I did as I was bid, although I thought, with anything but pleasure, that if at that moment the barricade were attacked and taken, I might be shot before I had the time to say, “Allow me to explain.” But the scene which surrounds me interests me in spite of myself. Those grim hags, with their red headdresses, passing the stones I give them rapidly from hand to hand, the men who are building them up only leaving off for a moment now and then to swallow a cup of coffee, which a young girl prepares over a small tin stove; the rifles symmetrically piled; the barricade, which rises higher and higher; the solitude in which we are working—only here and there a head appears at a window, and is quickly withdrawn; the ever-increasing noise of the battle; and, over all, the brightness of a dazzling morning sun—all this has something sinister and yet horribly captivating about it. While we are at work, they talk; I listen. The Versaillais have been coming in all night.^[99] The Porte de la Muette and the Porte Dauphine have been surrendered by the 13th and the 113th battalions of the first arrondissement. “Those two numbers 13 will bring them ill-luck,” says a woman. Vinoy is established at the TrocadÉro, and Douai at the Point du Jour: they continue to advance. The Champ de Mars has been taken from the Federals after two hours’ fighting. A battery is erected at the Arc de Triomphe, which sweeps the Champs ElysÉes and bombards the Tuileries. A shell has fallen in the Rue du MarchÉ Saint HonorÉ. In the Cours-la-Reine the 188th battalion stood bravely. The Tuileries is armed with guns, and shells the Arc de Triomphe. In the Avenue de Marigny the gendarmes have shot twelve Federals who had surrendered; their bodies are still lying on the pavement in front of the tobacconist’s. Rue de SÈvres, the Vengeurs de Flourens have put to flight a whole regiment of the line: the Vengeurs have sworn to resist to a man. They are fighting in the Champs ÉlysÉes, around the MinistÈre de la Guerre, and on the Boulevard Haussman. Dombrowski has been killed at the ChÂteau de la Muette. The Versaillais have attacked the Western Saint Lazare station, and are marching towards the PÉpiniÈre barracks. “We have been sold, betrayed, and surprised; but what does it matter, we will triumph. We want no more chiefs or generals; behind the barricades every man is a marshal!”

