Chapter VII: Inside Paris: Siege and Commune--The Barricades (1)

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!