The Insurrection in Paris Part 6

Never have I witnessed a scene of greater excitement than the entry of Rochefort into Versailles as a prisoner to-day. He was brought in by the St. Germain road, and was seated in a family omnibus drawn by two horses. First came a squadron of gendarmes, then the omnibus, surrounded by Cha.s.seurs D'Afrique, and lastly a squadron of the same corps. In the vehicle with Rochefort were his secretary, Mouriot, and four police agents dressed in plain clothes. Outside the omnibus were an officer of the gendarmerie in uniform and two or three _sergents-de-ville_ not in uniform. Rochefort's moustache had disappeared. He had himself shaved closely before setting out from Paris in order to disguise himself, but there was no mistaking him. It was half-past 1 o'clock in the afternoon when the _cortege_, arriving at the end of the Boulevard du Roi, entered the Rue des Reservoirs. Every one ran into the street, and shouts of execration were raised on all sides. It was no mere demonstration of a mob. The citizens of all cla.s.ses joined in it. One man ventured to cry "Vive Rochefort!" He was kicked by several persons who happened to be near him, and was saved from further violence only by arrest at the hands of the _sergents-de-ville_. Along the rue des Reservoirs, the Rue de la Pompe, the Place Hoche, the Rue de Hoche, and the Avenue St. Cloud Rochefort was greeted with incessant shouts of "_a bas l'a.s.sa.s.sin; a pied le brigand; a mort_!" The people wanted to have him out of the omnibus, and it was with difficulty the cavalry prevented them from dragging him out and inflicting summary execution. The cavalcade was obliged to go at a slow pace, but finally he was safely lodged in gaol.

I believe that but for the precautions taken by the Government he would have been killed before he had got near it. The demand to have an example made of him, and the dissatisfaction at seeing him brought to prison in a carriage, were loud and general.

There was a tremendous fire against the bastions this morning at 5 o'clock, and a strong fire has been maintained all day.

The fire of the Insurgents is much weaker than it was yesterday and the day before, except at Vaugirard, and from there to Montrouge, where mitrailleuses and musketry were brought into requisition.

Up to 5 o'clock this afternoon Auteuil still sh.e.l.led.

From 3 o'clock I have observed a very large number of the Versailles troops under arms at a short distance from the Point du Jour, and a considerable body of the Insurgents watching them from near the Vaugirard Gate.

At 5 o'clock the white flag was displayed at the Porte d'Auteuil.

Orders have been given for the troops to march onward and occupy it.

M. Thiers has issued a circular, dated noon to-day, in which he says:--

"Several Prefects having demanded that news should be published, the following answer has been sent to them:--Those persons who are uneasy are greatly mistaken. Our troops are working at the approaches, and at the moment of writing the breaching batteries continue their fire upon the walls. Never have we been so near the end. The members of the Commune are busy making their escape."

The breaching batteries are still keeping up a very heavy fire against the _enceinte_.

M. Thiers has sent a despatch to the Prefects announcing that the gate of St. Cloud was forced down by the fire of the Versailles guns, and General Douai then rushed with his men into the interior. The troops under Generals Ladmirault and Glinchamps were at once set in motion to follow them.

The Versailles troops entered Paris at 4 o'clock this afternoon at two different points--namely, by the St. Cloud Gate at Point du Jour, and by the gate of Montrouge.

The ramparts were abandonned by the Insurgents.

THE CAPTURE OF PARIS.

MAY 21st.--AND 22d.

The great event of yesterday came upon every one by surprise. It had been expected, but not for yesterday.

Even the Marshal Commanding-in-Chief looked onward to at least six more days of sapping and mounting of batteries and actual breaching before his army would be able to make the final movement.

A certain number of the troops were inside the _enceinte_ before any one but themselves knew of it, and Auteuil and the Point du Jour were sh.e.l.led for nearly two hours after they had fallen into possession of the forces of Versailles.

One man, M. Clement, an officer of Engineers, played a prominent part in this historical affair. Soon after midday, proceeding cautiously in advance of a party of his men, who were lying in concealment between the nearest parallel and the Porte de St. Cloud, he crept up to the bastion and found it and the ramparts adjoining without a single sentinel.

Keeping near the ground, he waved a white handkerchief; it was seen by the small party of Engineers who were lying outside the last parallel, and also by Lieutenant Treves, of the French Navy. At first the signal was not understood; but M. Clement continued to wave the handkerchief violently, and beckon to those who saw him to come on immediately. It was with difficulty 100 men could be collected in the trenches, but about that number advanced and occupied the deserted position. In the meantime the word was pa.s.sed from post to post in their rear, and a batallion was soon on its way after them. By half-past 3 o'clock dispositions had been effected for occupying both Auteuil and the Point du Jour with a sufficient force, and proceeding to the other gates both right and left. The gates and drawbridge of Auteuil had been demolished several days previously, but the Insurgents had subst.i.tuted an enormous barricade, which shut off the iron bridge uniting the Railway Station with the Viaduct.

