France in the Nineteenth Century

by Elizabeth Wormeley Latimer

By evening the National Guard had taken possession of the Hôtel-de-Ville, and the outer Boulevards were crowded by men shouting that they had made a revolution. On this day the insurgents assumed the name of "Fédérés," or Federals, denoting their project of converting the communistic cities of France into a Federal Republic.

In vain the Government put forth proclamations calling on all good citizens, and on the Old National Guard, to put down insurrection and maintain order and the Republic. The Old Battalions of the National Guard, about twenty thousand strong, had been composed chiefly of tradesmen and gentlemen; these, as soon as the siege was over, had for the most part left the city. Bismarck's proposition to Jules Favre had been to leave the Old National Guard its arms, that it might preserve order, but to take advantage of the occasion to disarm the New Battalions. As we have seen, all were permitted to retain their arms; but the chancellor told Jules Favre he would live to repent having obtained the concession.

The friends of order, in spite of the Government's proclamations, could with difficulty be roused to action. There were two parties in Paris,—the Passives, and the Actives; and the latter party increased in strength from day to day. Indeed, it was hard for peaceful citizens to know under whom they were to range themselves. The Government had left the city. One or two of its members were still in Paris, but the rest had rushed off to Versailles, protected by an army forty thousand strong, under General Vinoy.

A species of Government had, however, formed itself by the morning of March 19 at the Hôtel-de-Ville. It called itself the Central Committee of the National Guard, and issued proclamations on white paper (white paper being reserved in Paris for proclamations of the Government). It called upon all citizens in their sections at once to elect a commune. This proclamation was signed by twenty citizens, only one of whom, M. Assy, had ever been heard of in Paris. Some months before, he had headed a strike, killed a policeman, and had been condemned to the galleys for murder. The men who thus constituted themselves a Government, were all members of the International,—that secret association, formed in all countries, for the abolition of property and patriotism, religion and the family, rulers, armies, upper classes, and every species of refinement. Another proclamation decreed that the people of Paris, whether it pleased them or not, must on Wednesday, March 22, elect a commune.

In a former chapter I have tried to explain the nature of a commune. Victor Hugo wrote his opinion of it, when the idea of a commune was first started, after the fall of Louis Philippe in 1848. His words read like a prophecy:—

"It would tear down the tricolor, and set up the red flag of destruction; it would make penny-pieces out of the Column of the Place Vendôme; it would hurl down the statue of Napoleon, and set up that of Marat in its place; it would suppress the Académie, the École Polytechnique, and the Legion of Honor. To the grand motto of 'Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity,' it would add the words, 'or death.' It would bring about a general bankruptcy. It would ruin the rich without enriching the poor. It would destroy labor, which gives each of us his bread. It would abolish property, and break up the family. It would march about with the heads of the proscribed on pikes, fill the prisons with the suspected, and empty them by massacre. It would convert France into a country of gloom. It would destroy liberty, stifle the arts, silence thought, and deny God. It would supply work for two things fatal to prosperity,—the press that prints assignats, and the guillotine. In a word, it would do in cold blood what the men of 1793 did in the ravings of fever; and after the great horrors which our fathers saw, we should have the horrible in every form that is low and base."

The party of the Commune has been divided into three classes,—the rascals, the dupes, and the enthusiasts. The latter in the last hours of the Commune (which lasted seventy-three days) put forth in a manifesto their theory of government; to wit, that every city in France should have absolute power to govern itself, should levy its own taxes, make its own laws, provide its own soldiers, see to its own schools, elect its own judges, and make within its corporate limits whatever changes of government it pleased. These Communistic cities were to be federated into a Republic. It was not clear how those Frenchmen were to be governed who did not live in cities; possibly each city was to have territory attached to it, as in Italy in the Middle Ages.

The weather during March of the year 1871 was very fine, and fine weather is always favorable to disturbances and revolutions.

The very few men of note still left in Paris desirous of putting an end to disorder without the shedding of blood, proposed to go out to Versailles and negotiate with M. Thiers, the provisional president, and the members of his Government. They were the twelve deputies of the Department of the Seine, in which Paris is situated, headed by Louis Blanc, and the maires, with their assistants, from the twenty arrondissements. They proposed to urge on the Government of Versailles the policy of giving the Parisians the right to elect what in England would be called a Lord Mayor, and likewise a city council; also to give the National Guard the right to elect its officers.

This deputation went out to Versailles on the 20th of March,—two days before the proposed election for members of a commune. On the 21st, while all Paris was awaiting anxiously the outcome of the mission, there was a great "order" demonstration in the streets, and hopes of peace and concord were exchanged on all sides. The next day, the order demonstration, which had seemed so popular, was repeated, when a massacre took place on the Place Vendome and the Rue de la Paix. Nurses, children, and other quiet spectators were killed, as also old gentlemen and reporters for the newspapers. One of the victims was a partner in the great banking house of Hottinguer, well known to American travellers.