CHAPTER XX.
ROSSEL REPLACES CLUSERET—THE RIVALRIES—THE DEFENCE OF THE FORT OF ISSY.
The last act of the second Executive Commission was to name Rossel delegate at War. On the same evening (the 30th April) it sent for him. He came at once, recited the history of famous sieges, and promised to make Paris impregnable. No one asked him for a written plan, and there and then, as on the stage, his nomination was signed. He forthwith wrote to the Council, "I accept these difficult functions, but I want your entire support in order not to succumb under the weight of these circumstances."
Rossel knew these circumstances through and through. For twenty-five days chief of the general staff, he was the best-informed man in Paris as to all her military resources. He was familiar with the members of the Council, of the Central Committee, the officers, the effective forces, the character of the troops he undertook to lead.
At the outset he struck a wrong chord in his answer to the Versaillese officer who had summoned the fort of Issy to surrender. "My dear comrade, the first time you permit yourself to send us such an insolent summons, I shall have your flag of truce shot. Your devoted comrade." The cynical levity smacked of the condottiere. Certainly he who threatened to shoot an innocent soldier, and bestowed his dear, his devoted comrade upon a collaborator of Gallifet, was foreign to the great heart of Paris and her civil war.
No man understood Paris, the National Guard, less than Rossel. He imagined that the Père Duchesne was the real mouthpiece of the workmen. Hardly raised to the Ministry, he spoke of putting the National Guard into barracks, of cannonading the runaways; he wanted to dismember the legions and form them into regiments, with colonels named by himself. The Central Committee, to which the chefs-de-légion belonged, protested, and the battalions complained to the Council, which sent for Rossel. He set forth his project in a professional way in sober, precise words, so different from the Pyatical declamations, that the Council believed it beheld a man and was charmed. Still his project was the breaking-up of the National Guard, and the Council no more than the Executive Commission got a general plan of defence from him. He certainly demanded that the municipalities should be charged with concentration of arms, the horses, and prosecution of the refractory, but he made no condition sine quâ non.
He sent in no report on the military situation. He gave orders for the construction of a second enceinte of barricades, and of three citadels at Montmartre, the Trocadéro, and the Panthéon, but never personally concerned himself about their execution. He extended the command of General Wroblewski over all troops and forts on the left bank, but three days after restricted it again to bestow it upon La Cécilia, who had none of the qualities necessary in a superior commander. He never gave the generals any instructions for attack or defence. Despite certain fits and starts, he had in reality so little energy that he named Eudes commander of the second active reserve at the very moment when, against formal orders, this latter left the fort of Issy, which he had commanded since the reoccupation.
The Versaillese had recommenced firing with perfect fury. The shells, the bombs, battered the casemates, the grapeshot paved the trenches with iron. In the night of the 1st-2nd, the Versaillese, always proceeding by nocturnal surprises, attacked the station of Clamart, which was taken almost without a struggle, and the castle of Issy, which they had to conquer foot by foot. On the morning of the 2nd the fort again found itself in the same situation as three days before. A part of the village of Issy was even in the hands of the soldiers. During the day the francs-tireurs of Paris dislodged them at the point of the bayonet. Eudes, who in vain demanded reinforcements, went to the War Office to declare that he would not remain if Wetzel were not discharged. Wetzel was replaced by La Cécilia, but Eudes did not return to the fort, and left the command to the chief of his staff.
Thus since the 3rd it was evident that everything would go on as under Cluseret, and the Central Committee grew bolder. It had been thrown more and more into the shade, for the Commission of War kept it at a distance. Its sittings, more and more confused and void, were little attended—by about ten members, sometimes even by less. The enterprise of Rossel against the legions gave it back a little authority and daring. On the 3rd, in accord with the chefs-de-légion, they resolved to ask the Council for the direction and administration of the War Office. Rossel got wind of the affair, and had one of its members arrested; the others in great numbers, the chefs-de-légion with their sabres at their sides, went up to the Hôtel-de-Ville, where they were received by Félix Pyat, deeply moved by the odd conceit that they came to lay hands on him. "Nothing is getting along at the War Office," said they. "All the services are in disorder. The Central Committee offers itself to direct them. The delegate will conduct the operations, the Committee will see to the administration." Félix Pyat approved of the idea and submitted it to the Council. The minority took umbrage at the pretensions of the Committee, and even spoke of having them arrested. The majority left the matter to the Committee of Public Safety, which issued a decree admitting the co-operation of the Central Committee. Rossel accepted the situation and announced it to the chiefs of corps. The Commission of War continued, in spite of all this, to squabble with the Committee.