The Division of General Vergee marched direct upon Auteuil. Scarcely had the first column arrived there, when volleys of musketry were opened by the Insurgents concealed in houses. A few of the troops were put _hors de combat_ by this fire, but the artillery of the Division turned their pieces on the ramparts against the enemy, Mitrailleuses were also brought into requisition by the troops, and within an hour the Insurgents had fled to a distance.

The Division of General Douai entered by the gate of St. Cloud, which is at the Point du Jour, and occupied the salient between the ramparts and the viaduct. Here there was a second bastion of considerable solidity.

The soldiers entered the half-ruined barracks and casemates, and made prisoners of a number of Insurgents whom they found concealed there.

Immediate preparations were then made for the advance right and left, but as the enemy was still keeping up a fire from 7-pounders and Mitrailleuses, along the bastions between Vaugirard and Montrouge, a regular a.s.sault of these positions by the division under General Cissey was determined upon. I have already announced that it has been successful.

The Division began to march in by the Gates of Vaugirard and Montrouge.

At 2 o'clock this morning La Muette was occupied without serious resistance.

A Division subsequently advanced to Pa.s.sy to join that which had taken La Muette.

Such was the suddenness with which the occupation of the Point du Jour had been effected that, as I have stated, the firing from the military batteries continued for a considerable time after the first of the troops were in it. It was not till 4 o'clock that the order to cease firing in that direction left the Head-Quarters. In the meantime, hundreds of people stood on the Avenue and Terrace of Meudon watching the cannonade, and believing that all the posts of the Insurgents were still occupied by the enemy. Even the officers and men in the batteries did not know why the order to cease firing had been sent round.

I have just returned, after having followed in the rear of General Vinoy's last column, going to take up positions in the neighbourhood of the Trocadero. I have wandered all over the Point du Jour, visited Auteuil, and have walked along by the bastions between the Gate of St.

Cloud at the Point du Jour and the Gate of Auteuil. Having watched the other side of the Sevres Bridge, I was surprised on pa.s.sing along the Sevres road to observe that, very little damage had been done to the houses at the end of it near the _enceinte_. One or two bore the marks of sh.e.l.ls, but the fact is that nearly all had escaped, and what I saw at the _enceinte_ and within it, shows that the artillery practice of the Versailles side had been exceedingly good throughout the bombardment. The people on the Sevres road had kept their shops open amid all the terrible firing. Only some two or three houses had been closed. They stood at a dangerous angle to the batteries at Meudon. On one of them was chalked "_fermee pour cause du bombardement._" Between the last of the houses and the ramparts, and at a distance of not more than 100 yards from the latter, were the newly-cut trenches which the troops had constructed. Good gabions protected them in front, and there was a plentiful supply of fascines lying all about. The doors of the Porte were no longer to be seen, except in little bits on the roadway.

The drawbridge had succ.u.mbed bodily, and its place was supplied with some planks. The posthouse was in ruins, and the stone walls on either side between the gates and the parapet of the fortifications had been crumbled into rubbish; the glacis from the Point du Jour to Auteuil had been ploughed up in such a manner that not a yard of it was to be seen without a sh.e.l.l hole. To say that the parapet had been riddled would not be correct. It is smashed here and there, and at intervals everywhere, but in no place between the two Gates I am referring to is the earthwork inside the parapet laid bare, nor has a breach, properly so called, been anywhere made. The doors and gate walls of both gates are smashed through, but all along, despite serious disfigurement, the parapet is strong still.

To come back to the Point du Jour--that is as much a ruin as the town of St. Cloud. From the gate to the Railway Station there is not a single habitable house; not three have roofs, and not one has its windows and walls intact. Every lamppost has been scattered about the road in small pieces, and a stranger who had not heard of the bombardment might be pardoned for supposing that the streets had been macadamized with the fragments of sh.e.l.ls. Strange to say, the staircase leading from the Booking Office of the Railway Station to the line over head is uninjured, or nearly so, and by its means I was enabled to ascend and walk through that Viaduct which I have been looking at from a distance as sh.e.l.ls have been battering it for the last six weeks. It is much knocked about, and so is the bridge underneath it, which in a series of arches spans the river, but both will be serviceable still after some repair. Huge stones, displaced from their settings and broken into small pieces, lie scattered on the bridge and its approaches. From the Viaduct I could see an immense conflagration in the neighbourhood of the Champ de Mars, and a combat between the troops and the Insurgents was going on. In the Place de la Concorde and the Rue de Rivoli, all down to the Trocadero, reserves were in waiting with their cha.s.sepots stacked on each side of the road, but there was no fighting along the Quays.

General Vinoy had established himself in his new Head-Quarters, and the 70,000 or 80,000 men already in the heart of the city are believed to be quite sufficient to dispose of the last desperadoes of the Commune. The sounds of battle we heard from more than one point, and yet every one spoke of the Insurrection as in its last agonies. Men and women once more held up their heads and snapped their fingers at Delescluze, Dombrowski, and the Commune, but there was sad evidence all around us of what this rebellion had done. There in the little cemetery behind the ramparts lay the unburied and mangled remains of 32 National Guards who had been killed at the batteries just above. The whole place was a picture of ruin and desolation. Pa.s.sing out of the Point du Jour by the opining where the Porte de St. Cloud had stood, whole and entire, even after the Prussian bombardment, but where there is not a vestige of it bigger than a splinter now, I walked along the glacis in the direction of Auteuil. I was surprised to find that, at a distance of less than an eighth of a mile from the latter place, the military had fixed their gabions, sapped right up the glacis, and to within four or five yards of the fosse. The trenches had been cut across the Bois de Boulogne.

