French Literature – Children Books – Émile Zola – The Downfall (La Débâcle) – Contents
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PART III
Chapter VII
INSIDE PARIS: SIEGE AND COMMUNE—THE BARRICADES
Having overthrown the Empire at Sedan, the two German armies again began rolling their waves of men towards Paris, the army of the Meuse approaching the capital on its northern side by the valley of the Marne, whilst the army of the Crown Prince of Prussia, after crossing the Seine at Villeneuve-St. Georges, directed its course towards Versailles, skirting the city upon the south. And on that warm September morning, when General Ducrot, to whom the barely formed Fourteenth Army Corps had been confided, resolved to attack the second of the hostile armies on its flank march, Maurice, who was camping with his new regiment, the 115th of the Line, in the woods on the left of Meudon, only received orders to march when the disaster was already a certainty. A few shells had sufficed; a frightful panic had broken out among a battalion of newly recruited Zouaves, and the rest of the troops had been carried off in such helter-skelter fashion that the gallop of retreat did not cease till the men were behind the ramparts of Paris, where the alarm was intense. All the positions in advance of the southern forts were lost; and that evening the last link connecting the city with France, the telegraph wire of the Western Railway line, was severed. Paris was cut off from the world.
It was a frightfully sad evening for Maurice. Had the Prussians been more enterprising they might have camped that night on the Place du Carrousel. But they were extremely prudent folks, and had resolved to conduct the siege in the classical manner. The exact lines of the investment had already been settled—the cordon of the army of the Meuse on the north, from Croissy to the Marne, by way of Epinay; and the cordon of the Crown Prince of Prussia’s army on the south, from Chennevières to Châtillon and Bougival; whilst general headquarters with King William, Count von Bismarck, and General von Moltke, exercised authority from Versailles. The gigantic blockade, which folks had refused to believe in, was already an accomplished fact. The city, with its bastioned enceinte upwards of twenty miles in circumference, its fifteen forts and six detached redoubts, found itself, as it were, imprisoned. And the army of the defence was only composed of the Thirteenth Corps, which General Vinoy had saved and brought back to the capital, and the Fourteenth, still in progress of formation, and confided to General Ducrot—the pair of them comprising some eighty thousand soldiers, besides whom there were fourteen thousand sailors, naval gunners, and marines, fifteen thousand men belonging to various volunteer corps, and one hundred and fifteen thousand Mobile Guards, in addition to three hundred thousand National Guards apportioned among the nine sections of the ramparts. But although there was thus almost a nation of defenders, the disciplined, tried soldiers were few in number. Men were being equipped and drilled; Paris had become one immense entrenched camp. The defensive preparations were being feverishly pushed forward, roads were intercepted, the houses in the military zone were razed to the ground, the two hundred guns of heavy calibre, and the two thousand five hundred others were utilised; other cannon were cast, quite an arsenal springing into existence, thanks to the great patriotic efforts of Dorian, the Minister of Public Works. After the rupture of the negotiations of Ferrières, when Jules Favre had acquainted the inhabitants with Count von Bismarck’s demands—the cession of Alsace, the surrender of the garrison of Strasburg, and the payment of a war indemnity of five milliards of francs,[49]—a cry of rage resounded, and everyone acclaimed the continuation of the war, the prolongation of resistance as a condition indispensable to the very existence of France. Even should there be no hope of victory, it was the duty of Paris to defend herself so that the country might live.
One Sunday, at the close of September, Maurice was sent with a fatigue party to the other end of the city, and a fresh hope buoyed him up as he threaded the streets and crossed the squares. It seemed to him that since the rout of Châtillon all hearts had been rising for the mighty task that had to be accomplished. Ah! that Paris, which he had known so intent upon enjoyment, so near to the most grievous faults, how simple he found it now—cheerfully brave, and ready for every sacrifice! Everybody was in uniform; those who, as a rule, took the least interest in national affairs, now wore the képi of the National Guard. Like some gigantic clock whose works have broken, social life, industry, trade, business, had suddenly come to a standstill, and there remained but one passion—the resolution to conquer. It was the only subject that men talked of, that inflamed both their hearts and their heads, at the public meetings, during the guard-room vigils, and amid the crowds that incessantly gathered in the streets, barring both foot and roadways. Men’s minds were carried away by the illusions thus diffused; excessive tension was exposing them to the dangers of generous folly. Quite a crisis of sickly neurosis was already declaring itself, an epidemic fever of exaggerated fears as well as of exaggerated confidence, amid which a mere nothing sufficed to set the human animal loose. In the Rue des Martyrs, Maurice witnessed a scene which passionately excited him—a furious mob rushing to the assault of a lofty house, one of whose upmost windows had remained throughout the night brightly illumined by a lamp, which had evidently been intended as a signal to the Prussians stationed at Bellevue. Haunted by this belief in signals, some citizens virtually lived upon the housetops, watching all that went on around them. On the previous day, too, an unfortunate man had narrowly escaped being drowned in the ornamental water in the Tuileries Garden, because he had spread a map of the city on a seat and consulted it.
All Maurice’s confidence in the things in which he had formerly believed was shattered, and he, once so open-minded, was also succumbing to the mania of suspicion. Certainly he no longer despaired as he had done on the night of the panic of Châtillon, when he had anxiously wondered whether the French army would ever regain sufficient virility to fight; no, the sortie of September 30 in the direction of L’Hay and Chevilly, that of October 13 when the Mobiles had carried Bagneux, and that of October 21 when his regiment momentarily secured possession of the park of La Malmaison, had restored all his confidence, that flame of hope which a spark sufficed to rekindle and which consumed him. Although the Prussians had hitherto checked it upon every point, the army had none the less fought valiantly, and it might yet conquer. Maurice’s sufferings, however, were caused by Paris itself, which darted from extreme illusion to the deepest discouragement, ever haunted as it was, amid its thirst for victory, by an all-absorbing fear of treachery. After the Emperor and Marshal MacMahon, would not General Trochu and General Ducrot prove commanders of scant ability, unconscious artisans of defeat? The same movement which had swept the Empire away—all the impatience of violent-minded men eager to assume power and save France—was now threatening the Government of National Defence. Jules Favre and its other members were indeed already more unpopular than the fallen ministers of Napoleon III. Since they would not conquer the Prussians, it was their duty to make way for others, for the revolutionaries, who were certain of conquering by decreeing the levée en masse, and by employing the inventors who offered to undermine the suburbs of the city or to annihilate the enemy with a torrent of Greek fire.