Eight or ten men come flying down the ChaussÉe d’Antin; they join, crying out, “The Versaillais have taken the barracks; they are establishing a battery. Delescluze has been captured at the MinistÈre de la Guerre.”—“It is false!” exclaims a vivandiÈre; “we have just seen him at the HÔtel de Ville.”—“Yes, yes,” cry out other women, “he is at the HÔtel de Ville. He gave us a mitrailleuse. Jules VallÈs embraced us, one after another; he is a fine man, he is! He told us all was going well, that the Versaillais should never have Paris, that we shall surround them, and that it will all be over in two days.”—“Vive la Commune!” is the reply. The barricade is by this time finished. They expect to be attacked every second. “You,” said a sergeant, “you had better be off, if you care for your life.” I do not wait for the man to repeat his warning. I retrace my steps up the Boulevard, which is less solitary than it was. Several groups are standing at the doors. It appears quite certain that the troops of the Assembly have been pretty successful since they came in. The Federals, surprised by the suddenness and number of the attacks, at first lost much ground. But the resistance is being organised. They hold their own at the Place de la Concorde; at the Place VendÔme they are very numerous, and have at their disposal a formidable amount of artillery. Montmartre is shelling furiously. I turn up the Rue Vivienne, where I meet several people in search of news. They tell me that “two battalions of the Faubourg Saint Germain have just gone over to the troops, with their muskets reversed. A captain of the National Guard has been the first in that quarter to unfurl the tricolour. A shell had set fire to the MinistÈre des Finances, but the firemen in the midst of the shot and shell had managed to put it out.” At the Place de la Bourse I find three of four hundred Federals constructing a barricade; having gained some experience, I hurry on to escape the trouble of being pressed into the service. The surrounding streets are almost deserted; Paris is in hiding. The cannonading is becoming more furious every minute. I cross the garden of the Palais Royal. There I see a few loiterers, a knot of children are skipping. The Rue de Rivoli is all alive with people. A battalion marches hurriedly from the HÔtel de Ville; at the head rides a young man mounted on a superb black horse. It is Dombrowski. I had been told he was dead. He is very pale. “A fragment of shell hit him in the chest at La Muette, but did not enter the flesh,” says some one. The men sing the Chant du DÉpart as they march along. I see a few women carrying arms among the insurgents; one who walks just behind Dombrowski has a child in her arms. Looking in the direction of the Place de la Concorde, I see smoke arising from the terrace of the Tuileries. In front of the MinistÈre des Finances, this side of the barricade is a black mass of something; I think I can distinguish wheels; it is either cannon or engines. All around is confusion. I can hear the musketry distinctly, but the noise seems to come from the Champs ÉlysÉes; they are not firing at the barricade. I turn and walk towards the HÔtel de Ville: mounted expresses ride constantly past; companies of Federals are here and there lying on the ground around their piled muskets. By the Rue du Louvre there is another barricade; a little further there is another and then another.^[100] Close to Saint Germain l’Auxerrois women are busy pulling down the wooden seats; children are rolling empty wine-barrels and carrying sacks of earth. As one nears the HÔtel de Ville the barricades are higher, better armed, and better manned. All the Nationals here look ardent, resolved, and fierce. They say little, and do not shout at all. Two guards, seated on the pavement, are playing at picquet. I push on, and am allowed to pass. The barricades are terminated here, and I have nothing to fear from paving-stones. Looking up, I see that all the windows are closed, with the exception of one, where two old women are busy putting a mattress between the window and the shutter. A sentinel, mounting guard in front of the CafÉ de la Compagnie du Gaz, cries out to me, “You can’t pass here!” I therefore seat myself at a table in front of the cafÉ, which has doubtless been left open by order, and where several officers are talking in a most animated manner. One of them rises and advances towards me. He asks me rudely what I am doing there. I will not allow myself to be abashed by his tone, but draw out my pass from my pocket and show it him, without saying a word. “All right,” says he, and then seats himself by my side, and tells me, “I know it already, that a part of the left bank of the river is occupied by the troops of the Assembly, that fighting is going on everywhere, and that the army on this side is gradually retreating.—Street fighting is our affair, you see,” he continues. In such battles as that, the merest gamin from Belleville knows more about it than MacMahon.... It will be terrible. The enemy shoots the prisoners.” (For the last two months the Commune had been saying the same thing.) “We shall give no quarter.”—I ask him, “Is it Delescluze who is determined to resist?”—“Yes,” he answers.^[101] “Lean forward a little. Look at those three windows to the left of the trophy. That is the Salle de l’État-Major. Delescluze is there giving orders, signing commissions. He has not slept for three days. Just now I scarcely knew him, he was so worn out with fatigue. The Committee of Public Safety sits permanently in a room adjoining, making out proclamations and decrees.”—“Ha, ha!” said I, “decrees!”—“Yes, citizen, he has just decreed heroism!”^[102] The officer gives me several other bits of information. Tells me that “Lullier this very morning has had thirty rÉfractaires shot, and that Rigault has gone to Mazas to look after the hostages.” While he is talking, I try to see what is going on in the Place de l’HÔtel de Ville. Two or three thousand Federals are there, some seated, some lying on the ground. A lively discussion is going on. Several little barrels are standing about on chairs; the men are continually getting up and crowding round the barrels, some have no glasses, but drink in the palms of their hands. Women walk up and down in bands, gesticulating wildly. The men shout, the women shriek. Mounted expresses gallop out of the HÔtel, some in the direction of the Bastille, some towards the Place de la Concorde. The latter fly past us crying out, “All’s well!” A man comes out on the balcony of the HÔtel de Ville and addresses the crowd. All the Federals start to their feet enthusiastically.—“That’s VallÈs,” says my neighbour to me. I had already recognised him. I frequently saw him in the students’ quarter in a little crÉmerie in the Rue Serpente. He was given to making verses, rather bad ones by-the-bye; I remember one in particular, a panegyric on a green coat. They used to say he had a situation in the pompes funÈbres.^[103] His face even then wore a bitter and violent expression. He left poetry for journalism, and then journalism for politics.

