Camp, Court and Siege A Narrative of Personal Adventure and Observation During Two Wars: 1861-1865; 1870-1871

CHAPTER XXII. CHAPTER XXII. Reign of Terror.—Family Quarrels.—The Alsacians, etc., claim German Nationality.—They leave Paris on our Passes.—Prisoners of Commune.—Priests and Nuns.—Fragments of Shells.—"Articles de Paris."—Fearful Bombardment of "Point du Jour."—Arrest of Cluseret.—Commune Proclamations.—Capture of Paris.—Troops enter by Undefended Gate.—Their Slow Advance.—Fight at the Tuileries Gardens.—Communist Women.—Capture of Barricades.—Cruelties of the Troops.—"Pétroleuses."—Absurd Stories about them.—Public Buildings fired.—Destruction of Tuileries, etc., etc.—Narrow Escape of Louvre.—Treatment of Communist Prisoners.—Presents from Emperor of Germany. As time passed, the puerilities and atrocities of the Commune kept equal pace. They had taken possession of the public buildings and raised the red flag upon them, suppressing the tricolor. They now passed a decree requiring every man to be provided with a carte d'identité ; this, they said, was to protect them against Government spies. They established a bureau of denunciation, where any man who had a grudge against his neighbor had simply to denounce him as a Versailles sympathizer, and he was arrested. They closed the churches, or turned them into clubs. They arrested the priests; they shut up some of the convents, and imprisoned the nuns. They confiscated the gold and silver church plate, and turned it into coin. It was emphatically a "Reign of Terror." It was estimated that within a month after the outbreak of the Commune three hundred thousand people left Paris. In the clubs they denounced the Legation. They said that Mr. Washburne was about to call in the Germans at the request of the diplomatic corps. They proposed to hang him, and to banish the rest of us. In point of fact, I believe that Mr. Washburne could have called in the German army at any time. He had only to report to General Manteuffel that the lives of the Germans in Paris were in danger, and that he found himself unable to protect them, and Manteuffel would have occupied Paris at once. But Mr. Washburne never entertained an idea of doing this. Then the Commune began to quarrel among themselves. The Happy Family was at variance. Strange as it may appear, at the beginning of the affair, there were many earnest, honest fanatics in Paris who joined the movement. The first demands of the Commune under the influence of these men were not unreasonable, in American eyes. They asked that they might elect their own prefect, and that Paris should not be garrisoned by Government soldiers. But events soon outstripped these men; and as they found the city given over to organized pillage—the Committee of Public Safety meeting in secret, instead of in the light of open day, as they had promised, and the model republic of which they had dreamed as much a chimera as ever—they withdrew from the Government. Over twenty of them withdrew in a body, and published their reasons for doing so. But the scoundrels who now directed the movement "cared for none of these things." They had used these poor enthusiasts while it suited their purpose; now they threw them overboard, and replied to their manifesto by removing the Committee of Public Safety as too mild, afflicted with scruples, and appointing one of a bloodier type, one of its members a murderer. During all this time the Legation was beset from morning till night. The Alsacians and Lorrains residing in Paris, whom the treaty had made Germans, but who were nevertheless permitted to choose their nationality, had fully intended to opter for the French, and refused with indignation a German nationality. But when they found that to remain French condemned them to the National Guard, while to become German enabled them to leave Paris, and return to their homes, they came in shoals to the Legation to ask for German passports. It was a renewal of the days before the siege, the days of the German expulsion. Much of Mr. Washburne's time was taken up in visiting German prisoners, and procuring their discharge, and sometimes that of French priests and nuns. To procure the release of Germans was no very difficult task, for the Commune, as I have said, had a wholesome fear of the Teuton, and " Civis Germanicus sum " was an open-sesame to Communist prison-doors. But to release the poor French nuns was a more difficult task. Mr. Washburne effected it in many instances; but it required all his energy and decision. And here I must remark how much better and more humane it was to do as Mr. Washburne did—to hold such communication with the officials of the Commune as was absolutely necessary, and so save human life, and mitigate human suffering—than to sit with folded arms, and say, "Really, I can have nothing to do with those people," and so let fellow-creatures suffer and perish. Where there is a will, there is generally a way. Mr. Washburne was able to assist and protect indirectly many persons whom he could not claim as American citizens or German subjects. We could not give a United States passport to a Frenchman, but we could make him a bearer of dispatches, give him a courier's pass, and so get him safely out of Paris. Colonel Bonaparte escaped in this way. He was on the "Black List" of the Commune for arrest, and arrest then meant death. As the siege progressed, the bombardment became more and more severe. The beautiful avenue of the Champs Elysées was like a city of the dead. Not a living creature was to be seen upon it for hours. From time to time a man would emerge cautiously from a side street, gaze anxiously up the avenue, then start on a run to cross it. But the "insatiate thirst of gold" is stronger than the fear of death; and, at the worst of the bombardment, men and boys were to be seen lurking near the Arch, and darting upon an exploding shell to secure its fragments while they were still too hot to hold. A large business was done in these fragments after the siege, as well as in the unexploded shells. They were sold as relics; and