On the eve of the rising of October 31 Maurice was thus consumed by that malady of the siege days compounded of distrust and illusion. He now lent a willing ear to fancies at which he would formerly have smiled. Why should they not be realisable? Were not imbecility and crime limitless? Was there not a possibility of a miracle amid all the catastrophes overturning the world? There was a flood of rancour within him which had been gathering since that night when, in front of Mulhausen, he had heard of the disaster of Frœschweiler; and his heart bled at the thought of Sedan—Sedan, that raw wound, still sore, which opened and bled afresh at the tidings of the slightest reverse. Cast into a scaring, nightmare-like existence, no longer knowing if he were yet alive, he still suffered from the shock of each defeat; his physical strength had been impoverished, his head weakened by that long period of hungry days and sleepless nights; and the idea that so much suffering would but lead to another and an irremediable disaster fairly maddened him, transformed him, a man of culture, into a being governed merely by instinct, fallen into childhood once more, and ever swayed and carried away by the impulse of the moment. Anything, everything, destruction, extermination rather than surrender a copper of the fortune or an inch of the territory of France! The evolution at work within him, which, under the blow of the first reverses, had swept away his faith in the Napoleonic legend—that sentimental Bonapartism which he had imbibed from his grandfather’s epic narratives—was now reaching completion. He no longer even believed in the theoretical, orderly Republic, he was already inclining to revolutionary violence and to the necessity of terror as the only means of sweeping away the imbeciles and traitors who were butchering their own country. And so he was heart and soul with the insurrectionists on October 31, when such disastrous tidings came pouring upon Paris in fast succession—the loss of Le Bourget, so gallantly carried by the Volunteers of the Press on the night of the 27th; the arrival of M. Thiers at Versailles on his return from his journey to the European capitals, whence he had come, so it was reported, to treat for peace in the name of Napoleon III.; and finally the surrender of Metz, which, after the vague rumours which had been current, now became a frightful certainty, a supreme sledge-hammer blow, another but infinitely more shameful Sedan. And, on the morrow, when Maurice learnt of the occurrences at the Hôtel-de-Ville—the insurrectionists momentarily victorious, the members of the Government detained captive until the small hours of the morning and then only saved by a veering of the population, which, at first exasperated with them, had ultimately become anxious at thought of the triumph of the rising—he regretted the failure of the attempt, the failure to establish that Commune which might possibly have brought them salvation, with its call to arms, and its proclamation of the country in danger arousing all the classical memories of a free people determined not to perish. Thiers, for his part, did not even dare to enter the city, and on the rupture of the negotiations the Parisians all but illuminated.
Then the month of November went by amid feverish impatience. Some trifling engagements were fought, in which Maurice took no part. He was now camping in the direction of St. Ouen, and at each opportunity he applied for leave, to satisfy his incessant craving for news. Like him, Paris was waiting anxiously. Political passions seemed to have been somewhat appeased by the election of the district mayors, though it was noticeable that most of the successful candidates belonged to the extreme parties, an ominous symptom for the future. And that for which Paris was so anxiously waiting during this long lull, was the great sortie so incessantly called for, the sortie which was to bring victory and deliverance. Of this, again, there was not the slightest doubt; they would hurl back the Prussians and pass over them. Preparations were being made on the peninsula of Gennevilliers, the point which was considered most favourable for the projected effort. But one morning there came a fit of mad delight at the good news of Coulmiers—Orleans retaken, the Army of the Loire marching upon Paris, and already camping, it was said, at Etampes. Then everything was changed; the Gennevilliers scheme, Trochu’s long meditated plan, was abruptly set aside since it would merely be necessary to join hands with the army of succour across the Marne. The military forces had by this time been reorganised, and three armies had been created—one composed of the battalions of the National Guard under the orders of General Clément Thomas; the second, which General Ducrot was to conduct to the great attack, formed of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Army Corps, reinforced by the best men that could be picked out of the other forces; and finally the third, the reserve army, composed almost entirely of Mobile Guards, and confided to General Vinoy. And when on November 28 Maurice came to bivouac with his regiment—the 115th of the Line—in the wood of Vincennes, he entertained no doubt of the success of the effort. The three corps of the second army were all encamped there, and the men told one another that their appointment with the Army of the Loire was for the morrow at Fontainebleau. Then, immediately afterwards, came the customary ill-luck, the usual blunders, a sudden rising of the Marne which prevented the pontoon-bridges from being thrown across it, and regrettable orders which delayed the movements of the troops. On the following night the 115th of the Line was one of the first regiments to cross the river, and as early as ten o’clock, under a terrible fusillade, Maurice entered the village of Champigny. He was wild with excitement, and his chassepot burnt his fingers despite the bitter cold. Ever since he had been on the march he had had but one desire, to continue going onward like that, onward, ever onward until he met his comrades of the provinces over yonder. But, beyond Champigny and Bry, the army had come upon the park-walls of Cœuilly and Villiers, walls more than five hundred yards in length, which the enemy had transformed into impregnable fortresses. They proved the limit, the obstacle that bravery was powerless to surmount. From that moment all was hesitation and retreat; the third corps’ movements having been delayed, the first and second, whose advance was already arrested, continued defending Champigny during a couple of days, but eventually had to abandon it during the night of December 2, having merely achieved a barren victory. That night the whole army returned to encamp under the trees of the wood of Vincennes, which were white with rime; and Maurice, who could no longer even feel his feet, so numbed they were by the cold, lay with his face upon the frozen ground, and wept.
Ah! the sad dreary days which followed after the collapse of that great effort! The great sortie, so long in preparation, the irresistible onslaught which was to have delivered Paris, had failed; and three days later a letter from General von Moltke announced that the Army of the Loire had again been defeated and compelled to abandon Orleans. The fetters encompassing the city were being drawn tighter and tighter, as it were, and henceforth there was no possibility of breaking through them. Yet Paris, in the delirium of despair, seemed to acquire a fresh resistive strength. Famine was beginning to threaten the inhabitants. Since the middle of October meat had been rationed. In December not a beast remained of the great droves of oxen and flocks of sheep which had been turned into the Bois de Boulogne amid the clouds of dust raised by their continuous tramping; and now the horses were being slaughtered. The Government supplies, and the private stores of flour and grain which had been requisitioned, had been calculated to yield sufficient bread for four months. When the flour was all consumed it became necessary to erect mills in the railway stations. There was also a dearth of fuel, and such little as remained was reserved for grinding the grain, baking the bread, and manufacturing weapons. And yet Paris, without gas, with her streets lighted merely by petroleum lamps, few and far between, Paris shivering under her icy mantle, Paris, whose black bread and horseflesh were doled out to her in infinitesimal quantities, continued hoping—hoping despite everything, talking of Faidherbe in the north, of Chanzy on the Loire, and of Bourbaki in the east, as though some prodigy were about to bring these commanders victorious under the ramparts. The crowds which waited in the snow outside the bakers’ and butchers’ shops still chatted gaily at times over the news of some great imaginary victory. Indeed, after the short fit of despondency which followed upon each defeat, the same tenacious illusions would spring to life again, and flare yet higher and higher among that mass of people whom suffering and hunger filled with hallucinations. One day, a soldier who had spoken of surrender, was almost massacred by the bystanders on the Place du Château d’Eau. The troops, whose courage was exhausted and who felt the end approaching, asked for peace, but the inhabitants still clamoured for the sortie en masse, the torrential sortie, when the entire population, men, women, and even children, were to rush upon the Prussians, like a vast overflowing stream which throws everything down and sweeps it away.
And Maurice now kept apart from his comrades, avoiding them, and experiencing a growing hatred of his soldier’s calling which penned him up idle and useless under the shelter of Mont Valérien. And thus he availed himself of every opportunity that presented itself, invented all possible pretexts to obtain leave, and hurried with more haste than ever into that Paris where his heart had fixed its abode. He only found peace of mind when he was in the midst of the thronging masses; he tried to force himself to hope as the mob hoped. He often went to witness the ascent of the balloons which every few days were sent up from the Northern and Orleans railway stations, with a freight of carrier pigeons, despatches, and letters. The balloons ascended and were lost to sight in the cheerless wintry sky; and the hearts of the onlookers became heavy with anguish whenever the wind wafted them in the direction of Germany. Many of them must have been lost. Maurice had written twice to his sister Henriette, but he did not know if she had received his letters. His recollections of her and of Jean were now so far away from him, in the depths of that vast world whence nothing came, that he now thought of those dear ones but seldom, and then as of affections which he had left behind him in some other life. There was no room for them in his being now, it was filled to overflowing with the ceaseless tempest of despondency and excitement amid which he lived. Then, in the early days of January, he found fresh food for his exasperation in the bombardment of the districts on the left bank of the Seine. He had ended by ascribing the dilatoriness of the Germans in this respect to humanitarian reasons, though it was simply due to the difficulties they encountered in conveying their siege-guns through France and getting them into position. And now that a shell had killed two little girls at the Val-de-Grâce hospital, Maurice felt unbounded scorn and hatred for those barbarians who murdered children and threatened to burn down the public museums and libraries. However, after the first few days of fright, Paris had resumed, under the bombs, its life of unfaltering heroism.
