The Insurrection in Paris Part 10

JUNE 10th.

It is calculated that 70,000 travellers entered Paris between Sat.u.r.day and Tuesday by the Northern line alone. Many had to travel in luggage vans. Paris, notwithstanding, does not appear full. Most of the visitors make a very short stay. The dull condition of trade is loudly complained of.

The idea of burning the corpses which have not been properly buried has been abandoned; it is proposed to exhume all those buried in the Parc des Monceaux, the Jardin du Luxembourg, and other temporary burial places, and to transfer them to a new cemetery beyond Fort Vanves.

One hundred and fifty pretended firemen were executed yesterday at Versailles.

The Commander of the 9th Army Corps of Paris has issued a notice, stating that the surrender of arms has been slow, and the last delay has expired. The military authorities will, therefore, treat the offenders with severity. Active searches have been made in the Rue St. Honore to-day.

The Courts-martial at Versailles will try the prisoners exclusively for offences against the common law, and will not consider them as political offenders.

JUNE 11th.

The close inspection which has been made of the sewers in Paris has already led to the discovery of large quant.i.ties of weapons and ammunition, and also of many ex-Federalist combatants, who, despairing of escape from the regular troops, sought refuge in the subterranean pa.s.sages with whatever provisions they could secure. The greater part of these miserable creatures are in a most deplorable condition from hunger and the poisonous atmosphere of their hiding places. On Friday, at the angle of the Rue Vavin and the outer Boulevard, the scavengers found five bodies in the sewer, one that of an officer, and all mutilated by rats. The bodies were brought out by means of ropes, and after search for papers and doc.u.ments, were interred in the Mont Parna.s.se Cemetery.

JUNE 12th.

On Wednesday the Commissary of Police for the Quartier Saint Victor received information that the ex-General of the Commune, Rossel, was in concealment at the Hotel Montebello, upon the Boulevard St. Germain. The Commissary proceeded to the hotel, and upon searching the place found in a room on the third floor a person dressed in the uniform of the Eastern Railway service. Upon being questioned this person stated that his name was Tirobois, that he was an engineer living at Metz, but had been summoned to Paris by the railway managers on account of the pressure of traffic on the line. 'Are you sure of that?' asked the Commissary.

'Parbleu.' 'Well, in the name of the law I arrest you. You are Rossel.'

'I? not at all.' The prisoner was taken to the Prefecture de Police established at the Barracks of the Cite, and thence in a boat to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where the head-quarters of the munic.i.p.al police are established. During the whole of the journey thither, being closely pressed with questions by the Commissary, the pretended Tirobois continued his denials. Upon being further interrogated at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he replied, 'I have told you all I know about myself. Do not ask me any more.' Tirobois was then conveyed to the Ministry of War, where he was confronted with a number of persons who were detained in custody. Some of these declared that he was Rossel, but others, the majority, denied that he was the Communist ex-General. About 10 o'clock at night the prisoner was formally questioned as to his history. When the customary question, 'What is the name of your mother?'

was put, he became confused, turned red, and, suddenly springing up, exclaimed, 'Why carry on this pretence any longer. Of what good is this acting and these lies. Yes, I am Colonel Rossel.' After this avowal the prisoner was removed under escort to the depot of the Prefecture. Upon being searched there was found 225f. in notes, a political article, and a longitudinal section of the different public monuments in Paris. The next day he was taken to Versailles and lodged at the Grandes ecuries.

His real description is Louis Nathaniel Rossel, born at St. Brieuc (Cotes du Nord), September 9, 1844, of Louis and of Sarah Campbell. The _Figaro_ states that the artist Courbet was captured at the house of one of his friends, a pianoforte maker in the Rue St. Gilles. He was concealed behind a bedstead, and, upon being threatened with a revolver, gave himself up without attempting resistance.

The destruction at the Gobelins has not been so extensive as had been apprehended. Only a small portion of the buildings has been burnt, and work has already been resumed in the parts which have been spared. Even in those rooms which have been destroyed not all the works of art have been lost, and especially the "Dead Christ" after Philippes de Champagne, and the portrait of Louis XIV, after Rigault, have been saved. The collection of ancient patterns has also been preserved.

JUNE 13th

Some disquieting rumours about the condition of La Villette have caused the troops quartered there to be strongly reinforced; nevertheless, perfect tranquility so far prevails.

Business is greatly improving, orders for _articles de Paris_ coming in pretty freely, and the fine weather bringing increasing crowds of visitors.

Some further important arrests have been made, including Urbain, alleged to have been the princ.i.p.al instigator of the ma.s.sacre of the hostages.

JUNE 14th.

Paris is rapidly resuming its old appearance. The Cafes and Concerts in the Champs elysees recommence to-morrow, and various theatres are re-opening.

JUNE 15th.