Nothing, however, like enough of the parapet and the earthwork above had been thrown down to fill up the fosse. Indeed, no effort whatever had been made in the way of filling up, except at either side of the two Portes, so that an a.s.sault at any other than these points would have been a very difficult undertaking. On the glacis I saw the dead and decomposed body of a man not in uniform. He lay on his side, with one hand under his head and the other raised in the air. A gentleman who lives close by stated that the deceased, with two or three other men, had come out to fire stray shots at the soldiers in the trenches. As he lay there to-day I perceived that he had been pierced by several rifle b.a.l.l.s. The gates at Auteuil have disappeared as completely as those at Point du Jour, and at the Railway Station behind the iron railway bridge over the road all the habitations are, so to speak, in a heap. The French term "_debris_" best describes what is left of Auteuil and its surroundings. Stone, mortar, iron bridge metal, lamp posts, trees, are smashed, pounded, and scattered. No one who visited Auteuil in happier times would recognize even the spot on which it stood. As specimens of successful bombardment the Point du Jour and the three barracks behind the _enceinte_ that lie between them may be cited among the most complete that even modern artillery has succeeded in producing.

A great explosion, followed by a conflagration, occurred at half-past 12 at the Staff Quarters near the Esplanade of the Invalides.

Paris is now completely surrounded.

It is a.s.serted that Dombrowski is hemmed in at Ouen.

The Insurgents have established a battery upon the terrace of the Garden of the Tuileries, the fire of which sweeps over the Champs Elysees; but this position has been turned by General Clinchamp, and there is reason to hope that the resistance will not be of long duration.

The Versailles troops have already captured from 8,000 to 10,000 prisoners.

Fighting has been going on all this morning, the cannonade and musketry fire being incessant.

There is a large fire in the neighbourhood of the St. Lazare Railway Station, and a dense cloud of smoke hangs over the heights of Montmartre. Not only have the Germans completely isolated Paris, but all communication between Versailles and St. Denis is also cut off. Trains arriving from the North no longer enter Paris, but stop at St. Denis.

It is rumoured that the Prussians occupy Fort Vincennes.

The strictest orders have been given to the German outposts to drive back all Insurgents, and the advanced corps have been doubled tonight to prevent any from breaking through the circle of investment north of Paris.

A wounded Insurgent General attempted to pa.s.s the Prussian outposts, but was forced to retrace his steps.

MAY THE 23d.

It may be desirable that I should add some particulars to the account I have already given of the way in which the troops moved from the _enceinte_ to the different positions they occupied in Paris last night.

The first column, proceeding between the railway and the Fortifications, made its way from Auteuil to La Muette; the second, starting from Auteuil, threw down a barricade which had been erected behind the railway arch, and, taking the Rue Raynouard and the Rue Franklin, proceeded by the high ground to the Trocadero. This march was not a rapid one, because at every step precautions had to be taken against snares that might have been laid by the Insurgents. The Artillerymen and the Engineers entered the houses on the terraces and examined the powder stores in the Rue Beethoven in order to ensure the column against an explosion. The third column, setting out from the Point du Jour, marched along the quays to the Bridge of Jena. At this point there was a junction of the three columns, and a line of occupation from Pa.s.sy to the river side at that bridge was established. The fourth column crossed the river at the Point du Jour, and marched along the quay of Grenelle.

Upon entering the Champs de Mars they found that the Insurgents were encamped in considerable force there. Skirmishers were thrown out, and, opening fire, they drove out the enemy without any serious difficulty, although the latter had a park of artillery. The Insurgents showed fight for some time, and a struggle was maintained on the right of the Champs de Mars, where the temporary wooden barracks have been erected. The Insurgents formed in a sort of hollow square at the four sides of the portion of the ground which for some time has been covered with artillery _caissons_, and responded to the attack upon them by a vigorous fire, but being opposed on two sides by an overwhelming force, they gave way, without any very great loss on either side. The tricolour was planted on the Pavilion d'ecole.

From the Arc de Triomphe there was no fighting down the Champs elysees, but there was a struggle at the Palais de l'Industrie before the troops obtained possession of that building. Under the orders of certain members of the Commune, the Insurgents resisted with a musketry fire.

Montmartre kept firing in the direction of the Trocadero throughout the day. Its fire did not kill or wound many men, but it r.e.t.a.r.ded the advance of the troops towards the heart of the city.

The fire which I mentioned yesterday as having been seen by me from the Viaduct of the Point du Jour was caused by the blowing up of the riding school of the ecole d'Etat Major, which was filled with cartridges.

Dombrowski has not been taken. He escaped from La Muette when the troops entered, leaving behind him the silver service which was in the room where he had been about to sit down to dinner.