Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 2

by H. Sutherland Edwards

On the 14th of May several forts were captured from the Communists; and on the 21st everything seemed ready for a general attack. Proclamations were posted on the walls of Paris calling upon citizens to fight to the last; and officers rode through the streets inciting all they met to determined resistance. These appeals proved ineffective in the richer quarters of Paris, where the arrival of the Versailles troops was looked forward to with joy. But they met with the fullest response in the workmen’s districts, where even women and children fought at the barricades. Begun on Sunday, May 21st, the operations of the Versailles army were continued on Monday and Tuesday. The troops had been divided into five columns, which were to form a cordon round the city, and, attacking vigorously at certain points in the circumference, were gradually to concentrate so as to hem in the insurgents on all sides—the plan, in short, of the battle of Sedan[{359}] applied by Frenchmen to other Frenchmen. On Tuesday morning, May 23rd, the attack was begun. The Versailles troops were successful at all points; but one of the columns met with a desperate resistance on the plateau of Montmartre, which was not taken until after severe fighting. Close to Montmartre the Place Pigalle, where Dombrowski had his headquarters, still held out. It was surrounded by a barricade, which was defended with the utmost energy for two hours, until the Communist leader fell mortally wounded. Then the resistance did not cease; but before night the important stronghold was in possession of the Versailles troops.

There was desperate fighting, too, in the Place Vendôme, which was at last taken by an overwhelming assault made at the same time from the Rue de la Paix on the one side and the Rue de Castiglione on the other. The Place de l’Opéra was also the scene of a sanguinary struggle. It was not until Wednesday morning that the Bourse was taken, and the only important points left unoccupied were now the Hôtel de Ville and the Château d’Eau.

Meanwhile the insurgents, gradually falling back, had, in their powerlessness, gratified their rage by the most barbarous means. Organised incendiarism had been resorted to, and fires now broke out in every part of Paris. Fires which might possibly have been caused by shells had been noticed on the Tuesday, and now, on Wednesday, the Tuileries was in flames. Soon the Palais Royal, a whole side of the Rue Royale, and then, in an easterly direction, the Hotel de Ville, were found to be burning. A panic spread through the city, among the Versailles troops as well as the people. It was repeated from mouth to mouth that the Communists had sworn to burn all Paris by fire kindled with petroleum; and a series of arrests and executions was now begun, which soon amounted to the indiscriminate slaughter of all who chanced to fall under the slightest suspicion. “It was only necessary,” says an American writer, Dr. Edward L. Burlingame, “that a man or woman should be pointed at as pétroleur or pétroleuse; they were shot down without inquiry or mercy. Houses were searched, and those hidden in them were brought into the streets and killed. Many entirely innocent shared the fate of the leaders, like Vermorel and Rigault, both of whom fell by these summary executions. A court-martial was established in the centre of the city, but even for those brought before it there was in most cases only a hurried form of trial. New fires were continually lighted, either by concealed incendiaries—of whom many were taken with the implements for their work in their hands—or by petroleum bombs from the barricades and the districts still in possession of the Communists. During this week of conflagrations there were consumed or partially burned, besides a great number of private houses, the Palais de Justice, the Prefecture of Police, the Palace of the Legion of Honour, the Porte St. Martin Theatre, the Grenier d’Abondance, several churches, many mercantile establishments and minor public buildings: all this, besides the more formidable conflagrations at the Hôtel de Ville, the Tuileries and the Louvre.”

During the whole of Wednesday, in spite of the distraction caused by the fires, the troops had steadily continued the manœuvres by which they were gradually closing about the last insurgent strongholds. Around the burning hotel the Communists contested every step of advance with desperate bravery. It was late on Wednesday night before the building, then in flames in four places, was at last abandoned. On the left bank of the Seine the resistance was still more obstinate, and it was only on Thursday afternoon that the Versailles troops succeeded in driving the insurgents from their last strong position on the Buttes-aux-Cailles, after the bloodiest contest since their entry into the city. Still fighting, the Communists fell back to the manufactory of the Gobelins, which they set on fire. Here was their last desperate defence on this side of the river. Prisoners in their hands were forced to man the barricades, and afterwards were shot down after freedom had been scoffingly promised them. After a violent struggle the Versailles troops gained possession of the whole district, and with it of the last contested spot on the left bank.

On the right bank the troops were operating towards the Faubourg St. Antoine, and especially the Place de la Bastille, which was taken on Friday, when the insurgents retired to the cemetery of Père Lachaise. The quarter of Belleville, inhabited almost exclusively by workmen, resisted with the greatest ferocity, and on Friday night it was still unconquered by the Versailles troops, who now formed a semicircle around it. On Saturday, May 27th, there were still barricades to take in the Faubourg du Temple; and the Communists had yet to be dislodged from the cemetery of Père Lachaise. A fire, too, was kept up by a battery on the [{360}]Buttes Chaumont. On the evening of Saturday, May 27th, General Vinoy took the cemetery by storm. The last defence of the Communists was made at a barricade in the Faubourg du Temple, which, in spite of constant attacks, held out until Sunday at noon. At five o’clock on Sunday afternoon the firing had ceased throughout the city, and a notice from Marshal MacMahon was posted on the walls announcing that the civil war was at an end. The dead were scattered through half the streets of Paris, the hospitals were crowded with the wounded on both sides, and nearly twenty thousand prisoners were in the hands of the Government. The great majority of the ordinary prisoners were set at liberty; but a considerable number were shot on the plain of Satory, near Versailles. Many more were transported to penal colonies.

MARSHAL MACMAHON.
(From a Photograph by Appert, Paris.)

Versailles now lost its military importance as headquarters for the army. But the Assembly continued to sit there, and did not until some time afterwards hold its deliberations within the walls of Paris.

“In five or ten years, as soon as you are strong enough,” said Count Bismarck to General de Wimpffen, during the negotiations which followed the battle and preceded the surrender of Sedan, “you will attack us again, and we must be prepared for you.” This prediction, happily, has not been fulfilled. The words “as soon as you are strong enough” are somewhat oracular in character; but, as a matter of fact, France has remained at peace far longer than was thought probable either by her friends or by her enemies. The peace of 1815 lasted only fifteen[{361}] years, and it was first broken by the French themselves. The peace which followed the Franco-German War has already endured for twenty-three years.