Since the reverse of Champigny, there had only been one more abortive attempt at a sortie, made in the direction of Le Bourget, and on the evening when the plateau of Avron had to be evacuated, under the fire of the heavy guns pounding away at the forts, Maurice shared the violent fit of exasperation which spread throughout the city. At this juncture the growing discontent which threatened to sweep away General Trochu and the Government of National Defence acquired such intensity that the rulers of the city were compelled to attempt a supreme and hopeless effort. Why indeed did they refuse to lead the three hundred thousand National Guards into the field, the National Guards who did not cease offering themselves and claiming their share of peril? It was the torrential sortie clamoured for since the very outset, Paris opening her flood-gates and drowning the Prussians beneath the colossal torrent of her people. Despite the certainty of a fresh defeat, it became necessary to accede to this gallant prayer; but in order to limit the slaughter, the commanders contented themselves with adjoining to the regular troops the fifty-nine marching battalions of the National Guard. And the eve of January 19 was like a fête: an enormous crowd thronged the Boulevards and the Champs-Elysées, watching the regiments as they marched along headed by their bands, and singing patriotic refrains. Children and women accompanied them, and men sprang upon the benches to shout their ardent prayers for victory. Then, on the morrow, the entire population betook itself to the neighbourhood of the Arc-de-Triomphe, and a wild hope inflamed it when in the course of the morning the tidings arrived of the occupation of Montretout. Epic-like narratives circulated concerning the irresistible dash of the National Guards; the Prussians were overcome, Versailles itself would be captured before the evening. And then, what a collapse there was when the inevitable repulse became known at nightfall! Whilst the left wing of the army was occupying Montretout, the central column, after making its way beyond the outer wall of Buzenval Park, was shattered in its efforts to carry a second inner wall which it encountered. There had been a thaw, moreover, a persistent fine rain had drenched the roads, and the guns, those guns cast by public subscription, the pride and the hope of Paris, were unable to come up. On the right, too, General Ducrot’s column, brought into action much too late, was still lagging into the rear. The effort could be carried no further, and General Trochu had to give orders for a general retreat. Montretout was abandoned, St. Cloud was abandoned and set on fire by the Prussians. And when black night had fallen the whole horizon was illumined by the glow of that immense conflagration.
This time Maurice himself felt that it was all over. During four hours, under the galling fire from the Prussian entrenchments, he had remained in the park of Buzenval with some of the National Guards, whose courage he greatly praised when he returned into the city a few days afterwards. They had indeed conducted themselves bravely. That being so, was not the defeat necessarily due to the imbecility and treachery of the commanders? In the Rue de Rivoli he met bands of men shouting ‘Down with Trochu!’ and ‘Vive la Commune!’ Another awakening of the revolutionary passions had come, a fresh propulsion of public opinion of such a disquieting character that, to avoid being swept away, the Government of National Defence thought it necessary to compel General Trochu to resign his command and set General Vinoy in his place. That same day, at a public meeting at Belleville, Maurice again heard a demand for an attack en masse. It was a mad idea, and he knew it, yet his heart again began beating more rapidly, in presence of this obstinate resolve to fight and conquer. When all is ended, should not the impossible be attempted? Throughout the night he dreamt of prodigies.
Then another long week went by. Paris was suffering uncomplainingly. The shops were no longer opened, the few foot passengers no longer met a single vehicle in the deserted streets. Forty thousand horses had been eaten; dogs, cats, and rats were fetching high prices. Since the dearth of wheat had set in, the bread, partially compounded of rice and oats, was black, viscous, and difficult of digestion; and the interminable ‘waits’ outside the bakers’ shops to obtain the three hundred grammes of bread[50] to which each person’s daily ration was limited, were becoming mortal. Ah! those grievous ‘waits’ of the siege days, those poor women shivering under the downpour, with their feet in the icy slush—all the heroic wretchedness of the great city still bent upon not surrendering. The death-rate had increased threefold,[51] the theatres had been turned into ambulances. At nightfall the once luxurious fashionable quarters fell into a dreary quietness, into dense obscurity, like districts of some accursed city smitten by pestilence. And amid the silence and obscurity, you heard but the far-off, continuous crash of the bombardment, and saw but the flashes of the guns setting the wintry sky aglow.
All at once, on January 26, Paris became aware that for a couple of days past Jules Favre had been negotiating with Count von Bismarck for an armistice; and at the same time it learnt that there only remained sufficient bread for another ten days, barely the period requisite for the revictualling of the city. Capitulation had become a brutal necessity. In its stupor at thus at last learning the truth, Paris mournfully allowed the Government to act as it listed. That same day, at midnight, the last cannon shot was fired. And, on the 29th, when the Germans had occupied the forts, Maurice came inside the ramparts with the 115th and encamped in the neighbourhood of Montrouge. Then began an aimless kind of life, made up of idleness and feverish unrest. Discipline was greatly relaxed, the soldiers disbanded and roamed about, waiting to be sent home again. He, however, remained in a wild excited state, prompt to taking offence at the slightest provocation, his disquietude ever ready to turn into exasperation. He devoured the revolutionary newspapers, and that three weeks’ armistice, concluded for the sole purpose of allowing France to elect an Assembly which was to pronounce upon the conclusion of peace or the continuance of war, seemed to him a delusion and a snare, a final, supreme act of treachery. Even if Paris were forced to capitulate, he, like Gambetta, was in favour of continuing the war on the Loire and in the North. The disasters which overtook the Army of the East, forgotten, compelled to take refuge in Switzerland, enraged him. And then the result of the elections brought his fury to a climax; it was just as he had foreseen, the cowardly provinces, irritated by the resistance of Paris, hankered for peace at any price, so that they might bring back the monarchy, even under the Prussian guns. After the first sittings of the Assembly at Bordeaux, Thiers, elected in six-and-twenty departments, chosen chief of the executive by acclamation, became in his eyes a monster, the man of every lie and every crime. And nothing could now calm him—the peace which was concluded by the monarchical Assembly seemed to him a climax of shame; he became delirious at the mere thought of those harsh conditions, the indemnity of five milliards of francs, Metz given up, Alsace abandoned, the gold and the blood of France pouring forth from that wound opened in her flank, and never to be healed!
