Lord Lyons to Lord Granville.
Paris, March 20, 1871.
We are in a strange state indeed. How it will end, who shall say. The Prussians may be glad of a chance to wipe away the absurdity of their three days' occupation by a more serious entrance, and it may suit their rulers to put down Belleville, with a view to checking the progress of Republicanism. I should think however it would be wiser of them with their hatred of France, to leave the Parisians to accomplish their own ruin.
A good many National Guards have gone out towards Versailles, whether with the view of making a serious attack on the Government and the Assembly remains to be seen. It seems to be doubtful whether there are any troops, except perhaps the Papal Zouaves on whom the Government can depend.
The proclamations of the Central Committee in the Journal Officiel, which I send you officially, are worth reading. They seem to me to be in form much more calm, dignified and sensible than the proclamations of the Government of National Defence used to be. In substance they are not specimens of political knowledge and wisdom.
It is to be hoped that the Assembly will not make matters worse by violent and ill-considered resolutions. I suppose it will be furious with Thiers for having brought it to Versailles, and it is on the cards that it may be really attacked there to-day by the Parisians. Any way, I should not be at all surprised if the Assembly transferred itself to some dismal French provincial town.
Instructions, however, were shortly received to proceed to Versailles, and he betook himself there on the 21st, taking with him Wodehouse and Sheffield, and leaving Malet, Colonel Claremont, Lascelles,[27] and Saumarez[28] at the Embassy.
At Versailles complete ignorance appeared to prevail as to the actual situation; Jules Favre knew nothing, and either the Government had no plan or was not prepared to disclose it; but, as, at all events, during the early stage of the conflict, railway communication with Versailles was not interrupted, it was possible to come up to Paris occasionally at the risk of being seized by the Communists as a spy, and see how matters were progressing.
Thiers, in the early days of the Civil War affected to believe that the revolt would speedily be brought to a satisfactory termination, and the knowledge that he personally was largely responsible for the existing situation doubtless prompted him to minimise the danger as much as possible. By withdrawing the regular troops to Versailles, he had left the well-disposed inhabitants of Paris at the mercy of an armed revolutionary mob, and if a renewed bombardment or fresh Prussian occupation of the town was the result, the fault would have been largely his. The Assembly too found itself in a ridiculous position; it had been brought to Versailles because it had been represented that the Administration could not be carried on away from the capital, and no sooner did it arrive at Versailles than the whole Government was driven out of Paris.
The optimism with which Thiers viewed the progress of events in Paris was not shared by onlookers at Versailles. They could not help seeing that the members of the Central Committee were continually gaining ground, and had now obtained control of the whole or very nearly the whole of the city: that the slaughter of the 'Men of Order' in the Rue de la Paix on March 22, had left the Red Republicans the masters of the day, and that the communal elections on March 26, had given a semblance of regular authority to the revolutionaries. Thiers, who had taken the whole management of the affair into his own hands, and was still unwilling to use force, now endeavoured to conciliate the Communists by a proclamation conceding complete recognition of the municipal franchise, the right to elect all officers of the National Guard, including the Commander-in-Chief; a modification of the law on the maturity of bills of exchange, and a prohibition to house owners and lodging-house keepers to give their lodgers notice to quit. These concessions to blackmail were, however, considered insufficient by the implacable revolutionary leaders, and negotiations broke down when it was demanded that the Communal Council should supersede the Assembly whenever the two bodies might come into collision, and that the control of finance should be vested in the former. It was evident that civil war could no longer be avoided, and in view of the doubts which existed respecting the reliability of the army at Versailles, the gravest apprehensions were felt as to the result of the struggle. Lord Granville was convinced that the Prussians would re-enter Paris and restore the Empire, although the Emperor, while praising the Prussians in the course of a conversation with the Duke of Cambridge, had recently stated that no one could remain in France who was brought there by the enemy.
On March 28, the Commune was proclaimed with much pomp and emblematic ceremony in which Phrygian caps were conspicuous, and a series of decrees appeared shortly in the Journal Officiel, which announced the abolition of conscription, but the compulsory enrolment of all able-bodied men in the National Guard; a remission of lodger's rents; the suspension of the sale of all articles deposited in pawn; and the supersession of the Government at Versailles. A vast number of persons quitted the city before the end of the month, and of those who remained, there were probably many, who, apart from their political sentiments, heartily welcomed so convenient a release from embarrassing liabilities.