Our men paid dearly for these small cabinet revolutions. Tired out, badly commanded, they were negligent of their watches, and thus exposed to every surprise. The most terrible one took place in the night of the 3rd-4th May at the redoubt of the Moulin Saquet, held by 500 men at this moment. They were sleeping in their tents, when the Versaillese, having seized the sentinels, entered the redoubt and butchered about fifty Federals. The soldiers pierced the tents with their bayonets, slashing the corpses, and then made off with five pieces and 200 prisoners. The captain of the 55th was accused of having betrayed the watchword. The truth is not known, as—incredible fact!—the Council never inquired into the affair.
M. Thiers announced this "elegant coup-de-main"[147] in a bantering despatch to the effect that they had killed two hundred men; that "such was the victory the Commune might announce in its bulletins." The prisoners, taken to Versailles, were received by the elegant rabble who killed time in the cafés of St. Germain, now become the headquarters of high-life prostitution, or who went to the heights to see the shells battering the walls and the Parisians. But what were these insipid amusements by the side of a convoy of prisoners, whom they could beat, spit upon, and revile, a thousand times renewing the agonies of Mathô?
The simply bestial ferocity of the soldiers was much less horrible. These poor wretches firmly believed that the Federals were thieves or Prussians, and that they tortured their prisoners. There were some who, taken to Paris, for a long time refused all nourishment in dread of poison. The officers propagated these horrible stories; some even believed them.[148] The greater part, arriving from Germany in a state of extreme irritation against Paris,[149] said publicly, "We shall give these scoundrels no quarter," and they set the example of summary executions. On the 25th April, at the Belle-Epine, near Ville-Juif, four National Guards, surprised by mounted chasseurs, called upon to surrender, laid down their arms. The soldiers were leading them when an officer appeared, and, without further ado, discharged his revolver at them. Two were killed; the two others, left for dead, were able to drag themselves as far as the neighbouring trenches, where one of them expired.[150] The fourth was transported to the ambulance. Paris, erstwhile besieged by the Prussians, was now tracked by tigers.
These sinister forebodings of the lot reserved to the vanquished made the Council indignant, but did not enlighten it. The disorder grew greater with the danger. Rossel set nothing going. Pyat, whom he had often silenced with a word, abhorred him, and never ceased undermining his authority. "You see this man," said he to the Romanticists, "well, he is a traitor—a Cæsarian! After the Trochu plan, the Rossel plan." On the 8th May he had the direction of the military operations transferred to Dombrowski, leaving only nominal functions to Rossel, who, apprised of this that same evening, hurried to the Committee of Public Safety and forced it to revoke the decree.[151] On the 4th Félix Pyat sent orders to General Wroblewski without informing Rossel. The next day Rossel complained to the Council of the Committee of Public Safety of this mischievous interference, which embroiled everything. "Under these circumstances I cannot be responsible," said he, and demanded the publicity of the sittings, as he had always been received in private audience. Instead of forcing him to communicate his plan, they amused themselves with making him pass a sort of Freemason examination. The antediluvian Miot asked him what were his democratic antecedents. Rossel extricated himself very cleverly. "I will not tell you that I have studied the question of social reforms profoundly, but I abominate this society which has just betrayed France in so dastardly a way. I do not know what will be the new order of Socialism. I like it on trust, and it will anyhow be better than the old one." Everybody put him the questions he chose personally, and not through the medium of the president. He answered them all with sangfroid and precision, disarming all their scruples, and carried away cheers, but nothing more.
Had he possessed the strong head he was credited with, he would long since have fathomed the situation, understood that for this struggle without precedent new tactics were wanted, found a field of battle for these improvised soldiers, organised the internal defence, and awaited Versailles from the heights of Montmartre, the Trocadéro, and Mont-Valérien. But he dreamt of battles, was at bottom but a bookish soldier, original only in speech and style. While always complaining of want of discipline and of men, he allowed the best blood of Paris to be shed in the sterile struggles without the town, in heroic challenges at Neuilly, Vanves, and Issy.