Then, during the last days of February, Maurice made up his mind to desert. One clause of the treaty specified that the soldiers encamped in Paris should be disarmed and sent home. He did not wait for this, however; it seemed to him that it would rend his heart asunder if he were compelled to quit that glorious Paris, which hunger alone had been able to subdue. So he took himself off, and rented, in a six-storeyed house in the Rue des Orties, atop of the Butte des Moulins,[52] a little furnished room, akin to a belvedere, whence he could gaze over the sea of roofs and chimneys, from the Tuileries to the Bastille. An old fellow-student of the Law School had lent him a hundred francs. Moreover, as soon as he had secured a lodging, he entered himself in one of the battalions of the National Guard, resolved to content himself with the pay of a franc and a half per day allowed to the citizen soldiery. The idea of leading a quiet, egotistical life in the provinces horrified him. Even the letters which he received from his sister Henriette, to whom he had written directly the armistice was concluded, angered him with their pressing entreaties, the ardent desire they expressed that he would come and rest at Remilly. He refused to do so—he would only go there later on, when no Prussians were left there.
And Maurice now led a vagabond, lazy life, in a state of increasing feverishness. He no longer suffered from hunger; he had devoured the first white bread he could procure with delight. Paris, where there had never been any dearth either of wine or brandy, was now living in plenty, sinking, too, into incorrigible dipsomania. Still, it was always a prison, with its gates guarded by the Germans, and so many complicated formalities in force that people were unable to leave. There had as yet been no resumption of social life; there was still no work, no business transactions were engaged in, and cooped within the ramparts there was a whole people waiting in suspense and doing nothing, losing its last habits of regular, orderly life, whilst it vegetated in the bright sunshine of that budding springtime. During the siege there had at least been the military service to tire men’s limbs and occupy their minds, whereas now the population, in the isolation in which it still found itself, had all at once slipped into a life of absolute idleness. Maurice, like most others, lounged about from morn to eve, breathing the vitiated atmosphere, now thoroughly impregnated with all the germs of madness which for months past had been ascending from the mob. The unlimited liberty which prevailed completed the universal destruction. Maurice read the papers, attended the public meetings, shrugged his shoulders at the more preposterous speeches, but, nevertheless, returned home with his brain full of violent ideas, ready to engage in any desperate deed for the defence of what he believed to be truth and justice. And in his little room, whence he overlooked the city, he still indulged in dreams of victory, telling himself that France, the Republic, might yet be saved, so long as the treaty of peace was not finally signed.
The Prussians were to enter Paris on March 1, and when this became known a long howl of execration and wrath went up from every heart. Maurice never attended a public meeting now without hearing the Assembly, Thiers, and the Men of the Fourth of September charged with the responsibility of this crowning affront, from which, it was asserted, they had not tried to spare the heroic city.[53] He himself became so frenzied one evening that he made a speech and shouted that all Paris ought to go and die upon the ramparts, rather than allow a single Prussian to enter the capital. Amid this population, maddened by long months of misery and hunger, reduced to absolute idleness, unable to shake off its painful thoughts, consumed by suspicion, and fearful of phantoms of its own creation, the insurrectionary movement grew and spread, made all its preparations in the full light of day. It was one of those moral crises which have followed upon all great sieges, when excessive patriotism, deceived in its hopes and expectations, after vainly inflaming men’s minds, becomes changed into a blind longing for violence and destruction. The Central Committee, elected by the delegates of the National Guard, had just protested against any attempt at disarming the citizen soldiery. A great demonstration had followed on the Place de la Bastille, with red flags, incendiary speeches, an immense concourse of people, and, as a climax, the murder of a wretched detective, who was flung into the canal and stoned until he drowned. And forty-eight hours later, on the night of February 26, Maurice, aroused by the beating of the ‘assembly’ and the ringing of the tocsin, met bands of men and women dragging cannon along the Boulevard des Batignolles. And he too, with a score of other men, harnessed himself to one of the guns, on hearing that the people had been to fetch this artillery from the Place Wagram, so that the Assembly might not hand it over to the Prussians. There were altogether a hundred and seventy pieces, and for lack of horses the people dragged them along with ropes, pushed them with their fists till they brought them to the summit of Montmartre, with the fierce impetuosity of some barbarian horde saving its idols from destruction. When on March 1 the Prussians had to content themselves with occupying the district of the Champs-Elysées, penned up there within barriers like a herd of anxious conquerors, Paris put on a lugubrious aspect and did not stir; its streets were deserted, its houses closed—the whole city remained lifeless, shrouded, as it were, in a huge veil of mourning.
Two more weeks went by, and Maurice no longer knew how he was living during this long wait for the indeterminate, monstrous something whose approach he could divine. Peace was now definitely concluded, the Assembly was to take up its quarters at Versailles on March 20; but to Maurice it seemed that nothing was yet ended, that some frightful revanche was at hand. Whilst he was dressing on the morning of March 18, he received a letter from Henriette, in which she again begged him to join her at Remilly, affectionately threatening to go to fetch him if he should delay his coming much longer. And then she referred to Jean, and related how, after leaving her at the end of December to join the Army of the North, he had fallen ill of a low fever and had been nursed in a Belgian hospital; and he had written to her, only the previous week, to say that in spite of his weakness he was about to start for Paris with the intention of seeking active service again. Henriette concluded by asking her brother to give her full particulars concerning Jean as soon as he had seen him. Then Maurice, with this letter lying open before his eyes, fell into a tender reverie. Henriette, Jean, his fondly loved sister, his brother bound to him by ties of mutual misery and succour; ah! how far those dear ones were from his daily thoughts, now that the tempest was ever raging within him!
However, as his sister informed him that she had been unable to give Jean his address in the Rue des Orties, he determined to try and find his friend that same day, by applying at the War Office. But he was barely out of the house, just crossing the Rue St. Honoré in fact, when two comrades of his battalion acquainted him with what had happened during the night and early morning at Montmartre. And all three then started off thither at the double-quick, half out of their senses.
Ah! that 18th of March, with what fatal excitement did it inflame Maurice! Later on he could not clearly remember what he had done or said that day. Looking backward, he first beheld himself galloping along in a state of fury—fury at thought of the surprise which the troops had attempted that morning before daybreak, with the view of recapturing the guns of Montmartre, and thus disarming Paris. Evidently enough, Thiers, who had recently arrived from Bordeaux, had for two days past been planning this stroke, the object of which was to enable the Assembly to proclaim the monarchy at Versailles. Next Maurice beheld himself at Montmartre at about nine o’clock, fired by the narratives of victory which were recounted to him—how the troops had come stealing up in the darkness; how the arrival of the teams which were to have removed the guns had been delayed; how the National Guards had thereupon rushed to arms; and how the soldiers, loth to fire on women and children, had eventually hoisted the butt-ends of their chassepots and fraternised with the people. Then he beheld himself roaming through Paris at random, already realising by midday that the city belonged to the Commune, although there had been no battle. Thiers and the ministers, however, had fled from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where they had been assembled in council, the Government rushed helter-skelter to Versailles, and the thirty thousand troops of the garrison were led away in all haste, though not without leaving over five thousand deserters on the road. Then Maurice beheld himself at about half-past five at a corner on the outer Boulevards, loitering among a group of ruffians and listening without any feeling of indignation to the abominable story of the murder of Generals Lecomte and Clément Thomas. Generals, indeed! He remembered those of Sedan, incapable humbugs who only thought of taking all the blanket to themselves! One the more or one the less, verily, that was a matter of little consequence! And he had spent the remainder of the day in the same wildly excited state, no longer capable of seeing things as they really were, transported by this insurrection which the very paving stones seemed to have favoured, which, in the unforeseen fatality of its triumph, had spread and at one stroke secured power, placing the Hôtel-de-Ville, at ten o’clock that same night, in the hands of the members of the Central Committee, who were amazed to find themselves assembled there.