To-day he is spouting forth at a window of the HÔtel de Ville. I cannot catch a word of what he says; but as he retires he is wildly applauded. Such applause pains me sadly. I feel that these men and these women are mad for blood, and will know how to die. Alas! how many dead and dying already! neither the cannonading nor the musketry has ceased an instant. I now see a number of women walk out of the HÔtel, the crowd makes room for them to pass. They come our way. They are dressed in black, and have black crape tied round their arms and a red cockade in their bonnets. My friend the officer tells me that they are the governesses who have taken the places of the nuns. Then he walks up to them and says, “Have you succeeded?”—“Yes,” answers one of them, “here is our commission. The school children are to be employed in making sacks and filling them with earth, the eldest ones to load the rifles behind the barricades. They will receive rations like National Guards, and a pension will be given to the mothers of those who die for the Republic. They are mad to fight, I assure you. We have made them work hard during the last month, this will be their holiday!” The woman who says this is young and pretty, and speaks with a sweet smile on her lips. I shudder. Suddenly two staff officers appear and ride furiously up to the HÔtel de Ville; they have come from the Place VendÔme. An instant later and the trumpets sound. The companies form in the Place, and great agitation reigns in the HÔtel. Men rush in and out. The officers who are in the cafÉ where I am get up instantly, and go to take their places at the head of their men. A rumour spreads that the Versaillais have taken the barricades on the Place de la Concorde.—“By Jove! I think you had better go home,” says my neighbour to me, as he clasps his sword belt; “we shall have hot work here, and that shortly.” I think it prudent to follow this advice. One glance at the Place before I go. The companies of Federals have just started off by the Rue de Rivoli and the quays at a quick march, crying “Vive la Commune!” a ferocious joy beaming in their faces. A young man, almost a lad, lags a little behind, a woman rushes up to him, and lays hold of his collar, screaming, “Well, and you, are you not going to get yourself killed with the others?”

I reach the Rue Vieille-du-Temple, where another barricade is being built up. I place a paving-stone upon it and pass on. Soon I see open shops and passengers in the streets. This tradesmen’s quarter seems to have outlived the riot of Paris. Here one might almost forget the frightful civil war which wages so near, if the conversation of those around did not betray the anguish of the speakers, and if you did not hear the cannon roaring out unceasingly, “People of Paris, listen to me! I am ruining your houses. Listen to me! I am killing your children.”

On the boulevards more barricades; some nearly finished, others scarcely commenced. One constructed near the Porte Saint Martin looks formidable. That spot seems destined to be the theatre of bloody scenes, of riot and revolution. In 1852, corpses laid piled up behind the railing, and all the pavement tinged with blood. I return home profoundly sad; I can scarcely think.—I feel in a dream, and am tired to death; my eyelids droop of themselves; I am like one of those houses there with closed shutters.

Near the Gymnase I meet a friend whom I thought was at Versailles. We shake hands sadly. “When did you come back?” I ask.—“To-day; I followed the troops.”—Then turning back with me he tells me what he has seen. He had a pass, and walked into Paris behind the artillery and the line, as far as the TrocadÉro, where the soldiers halted to take up their line of battle. Not a single man was visible along the whole length of the quays. At the Champ de Mars he did not see any insurgents. The musketry seemed very violent near Vaugirard on the Pont Royal and around the Palais de l’Industrie. Shells from Montmartre repeatedly fell on the quays. He could not see much,—however only the smoke in the distance. Not a soul did he meet. Such frightful noise in such solitude was fearful. He continued his way under shelter of the parapet. In one place he saw some gamins cutting huge pieces of flesh off the dead body of a horse that was lying in the path. There must have been fighting there. Down by the water a man fishing while two shells fell in the river, a little higher up, a yard or two from the shore. Then he thought it prudent to get nearer to the Palais de l’Industrie. The fighting was nearly over then, but not quite. The Champs ElysÉes was melancholy in the extreme; not a soul was there. This was only too literally true; for several corpses lay on the ground. He saw a soldier of the line lying beneath a tree, his forehead covered with blood. The man opened his month as if to speak as he heard the sound of footsteps, the eyelids quivered and then there was a shiver, and all was over. My friend walked slowly away. He saw trees thrown down and bronze lamp-posts broken; glass crackled under his feet as he passed near the ruined kiosques. Every now and then turning his head he saw shells from Montmartre fall on the Arc de Triomphe and break off large fragments of stone. Near the Tuileries was a confused mass of soldiery against a background of smoke. Suddenly he heard the whizzing of a ball and saw the branch of a tree fall. From one end of the avenue to the other, no one; the road glistened white in the sun. Many dead were to be seen lying about as he crossed the Champs ElysÉes. All the streets to the left were full of soldiery; there had been fighting there, but it was over now. The insurgents had retreated in the direction of the Madeleine. In many places tricolor flags were hanging from the windows, and women were smiling, and waving their handkerchiefs to the troops. The presence of the soldiery seemed to reassure everybody. The concierges were seated before their doors with pipes in their mouths, recounting to attentive listeners the perils from which they had escaped; how balls pierced the mattresses put up at the windows, and how the Federals had got into the houses to hide. One said, “I found three of them in my court; I told a lieutenant they were there, and he had them shot. But I wish they would take them away; I cannot keep dead bodies in the house.” Another was talking with some soldiers, and pointing out a house to them. Four men and a corporal went into the place indicated, and an instant afterwards my friend heard the cracking of rifles. The concierge rubbed his hands and winked at the bystanders, while another was saying, “They respect nothing those Federals; during the battle they came in to steal. They wanted to take away my clothes, my linen, everything I have, but I told them to leave that, that it was not good enough for them, that they ought to go up to the first floor, where they would find clocks and plate, and I gave them the key. Well, Messieurs, you would never believe what they have done, the rascals! They took the key and went and pillaged everything on the first floor!” My friend had heard enough, and passed on. The agitation everywhere was very great. The soldiers went hither and thither, rang the bells, went into the houses; and brought out with them pale-faced prisoners. The inhabitants continued to smile politely, but grimly. Here and there dead bodies were lying in the road. A man who was pushing a truck allowed one of the wheels to pass over a corpse that was lying with its head on the curbstone. “Bah!” said he, “it won’t do him any harm.” The dead and wounded were, however, being carried away as quickly as possible.