People, in France, are discussing the causes of the late insurrection, and measuring the consideration to which the Insurgents, whether as rebels or refugees, are justly ent.i.tled. That the tendency of opinion should be strongly against the Communists is natural, for the justification of their revolt appears difficult, while their last acts have excited universal abhorrence. It is, indeed, perfectly true that they had no grievance against the Government which they defied, for though, perhaps, the National a.s.sembly might not have voted for a Republic, no Republic which could have been voted by any a.s.sembly of Frenchmen would have satisfied the Insurgents of Paris. The political leanings of the a.s.sembly may be put out of the question in searching for the origin of the Civil War. That war was hatched in the brooding minds of Parisian workmen, intent on one single object, and it became practicable when the Revolution of September last put arms in their hands and the capitulation of February left them there still.

The one fixed idea of the workmen of Paris was that work ent.i.tled them to something more than wages. They had so long and so intently contemplated the relations between labour and capital that they knew nothing of any other elements of human society, or of any other cla.s.ses beyond employers and employed. They saw that a hundred workmen got their five francs a day each, and that the single person who hired them got his thousands a year. We are not aware that, as a rule, they were ill-paid or overworked, or in any way oppressed. We should infer rather that they were in the receipt of good wages, that they possessed education as well as skill, and that they had leisure enough and to spare for discussion and thought. The misfortune was that they thought of one subject only, until at last their conceptions grew actually monstrous. It was not all at once that they reached the doctrines recently declared. There is a wide difference between the ideas of 1871 and those of 1848. At the latter period the labourer was held simply to be worthy of his hire, and nothing was proposed beyond such an organization of labour as would insure a constant supply of work for all who wanted it, at wages determined rather by considerate adjustment than unrestricted compet.i.tion. But the men of the Commune had advanced far ahead of such old Tories of Socialism and Democracy as LEDRU ROLLIN and LOUIS BLANC. Still occupied with the one single prospect of their daily life, and regarding the relations between capital and labour as the be-all and end-all of existence, they had reached the conclusion that all capital should be transferred bodily to themselves; that they alone ought to const.i.tute society, that all other cla.s.ses should be dispossessed as worthless, and all established inst.i.tutions abolished as effete. They began their demolition with the nation itself. They would have no nation, no France, no French Government. They renounced not only all Kings and Emperors, but all Presidents, all Conventions, and all Parliaments, the latter especially. In the place of such authorities they proposed to subst.i.tute Committees of working men, and to cut up the country into such areas as Trade Unions might conveniently govern. For their own particular Union they thought Paris might serve well enough, and so they stipulated for their own sovereignty within these limits under the t.i.tle of the Commune. On those terms--every other species of authority and power being excluded--they believed they could put into practice their one idea of turning their own little world upside down and making the working cla.s.s everything and other cla.s.ses nothing. As they never looked beyond their own workshops, they considered that none but working people had ever done any duties or suffered any wrongs, and that no others, therefore, were ent.i.tled to any rights. The one object of their hatred, envy, and antagonism was capital, and they resolved to take capital into their own hands. For the future they would lead easy lives, and be the lords instead of the slaves of their old and detested enemy.

In those pretensions and those desires originated the Revolution just suppressed. The war thus undertaken was a Civil War, conducted without the least respect to any laws of war at all. The flight of the Government left the entire Capital not only with all its resources, but with all its treasures and all its inhabitants, in the hands of the insurgents. With these advantages they preferred their demands. They asked for the Capital of France to be delivered over to them as an estate or province within which they might proscribe the wors.h.i.+p of G.o.d, appropriate every form of capital, and depose all authority and all ranks in favour of their own. Failing this, and in the event of their being defeated in the actual war, they asked for amnesty and liberty to depart. At first they reckoned on victory, for the a.s.sembly appeared disorganized and its armies wavering; the support of other great towns was antic.i.p.ated, and the outlaws of every country in Europe--the veterans of the universal Revolution--had carried their swords to the service of its latest and ripest expression--the Parisian Commune.

Moreover, they had tremendous means of extortion in their hands. They held possession of all that was precious and admirable in the Capital of France, and they declared that, if they were neither allowed to prevail nor permitted to escape, they would spare nothing in their vengeance. In preparation for the worst they stored combustibles in the n.o.blest edifices of the city, and then, laying their hands on some of the most eminent and venerated of its inhabitants, they penned them in a body for the contingency of prospective slaughter. They had no more personal animosity against Monseigneur DARBOY than against any statue in the Tuileries or the Louvre. Animate and inanimate objects were marked for destruction on precisely the same grounds--the necessity of putting stress upon the enemy; and the threat was actually executed because its execution might improve the effect of terrorism another day. Of laws or of rules of war these men took not the slightest account. The military leaders of the insurrection had been trained in combats where every imaginable expedient had been held lawful, and the Committee of the International thought no price too high for the realization of their fixed idea. Soldiers and workmen alike were prepared for any extremity of outrage either in pursuit of victory or prosecution of revenge.

Such was the cause and such the conduct of this two months' war; but a war, nevertheless, it was, waged by a political insurrection on behalf of a political object. It is very true that the Insurgents aimed at no form of polity known to the world, and that it would have been impossible to content them by any measure of civil freedom or political rights. Their chief and most peremptory demand was, not for any rights of their own, but for the suppression of the rights of others. They denounced the extension of the suffrage to the rural population, and, as they were in a very small minority themselves, they protested against the right of any majority to outvote them, though they were preparing all the while to impose their own will on a const.i.tuency of ten times their number.