At Issy above all. It was no longer a fort, hardly a strong position, but a medley of earth and rubble-work battered by shells. The staved-in casemates opened a view upon the country, the powder magazines were laid bare, half of bastion 3 was in the moat, one could drive up to the breach in a carriage. Ten pieces at most answered the fire of sixty Versaillese ordnance pieces, while the fusillade of the trenches aimed at the embrasures killed almost all our artillerists. On the 3rd the Versaillese renewed their summons to surrender; they were answered with the word of Cambronne. The chief of the general staff left by Eudes had also made off, but happily the fort remained in the valiant hands of the engineer Rist and of Julien, commander of the 14th battalion of the eleventh arrondissement. It is to them and to the Federals who stood by them that the honour of this prodigious defence belongs. Here are a few notes from their military journal.
"4th May.—We are receiving explosive balls that burst with the noise of percussion-caps. The waggons do not come; food is scanty and the shells of seven centimetres, our best pieces, will soon fail us. The reinforcements promised every day do not appear. Two chiefs of battalions have been to Rossel. He received them very badly, and said that he had the right to shoot them for having abandoned their post. They explained our situation. Rossel answered that a fort defends itself with the bayonet and quoted the work of Carnot. Still he has promised reinforcements. The Freemasons have planted their banner on our ramparts. The Versaillese knocked it down in an instant. Our ambulances are full; the prison and corridor that lead to it are crammed with corpses. An ambulance omnibus arrives in the evening. We put in as many of our wounded as possible. During its passage from the fort to Issy the Versaillese pepper it with balls.
"5th.—The fire of the enemy does not cease for a moment. Our embrasures no longer exist; the pieces of the front still answer. At two o'clock we receive ten waggons of shells of seven centimetres. Rossel has come. He looked at the works of the Versaillese for a long time. The enfants-perdus who serve the pieces of bastion 5 are losing many men; they remain steadfast. There are now in the dungeons two yards deep of corpses. All our trenches, riddled by artillery, have been evacuated. The trench of the Versaillese is sixty yards from the counterscarp. They push on more and more. The necessary precautions are taken in case of an attack to-night. All the flank pieces are loaded with grapeshot. We have two mitrailleuses above the terre-plein to sweep at once the moat and the glacis.
"6th.—The battery of Fleury regularly discharges its six rounds on us every five minutes. A cantinière has just been brought to the ambulance, wounded in the left side of the groin. For four days past three women have gone into the thickest of the fire to tend the wounded. This one is dying and bids us remember her two little children. No more food. We eat only horse-flesh. Evening: the rampart is untenable.
"7th.—We are receiving as many as ten shells a minute. The ramparts are totally uncovered. All the pieces, save two or three, are dismounted. The Versaillese works almost touch us. There are thirty more dead. We are about to be surrounded."
FOOTNOTES:
[147] La Guerre des Communeux by a superior officer of the Versaillese army.
[148] On the 12th May, at the barricade of Petit-Vanves, an officer of engineers of the Lacretelle division, second corps, Captain Rozhem, was taken prisoner. When brought before the commander of the trenches, "I know what is in store for me," said he; "shoot me." The commander shrugged his shoulders and took him to Delescluze. "Captain," said the delegate, "promise that you will not fight against the Commune and you are free." The officer promised, and, deeply moved, asked Delescluze for permission to shake hands with him. This is one fact among a hundred such. Is it necessary to add that from the 3rd April to the 23rd May the Federals did not shoot one single prisoner, officer or soldier?
[149] Appendix X.
[150] This fact was established through the minute inquiry which the Council charged three of its members to make. Two of these, Gambon and Langevin, are by their characters above all suspicion. They received the declaration of the wounded man and saw one of the bodies, the two others not having been found.
[151] It never appeared in the Officiel, but was announced in the Vengeur; for Félix Pyat abused his functions in order to give his journal the first news of the official decisions. This time he was a little too quick.
CHAPTER XXI.
"La plus grande infamie dont l'histoire moderne ait garde la souvenir, s'accomplit à cette heure, Paris est bombardé."—Jules Favre, Jules Simon, E. Picard, Trochu, Jules Ferry, E. Arago, Garnier-Pages, Pelletan. Proclamation du Gouvernement de la Defense Nationale à propos du bombardement Prussien.
"Nous avons écrasé tout un quartier de Paris."—M. Thiers à l'Assemblée Nationale, Séance du 5 Août 1871.
PARIS IS BOMBARDED—THE FORT OF ISSY SUCCUMBS—THE COUNCIL ELECTS A NEW COMMITTEE OF PUBLIC SAFETY—ROSSEL FLIES.