The cannon had now ceased roaring, and the fight was still going on close at hand—at the Tuileries doubtless. The townspeople were tranquil and the soldiery disdainful. A strange contrast; all these good citizens smiling and chatting, and the soldiers, who had come to save them at the peril of their lives, looking down upon them with the most careless indifference. My friend reached the Boulevard Haussmann; there the corpses were in large numbers. He counted thirty in less than a hundred yards. Some were lying under the doorways; a dead woman was seated on the bottom stair of one of the houses. Near the church of “La TrinitÉ” were two guns, the reports from which were deafening; several of the shells fell on a bathing establishment in the Rue Taitbout opposite the Boulevard. On the Boulevard itself, not a person was to be seen. Here and there dark masses, corpses doubtless. However, the moment the noise of the report of a gun had died away, and while the gunners were reloading, heads were thrust out from doors to see what damage had been done—to count the number of trees broken, benches torn up, and kiosques overturned. From some of the windows rifles were fired. My friend then reached the street he lived in and went home. He was told that during the morning they had violently bombarded the CollÈge Chaptal, where the Zouaves of the Commune had fortified themselves; but the engagement was not a long one, they made several prisoners and shot the rest.

My friend shut himself up at home, determined not to go out. But his impatience to see and hear what was going on forced him into the streets again. The PÉpiniÈre barracks were occupied by troops of the line; he was able to get to the New Opera without trouble, leaving the Madeleine, where dreadful fighting was going on, to the right. On the way were to be seen piled muskets, soldiers sitting and lying about, and corpses everywhere. He then managed, without incurring too much danger, to reach the Boulevards, where the insurgents, who were then very numerous, had not yet been attacked. He worked for some little time at the barricade, and then was allowed to pass on. It was thus that we had met. Just as we were about to turn up the Faubourg Montmartre a man rushed up saying that three hundred Federals had taken refuge in the church of the Madeleine, followed by gendarmes, and had gone on fighting for more than an hour. “Now,” he finished up by saying, “if the curÉ were to return he would find plenty of people to bury!”

I am now at home. Evening has come at last; I am jotting down these notes just as they come into my head. I am too much fatigued both in mind and body to attempt to put my thoughts into order. The cannonading is incessant, and the fusillade also. I pity those that die, and those that kill! Oh! poor Paris, when will experience make you wiser?