Confused as were these memories in Maurice’s mind, he retained a precise recollection of one incident—his unexpected meeting with Jean. The latter had reached Paris three days previously, penniless, still wan and enfeebled by the fever which during two long months had kept him in a hospital at Brussels; and meeting a former captain of his old regiment, Captain Ravaud, he had at once joined the company which this officer now commanded in the 124th of the Line. He had secured his old rank of corporal, and on the evening of the insurrection he had just left the Prince-Eugène barracks with his squad, the last of the regiment, in view of reaching the left bank of the Seine, where the entire army had received orders to concentrate, when he and his men were suddenly stopped by the crowd assembled on the Boulevard St. Martin. Shouts were raised, and there was a talk of disarming the soldiers. With perfect coolness, however, Jean requested the mob to let him alone; all this business did not concern him, said he; he simply wished to carry out his orders without hurting anyone. But all at once a glad cry of surprise rang out, and Maurice, who was among the crowd and had drawn near, threw himself on his friend’s neck, embracing him fraternally.
‘What! is it you?’ said the young fellow, ‘My sister wrote to me about you, and I wished to go to the Ministry this morning to inquire after you.’
Big tears of joy had gathered in Jean’s eyes. ‘Ah! my poor youngster; how pleased I am to see you!’ he replied. ‘I myself have been wanting to find you, but where could I go and look for you in this confounded big place?’
The crowd, meantime, was still growling angrily, and Maurice turned round to appease it. ‘Let me talk to them, citizens!’ said he. ‘They are good fellows and I’ll answer for them.’ Then, grasping his friend’s hands, he added in a lower voice: ‘You will stay with us, won’t you?’
Jean’s face assumed an expression of deep surprise. ‘Stay with you—what do you mean?’
Then for a moment he listened to Maurice while the latter railed against the Government and the army, recalled all that they had suffered together in past times, and explained that the people was at last about to become the master and would punish both traitors and cowards and save the Republic. And by degrees, as Jean strove to understand it all, his calm peasant’s face darkened with increasing sorrow: ‘Ah! no, no, youngster, I can’t stay, if it’s for such fine work as that—besides, my captain ordered me to take my men to Vaugirard, and I am going there. If thunderbolts were falling, there I should go all the same. It’s only natural, you know it is, yourself.’ He had begun to laugh in his simple way, and added: ‘It’s you that must come with us.’
But with a gesture of furious dissent Maurice released his hold on Jean’s hands. And for a few seconds they stood there face to face—one a prey to all the exasperation born of that fit of insanity which had taken possession of Paris, that malady of distant origin, sprung from the bad leaven of the late reign; the other, strong in his practical common-sense and ignorance, still healthy because he had grown apart in the soil of labour and thrift. Yet they were brothers, a strong tie bound them together, and they felt as though they were being wrenched asunder when a swaying of the crowd suddenly parted them.
‘Till we meet again, Maurice!’
‘Till we meet again, Jean!’
It was a regiment of infantry, the 79th of the Line, which, debouching in a compact mass from a side street, had just thrown the mob back upon the footways. There was again some shouting and hooting, but none were bold enough to bar the road to the soldiers, whose officers were urging them along. And the little squad of the 124th, thus extricated from the mob, was able to follow in the wake of the regiment without further hindrance.
‘Till we meet again, Jean!’
‘Till we meet again, Maurice!’
Again did they wave their hands, yielding to the fatality of that violent parting, but with their hearts still full of one another.
During the ensuing days Maurice at first forgot this incident, so absorbing were the extraordinary events which now followed one upon another in fast succession. On the 19th Paris awoke without a Government; still, it was more surprised than frightened on learning how panic had carried off the army, the public services, and the ministers to Versailles during the night; and, as the weather was magnificent that fine March Sunday, the city simply streamed into the streets to gaze at the barricades. A large white placard emanating from the Central Committee, and convoking the population for the Communal elections, appeared a very sensible production. People merely expressed surprise at finding it signed by names so utterly unknown. At the dawn of the Commune, indeed, Paris, in the bitter memory of all that it had suffered, in the suspicions also which ever haunted it, was hostile to Versailles. Absolute anarchy, moreover, prevailed; the district mayors and the Central Committee contending for authority, and the former making ineffectual efforts at conciliation, whilst the latter, as yet uncertain whether it could rely upon the entire federated National Guard, modestly limited its demands to municipal liberty. The shots fired at the pacific demonstration of the Place Vendôme, the few victims who then fell, staining the pavement with their blood, sent the first thrill of terror circulating through the city. And whilst the triumphant insurrection was at last taking possession of all the ministries and public departments, equal rage and alarm prevailed at Versailles, where the Government was hastily gathering together sufficient military forces to repel the attack which it felt to be imminent. The most reliable troops of the armies of the North and of the Loire were speedily summoned; and, ten days having sufficed to collect a force of nearly eighty thousand men, confidence returned so rapidly that already on April 2 a couple of divisions opened hostilities by taking the suburbs of Puteaux and Courbevoie from the Federals.[54]
It was only on the morrow that Maurice, who had set out with his battalion to effect the capture of Versailles, again beheld Jean’s sorrowful countenance rise up amid his feverish souvenirs. The attack of the Versaillese had stupefied and exasperated the National Guard, and three columns of the latter, some fifty thousand men, had poured forth from Paris early that morning, rushing towards Versailles by way of Bougival and Meudon with the design of seizing the monarchical Assembly and the murderer Thiers! ‘Twas the torrential sortie, the sortie so ardently demanded during the siege, and Maurice wondered where he should again see Jean, whether it would not be over yonder among the corpses on the battlefield? But the rout came too promptly for his surmises; his battalion had barely reached the Plateau des Bergères, on the road to Reuil, when some shells, fired from the fort of Mont Valérien, fell among the ranks. For a moment perfect stupor prevailed; some of the men had imagined that the fort was held by their comrades, whilst others averred that the commander had promised that he would not fire. Then a mad terror took possession of the Federals, the battalions disbanded and scurried back into Paris, whilst the head of the column, cut off by a turning movement which General Vinoy promptly effected, only reached Reuil to be cut to pieces there.
Maurice, who had escaped from the slaughter unharmed, and was thrilled with the emotion of fighting, now nourished intense hatred for that so-called government of law and order, which, beaten by the Prussians in every encounter, could only muster up courage to conquer Paris. And the German armies were still there, encamped on the north-eastern side of the city from St. Denis to Charenton, and gazing on that fine spectacle of a nation’s Downfall! In the gloomy passion for destruction which was gaining upon him, Maurice approved of the first violent measures to which the Commune resorted, the erection of barricades in the streets and squares, the arrest of the hostages, the Archbishop, the priests, and the ex-functionaries. Atrocities were already being perpetrated on either side; Versailles shot its prisoners, whilst Paris decreed that for the head of each of its soldiers the heads of three hostages should fall; and the little reason which Maurice still retained, after so many shocks and so much havoc, was speedily swept away by the blast of fury now blowing from every side. In his eyes the Commune appeared as the Avenger of all the shame and degradation that had been endured, as the Liberator armed with the knife to amputate and the flame to purify. All this was not quite clear in his mind; the cultured being yet lingering within him merely evoked the old classical memories of triumphant free cities, and federations of rich provinces imposing their will upon the world. Should Paris prove victorious, he pictured her crowned with an aureole of glory, building up a new France where justice and liberty would reign supreme, and organising a new society after first sweeping away the rotten remnants of the old. To tell the truth, when the elections were over, he felt some surprise on reading the names of the members of the Commune; so extraordinary was the mingling of Moderates, Revolutionaries, and Socialists of all sects, to whom the mighty task was confided. He knew several of these men, and esteemed them to be of very limited attainments. And would not even the best of them come into collision and neutralise one another’s efforts, representing as they did such conflicting principles? However, on the day when the Commune was solemnly installed in office at the Hôtel-de-Ville, whilst the guns were booming and the trophies of red flags were flapping in the breeze, he strove to forget everything, buoyed up once more by boundless hope. And, fanned by the lies of some and the unquestioning faith of others, his illusions were all revived in this acute stage of his malady, which was now fast reaching a climax.