We must leave this heroic atmosphere to return to the quarrels of the Council and of the Central Committee. Why did they not hold their sittings at the Muette or under the eyes of the public?[152] The shells of Montretout, which had just unmasked its powerful battery, the severe attitude of the people, would no doubt have made them unite against the common enemy. He had commenced to batter in breach.
On the 8th May, in the morning, seventy marine pieces began to attack the enceinte from the bastion 60 to the Point du Jour. The shells of Clamart already reached the quay of Javelle, and the battery of Breteuil covered the Grenelle quarter with projectiles. In a few hours half Passy had become uninhabitable.
M. Thiers accompanied his shells with a proclamation: "Parisians, the Government will not bombard Paris, as the men of the Commune will not fail to tell you. It will discharge its cannon.... It knows, it would have understood, even if you had not said so on all sides, that as soon as the soldiers cross the enceinte you will rally round the national flag." And he invited the Parisians to open the gates to him. What was the action of the Council in reply to this appeal to treason?
On the 8th it entered upon a random discussion on the minutes of its sittings[153] and the publicity of the latter, which one member of the majority wanted to suppress altogether. The minority complained of the Central Committee, which had encroached upon all services in spite of the Commission of War; it had driven away Varlin from the commissariat, entirely reorganised by him. They asked whether the Government called itself Central Committee or Commune. Félix Pyat justified himself by accusing Rossel. "It is not the fault of the Committee of Public Safety if Rossel has neither the strength nor the intelligence to keep the Central Committee within its functions." The friends of Rossel answered, accusing Pyat of continually interfering even in purely military questions. If the Moulin Saquet had been surprised, it was because Wroblewski, who commanded on that side, received a formal order from Félix Pyat to repair to Issy. "It is false," said Pyat; "I have never given such an order." They let him thoroughly enmesh himself, and then produced the order, written entirely in his own hand. He took hold of it, turned it round, feigned astonishment, and was finally obliged to confess.[154] The discussion then reverted to the Central Committee—were they to dissolve it, arrest its members, or surrender to it the administration of the War Office? The Council, as usual, did not dare to decide, and, after a confused debate, abode by the resolution of the 3rd May—the Central Committee will be held subordinate to the Military Commission.
At this very moment strange scenes were enacted at the War Office. The chefs-de-légion, who were stirring more and more against Rossel, had that day resolved to ask him for the report of all the decisions he was about to take with respect to the National Guard. Rossel knew of their project. In the evening, when they arrived at the Ministry, they found in its court an armed platoon, and beheld Rossel watching them from his window. "You are audacious," said he; "do you know that this platoon is here to shoot you?" They, without appearing to care much: "There is no need of audacity; we simply come to speak to you of the organisation of the National Guard." Rossel relaxed, went to the window, gave orders to the platoon to re-enter. This burlesque demonstration did not miss its effect. The chefs-de-légion disputed the project on the regiments point by point, demonstrating its impossibility. Tired of arguing, Rossel said to them, "I am fully aware that I have no forces, but I affirm you have not either. You have, say you? Well, give me the proof. To-morrow, at eleven o'clock, bring me 12,000 men to the Place de la Concorde, and I will try to do something." He wanted to make an attempt by the Clamart station. The chefs-de-légion engaged to find the men, and spent the whole night in search of them.
While these contests went on, the fort of Issy was being evacuated. Since the morning it had been reduced to the last extremity. Any of its defenders who approached the guns was a dead man. In the evening the officers assembled, and came to the conclusion that they could no longer hold out. Thereupon the men, driven away from all sides by the shells, massed themselves under the entrance vault, when a shell from the Moulin de Pierre fell in their midst, killing sixteen of them. Rist, Julien, and several others, who were stubbornly bent upon holding these ruins, were at last obliged to yield. About seven o'clock the evacuation began. The commander, Lisbonne, one of the members of the first Central Committee, a man of extraordinary courage, covered the retreat amidst a shower of bullets.
A few hours after, the Versaillese, crossing the Seine, established themselves before Boulogne in front of the bastions of the Point du Jour, and opened a trench three hundred yards from the enceinte. All that night and the whole morning of the 9th the War Office and the Committee of Public Safety knew nothing of the evacuation of the fort.