NOTES:

[98] It was known by this time at Versailles in what a desperate condition was the Commune, by the information of persons devoted to order, but who remained amongst the insurgents to keep watch over and restrain them as much as possible.
The Versailles authorities know that, thanks to the well-directed fire of Montretout, the bastions of the Point du Jour were no longer tenable, and that their defenders had abandoned them and had organized new works of defence; nevertheless, the operations were earned on just as systematically as if the fire of the besieged had not ceased for several days, when, on Sunday, the 21st May, about midday, an officer on duty in the trenches, in course of formation in the Bois de Boulogne, perceived a man making signs with a white handkerchief near the military post of Saint Cloud; the officer immediately approached near enough to hear the bearer of the flag of truce, say:—
“My name is Ducatel, and I belong to the service of the Engineers of Roads and Bridges, and I have been a soldier. I declare that your entrance into Paris is easy, and as a guarantee of the truth of what I say, I am about to give myself up;” so saying, he passed over the fosse by means of one of the supports of the drawbridge, in spite of several shots fired at him by Federals hidden in the houses at Auteuil, but none of which reached him.
A few resolute men now passed over the fosse, and arrived without accident on the other side. A few insurgents, who were still there, made off without loss of time, leaving the invaders to establish themselves, and wait for reinforcements.
A short time after a white flag was exhibited in the neighbouring bastion, which bore the number 62, and the fire from Montretout and Mont ValÉrien was stopped, the infantry of the Marine took possession of the gate, out the telegraphic wires which were supposed to be in communication with torpedoes, while information was immediately despatched to Versailles of these important events.
The division of General VergÉ, placed for the time under the orders of General Douay, entered the gate at half-past three in the afternoon, and took possession of Point du Jour, after having taken several barricades; at one of these, Ducatel was sent with a flag of trace towards the insurgents, who offered to surrender, but he received a bayonet wound, was carried off to the École Militaire, tried by court-martial and condemned to death, from which he was fortunately snatched by the arrival of the Versailles troops at the TrocadÉro at two o’clock in the morning.
At the same time, the first corps d’armÉe (that of General L’Admirault), made its way into the city by the Portes d’Auteuil and Passy, and took up a strong position in the streets of Passy.

[99] At ten o’clock at night, the army had taken possession of the region comprised between the ceinture, or circular railway, and the fortifications, the streets of Auteuil to the viaduct, and the bridge of Grenelle.
At midnight, the movement which had been suspended for a time to rest the troops, was recommenced all along the line.
At two o’clock in the morning, General Douay occupied the TrocadÉro; and at about four o’clock his soldiers, after a short struggle, captured the chateau of La Muette, making about six hundred prisoners, and then, advancing in the direction of Porte Maillot, they joined the troops of General Clinchant, who had got within the ramparts on that side.
At the break of day, the tricolour floated over the Arc de Triomphe, without the Versailles forces having sustained sensible loss. All this passed on the right bank of the Seine.

[100] The insurrectionists followed a decided and pre-conceived plan. The barricades, which intersected the streets of Paris in every direction, were arranged on a general system which showed considerable skill. Was this ensemble a conception of Cluseret? or a plan of Gaillard, or Eudes, or Rossel? No one now could say which, but at any rate we are able to deduce the plan from the facts and set it out as follows:—
Within the line of the fortifications the insurgents had formed a second line of defence, which runs on the right bank of the river, by the Trocadero, the Triumphal Arch, the Boulevard de Courcelles, the Boulevard de Batignolles, and the Boulevard de Rochechouart; and on the left across the bridge of IÉna, the Avenue de la Bourdonnaye, the École Militaire, the Boulevard des Invalides, the Boulevard Montparnasse, and the Western Railway Station. Along the whole extent of this circuit the entrances of the streets were barricades, and the “Places” turned into redoubts.
From this double enceinte of fortifications the lines of defence converged along the great boulevards, the Rue Royale, by the Ministry of Marine, the terrace of the Tuileries Gardens, the Place de la Concorde, the Palace of the Corps LÉgislatif, the Rue de Bourgogne, and the Rue de Varenne. This third enceinte of defence was the pride of the insurgents; they were never tired of admiring their celebrated barricade of the Rue St. Florentin, and that which intercepted the quay at the corner of the Tuileries Gardens on the Place de la Concorde.
This is not all. Supposing that the third line were forced, the insurgents would not even then be without resource. On the left bank of the Seine they fell back successively on the Rue de Grenelle, Rue Saint Dominique, and Rue de Lille, all three closed by barricades; on the right bank they could carry on the struggle by the Rue Neuve-des-Petits-Champs, the Rue de la Paix, and the Place VendÔme, and even when beaten back from these last retreats, they could still defend the Rue St. HonorÉ and operate a retreat by the Palace of the Tuileries, the Louvre, and the HÔtel de Ville.