Such are my summary reflections concerning that gigantic insurrection.

Now, my Dear, that I have brought my daily correspondence to an end, happy shall I be, if such as may happen to read my small volume can find the perusal of it as interesting as you told it was to you.

I don't expect to stay much longer abroad: I shall soon return to England but quite heart-rent at what my eyes have witnessed, and notwithstanding my admiration for the n.o.ble qualities of the french nation, more than once, I fear, I shall not be able to refrain exclaiming: _Poor France!_

THE END.

HISTORICAL INFORMATIONS ABOUT THE PRINc.i.p.aL BUILDINGS BURNT

The Palais Royal, built on the site of Cardinal Richelieu's Palace, faces the Louvre, and adjoins the Place des Victoires. Given by Louis XIV, to his brother the Duke of Orleans, it pa.s.sed from him to the Regent Duke. Here, but not in the existing edifice, the Regent and his daughter held their incredible orgies; here lived his grandson Egalite, who rebuilt the palace after a fire, and relieved his embarra.s.sments by erecting the ranges of shops. The Palais Royal Gardens were the nursery of the First Revolution; they were the favourite resort of Camille Desmoulins and the other mob orators not yet sitting in Convention; and in them was unfurled, on the 13th of July, 1789, that tricolour flag which was to prove even a deadlier symbol than the red and white roses plucked once for England's woe in our own Temple-gardens. At the Palais Royal Egalite hatched the plots which ended in his execution, when it was disposed of by lottery, to be bought back, repaired, and beautified by the Orleans family after the Restoration, and inhabited by them till the second death of the Monarchy, in 1830, removed them to the Tuileries. In 1848 the palace was plundered and the interior destroyed by the mob, who at the same time burnt Louis Philippe's fine library.

The Palais was turned into a barrack, but when the new Republic developed into an Empire, it naturally changed back again into a palace.

The Emperor made it over to his uncle Jerome, who left it to Prince Napoleon, by whom it was fitted up in sumptuous style. The great staircase and its bal.u.s.trades and the Galerie des Fetes were fine in art and in general effect, but nothing that may have been destroyed can be half so great a loss as the Library which went in 1848, or as the Hotel de Ville, a magnificent structure, dating in part from 1628. The additions of 1842 to this munic.i.p.al palace cost 640,000_l_., and some of the saloons were the most gorgeous in Paris, perhaps in the world. Here in the days gone by, the Prefect of the Seine was wont to entertain his 7,000 guests in the great gallery, with its gilt Corinthian columns and 3,000 wax lights, the whole suite of rooms measuring more than 1,000 yards in length. In and about the building were some 500 statues of French celebrities, from Charlemagne to Louis XIV, in a full-bottomed wig. Painting, gilding, carving, gla.s.s, and velvet here had done their utmost, and as a specimen of magnificence in the modern French taste the furniture and decorations of the Hotel de Ville were unrivalled. The building, however, was far from depending altogether on its sumptuous upholstery. Not only was the architecture worthy of all praise and the art of much of the decoration as intrinsic as its gold, but here had been enacted many famous and infamous scenes in the history of Paris.

Here the first Commune held its b.l.o.o.d.y sittings; here Robespierre took refuge with his partisans, and was found by the soldiers with his broken jaw; the "Citizen King" was presented here to the people by Lafayette from a central window; here the soldiers were quartered in 1848; and here in 1871 was the stronghold of the last Commune, less b.l.o.o.d.y in its life but more desperate in its death than the first.

The Palais de Justice is a vast pile, which includes the Sainte Chapelle, numerous courts of law, and the Prison of the Conciergerie.

Anciently the site of palaces inhabited by the Kings down to Francis I., afterwards the meeting place of the Parliaments of Paris, it has been repaired and rebuilt since 1831 at a cost of nearly 1,000,000_l_. The courts of law open from the vast but inelegant Salle des Pas Perdus, which answers to our Westminster-hall. One of these courts was the Chamber of the Tribunal Revolutionnaire, and communicated by a small door with the Conciergerie Prison. In the precincts of the Palais stands, or stood, the Sainte Chapelle, an exquisite specimen on a small scale of the best style of Gothic architecture. The Chapelle was finished in 1248, having been built by Pierre de Montereau to enshrine the thorns of our Lord's crown and the wood of the Cross, relics bought for an immense sum from the Emperor Baldwin by St. Louis, and carried through the streets of Paris by the King barefoot. In 1791 the Sainte Chapelle became a club, then a corn store, then a record office; Louis Philippe commenced its restoration, and up to the fall of the Empire about 2,000,000f. had been spent upon it. It is in two stories, corresponding with the floors of the ancient palace; the lower chapel, or crypt, was intended for the servants, the upper, on a level with the Royal apartments, for the Royal family. The gla.s.s is exquisite, and the statues of the twelve Apostles date from the 13th century, and are admirable specimens of the art of their age. A small square hole to the south of the nave communicates with a room in which Louis XI was wont to sit and hear ma.s.s without fear of a.s.sa.s.sination.

GRAND-HOTEL

_12, Boulevard des Capucines, 12._