To whom shall we listen? Whom believe? It would take a hundred pages, and more, to relate all the different rumours which have circulated to-day, the 4th of April, the second day of the horrible straggle. Let us hastily note down the most persistent of these assertions; later I will put some order into this pell-mell of news.

All through the night the drums beat to arms in every quarter of the town. Companies assembled rapidly, and directed their way towards the Place VendÔme or the Porte Maillot, shouting, “A Versailles!” Since five this morning, General Bergeret has occupied the Rond-Point of Courbevoie. This position has been evacuated by the troops of the Assembly. How was this? Were the Federals not beaten yesterday?

(One thing goes against General Bergeret in the opinion of his troops: he drives to battle in a carriage.)

He has formed his troops into columns. No less than sixty thousand men are under his orders; two batteries of seven guns support the infantry; omnibuses follow, filled with provisions. They march towards the Mont ValÉrien; after having taken the fort, they will march on Versailles by Rueil and Nanterre.^[34] After they have taken the Mont ValÉrien! there is not a moment’s doubt about the success of the enterprise. “We were assured,” said a Federal general to me, “that the fort would open its doors at the first sight of us.” But they counted without General Cholleton, who commands the fortress. The advance-guard of the Federals is received by a formidable discharge of shot and shells. Panic! Cries of rage! A regular rout to the words, “We are betrayed!”^[35] The army of the Commune is divided into two fragments: one—scarcely three battalions strong—flies in the direction of Versailles, the other regains Paris with praiseworthy precipitation. Must the Parisian combatants be accused of cowardice for this flight? No! They were surprised; had never expected such a reception from Mont ValÉrien; had they been warned, they would have held out better. After all, there was more fright than harm done in the affair; the huge fortress could have annihilated the Communists, and it was satisfied with dispersing them. But what has become of the three battalions that passed Mont ValÉrien? Bravely they went forward.

In the meantime another movement was being made upon Versailles by Meudon and Clamart. A small number of battalions had marched out during the night, and are massed under cover of the forts of Issy and Vanves. They have managed to establish a battery of a few guns on a wooded eminence, at the foot of the glacis of Fort. Issy, and their pieces are firing upon the batteries of the Versailles troops at Meudon, which are answering them furiously. It is a duel of artillery, as in the time—the good time, alas!—of the Prussians.

Up to this moment the information is tolerably clear; probable even, and one is able to come to some idea of the respective positions of the belligerents. But towards two o’clock in the afternoon all the reports get confused and contradictory.

An estafette, who has come from the Porte Maillot, cried to a group formed on the place of the New Opera-house, “We are victorious! Flourens has entered Versailles at the head of forty thousand men. A hundred deputies have been taken. Thiers is a prisoner.”

Elsewhere it is said that in the rout of that morning, at the foot of Mont ValÉrien, Flourens had disappeared. And where could he have found the forty thousand men to lead them to Versailles?

At the same time a rumour spreads that General Bergeret has been grievously wounded by a shell. “Pure exaggeration!” some one answers. “The General has only had two horses killed under him.”

Before him, rather, since he drives to battle. What appears most certain of all is that there is furious fighting going on between SÈvres and Meudon. I hear it said that the 118th of the line have turned the butts of their guns into the air, and that the Parisians have taken twelve mitrailleuses from the Versailles troops.

There is fighting, too, at ChÂtillon. The Federals have won great advantages. Nevertheless an individual who went out that side to investigate, announces that he saw three battalions return with very little air of triumph, and that other battalions, forming the reserve, had refused to march.

A shower of contradictions, in which the news for the most part has no other source than the opinion and desire of the person who brings it. It is by the result alone that we can appreciate what is passed. At one moment I give up trying to get information as a bad job, but I begin questioning again in spite of myself; the desire to know is even stronger than the very strong certainty that I shall be able to learn nothing.

I turn to the Champs ElysÉes. The cannon is roaring; ambulance waggons descend the Avenue, and stop before the Palais de l’Industrie; over the way Punch is making his audience roar with laughter as usual. Oh! the miserable times! The horrible fratricidal struggle! May those who were its cause be accursed for ever!

While some are killing and others dying, the members of the Commune are rendering decrees, and the walls are white with official proclamations.

“Messieurs Thiers, Favre, Picard, Dufaure, Simon and Pothuan are impeached; their property will be seized and sequestrated until they deliver themselves up to public justice.”

This impeachment and sequestration, will it bring back husbands to the widows and fathers to the orphans?

“The Commune of Paris adopts the families of citizens who have fallen or may fall in opposing the criminal aggression of the Royalists, directed against Paris and against the French republic.”

Infinitely better than adopting the orphans would be to save the fathers from death. Oh, these absurd decrees! You separate the Church from the State; you suppress the budget of public worship; you confiscate the property of the clergy. A pretty time to think about such acts! What is necessary, what is indispensable, is to restore quiet, to avoid massacres, and to stifle hatred. That you will not decree. No! no! That which is now happening you have desired, and you still desire it; you have profited by the provocations you have received to bring about the most frightful conflict which the history of unfortunate France records; and you will persevere, and in order to revive the fainting courage of those whom you have devoted to inevitable defeat and death, you bring into action all the hypocrisy with which you have charged your enemies!

“Bergeret and Flourens have joined their forces; they are marching on Versailles. Success is certain!”

You cause this announcement to be placarded in the street—false news, is it not? But men can only be led to their ruin by being deceived. You add:

“The fire of the army of Versailles has not occasioned us any appreciable loss.”

Ah! As to this let us ask the women who await at the gates of the city the return of your soldiers, and crowd sobbing round the bloody litters!

NOTES:

[34] The combined plan of the three generals of the Commune consisted, like the famous plan of General Boum, in proceeding by three different roads: the first column, under the orders of Bergeret, seconded by Flourens, went by Rueil; the second, commanded by Duval, marched upon Versailles by lower Meudon, Chaville, and Viroflay; covered by the fire of Fort Issy, and the redoubt of Moulineaux; and lastly, the third, with General Eudes at its head, took the Clamart road, protected by the fort of Vanves.

[35] Though no fort covered Bergeret’s eight battalions with its fire, yet Bergeret was so sure that the artillerymen of Mont ValÉrien would do as the line did on the 18th of March, i.e., refuse to fire, that he advanced boldly as far as the bridge of Neuilly, and had made a halt at the Rond-Point des BergÈres, when a heavy cannonading from Mont ValÉrien separated a part of the column from its main body.