[101] In the following proclamation, published on the 21st May, Delescluze stimulated the Communist party, which felt its power melting away on all sides:

“TO THE PEOPLE OF PARIS, TO THE NATIONAL GUARD.

“CITIZENS,—We have had enough of militaryism; let us have no more stuffs embroidered and gilt at every seam!
“Make room for the people, the real combatants, the bare arms! The hour of the revolutionary war has struck!
“The people know nothing of scientific manoeuvres, but with a rifle in hand and the pavement beneath their feet, they fear not all the strategists of the monarchical school.
“To arms, citizens! To arms! You must conquer, or, as you well know, fall again into the pitiless hands of the rÉactionaires and clericals of Versailles; those wretches who with intention delivered France up to Prussia, and now make us pay the ransom of their treason!
“If you desire the generous blood which you have shed like water during the last six weeks not to have been shed in vain, if you would see liberty and equality established in France, if you would spare your children sufferings and misery such as you have endured, you will rise as one man, and before your formidable bands the enemy who indulges the idea of bringing you again under his yoke, will reap nothing but the harvest of the useless crimes with which he has disgraced himself during the past two months.
“Citizens! your representatives will fight and die with you, if fall we must; but, in the name of our glorious France, mother of all the popular revolutions, the permanent source of ideas of justice and unity, which should be and which will be the laws of the world, march to the encounter of the enemy, and let your revolutionary energy prove to him that Paris may he sold, but can never be delivered up or conquered.
“The Commune confides in you, and you may trust the Commune!
“The civil delegate at the Ministry of War,

“(Signed)
“CH. DELESCLUZE.

“Countersigned by the Committee of Public Safety:—Antoine Arnauld, Billioray, E. Eudes, F. Gambon, G. Ranvier.”

Such was the despairing cry of the insurrection at bay.

[102] See Appendix, No. 9.

[103] There are no private undertakers and funeral furnishers in Paris. It is all done by a company, under the supervision of Government, a very large concern, called the Pompes FunÈbres.

[104] Jules VallÈs was one of the most conspicuous among the men of the 18th of March. He had been journalist, working printer, a clerk at the HÔtel de Ville, editor of a newspaper, pamphleteer, and cafÉ orator in turn, but always noisy and boastful. AndrÉ Gill, the caricaturist, once drew him as an undertaker’s dog, dragging a saucepan behind him, and the caricature told VallÈs’ story well enough. In face he was ugly, but energetic in expression, almost to ferociousness.
He was born at Puy, in 1833, and on leaving the college of Nantes, came to study law in Paris, but politics occupied him chiefly, and he soon got himself shut up in Mazas as a political prisoner. After some time spent in confinement, he obtained his liberty, and published at Nantes, a pamphlet under the title of “Money: by a literary man become a journalist;” and the pamphlet, having gained him some slight popularity, he was engaged, later, on the Figaro, to write the reports of the Bourse, and in the meantime he eked out his slender salary by working as a clerk at the HÔtel de Ville. When Ernest Feydeau brought out the Epoque, in 1864, Jules VallÈs published a few articles in its columns, and a little later became a writer on the EvÉnement, with the magnificent salary of eighteen thousand francs a year. A month afterwards, he was without occupation again, but he soon re-appeared with a new journal of his own, La Rue, La Sue, in its turn, however, only lived during a few numbers, and Jules VallÈs now took up cafÉ politics, and practised table oratory at the Estaminet de Madrid, where he fostered and expounded the projects which he has since brought to so fearful a result.
In 1869, he became one of the most inveterate speakers at election meetings, and presented himself as a candidate for the Corps LÉgislatif. He was not elected, but the profession of opinions that he then made was certain to obtain him a seat in the Communal Assembly. One of the last articles in the Cri du People of Jules VallÈs announced the fatal resolution of defending Paris by all possible means. An article finishing with this prophetic sentence, “M. Thiers, if he is chemist enough will understand us.”

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