Maurice spent the entire month of April in the neighbourhood of Neuilly, firing away at the Versaillese. The spring was an early one, and the lilacs were already blooming; they fought amid the tender greenery of the villa gardens, and some National Guards would return home at nightfall with nosegays in their gun-barrels. The troops assembled at Versailles were now so numerous that they had been divided into two armies, the first actively engaged under Marshal MacMahon, and the second forming a reserve force, commanded by General Vinoy. The Commune, on its side, had about one hundred thousand mobilised National Guards, and nearly as many men in the sedentary battalions, but of all these not more than fifty thousand really fought. And day by day the plan of the Versaillese became more and more evident; after taking Neuilly they had occupied the château of Bécon and then Asnières, but simply with a view of bringing the line of investment closer to the city, which they purposed entering by the Point-du-Jour, as soon as they could force the rampart there by means of the converging fire of Mont-Valérien and the fort of Issy. Mont-Valérien belonged to them, and all their efforts were directed towards capturing the fort of Issy, in attacking which they availed themselves of some of the works which had been thrown up by the Prussians during the late siege.
After the middle of April the cannonade and fusillade went on without a pause. At Levallois and Neuilly an endless combat was kept up, a skirmishing fire which rattled uninterruptedly by day and night alike. Heavy guns, mounted upon armour-plated carriages, travelled along the circular railway line, and fired over the roofs of Levallois at Asnières. But it was at Vanves and at Issy that the cannonade proved fiercest, all the window-panes on that side of Paris rattled as they had done during the most terrible days of the German siege. And on May 9, when, after a first alert, the fort of Issy finally fell into the possession of the Versaillese, the defeat of the Commune became a certainty, and a fit of panic impelled its members to the most evil resolutions.
Maurice approved of the creation of a Committee of Public Safety. Pages of history returned to his mind; had not the hour struck for energetic measures to be adopted if the country were to be saved? Of all the many acts of violence, there was but one which wrung his heart with a secret anguish—the destruction of the Vendôme Column. In vain did he reproach himself for this feeling, this childish weakness as he deemed it; his grandfather’s voice still rang in his ears telling him tales of battle—Marengo, Austerlitz, Jena, Eylau, Friedland, Wagram, the Moskowa—all those epic narratives which thrilled him yet. But it was different when the question was one of demolishing the house of that murderer, Thiers, of detaining the hostages as a guarantee and a menace, for were not acts like these fitting reprisals now that the rage of Versailles against Paris had increased to such a pitch that the city was being bombarded, and that shells were plunging through the house-roofs and killing women? That sombre longing for destruction mounted to his brain as the end of his dream drew nigh. If the principle of justice and retribution were destined to be annihilated in bloodshed might the ground open and everything be transformed by one of those cosmical convulsions that have renewed the life of the world! Might Paris fall, burn like a huge sacrificial pyre rather than be again delivered over to its vice and its misery, to that old rotten social system that had ever upheld abominable injustice! And he dreamed another great gloomy dream—the giant city reduced to cinders, naught left but smoking embers on both banks of the river, a nameless, unparalleled catastrophe whence a new people would arise. And thus he took a more and more feverish interest in the wild reports which circulated: whole districts undermined, the catacombs chokefull of gunpowder, everything ready to blow up the public monuments; electric wires connecting the mines so that a single spark would at the same moment ignite them all; vast stores of inflammable products gathered together, especially petroleum, enough to turn the streets and squares into rivers and seas of flame. The Commune had sworn it—if the Versaillese should enter the city, not one of them would pass beyond the barricades blocking the crossways, the pavements would open, the edifices would crumble, Paris would flare from end to end and swallow up a world!
And if Maurice began clinging to this wild dream, it was because of his secret discontent with the Commune itself. He despaired of the men composing it, felt them to be incompetent, pulled this way and that by conflicting views and interests, growing more and more exasperated, losing their heads, and lapsing into imbecility as their peril gradually increased. Of all the social reforms to which the Commune was pledged, it had been unable to realise a single one; and it was already certain that it would leave no durable work behind it. But the great evil from which it suffered was the rivalry tearing it asunder, the mutual suspicion which consumed each of its members. Many of them, the Moderates, the timid ones, had already ceased taking any part in the deliberations. The others acted on the spur of the moment, as events might suggest, trembled at the prospect of a possible dictatorship, had reached indeed that phase when the factions of revolutionary assemblies exterminate one another in the hope of saving the Commonwealth. After Cluseret, after Dombrowski, it became Rossel’s turn to be suspected. Delescluze, appointed civil delegate at War, could himself do nothing, despite his great authority. And on the other hand the social effort, of which there had been just a faint glimpse, subsided to insignificance, proved utterly abortive amid the hourly increasing isolation of these men, rendered powerless by dissension and reduced to acts of despair.
Terror was rising in Paris. Irritated, at first, against Versailles, shuddering at memory of the sufferings of the siege, the city was now detaching itself from the Commune. The compulsory enrolment, the decree incorporating every man under forty years of age in the insurrectionary forces, had angered people of calm minds and caused a flight en masse; some folks went off by way of St. Denis, disguised and provided with spurious Alsatian passports,[55] others with the help of ropes and ladders let themselves down into the ditch of the fortifications on dark nights. The wealthy people of the middle class had long since taken themselves off. Not a factory, not a workshop had reopened its doors. There was no trade, no work, the old life of idleness continued during that anxious wait for the inevitable ending. And the people—the poorer classes—still lived upon the paltry pay allowed to each National Guard—that franc and a half per diem paid from the millions which were now being requisitioned from the Bank of France, that franc and a half for the sake of which alone many men still continued fighting, and which was really one of the primary causes, the why and wherefore of the insurrection. Entire districts had become depopulated, the shops were shut, the house-fronts lifeless. And in the deserted streets under the warm sun of that lovely month of May, there was nothing to look at but the funerals of Federals who had been killed in action—processions unaccompanied by any priest, but fraught with a barbaric pomp, the hearses draped with red flags and followed by crowds wearing ‘button-holes’ of immortelles. The churches, closed for purposes of worship, became transformed every evening into political club-rooms. Only revolutionary newspapers were published, all the others had been suppressed. And all this was tantamount to the destruction of Paris, that great, ill-fated Paris which, like the Republican capital it was, still retained a feeling of repulsion for the Assembly, even while its terror of the Commune, and its impatience to be delivered from it, grew and spread amid all the alarming rumours that circulated—rumours of the daily arrest of hostages, and of barrels of gunpowder lowered into the sewers, where men were said to watch with lighted torches waiting for a signal.