the Parisian shop-keepers mounted them as clocks, fenders, inkstands, penholders, and other articles de Paris . A battery of immense strength was at length erected at Montretout, near St. Cloud. It was probably the most powerful battery ever erected in the world. It opened upon the gate of the Point du Jour, and in a few days the scene of devastation in that quarter was fearful. Not a house was left standing, scarcely a wall. Bodies of soldiers of the National Guard lay unburied among the ruins. The fire was too hot for their comrades to approach them. In the mean time dissension reigned among the Communists. A new Committee of Public Safety was appointed. They arrested Cluseret, their Minister of War, as they had already arrested Lullier. They accused him of treason, and it would have gone hard with him had the Commune continued much longer in power. They said that "a hideous plot had been discovered," but that the guilty were known, and "their punishment should be exemplary as their crime was unparalleled." They announced that if the Commune fell, they would fire the city, and its beauty and its pride should be buried with them. They wrote forcibly, those fellows! Had they fought with as much vigor as they wrote, the world would at least have respected their courage, instead of pronouncing them as cowardly as they were cruel. But their career of crime and folly was drawing to a close. One day a citizen of Paris, a civil engineer, was taking his afternoon walk. As he approached one of the gates, not far from Auteuil, he was surprised to find no National Guard on duty. He kept on, and came to the fortifications. There was not a defender in sight, while the French troops lay outside under cover watching for some one to fire at. Why they had not discovered the absence of the enemy can only be accounted for by the general inefficiency into which the French army had fallen. The engineer raised his white handkerchief on his cane, and when he saw that it was observed, quietly walked through the ruins of the work, crossed the fosse, and asked the officer in command why on earth he did not come in; there was a gate, and no one to defend it. It occurred to the officer that it might be as well to do so; that perhaps that was what he was there for: so he marched in with his company, and Paris was taken. It was rather an anticlimax! After a delay of months, and a fierce bombardment, to enter Paris on the invitation of a citizen taking his afternoon walk! It was never known how that gate came to be left unguarded. It was probably owing to dissensions in the Commune. The battalion holding it had not been relieved, as they expected to be; so they voted that they would not stay any longer, shouldered their muskets, and marched off. The troops entered on the 22d of May. Once fairly in, the work was comparatively easy; but they proceeded with great caution. It was said that Gallifet urged that he should take his cavalry, and scour the city. I believe that he could have done it on that day, for the Communists were thoroughly demoralized; but it was thought to be too hazardous an operation for cavalry. The next morning the troops advanced unopposed as far as the Place de la Concorde. I have the word of an American friend, whose apartment looked upon the Place, that the strong barricade which connected the Rue St. Florentin with the Tuileries Gardens was then undefended, and that if the troops had advanced promptly they could have carried it without resistance; but while they sent forward their skirmishers, who found no one to skirmish with, and advanced with the ut most caution, a battery, followed by a battalion of the National Guard, galloped up from the Hôtel de Ville. The troops then began regular approaches. They entered the adjoining houses, passing from roof to roof, and occupying the upper windows, till finally they commanded the barricade, and fired down upon its defenders. They filled barrels with sand, and rolled them toward the barrier. Each barrel covered two skirmishers, who alternately rolled the barrel and picked off the defenders of the barricade if they ventured to show themselves. My informant saw a young and apparently good-looking woman spring upon the barricade, a red flag in her hand, and wave it defiantly at the troops. She was instantly shot dead. When the work was carried, an old woman was led out to be shot. She was placed with her back to the wall of the Tuileries Gardens, and, as the firing party leveled their pieces, she put her fingers to her nose, and worked them after the manner of the defiant in all ages, or, as Dickens expresses it, "as if she were grinding an imaginary coffee-mill." Many of their strongest positions were abandoned by the insurgents, having been turned by the troops. Those that resisted fell one after the other, carried in the way I have described. Indeed, I can see no possibility of a barricade holding out unless the adjacent houses are held too. That at the head of the Rue St. Florentin was of great strength, a regular work; for the Communists had several excellent engineers in their ranks, graduates of the military schools, men who had been disappointed under the Government in not meeting with the promotion they thought they deserved, and so joined the Commune. The ditch of the barricade St. Florentin was about sixteen feet deep. It made a convenient burying-ground. The dead Communists, men and women, were huddled into it, quicklime added, and the fosse filled up. As the pleasure-seeker enters the Rue de Rivoli from the Place de la Concorde he passes over the bodies of forty or fifty miserable wretches—most of them scoundrels of the deepest dye—but among them some wild fanatics, and some poor victims of the Commune, forced unwillingly into its ranks. Much must be pardoned to soldiers heated with battle, and taught to believe every prisoner they take an incarnate devil. But making all allowances, there is no excuse for the wholesale butcheries committed by the troops. A friend of mine saw a house in the Boulevard Malesherbes visited by a squad of