On the 9th, at mid-day, the battalions asked for by Rossel were drawn up along the Place de la Concorde. Rossel arrived on horseback, hardly looked at the front lines, and then addressed the chefs-de-légion, "There are not enough men here for me;" and at once turning about, rode off to the War Office, where he was informed of the evacuation of the fort of Issy. He seized his pen, wrote, "The tricolor flag floats from the fort of Issy, abandoned yesterday evening by the garrison," and, without apprising the Council or the Committee of Public Safety, gave the order to placard ten thousand copies of these two lines, while six thousand was the number usually printed.
He next sent in his resignation: "Citizens, members of the Commune, I feel myself incapable of any longer bearing the responsibility of a command where every one deliberates and no one obeys. The Central Committee of Artillery has deliberated and prescribed nothing. The Commune has deliberated and resolved upon nothing. The Central Committee deliberates and has not yet known how to act. During this delay the enemy has hemmed in the fort of Issy by imprudent attacks, for which I would punish him if I had the smallest military force at my disposal." He then recounted in his own fashion, and very inaccurately, the evacuation of the fort, the review on the Place de la Concorde; said that, instead of the 12,000 men promised, there were only 7,000,[155] and concluded: "Thus the nullity of the Committee of Artillery prevented the organisation of the artillery; the hesitation of the Central Committee stopped the administration; the paltry pre-occupations of the chefs-de-légion paralysed the mobilisation of the troops. My predecessor committed the fault of struggling against this absurd situation. I retire, and have the honour to ask you for a cell at Mazas."
He thus thought to clear his military reputation; but point by point he might have been categorically answered. Why did you accept this "absurd" situation with which you were thoroughly conversant? Why did you make no conditions on entering the Ministry on the 1st April, no condition to the Council on the 2nd and 3rd May? Why did you send away at least 7,000 men this morning, when you pretend not to have "the smallest military force" at your disposal? Why did you know nothing for fifteen hours of the evacuation of a fort whose straits it was your duty to watch from hour to hour? Where is your second enceinte? Why has no work been done at Montmartre and the Panthéon?
Rossel might perhaps have addressed his reproaches to the Council, but he committed an unpardonable fault in sending his letters to the journals. Thus in less than two hours he had disheartened 8,000 combatants, spread panic, stigmatised the brave men of Issy, denounced the weakness of the defence to the enemy, and that at the very moment when the Versaillese were rejoicing over the taking of Issy.
There every one was merrymaking. M. Thiers and MacMahon harangued the soldiers, who, singing, brought back the few pieces found in the fort. The Assembly suspended its sittings and came into the marble court to applaud these children of the people who thought themselves victors. M. Thiers a month later said from the tribune, "When I see these sons of our soil, strangers often to an education that elevates, die for you, for us, I am profoundly touched." Touching emotion this of the hunter before his pack. Remember this avowal and the sort of men for whom you die, sons of the soil!
And at the Hôtel-de-Ville they were still disputing! Rigault recriminated. The majority of the Council had named him procureur of the Commune in spite of his culpable levity at the Prefecture. The discussion was growing angry when Delescluze entered hastily and exclaimed, "You discuss when it has been placarded that the tricolor flag floats from the fort of Issy. I make an appeal to you all. I had hoped that France would be saved by Paris and Europe by France. The Commune is pregnant with a power of revolutionary instinct capable of saving the country. Cast aside to-day all your animosities. We must save the country. The Committee of Public Safety has not answered our expectations. It has been an obstacle instead of a stimulus. With what is it occupying itself? With individual appointments instead of general measures. A decree signed Meillet names this citizen himself governor of the fort of Bicêtre. We had a man there, a soldier,[156] who was thought too severe. It is desirable that all were as severe as he. Your Committee of Public Safety is undone, crushed beneath the weight of the memories attached to it. I say it must disappear."
The Assembly, thus brought back to a sense of its duty, resolved into a secret committee, thoroughly discussing the Committee of Public Safety. What had it done for a week past? Installed the Central Committee at the War Office, increased the disorder, sustained two disasters. Its members lost themselves in details or else did amateur service. One deserted the Hôtel-de-Ville to go and shut himself up in a fort; if at least it had been that of Issy or of Vanves! Félix Pyat passed the greater part of his time in the office of the Vengeur, there venting his spleen in long-winded articles. A member of the Committee of Public Safety endeavoured to defend it by pleading the vagueness of its attributes. He was answered that Article 3 of the decree gave the Committee full powers over all the Commissions. Finally, after many hours, they decided to renew the Committee at once; to appoint a civil delegate to the War Office; to draw up a proclamation; to meet, save in cases of emergency, only three times a week; to establish the new Committee permanently at the Hôtel-de-Ville, while the other members of the Council were to stay regularly in their respective arrondissements. Delescluze was named Delegate at War.
