Communal fraternity is decidedly in the ascendant; it is putting into practice this admirable precept, “Arrest each other.” They say M. Delescluze has been sent to the Conciergerie. Yesterday Lullier was arrested, to-day Assy. It was not sufficient to change Executive Committees—if I may be allowed to say so—with no more ceremony than one would change one’s boots; the Commune conducts itself, in respect to those members that become obnoxious to it, absolutely as if they were no more than ordinary archbishops.

What! Assy—Assy^[42] of Creuzot—who signed before all his comrades the proclamations of the Central Committee, in virtue, not only of his ability, but in obedience to the alphabetical order of the thing—Assy no longer reigns at the HÔtel de Ville!—publishes no more decrees, discusses no longer with F. Cournet, nor with G. Tridon. Wherefore this fall after so much glory? It is whispered about that Assy has thought it prudent to put aside a few rolls of bank notes found in the drawers of the late Government. What, is that all? How long have politicians been so scrupulous? Members of the Commune, how very punctilious you have grown. Now if the Citizen Assy were accused of having in 1843 been intimately acquainted with a lady whose son is now valet to M. Thiers’ first cousin, or if he had been seen in a church, and it were clearly proved that he was there with any other intention than that of delicately picking the pockets of the faithful, then I could understand your indignation. But the idea of arresting a man because he has appropriated the booty of the traitors, is too absurd; if you go on acting in that way people will think you are growing conscientious!

As to Citizen Lullier,^[43] who was one of the first victims of “fraternity,” he is imprisoned because he did not succeed in capturing Mont ValÉrien. I think with horror that if I had been in the place of Citizen Lullier I should most certainly have had to undergo the same punishment, for how in the devil’s name I could have managed to transport that impregnable fortress on to the council-table at the HÔtel de Ville I have not the least conception. It is as bad as if you were in Switzerland, and asked the first child you met to go and fetch Mont Blanc; of course the child would go and have a game of marbles with his companions, and come back without the smallest trace of Mont Blanc in his arms, thereupon you would whip the youngster within an ace of his life. However, it appears that M. Lullier objected to being whipped, or rather imprisoned, and being as full of cunning as of valour he managed to slip out of his place of confinement, without drum or trumpet. “Dear Rochefort,” he writes to the editor of Le Mot d’Ordre, “you know of what infamous machinations I have been the victim.” I suppose M. Rochefort does, but I am obliged to confess that I have not the least idea, unless indeed M. Lullier means by “machinations” the order that was given him to bring Mont ValÉrien in his waistcoat pocket. “Imprisoned without motive,” he continues, “by order of the Central Committee, I was thrown ...” (Oh! you should not have thrown M. Lullier) “into the Prefecture of Police,” (the ex-Prefecture, if you please), “and put in solitary confinement at the very moment when Paris was in want of men of action and military experience.” Oh, fie! men of the Commune, you had at your disposal a man of action—who does not know the noble actions of Citizen Lullier? A man of military experience—who does not know what profound experience M. Lullier has acquired in his numerous campaigns—and yet you put him, or rather throw him, into the Prefecture! This is bad, very bad. “The Prefecture is transformed into a state prison, and the most rigorous discipline is maintained.” It appears then that the Communal prison is anything but a fool’s paradise. “However, in spite of everything, I and my secretary managed to make our escape calmly ...”—the calm of the high-minded—“from a cell where I was strictly guarded, to pass two court-yards and a dozen or two of soldiers, to have three doors opened for me while the sentinels presented arms as I passed ...” What a wonderful escape: the adventures of Baron Munchausen are nothing to it. What a fine chapter poor old Dumas might have made of it. The door of the cell is passed under the very nose of the jailer, who has doubtless been drugged with some narcotic, of which M. Lullier has learnt the secret during his travels in the East Indies; the twelve guards in the court-yards are seized one after another by the throat, thrown on the ground, bound with cords, and prevented from giving the alarm by twelve gags thrust into their twelve mouths; the three doors are opened by three enormous false keys, the work of a member of the Commune, locksmith by trade, who has remained faithful to the cause of M. Lullier; and last, but not least, the sentinels, plunged in ecstasy at the sight of the glorious fugitive, present arms. What a scene for a melodrama! The most interesting figure, however, in my opinion, is the secretary. I have the greatest respect for that secretary, who never dreamt one instant of abandoning his master, and I can see him, while Lullier is accomplishing his miracles, calmly writing in the midst of the danger, with a firm hand, the faithful account of these immortal adventures. “I have now,” continues the ex-prisoner of the ex-Prefecture, “two hundred determined men, who serve me as a guard, and three excellent revolvers, loaded, in my pocket. I had foolishly remained too long without arms and without friends; now I am resolved to blow the brains out of the first man who tries to arrest me!” I heard a bourgeois who had read this exclaim, that he wished to Heaven each member of the Commune would come to arrest him in turn. Oh! blood-thirsty bourgeois! Then Lullier finishes up by declaring that he scorns to hide, but continues to show himself freely and openly on the boulevards. What a proud, what a noble nature! Oh, ye marionettes, ye fantoccini! Yet let me not be unjust; I will try and believe in you once more, in spite of armed requisitions, in spite of arrests, of robberies—for there have been robberies in spite of your decrees—I will try and believe that you have not only taken possession of the HÔtel de Ville for the purpose of setting up a Punch and Judy show and playing your sinister farces; I want to believe that you had and still have honourable and avowable intentions; that it is only your natural inexperience joined to the difficulties of the moment which is the cause of your faults and your follies; I want to believe that there are among you, even after the successive dismissal of so many of your members, some honourable men who deplore the evil that has been done, who wish to repair it, and who will try to make us forget the crimes and forfeits of the civil war by the benefits which revolution sometimes brings in its train. Yes, I am naturally full of hope, and will try and believe this; but, honestly, what hope can you have of inspiring confidence in those who are not prejudiced as I am in favour of innovators, when they see you arrest each other in this fashion, and know that you have among you such generals as Bergeret, such honest citizens as Assy, and such escaped lunatics as Lullier?

