On the 3d of April the civil war broke out—Paris against Versailles, the army under the Assembly of the republic against the National Guard in sympathy with the Commune. The Germans, who still held two of the forts in the vicinity of Paris, looked grimly on at the tragedy about to be played upon the stage which their hands had erected.
The war began with murder. Dr. Pasquier, a distinguished surgeon, bearing a flag of truce, met two National Guards on the bridge of Courbevoie, near Neuilly, where the body of Napoleon had been brought ashore thirty years before. After a brief debate one of the soldiers ended the colloquy by blowing out the doctor's brains. As soon as General Vinoy, in command of the army of order, heard of this murderous act he ordered the guns of Fort Varélien to be turned upon the city.
On the following morning five columns of the troops of the Commune marched out to take the fort, lured by the confident impression that the soldiers under Vinoy would fraternize with them. They were mistaken. The guns of Fort Varélien hurled death-dealing missiles into their columns and they were quickly in full retreat. Flourens, a scientist of fame who had joined their ranks, fell dead. Duval, one of their generals, was captured and was quickly shot as a traitor. The other leaders were at once sent to prison by the angry Council on their return and the Commune ordered that Paris should be filled with barricades.
Though the Commune had imprisoned the unsuccessful generals, they were infuriated at the execution of General Duval and sought in the dignitaries of the church the most exalted hostages they could find against such summary acts. On the night of the 6th Monseigneur Darboy, Archbishop of Paris, his chaplain, and eight other priests were arrested. The curé of the Madeleine and his vicar had before been seized. Other priests were later taken into custody and the prison at Mazas was well filled with these so-called hostages. The fury of the leaders of the revolt led them to other excesses against religion, the churches being closed, the arms cut from the crosses, and red flags hung in their stead.
The outrages were not confined to the church. In the words of a resident of Paris: "The motto of the Commune soon became fraternity of that sort which means arrest of each other." Before the Council was two weeks old many of its leading members had found their way to prison. Dissensions had broken out in its midst, and the stronger victimized the weaker.
By April 7 a personage calling himself General Cluseret had, as some one expressed it, "swallowed up the Commune." He called himself an American, and had been in the Union service in the American civil war, but no one knew where he was born. He had served in the Chasseurs d'Afrique and in the Papal Zouaves, and after the fall of the Commune escaped from Paris and became a general of the Fenians, nearly capturing Chester Castle in their service.
This man became absolute dictator over the revolted city, with its two million of inhabitants; yet after three weeks of this dictatorial rule his star declined and he found himself in prison at Mazas, to which he had sent so many others.
Leaving these details for the present, we must return to the war, which was soon in full blast. The assault of April 4 repulsed, the guns of Fort Varélien were opened upon the city and the second bombardment of Paris in that memorable year began. The guns of its friends were more destructive than those of its foes, the forts taking part in the bombardment being much nearer the centre of the city. Their shells damaged the Arch of Triumph, which the Prussians had spared; they fell alike on homes, public buildings and churches; alike on men, women and children, friend and foe.
Under order of General Cluseret, the dictator of the Commune, every man was ordered to take part in the defence of the city. His neighbors were required to see that he did so and to arrest him if he showed a disposition to decline. For the seventy-three days that the power of the Commune lasted Paris was a veritable pandemonium, the fighting, the arrests, the bombardment keeping the excitement at an intense pitch. The people deserted the streets, which were silent and empty, except for the soldiers of the Commune—a disorderly crew in motley uniforms—the movement of ammunition wagons, and the other scenes incident to a state of war. But the usual swarming life of Paris had vanished. There was no movement, scarcely any sound. The shop-windows were shut, many of them boarded up, red flags hanging from a few, but as a rule the very buildings seemed dead.
This is the story told by one observer, but another—perhaps at a different period of the bombardment—speaks of well-dressed people "loitering in the boulevards as if nothing were going on. The cafés, indeed, were ordered to close their doors at midnight, but behind closed shutters went on gambling, drinking and debauchery. After spending a riotous night, fast men and women considered it a joke to drive out to the Arch of Triumph and see how the fight was going on."