France in the Nineteenth Century

by Elizabeth Wormeley Latimer

The punishment of the unfortunate, as well as of the guilty, was very severe. Their imprisonment in the Great Orangery at Versailles, where thousands of orange-trees are stored during the winter, involved frightful suffering. A commission was appointed to try the prisoners, but its work was necessarily slow. It was more than a year before some of the captured leaders of the Commune met their fate. Those condemned were shot at the Buttes of Satory,—an immense amphitheatre holding twenty thousand people, where the emperor on one of his fêtes, in the early days of his marriage, gave a great free hippodrome performance, to the intense gratification of his lieges.

Some prisoners were transported to New Caledonia; Cayenne had been given up as too unhealthy, and this lonely island in the far Pacific Ocean had been fixed upon as the Botany Bay for political offenders. Some of the leaders in the Council of the Commune were shot in the streets. Raoul Rigault was of this number. Some were executed at Satory; some escaped to England, Switzerland, and America; some were sent to New Caledonia, but were amnestied, and returned to France to be thorns in the side of every Government up to the present hour; some are now legislators in the French Chamber, some editors and proprietors of newspapers. Among those shot in the heat of vengeance at Satory was Valin, who had vainly tried to save the hostages. Deleschuze, in despair at the cowardice of his associates, quietly sought a barricade when affairs grew desperate, and standing on it with his arms folded, was shot down. Cluseret, who had real talent as an artist, had an exhibition a few years since of his pictures in Paris, and writing to a friend concerning it, speaks thus of himself:[1]

[Footnote 1: Le Figaro.]

"You can tell me the worst. When a man has passed through a life full of vicissitudes as I have done, during seventeen years of which I have seen many campaigns, fighting sometimes three hundred and sixty-five days in a year, or marching and counter-marching, without tents or anything; when one has been three times outlawed and under sentence of death; when one has known much of imprisonment and exile; when one has suffered from ingratitude, calumny, and poverty,—one is pretty well seasoned, and can bear to hear the truth."

One thousand and thirty-one women were among the prisoners at Versailles and Satory. Many of them were women of the worst character. Eight hundred and fifty were set at liberty; four were sent to an insane asylum; but doctors declared that nearly every woman who fought in the streets for the Commune was more or less insane.

The most important of all captures was that of Rochefort. He had been a leading man in the Council of the Commune, but was so great a favorite with men of literature, besides having strong friends and an old schoolfellow in Thiers' cabinet, that he escaped with transportation to the Southern Seas. On May 20, when he saw that the end of the Commune was at hand, he procured from the Delegate for Foreign Affairs passports for himself and his secretary. It is thought that the delegate, enraged at Rochefort's purpose of deserting his colleagues, betrayed him to the Prussians who held the fort of Vincennes. The Prussians sent word to the frontier, and there the fugitives were arrested. Rochefort had no luggage, but in his pocket was a great deal of miscellaneous jewelry, a copy of "Monte Cristo," and some fine cigars. Escorted by Uhlans, he was brought to St. Germains, and delivered over to the Versailles Government. For a long time his fate hung in the balance, and it seemed improbable that even the exertions of M. Thiers, the President, and Jules Favre, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, could save him.

Having told of the last days of the Commune as seen by Count Orsi and the Marquis de Compiègne, there remains one more narrative,—the experiences of a man still more intimately connected with the events of that terrible period, though, like a soldier in battle, he seems to have been able to see only what was around him, and could take no general view of what went on in other parts of the field.

The writer was all English gentleman who published his narrative immediately after he returned to England in September and October, 1871, in "Macmillan's Magazine." "The writer," says the editor, "is a young gentleman of good family and position. His name, though suppressed for good reasons, is known to us, and we have satisfied ourselves of the trustworthiness of the narrative." He says:

"I left England very hurriedly for France on March 29, 1871. I had neglected to procure a passport, and had no papers to prove my identity. I travelled from Havre to Paris without trouble, and on the train met two men whom I saw afterwards as members of the Council of the Commune. The first thing that struck me on my arrival in Paris was the extreme quietness of the streets. During the first week of my stay I was absorbed in my own business, and saw nothing; but on Monday, April 10, my own part in the concerns of the Commune began. I was returning home from breakfast about one o'clock in the day, when I met a sergeant and four men in the street, who stopped me, and the sergeant said: 'Pardon, Citizen, but what is your battalion?' I answered that, being an Englishman, I did not belong to any battalion. 'And your passport, Citizen?' On my replying that I had none, he requested me to go with him to a neighboring mairie, and I was accordingly escorted thither by the four men. On my arrival I was shown into a cell, comfortable enough, though it might have been cleaner. Having no evidence of my nationality, I felt it was useless to apply to the Embassy; all the friends I had in Paris who could have identified me as all Englishman had left the city some days before, and as I reflected, it appeared to me that if required to serve the Commune, no other course would be left to me. One thing, however, I resolved,—to keep myself as much in the background as possible. In three or four hours I was conducted before the members of the Commune for that arrondissement. They received me civilly, asked my name, age, profession, etc., and then one of them, taking up a paper, proceeded to say that I must be placed in a battalion for active service, as I was under forty years of age. 'Gentlemen,' I replied, 'your political affairs are of no interest to me, and it is my misfortune to be placed in this unpleasant predicament. But I tell you plainly, you may shoot me if you will, but I absolutely refuse to leave Paris to fight the Versaillais, who are no enemies of mine in particular, and I therefore demand to be set at liberty.' Upon this they all laughed, and told me to leave the room. After a little time I was recalled, and told I should be placed in a compagnie sédentaire. I again remonstrated, and demanded to be set at liberty, when they said I was drunk, and ordered me to be locked into my cell, whence I was transferred to my battalion the next morning. I found my captain a remarkably pleasant man, as indeed were all my comrades in my company, and I can never forget the kindness I met with from them. My only regret is my utter ignorance of their fate. I can scarcely hope they all escaped the miserable fate that overtook so many; but I should rejoice to know that some were spared. On entering the captain's office and taking off my hat, I was told to put it on again, 'as we are all equal here, Citizen;' and after the captain had said a few words to me, I was regaled with bread, sardines, and wine,—the rations for the day. The captain was a young man of six-and-twenty, with a particularly quiet, gentlemanly manner (he was, I believe, a carpet-weaver). He had been a soldier, and had served in Africa with distinction.

"The account of my daily duties as a member of this company from April 10 to May 23 may be here omitted. I became orderly to one of the members of the Commune, and being supplied with a good horse (for as an Englishman I was supposed to be able to ride), I spent much of my time in carrying messages. On the morning of Tuesday, May 23, our colonel told us of the death of Dombrowski, who had been shot during the night, though particulars were not known. I was sorry to hear of his end, for he had been disposed to be kind to me, and I knew then that the cause of the Commune was utterly lost, as he was the only able man among them. The night before, we had seen such a fire as I never saw before, streaming up to the sky in two pillars of flame. I was told it was the Tuileries. The Versaillais were already within the walls of Paris, but this we in the centre of the city did not know. The news spread during the day, however, and there was a great panic in the evening. Everybody began to make preparations for flight, the soldiers being anxious to get home and change their uniforms for plain clothes. No one knew with any degree of certainty where the enemy really was, nor how far he had advanced; only one thing was certain, that the game was played out, and that sauve qui peut must be the order of the day. Men, women, and children were rushing frantically about the streets, demanding news, and repeating it with a hundred variations. The whole scene was lit up by fires which blazed in all directions. At last the night gave place to dawn, and the scene was one to be remembered for a lifetime. The faces of the crowd wore different expressions of horror, amazement, and abject terror.... Early in the morning of Wednesday 24th, I, with some others, was ordered to the barricade of La Roquette.[1] My companions were very good fellows, with one exception,—a grumpy old wretch who had served in Africa, and could talk about nothing but the heat of Algeria and the chances for plunder he had let slip there. Finding nothing to do at the barricade, I tied my horse and fell asleep upon the pavement. I dreamed I was at a great dinner-party in my father's house, and could get nothing to eat, though dishes were handed to me in due course. Many times afterwards my sleeping thoughts took that direction. I really believe that there were times when I and many others would willingly have been shot, if we could have secured one good meal, When I awoke, about mid-day, in the Rue de la Roquette, I found my companions gone to the mairie of the Eleventh Arrondissement, and I followed them. Our uniform was not unlike that of the troops of the line in the French army, so we were taken by the crowd for deserters, and hailed with 'Ah, les bon garçons! Ah, les bons patriotes!' and we shouted back in turn with all our might, 'Vive la Commune! Vive la République!' Those words were in my mouth the whole of the next three days. The people never saw a horseman without shrieking to him, 'How is all going on at present?' To which the answer was invariably, 'All goes well! Vive la Commune! Vive la République!' though the enemy might at that moment be within five hundred yards. Indeed, the infatuation and credulity displayed by the French, not only during the insurrection, but the whole war, was absurd. Tell them on good authority that they had lost a battle or been driven back, they would answer that you were joking, and you might think yourself lucky to escape with a whole skin; but say nothing but 'All goes well! We have won!' and without stopping to inquire, they would at once cheer and shout as if for a decisive victory."