In the evening, at ten o'clock, there was a second meeting for the nomination of the new Committee. The majority voted Félix Pyat, quite exasperated at the attacks of the afternoon, to the chair. He opened the sitting by demanding the arrest of Rossel. Cleverly grouping together appearances which seemed proofs to the suspicious, he made Rossel the scapegoat of the faults of the Committee, turning the anger of the Council against him. For half an hour he disparaged the absent man, whom he would not have dared attack to his face. "I told you, citizens, that he was a traitor. You would not believe me. You are young; you did not, like our paragons of the Convention, know how to mistrust military power." This reminiscence ravished the Romanticists. They had but one dream—to be Conventionnels. So difficult was it for this revolution of proletarians to rid itself of bourgeois tinsel.
The ire of Pyat was not wanted to convince the Assembly. Rossel's act was culpable in the eyes of the least prejudiced. His arrest was decreed unanimously, less two voices, and the Commission of War received the order to carry it out.
They next passed to the nomination of the Committee. The minority, a little reassured by the election of Delescluze and Jourde, which seemed to acknowledge the right of the Council to appoint the delegates, resolved to take part in the vote, and asked for a place in the list of the majority. This was an excellent occasion to efface all differences, to re-establish union against Versailles. But the perfidious promptings of Félix Pyat had induced the Romanticists to look upon their colleagues of the minority as veritable reactionists. After his speech the sitting was suspended; little by little the members of the minority found themselves alone in the council-hall. They looked for their colleagues and surprised them in a neighbouring room deliberating apart. After a violent altercation they all returned to the Council.
A member of the minority demanded that they should put an end to these shameful divisions. A Romanticist answered by asking for the arrest of the factious minority, and the President, Pyat, was about to empty the vials of his wrath, when Malon cried to him, "Silence! you are the evil genius of this revolution. Do not continue to spread your venomous suspicions, to stir up discords. It is your influence that is ruining the Commune!" And Arnold, one of the founders of the Central Committee, "It is still these fellows of 1848 who will undo the revolution."
But it was too late now to engage in the struggle, and the minority was to expiate its doctrinairism and maladroitness. The whole list of the majority passed; Ranvier, Arnaud, Gambon, Delescluze, and Eudes. The nomination of Delescluze to the War Office having left a vacancy, there was after two days a second vote, and the minority proposed Varlin. The majority, abusing their victory, committed the impropriety of preferring Billioray, a most worthless member.
The Council broke up at one o'clock in the morning. "Did not we do them? and what do you think of the way I managed the business?" said Félix Pyat to his friends on leaving the chair.[157] This honest mandatory, altogether absorbed in the work of "doing" his colleagues, had forgotten to verify the capture of the fort of Issy. And that same evening, twenty-six hours after the evacuation, the Hôtel-de-Ville placarded on the door of the mairies, "It is false that the tricolor flag floats on the fort of Issy. The Versaillese do not and shall not occupy it." This contradiction was as good as Trochu's apropos of Metz.
During these tempests at the Hôtel-de-Ville the Central Committee had sent for Rossel, reproached him with the placard of the afternoon, and the unusual number of copies printed. He defended himself acrimoniously. "It was my duty. The greater the danger, the greater the duty to make it known to the people." Yet he had done nothing of the kind on the surprise of the Moulin-Saquet. After his departure the Committee deliberated at length. Some one said, "We are lost if we get no dictatorship." For some days this idea was uppermost in the Committee. The latter voted quite seriously that there should be a dictator, and that the dictator was to be Rossel. A deputation of five members gravely went to fetch him; he came down to the Committee, pretended to reflect, and finally said, "It is too late. I am no longer delegate. I have sent in my resignation." Some waxing angry with him, he rebuked them and left. In his cabinet he found the Commission of War, Delescluze, Tridon, Avrial, Johannard, Varlin, and Arnold, who had just arrived.