NOTES:

[42] Assy, who first became publicly known as the leader of the strike at Messrs. Schneider’s works at Creuzot, was an engineer. He was born in 1840. He became a member of the International Society, and was selected in 1870 to organise the Creuzot strike. Being threatened with arrest, he went to Paris, but did not remain there long, and on the 21st of March in that year, a few days after his return to Creuzot, the strike of the miners commenced. Assy was, finally, arrested and tried before the Correctional Tribune of Paris as chief and founder of a secret society, but he was acquitted of that charge.
At the siege of Paris, Assy was appointed as an officer in a free guerilla corps of the Isle of France. Subsequently he was a lieutenant in the 192nd battalion of the National Guard. Getting on the Central Committee, he took an active share in the events that occurred. Appointed commander of the 67th battalion on the 17th March, we find him on the morning of the 18th as Governor of the HÔtel de Ville, and colonel of the National Guard, organising with the members of the committee the means of a serious resistance—giving orders for the construction of barricades—stopping the transport of munitions and provisions from Paris. Becoming a member of the Commune, he took an active part in carrying into effect the decrees which led, among other things, to the demolition of the VendÔme Column and of the house of M. Thiers. He was arrested in April, and was succeeded as Governor of the HÔtel de Ville by one Pindy, who retained the office till the army entered Paris. Assy was held prisoner, sur parole, at the HÔtel de Ville, till the 19th April, when he was liberated. After this Assy was engaged in superintending the manufacture of munitions of war. He was the sole superintendent of the supply, especially as regards quality. Among the warlike stores manufactured were incendiary shells filled with petroleum, intended to be thrown into Paris during the insurrection. It is certain that these engines of destruction could only have been made at the factory superintended by Assi. He was arrested on the 21st May. Assy was one of the chiefs of the insurrection; he denied signing the decrees for the execution of the hostages, or order for the enrolment of the military in the National Guard. Assy was condemned by the tribunal of Versailles, Sept. 2, to confinement for life in a French fortress—a light penalty for the deeds of this important insurgent.

[43] Memoir, see Appendix 5.