CHAPTER I.

       Table of Contents

      "Le chef du pouvoir exécutif, pas plus que l'Assemblée Nationale, s'appuyant l'un sur l'autre et se fortifiant l'un par l'autre, n'avaient en aucune manière provoqué l'insurrection parisienne."—Discours de M. Dufaure contre l'Amnistie, Séance du 18 Mai 1876.

      FIRST ATTACKS OF THE COALITION AGAINST PARIS—THE BATTALIONS OF THE NATIONAL GUARD FEDERALISE AND SEIZE THEIR CANNON—THE PRUSSIANS ENTER PARIS.

      The invasion has brought back the "Chambre introuvable" of 1816. After having dreamt of a regenerated France soaring towards the light, to feel oneself hurled back half a century, under the yoke of the Jesuits of the Congregation, of the brutal rurals! There were men who lost heart. Many spoke of expatriating themselves. The thoughtless said, "The Chamber will only last a day, since it has no mandate but to decide on peace and war." Those, however, who had watched the progress of the conspiracy and the leading part taken in it by the clergy, knew beforehand that these men would not allow France to escape their clutches before they crushed her.

      Men just escaped from famine-stricken but glowing Paris found on their arrival at Bordeaux the Coblentz of the first emigration, but this time invested with the power to glut rancors that had been accumulating for forty years. Clericals and Conservatives were for the first time allowed, without the interference of either emperor or king, to trample to their hearts' content on Paris, the atheist, the revolutionist, who had so often shaken off their yoke and baffled their schemes. At the first sitting their choler burst out. At the farther end of the hall, sitting alone on his bench, shunned by all, an old man rose and asked to address the Assembly. Under his cloak glared a red shirt. It was Garibaldi. At the call of his name, he wished to answer, to say in a few words that he resigned the mandate with which Paris had honored him. His voice was drowned in howls. He remained standing, raising his hand, but the insults redoubled. The chastisement, however, was at hand. "Rural majority! disgrace of France!" cried from the gallery a young vibrating voice, that of Gaston Crémieux, of Marseilles. The deputies rose threatening. Hundreds of "Bravos" answered from the galleries, overwhelming the rurals. After the sitting the crowd cheered Garibaldi and hooted his insulters. The National Guard presented arms, despite the rage of M. Thiers, who under the peristyle apostrophized the commanding officer. The next day the people returned, forming lines in front of the theatre, and forced the reactionist deputies to undergo their republican cheers. But they knew their strength, and from the beginning of the sittings opened their attack. One of the rurals, pointing to the representatives of Paris, cried, "They are stained with the blood of civil war!" And when one of these representatives cried, "Vive la République!" the majority hooted him, saying, "You are only a fraction of the country." On the next day the Chamber was surrounded by troops, who kept off the republicans.

      At the same time the Conservative papers united in their hissings against Paris, denying even her sufferings. The National Guard, they said, had fled before the Prussians; its only exploits had been the 31st October and 22nd January. These calumnies fructified in the provinces, long since prepared to receive them. Such was their ignorance of the siege, that they had named some of them several times—Trochu, Ducrot, Ferry, Pelletan, Garnier-Pages, Emmanuel Arago—to whom Paris had refused a single vote.

      It was the duty of the Parisian representatives to clear up this darkness, to recount the siege, to denounce the men responsible for the failure of the defence, to explain the significance of the Parisian vote, to unfurl the flag of republican France against the clerico-monarchical coalition. They remained silent, contenting themselves with puerile party meetings, from which Delescluze turned away as heart-broken as from the Assembly of the Paris mayors. Our Epimenides of 1848 answered with stereotyped humanitarian phrases the clashing of arms of the enemy, who all the while affirmed his programme: to patch up a peace, to bury the Republic, and for that purpose to checkmate Paris. Thiers was named chief of the executive power with general acclamation, and chose for his Ministers Jules Favre, Jules Simon, Picard and Leflô, who might still pass muster with the provincial republicans.

      These elections, these menaces, these insults to Garibaldi, to the Paris representatives; Thiers, the incarnation of the Parliamentary monarchy, first magistrate of the Republic, blow after blow was struck at Paris, a feverish, hardly revictualled Paris, hungering still more for liberty than bread. This then was the reward for five months of suffering and endurance. These provinces, which Paris had invoked in vain during the whole siege, dared now to brand her with cowardice, to throw her back from Bismarck to Chambord. Well, then, Paris was resolved to defend herself even against France. The new imminent danger, the hard experience of the siege, had exalted her energy and endued the great town with one collective soul.

      Already, towards the end of January, some republicans, and also some bourgeois intriguers in search of a mandate, had tried to group the National Guards with a view to the elections. A large meeting, presided over by Courty, a merchant of the third arrondissement, had been held in the Cirque. They had there drawn up a list, decided to meet again to deliberate in case of double electoral returns, and had named a committee charged to convoke all the companies regularly. This second meeting was held on the 15th in the Vauxhall Douané Street. But who then thought of the elections? One single thought prevailed: the union of all Parisian forces against the triumphant rurals. The National Guard represented all the manhood of Paris. The clear, simple, essentially French idea of confederating the battalions had long been in every mind. It was received with acclamation and resolved that the confederate battalions should be grouped round a Central Committee.

A commission during the same sitting was charged to elaborate the statutes. Each arrondissement represented—eighteen out of twenty—named a commissary. Who were these men? The agitators, the revolutionists of La Corderie, the Socialists? No; there was not a known name amongst them. All those elected were men of the middle classes, shopkeepers, employés, strangers to the coteries, till now for the most part strangers even to politics.[63] Courty, the president, was known only since the meeting at the Cirque. From the first day the idea of the federation appeared what it was—universal, not sectarian, and therefore powerful. The next day, Clément-Thomas declared to the Government that he could no longer be answerable for the National Guard, and sent in his resignation. He was provisionally replaced by Vinoy.

      On