigue. But of all the atrocities of the Commune that stirred
his placid nature and made him forgetful even of his tenderest affections, there
were none that angered him as did those conflagrations. What, burn houses, set
fire to palaces, and simply because they had lost the battle! Only robbers and
murderers were capable of such work as that. And he who but the day before had
sorrowed over the summary executions of the insurgents was now like a madman,
ready to rend and tear, yelling, shouting, his eyes starting from their sockets.
Jean burst like a hurricane into the Rue du Bac with the few men of his
squad. At first he could distinguish no one; he thought the barricade had been
abandoned. Then, looking more closely, he perceived a communard extended on the
ground between two sand bags; he stirred, he brought his piece to the shoulder,
was about to discharge it down the Rue du Bac. And impelled by blind fate, Jean
rushed upon the man and thrust his bayonet through him, nailing him to the
barricade.
Maurice had not had time to turn. He gave a cry and raised his head. The
blinding light of the burning buildings fell full on their faces.
"O Jean, dear old boy, is it you?"
To die, that was what he wished, what he had been longing for. But to die by
his brother's hand, ah! the cup was too bitter; the thought of death no longer
smiled on him.
"Is it you, Jean, old friend?"
Jean, sobered by the terrible shock, looked at him with wild eyes. They were
alone; the other soldiers had gone in pursuit of the fugitives. About them the
conflagrations roared and crackled and blazed up higher than before; great
sheets of white flame poured from the windows, while from within came the crash
of falling ceilings. And Jean cast himself on the ground at Maurice's side,
sobbing, feeling him, trying to raise him to see if he might not yet be saved.
"My boy, oh! my poor, poor boy!"