And at this stage Maurice, who hitherto had never been inclined to drink, found himself caught and submerged as it were in the universal intoxication. At present, when he was on duty at some advanced post or spent the night in a guard-room, it frequently happened that he accepted a nip of brandy. And if he took a second nip excitement followed, fanned by the breath of his comrades as it blew past his face, reeking with alcoholic fumes. The drunkenness had become chronic, an all-invading epidemic, bequeathed by the first siege, aggravated by the second; for if the population had lacked bread it had always possessed brandy and wine in profusion, and had so saturated itself with drink, that the merest drop now sufficed to make it delirious. For the first time in his life, on the evening of Sunday, May 21, Maurice came back drunk to his lodging in the Rue des Orties, where he still slept from time to time. He had again spent the day at Neuilly, firing at the Versaillese and drinking with his comrades in the hope of surmounting the intense weariness which was overpowering him. Then with his head in a fog and his limbs exhausted, he had come and thrown himself on the bed in his little room, led thither by instinct, for he never remembered how he had managed to make the journey. And on the following morning the sun was already high in the heavens when the tumult of alarm bells, drums, and bugles at last aroused him. On the previous evening, finding a gate of the ramparts at the Point-du-Jour abandoned, the Versaillese had entered Paris unopposed.
Hastily dressing, and taking his gun, which he slung over his shoulder, Maurice went down into the street, and, scarcely had he reached the district municipal offices, when a cluster of scared comrades whom he met there acquainted him with the events of the evening and the night, in so confused a way, however, that it was at first difficult for him to understand the position. The fort of Issy and the great battery at Montretout had been pounding away at the ramparts for ten days past, and with such effect that the St. Cloud gate of the fortifications had at last become untenable. An assault had therefore been resolved upon, and was to have taken place on the morning of May 22. But on the afternoon of the 21st, at about five o’clock, a passer-by, seeing that nobody remained guarding the St. Cloud gate, simply beckoned to the Versaillese posted in the trenches, which were scarcely fifty yards away. Two companies of the 37th of the Line thereupon at once entered the city, and behind them followed the whole of the Fourth Corps, commanded by General Douay. The troops poured into Paris in a ceaseless stream throughout the night. At seven in the evening General Vergé’s division set out towards the Grenelle bridge, and even pushed forward as far as the Trocadéro. At nine o’clock General Clinchant captured Passy and La Muette. At three in the morning the First Corps was camping in the Bois de Boulogne; and at about the same hour General Bruat’s division crossed the Seine to carry the Sèvres gate and facilitate the entrance of the Second Corps, which, under the orders of General de Cissey, occupied the Grenelle district an hour later. Thus on the morning of the 22nd the army of Versailles held the Trocadéro and La Muette on the right bank of the river, and Grenelle on the left bank; and this to the stupor, wrath, and consternation of the Commune, whose members were already accusing one another of treachery in their agony at the idea that annihilation was now inevitable.
This, too, was Maurice’s first feeling when he at last understood the situation. The end had come, and no course remained but to meet death boldly. Meantime, however, the alarm bells were pealing, the drums were beating more loudly, women and even children were helping to build barricades, and the streets were filling with all the feverish stir and bustle of the battalions hastily assembled and hurrying to their posts of combat. And at midday hope again sprang from the breasts of the excited, determined soldiers of the Commune when they found that the Versaillese had scarcely stirred from their positions. This army, which they had feared to find at the Tuileries in a couple of hours’ time, manœuvred with extraordinary caution, profiting by the stern lessons of defeat, and exaggerating the tactics which it had learnt at such dire cost from the Germans.[56] Meantime the Committee of Public Safety, and Delescluze, the delegate at War, organised and directed the defence from their quarters at the Hôtel-de-Ville. It was noised abroad that they had disdainfully repulsed a supreme attempt at conciliation. These tidings inflamed the courage of their partisans; the triumph of Paris once more seemed assured, and on all sides the resistance was to be as fierce as the attack had been implacable—such was the hatred, fed by lies and atrocities, which burnt in the hearts of either army.
Maurice spent that day in the neighbourhood of the Champ de Mars and the Invalides, falling back slowly from street to street whilst firing upon the troops. He had not been able to find his own battalion, and was fighting in company with some comrades who were strangers to him, and who had led him to the left bank of the river without his even noticing it. Towards four o’clock they defended a barricade blocking the Rue de l’Université, at the point where it reaches the Esplanade des Invalides; and they did not abandon this position until the twilight fell and they learned that Bruat’s division, stealing along by way of the quay, had secured possession of the Corps Législatif. As it was, they narrowly escaped being caught, and only reached the Rue de Lille with great difficulty, after making a long round through the Rue St. Dominique and the Rue Bellechasse. When night fell the army of Versailles occupied a line starting from the Vanves gate, on the left bank of the Seine, and passing by way of the Corps Législatif across the river to the Elysée palace, the church of St. Augustin, and the St. Lazare railway station, until it finally reached the Asnières gate on the north-west.
It was the morrow, May 23, a beautiful spring Tuesday, bright with warm sunshine, which proved the terrible day for Maurice. The few hundred Federals of various battalions, among whom he found himself, still held the whole district from the quay to the Rue St. Dominique. Most of them, however, had bivouacked in the gardens of the large mansions lining the Rue de Lille, and he himself had fallen fast asleep on a lawn adjoining the palace of the Legion of Honour. He fancied that the troops would emerge from the Corps Législatif at dawn to drive him and his comrades behind the strong barricades which had been thrown up in the Rue du Bac, but several hours went by and there were no signs of an attack. The combatants merely continued exchanging random shots from one to the other end of the streets. All this, however, formed part of the plan of the Versaillese, which was now being slowly, cautiously carried out. Firmly resolved not to attempt a front attack upon the formidable fortress into which the insurgents had converted the Tuileries terrace, they had decided upon a double advance along the ramparts on either side of the river in view of capturing Montmartre on the north and the Observatory on the south to begin with, and thence swooping down upon the city, surrounding the central quarters and seizing upon them at one great stroke. Towards two o’clock Maurice heard a comrade say that the tricolour flag was waving over Montmartre. Simultaneously attacked by three army corps, whose battalions had climbed the height on its northern and western sides, the great battery of the Galette windmill had been captured; and the victors were now streaming down into Paris, carrying in turn the Place St. Georges, the church of Notre Dame de Lorette, the municipal offices in the Rue Drouot, and the Grand Opera House; whilst on the left bank the turning movement, starting from the Montparnasse Cemetery, was now reaching the Place d’Enfer and the Horse Market. At these tidings of the rapid progress made by the army the Communists gave way to stupor, wrath, and fright. What! Montmartre had been carried in a couple of hours—Montmartre, the glorious, impregnable citadel of the insurrection! Maurice noticed that the ranks were thinning around him, that trembling comrades were slinking away to wash their hands and slip on a blouse, in their fear of the troops’ reprisals. It was rumoured, too, that they would soon be turned by way of the Croix-Rouge crossway, the attack on which was now being prepared. The barricades in the Rue Martignac and the Rue Bellechasse had already been carried, and the insurgents were beginning to espy the red trousers of the soldiers at the end of the Rue de Lille. And now the Communist force upon this point became limited to the men of conviction, the desperate ones; Maurice and some fifty others who were resolved to die after killing as many as possible of those bloodthirsty Versaillese who treated the Federals as bandits, dragging those whom they made prisoners to the rear of their line of battle and shooting them down there. Since the previous day the execrable feelings of hatred animating either side had yet increased; it was now a war of extermination between those rebels dying for their dream, and that army hot with reactionary passions and exasperated at still having to fight.
