Who takes Bergeret’s place? Dombrowski.^[49] Who had the idea of doing this? Cluseret. First of all we had the Central Committee, then we had the Commune, and now we have Cluseret. It looks as if Cluseret had swallowed the Commune, which had previously swallowed and only half digested the Central Committee. We are told that Cluseret is a great man, that Cluseret is strong, that Cluseret will save Paris. Cluseret issues decrees, and sees that they are executed. The Commune says, “we wish;” but Cluseret says, “I wish.” It is he who has conceived and promulgated the following edict:

“In consideration of the patriotic demands of a large number of National Guards, who, although they are married men, wish to have the honour of defending their municipal rights, even at the expense of their lives ...”

I should like to know some of those National Guards who attach so little importance to their lives! Show me two, and I will myself consent to be the third. But I am interrupting Dictator Cluseret.

“The decree of the fifth of April is therefore modified:”

The decree of the fifth of April was made by the Commune, but Cluseret does not care a straw for that.

“From seventeen to nineteen, service in the marching-companies is voluntary, but from nineteen to forty it is obligatory for the National Guards, married or unmarried.
“I recommend all good patriots to be their own police, and to see that this edict is carried out in their respective quartern, and to force the refractory to serve.”

As to the last paragraph of Cluseret’s decree it is impossible to joke about it, it is by far too odious. This exhortation in favour of a press-gang,—this wish that each man should become a spy upon his neighbour (he says it in so many words), fills me with anger and disgust. What! I may be passing in the streets, going about my own business, and the first Federal who pleases, anybody with dirty hands, a wretch you may be sure, for none but a wretch would follow the recommendations of Cluseret,—an escaped convict, may take me by the collar and say, “Come along and be killed for the sake of my municipal independence.” Or else I may be in bed at night, quietly asleep, as it is clearly my right to be, and four or five fellows, fired with patriotic ardour, may break in my door, if I do not hasten to open it on the first summons like a willing slave, and, whether I like it or not, drag me in night-cap and slippers, in my shirt perhaps, if it so pleases the brave sans-culottes, to the nearest outpost. Now I swear to you, Cluseret, I would not bear this, if I had not, during the last few hungry days of the siege, sold to a curiosity dealer—your colleague now in the Commune—my revolver, which I had hoped naÏvely might defend me against the Prussians! Think, a revolver with six balls, if you please, and which, alas! I forgot to discharge!

We can only hope that even at this moment, when the revolution has brought out of the darkness into the light, so many rascals and cowards, just as the sediment rises to the top when the wine is shaken, we must hope, that there will be found in Paris, nobody to undertake the mean office of spy and detective; and that the decree of M. Cluseret will remain a dead-letter, like so many other decrees of the Commune. I will not believe all I am told; I will not believe that last night several men, without any precise orders, without any legal character whatever, merely National Guards, introduced themselves into peaceful families; waking the wife and children, and carrying off the husband as one carries off a housebreaker or an escaped convict. I am told that this is a fact, that it has happened more than fifty times at Montmartre, Batignolles, and Belleville; yet I will not believe it.^[50] I prefer to believe that these tales are “inventions of Versailles” than to admit the possibility of such infamy.

Come now, Cluseret, War Delegate, whatever he likes to call himself. Where does he come from, what has he done, and what services has he rendered, to give him a right thus to impose his sovereign wishes upon us?

He is not a Frenchman; nor is he an American; for the honour of France I prefer his being an American. His history is as short as it is inglorious. He once served in the French army, and left, one does not know why; then went to fight in America during the war. His enemies affirm that he fought for the Slave States, his friends the contrary. It does not seem very clear which side he was on—both, perhaps. Oh, America! you had taken him from us, why did you not keep him? Cluseret came back to us with the glory of having forsworn his country. Immediately the revolutionists received him with open arms. Only think, an American! Do you like America? People want to make an America everywhere. Modern Republics have had formidable enemies to contend with—America and the revolution of ’98. We are sad parodists. We cannot be free in our own fashion, but are always obliged to imitate what has been or what is. But that which is adapted to one climate or country, is it always that which is the fittest thing for another? I will return, however, to this subject another time. America, who is so vaunted, and whom I should admire as much as could reasonably be wished, if men did not try to remodel France after her image, one must be blind not to see what she has of weakness and of narrowness, amid much that is truly grand. It was said to me once by some one, “The American mind may be compared to a compound liqueur, composed of the yeast of Anglo-Saxon beer, the foam of Spanish wines, and the dregs of the petit-bleu of Suresnes, heated to boiling point by the applause and admiration given by the genuine pale ale, the true sherry, and authentic ChÂteau-Margaux to these their deposits. From time to time the caldron seethes with a little too much violence, and the bubbling drink pours over upon the old world, bringing back to the pure source, to the true vintage, their deteriorated products. Oh! The poor wines of France! How many adulterations have they been submitted to!” Calumny and exaggeration no doubt; but I am angry with America for sending Cluseret back, as I am angry with the Commune for having imposed him on Paris. The Commune, however, has an admirable excuse: it has not, perhaps, found among true Frenchmen one with an ambition criminal enough to direct, according to her wishes, the destruction of Paris by Paris, and France by France.

NOTES:

[49] There are two versions of Dombrowski’s earlier history. By his admirers he was said to have headed the last Polish insurrection: the party of order stigmatise him as a Russian adventurer, who had fought in Poland, but against the Poles, and in the Caucasus, in Italy, and in France—wherever; in fine, blows were to be given and money earned. He entered France, like many other adventurous knights, in Garibaldi’s suite, came to Paris after the siege, and immediately after the outbreak of the eighteenth of March was created general by the Commune, and gathered round him in guise of staff the most illustrious, or least ignoble, of those foreign parasites and vagabonds, who have made of Paris a grand occidental Bohemian Babel. These soldiers of fortune, most of whom had been “unfortunate” at home, formed the marrow of the Commune’s military strength.
Dombrowski had gained a name for intrepidity even among these men of reckless courage and adventurous lives. He maintained strict discipline, albeit to a not very moral purpose. Whoever dared connect his name with the word defeat was shot. Like many other Communist generals he took the most stringent measures for concealing the truth from his soldiers, and thus staved off total demoralisation until the Versailles troops were in the heart of Paris. His relations with the Federal authorities were not of an uniformly amiable character.

[50] A poor Italian smith told me he had three men seized. They had taken a stove near the fortifications of Ternes, when they were arrested. “But we are Italians!” they cried. It was no excuse, for the Federals replied, “Italians! so much the better; you shall serve as Garibaldians!”