Delescluze explained their mission. Rossel listened very calmly; said that though the decree was unjust, he submitted to it. He then described the military situation, the rivalries of all kinds that had continually clogged him, the weakness of the Council. "It has not known," said he, "how to utilise the Central Committee, nor how to break it at the opportune time. Our resources are quite sufficient, and I am ready, for my own part, to assume all responsibility, but on the condition of being supported by a strong and homogeneous power. I could not in the face of history take upon myself the responsibility for certain necessary repressions without the assent and support of the Commune." He spoke at great length in that clear and nervous style that twice in the Council had won over his most decided adversaries. The Commission, much struck by his arguments, withdrew to another room. Delescluze declared that he could not make up his mind to arrest Rossel till the Council had heard him. His colleagues were of the same opinion, and left the ex-delegate under the guard of Avrial and Johannard, who the next morning conducted him to the Hôtel-de-Ville. Avrial stayed with Rossel in the questor's office, while Johannard went to apprise the Council of their arrival.
Some wanted Rossel to be heard; the greater number, distrustful of themselves, were afraid lest his voice should again bring round the Council, maintained that his hearing was contrary to equity, and cited the example of Cluseret, who had been arrested without being heard, as though one injustice could sanction another. The admission of Rossel was refused.
Ch. Gérardin, a member of the Council, repaired to the questor's office. "What has the Commune decided?" said Avrial. "Nothing yet," answered Ch. Gérardin, who nevertheless had just left the sitting, and seeing Avrial's revolver on the table, he said to Rossel, "Your guardian fulfils his duty conscientiously." "I do not suppose," answered Rossel hurriedly, "that this precaution concerns me. Besides, Citizen Avrial, I give you my word of honour as a soldier that I shall not seek to escape."
Avrial, very tired of his post as sentry, had already asked the Council to relieve him. Receiving no answer, he thought he might leave his prisoner under the guard of a member of the Committee of Public Safety—for Ch. Gérardin had not yet been discharged from his functions—and he proceeded to the Council. When he returned, Rossel and Ch. Gérardin were gone. The ambitious young man had slunk like a weasel out of this civil war into which he had heedlessly thrown himself.
One may divine whether Pyat was sparing of adjectives against the fugitive. The new Committee having just been informed of the discovery of two conspiracies, launched a desperate proclamation: "Treason had slipped into our ranks. The abandonment of the fort of Issy announced in an impious placard by the wretch who surrendered it, was only the first act of the drama. A monarchical insurrection in our midst coinciding with the surrender of one of our gates was to follow. All the threads of the dark plot are now in our hands. Most of the culprits are arrested. Let all eyes be open, all arms ready to strike the traitors!"
This was going off into melodrama when cold blood and precision were wanted. And the Committee boasted strangely when it pretended to have arrested "most of the culprits" and that it held "in its hands all the threads of the dark plot."
FOOTNOTES:
[152] On the 3rd May they had voted that the public should be admitted, and even charged two members to find a suitable hall; but the decree was not executed, although in the Hôtel-de-Ville itself there was the splendid St. Jean Hall, which might have been prepared in a few hours.
[153] The reports in the Officiel, confided to inexperienced writers, who abridged or amplified at pleasure, again altered at the printing-office, frequently interrupted by the formation of secret committees, give but a very vague idea of these sittings.
[154] "Committee of Public Safety, No. 98.—Paris, 3rd May 1871.—General Wroblewski,—Please repair immediately to the fort of Issy. It is urgent to make provision for several services, engineering, artillery, &c. The members of the Committee of Public Safety. Félix Pyat, Ant. Arnaud. Enclosed is a despatch from the commander of the fort."
Before the public, ignorant of this despatch, Pyat kept up his lie. He said in the Vengeur: "The only order given directly to the generals by the Committee of Public Safety to defend Issy, which Rossel did not defend, was addressed to General Wroblewski, intrusted with the forts of the south. The Committee of Public Safety, in ordering him to watch over Issy, did not displace him." In point of fact, not Wroblewski was charged with the defence of the fort of Issy, but La Cécilia, who since the reoccupation held the chief post on this side, and commanded Wetzel, intrusted with the defence of the approaches of the fort.
[155] The chefs-de-légion have said 10,000. The truth lies between the two.
[156] P. Vichard, ex-chief of the staff of the Garibaldian General Bossack.
[157] Heard and reported by Lefrançais, whose veracity is above suspicion. Etude sur le Mouvement Communaliste par G. Lefrançais, p. 294. Neuchâtel, 1870.