soldiers. They asked the concierge if there were any Communists concealed there. She answered that there were none. They searched the house, and found one. They took him out and shot him, and then shot her. One of the attachés of the Legation saw in the Avenue d'Autin the bodies of six children, the eldest apparently not over fourteen, shot to death as pétroleuses , suspected of carrying petroleum to fire the houses. There was no trial of any kind, no drum-head court-martial even, such as the laws of civilized warfare require under all circumstances. Any lieutenant ordered prisoners to be shot as the fancy took him, and no questions were asked. Many an innocent spectator perished in those days. An English officer had a narrow escape. He approached a crowd of prisoners halted for a moment on the Champs Elysées; and when they moved on, the guard roped him in with the rest, and would not listen to a word of explanation. Happily he was able to attract the attention of the Marquis de Gallifet and explain his position. An officer of high rank who was escorting a batch of prisoners to Versailles is said to have halted in the Bois, ridden down the column, picked out those whose faces he particularly disliked, and had them shot on the spot. The number of lives taken after the defeat of the Commune can never be accurately known; but it was generally computed at the time to exceed the number of those lost in both sieges. Petroleum next became the madness of the hour. Every woman carrying a bottle was suspected of being a pétroleuse . The most absurd stories were told of its destructive properties. Organized bands of women were said to be patrolling the streets armed with bottles of petroleum. This they threw into the cellar windows, and then set fire to it. The windows were barred, and the cellars in Paris are universally built in stone and concrete. How they effected their purpose under these circumstances is not readily seen. If this was their modus operandi , they were the most inexpert incendiaries ever known. The Commune should blush for its pupils in crime. I do not believe in the petroleum story, and I do not think that one-third of the population believed in it. Yet such was the power of suspicion in those days, and such the distrust of one's neighbor, that every staid and sober housekeeper bricked up his cellar windows, and for weeks in the beautiful summer weather not an open window was to be seen on the lower stories. No doubt every second man thought it a great piece of folly thus to shut out light and air from his lower stories; but if he had not done as his neighbors did, he would have been denounced by them as a pétroleux . The leaders of the Commune, as I have said, had sworn that, if the city were taken, they would blow up the public buildings, and bury every thing in a common ruin. Happily, their good-will exceeded their ability. They had no time to execute their atrocious projects. They burned the Tuileries, the Finances, the Hôtel de Ville, the Comptes, the Hotel of the Legion of Honor, and a small portion of the Palais Royal. The only irreparable loss was that of the Hôtel de Ville. The Finances, the Comptes, and the Legion of Honor had no imperishable historical associations connected with them. The Tuileries was an old and inconvenient building. The Emperor had already rebuilt it in part. Plans for reconstructing the whole building had been prepared and still exist, and nothing but the want of money had prevented their being carried into execution long before. I do not propose to dwell upon the horrors of the nights of the 23d and 24th of May, when all Paris appeared to be in flames. The view from the high ground upon which the Legation stands was very striking. A pall of smoke hung over the city by day, and pillars of fire lighted it by night. One of the most painful features of those days was the prolonged suspense. We did not know which of the magnificent monuments of Paris were in flames; for the troops permitted no approach, and the most startling rumors were current. The Louvre was at one time in danger, but happily escaped. I pass over, too, the cruelties of the march of the prisoners to Versailles, and the sufferings they there endured. These things are written in the annals of the times, and no good can be done by reviving them. Beautiful France has been sorely tried with revolutions. Let us hope that she has seen the last. In the hotel of the German Embassy at Paris may be seen several articles of value, mostly Sèvres and Dresden china, which the German Government desires to present to Mr. Washburne, General Read, and some few other officers of the United States, in token of its gratitude for services rendered to German subjects during the war. These articles can not be received without the permission of Congress. The House promptly passed the joint resolution. The Senate still hesitates. Mr. Fox, formerly Assistant Secretary of the Navy, and the officers who accompanied him to Russia, were permitted to receive such presents as "the Emperor might see fit to give them." Are Mr. Washburne and his subordinates, who certainly rendered some services, and suffered some hardships, less entitled to receive this permission than Mr. Fox and his companions, who took a monitor to Cronstadt? TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain. Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within the text and consultation of external sources. Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text, and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained. For example, reconnoissance; embassador; encumbered, incumbrance; titbit. Pg 10 , 'Bass-reliefs' replaced by 'Bas-reliefs'. Pg 234 , 'mlliards' replaced by 'milliards'. Pg 256 , 'Bass-reliefs' replaced by 'Bas-reliefs'. Pg 270 , 'bass-reliefs' replaced by 'bas-reliefs'. *** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAMP, COURT AND SIEGE *** Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will be renamed. Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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