At about five o’clock, whilst Maurice and his comrades were finally retreating to seek the shelter of the barricades in the Rue du Bac, making their way from door to door down the Rue de Lille and still firing as they went, the young fellow suddenly perceived a mass of dense black smoke pouring out of an open window of the palace of the Legion of Honour. It was the first of the conflagrations kindled in Paris; and in the furious insanity that now possessed him he experienced a fierce delight. The hour had come: might the whole city flare like a huge sacrificial pyre, might fire purify the world! But all at once he was overcome with astonishment. Five or six men had just rushed out of the palace, led by a big fellow in whom he recognised Chouteau, his former comrade in the 106th of the Line. Maurice had caught sight of the scamp once before, just after the 18th of March, when he was already wearing the gold-laced cap of an officer. Since then he must have risen in rank, for his uniform was now covered with galloons. Maybe he was attached to the staff of some Communist general who shirked fighting; and indeed Maurice suddenly remembered that a comrade had told him various anecdotes of this fellow Chouteau, who had been quartered at this very palace of the Legion of Honour, where in the company of his mistress he had led a life of continual jollity, lying booted and spurred in the sumptuous beds, and smashing the plate-glass mirrors with shots from his revolver just by way of a lark. It was asserted, too, that his mistress, under pretence of going to market, drove out every morning in a gala carriage, in which she carried away bales of linen, clocks, and even articles of furniture. Thus, when Maurice caught sight of the rogue running away with his men, and still carrying a can of petroleum, he experienced a sensation of uneasiness, a frightful doubt, a wavering of all the blind faith which had been buoying him up. Was it possible that the great work could be evil, since it had such a man as Chouteau for its artisan?
Several hours elapsed and still he fought, but in a distressful fashion, conscious of no feeling save a sombre determination to die. If he had erred, might he atone for his error with his blood! The barricade at which he found himself barred the Rue de Lille at the point where this street was intersected by the Rue du Bac. It was a formidable one, strongly built of sandbags and barrels of earth and faced by a deep ditch. Maurice was holding it with barely a dozen Federals, all of them reclining among the sandbags, and with unerring aim picking off every soldier who showed himself. Without moving, without even speaking a word, such was the dogged sullenness of his despair, the young fellow continued exhausting his cartridges until night closed in, watching meantime the growth of the clouds of smoke which were pouring out of the palace of the Legion of Honour, and were swept down into the street by the wind. The flames were not yet visible in the waning daylight. Another conflagration had broken out in a neighbouring mansion. And all at once a comrade ran up to Maurice and warned him that the soldiers, not daring to advance down the street, were approaching through the gardens and houses skirting it, cutting their way through the walls with picks. The end was at hand; the troops might emerge on that very spot at any moment. And, indeed, on a shot being fired from a window above him, he looked up and again saw Chouteau and his men, who were now frantically climbing the stairs of the corner houses on either hand, carrying lighted torches as well as cans of petroleum. Half an hour later, the whole crossway was flaring under the black sky, and Maurice, still reclining behind the barrels and the bags, profited by the vivid light to shoot down any of the soldiers who were imprudent enough to leave the shelter of the doorways and show themselves in the street.
How long did he keep on firing? He no longer had any consciousness of time or place. It might be nine o’clock, ten o’clock perhaps. The abominable work in which he was engaged now gave him a sensation of nausea, as though he were drunk with some loathsome wine which kept on rising from his stomach. Now that the houses were flaming all around, an intense heat, a burning, asphyxiating atmosphere was beginning to envelop him. The crossway, barred on every side by piles of paving stones, had become an intrenched camp which the conflagrations defended with shower after shower of brands. And were not these the orders? To set each district on fire as, one by one, its barricades were abandoned, to check the advance of the troops by a devouring line of furnaces, to burn down progressively each portion of Paris which they, the insurgents, might be forced to surrender? And Maurice already realised that the houses of the Rue du Bac were not the only ones that were burning. Behind him an immense ruddy glow suffused the sky, and he could hear a distant roar as though the whole city were catching fire. Along the Seine, on the right bank, some other gigantic conflagrations must be bursting forth. He had long since seen Chouteau hurry away, fleeing the bullets. One by one, moreover, the most desperate of his comrades took themselves off, terrified by the idea that they might now at any moment be outflanked; and at last he remained there all alone, and was still lying between two sandbags with the one thought of defending the front of the barricade, when all at once some soldiers, having made their way through the courtyards and gardens of the Rue de Lille, came out by a house in the Rue du Bac and swooped down from the rear.
For two long days, amid the excitement of that supreme struggle, Maurice had not given a thought to Jean; nor had Jean since entering Paris with his regiment, which had been adjoined to General Bruat’s division, for a single moment remembered his friend Maurice. On the previous day, the corporal had spent his time firing upon the insurgents on the Champ de Mars and the Esplanade des Invalides; and on this, the second, the terrible day of the fighting, he had not left the Place du Palais Bourbon till about noon, when he and his comrades were sent forward to capture the barricades of the neighbourhood as far as the Rue des Saints-Pères. He, usually so calm, had gradually become quite exasperated by that fratricidal war, somewhat influenced in this respect by his comrades, all of whom ardently longed for a rest after so much fatigue and privation. The men who had spent long months as prisoners of war in Germany, and who had only been brought back to France to be re-incorporated in the army, felt thoroughly enraged with Paris; and Jean, for his part, was further incensed by all that he had heard of the abominations of the Commune—deeds which struck at his belief in the rights of ownership, and at his desire for orderly government. He was still the sensible, sober-minded peasant, personifying the very foundation of the nation, desirous of peace in order that one might again begin working, earning money, and recruiting health and strength. And in the growing wrath which now carried away all thought even of his most tender affections, he was especially maddened by the deeds of the incendiaries. What! burn down houses, burn down palaces, simply because one was not the stronger; no, no, anything but that! Only bandits could do such things. And he, who only the day before had been grieved by the summary executions of the Communists captured by the troops, had now lost all control over himself and was like a madman, striking and shouting fiercely, with his eyes starting from their sockets.
It was with a rush that he debouched into the Rue du Bac, followed by the few men of his squad. At first he could distinguish no one, and fancied that the barricade had been altogether abandoned. Then, over yonder, between two sandbags, he caught sight of a Communist who was moving, levelling his gun again, about to fire down the Rue de Lille. And, thereupon, under the furious propulsion of Destiny, he ran up and nailed the man to the barricade with a thrust of his bayonet.
Maurice had not had time to turn. He gave a shriek and raised his head. The conflagrations lighted up both men with a blinding blaze.
‘Oh! Jean, my old friend, Jean, is it you?’
Die? Yes, willingly; he was desperately impatient for death. But to die by his brother’s hand was too hard; it marred his death—poisoned it with an abominable bitterness.
‘Is it you then, Jean—my old Jean?’
Jean looked at him, thunderstruck, abruptly sobered. They were alone; the other soldiers had already started in pursuit of some runaways. All around them the conflagrations were flaring yet higher, the windows were vomiting great red flames, and one could hear the crash of the burning ceilings as they sank inside the houses. Then Jean fell down near Maurice, sobbing, feeling him, trying to raise him up so as to ascertain whether he might not still be able to save him.
‘Oh! my poor youngster, my poor youngster!’
< < < Chapter VI
Chapter VIII > > >
French Literature – Children Books – Émile Zola – The Downfall (La Débâcle) – Contents
Copyright holders – Public Domain Book
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