France in the Nineteenth Century

by Elizabeth Wormeley Latimer

The six victims were at last placed in a line, with their backs to the wall. As Ferré was giving the order to fire, the archbishop raised his right hand in order to give, as his last act, his episcopal blessing. As he did so, Lolive exclaimed: "That's your benediction is it?—now take mine!" and shot the old man through the body with a revolver. All were shot dead at once, save M. Bonjean.

There is now a marble slab in the little court inscribed with their names, and headed: "Respect this place, which witnessed the death of noble men and martyrs." The warder, Henrion, was put in charge of the place, and planted it with beds of flowers.

The execution over, the leaders searched the cells of their victims. In most of them they found nothing; in two were worn cassocks, and in the archbishop's was his pastoral ring. One of the party said the amethyst in it was a diamond; another contradicted him, and said it was an emerald. The bodies lay unburied until two o'clock in the morning, when four or five of those who had shot them despoiled them, one hanging the archbishop's chain and cross about his own neck, another appropriating his silver shoe-buckles. Then they loaded the bodies on a hand-barrow and carried them to an open trench dug in Père la Chaise. There, four days later, when the Versaillais had full possession of the city, they were found. The archbishop and the Abbé Duguerrey were taken to the archbishop's house with a guard of honor, and are buried at Notre Dame. The two Jesuit fathers were buried in their own cemetery, and Judge Bonjean and the hospital chaplain sleep in honored graves in Père la Chaise.

After these executions a large number of so-called "hostages,"—ecclesiastics, soldiers of the line, sergents de ville, and police agents remained shut up in La Roquette. It was Saturday, May 27, the day before Whit Sunday. Says the Abbé Lamazou,—

"It was a few minutes past three, and I was kneeling in my cell saying my prayers for the day, when I heard bolts rattling in the corridor. We were no longer locked in with keys. Suddenly the door of my cell was thrown open, and a voice cried: 'Courage! our time has come.' 'Yes, courage!' I answered. 'God's will be done.' I had on my ecclesiastical habit, and went out into the corridor. There I found a mixed crowd of prisoners, priests, soldiers, and National Guards. The priests and the National Guards seemed resigned to their fate, but the soldiers, who had fought the Prussians, could not believe it was intended to shoot them. Suddenly a voice, loud as a trumpet, rose above the din. 'Friends,' it cried, 'hearken to a man who desires to save you. These wretches of the Commune have killed more than enough people. Don't let yourselves be murdered! Join me. Let us resist. Sooner than give you up I will die with you!' The speaker was Poiret, one of the warders of the prison. He had been horrified by what had been done already, and when ordered by his superiors to give up the prisoners in his corridor to a yelling crowd, he had shut the doors on the third story behind him, and was advising us, at the risk of his own life, to organize resistance."

The abbé joined him with, "Don't let us be shot, my friends; let us defend ourselves. Trust in God; he is on our side!"

But many hesitated. "Resistance is mere madness," they said; and a soldier shouted, "They don't want to kill us; they want the priests! Don't let us lose our lives defending them!"

"The sergents de ville in the story below you," cried Poiret, "are going to defend themselves, They are making a barricade across the door of their corridor. We have no arms, but we have courage. Don't let us be shot down by the rabble."

It was proposed to make a hole in the floor, and so to communicate with the sergents de ville. The prisoners armed themselves with boards and iron torn from their bedsteads, and in five minutes had made an opening through the floor. A non-commissioned officer from below climbed through it, and arranged with Poiret the plan of defence.

By this time the inner courtyard of the prison was invaded by a rough and squalid crowd, come to take a hand in whatever murder or mischief might be done. The besieged put mattresses before their windows for protection. The man who led the mob was one Pasquier, a murderer who had been in a condemned cell in La Roquette till let out by the general jail-delivery of the Commune.