On my way back, I had to pass in front of a liqueur shop, the door of which was open, and several men were talking there. I stopped to learn the news. Montmartre is taken; the Federals had not opposed much resistance; but a great deal of firing had gone on in the side streets and lanes. Seven insurgents were surrounded. “Give yourselves up, and your lives will be saved,” cried out the soldiers. They replied, “We are prisoners;” but one of them drew his revolver and shot an officer in the leg. Then the soldiers took the seven men, threw them into a large hole, and shot them from above like so many rabbits. Another man told me that he had seen a child lying dead at the corner of the Rue de Rome. “A pretty little fellow,” he said, “his brains were strewed on the pavement beside him.” A third, that when all the fighting was over at the Place Saint-Pierre a rifle shot was heard, and a captain of Chasseurs fell dead. The major who was there, looked up and saw a man trying to hide himself behind a chimney pot; the soldiers got into the house, seized him on the roof, and brought him down into the Place. What did the insurgent do, but walked up to the major, smiling, and hit him a blow on the cheek. The major set him up against a wall, and blew his brains out with a revolver. Another insurgent who was arrested, made an insulting grimace at the soldiers; they shot him. On the southern sides of Paris, the operations of the army have not been so fortunate as on this. In the Faubourg St. Germain it advances very slowly, if it advance at all. The Federals fight with heroic courage at the Mont-Parnasse Station, the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, and the Croix-Rouge; from the corners of the streets, from the windows, from the balconies proceed shots rarely ineffective. This sort of warfare fatigues the soldiers, particularly as the discipline prevents them from using the same measures. At Saint-Quen, likewise, the march of the troops is stayed; the barricade of the Rue de Clichy holds out, and will hold out some time. In other quarters the advantages gained by the Versaillais are evident. Here and there some small show of resistance is offered, but the insurgents are flying. I cannot tell whether all these floating rumours are true. As I return home, I look round; in the Rue Geoffrey-Marie, near the Faubourg Montmartre, I see a National Guard alone in the middle of the street, nothing to screen him whatsoever; he loads his rifle and fires, loads and fires again; again and again! Thirty-three times! Then the rifle slips to the ground, and the man staggers and falls.
XCIII.
This morning, the 23rd, after a combat of three hours, the barricade of the Place de Clichy has not yet yielded. Yet two battalions of National Guards had, at the beginning of the fight, reversed their arms, and were fraternising with the soldiers on the Place de la Maine, a hundred and fifty yards from the scene of the fray. The cracking of the rifles, the explosion of shells, and the sound of mitrailleuses filled the air. The smell of powder was stifling. Dreadful cries arose from the poor wounded wretches; and the whizzing projectiles from Montmartre rent the air above in their fiery course. “Beneath us,” said an inhabitant of Batignolles who gave me these particulars, “beneath us the city lay like a seething caldron.”
The beating of drums and the sharp trumpet-calls mixed in this monstrous din, and were every now and then lost in the tremendous noise of the firing.
About half-past one the sounds grew quieter; the barricade was taken. The insurgents were retreating to La Chapelle and Belleville in disorder; the soldiers of the line rushed like a torrent into the Avenue de Clichy, leaving a tricolour flag hoisted upon the dismantled barricade.
Here and there, in the streets, the struggle had not ceased. In the Rue Blanche a rifle-shot proceeded from a ground-floor; the man was taken and executed outside his own door. The artillery was moving up the Rue Chaptal towards Montmartre and La Chapelle. The day was very hot; pails of water were thrown over the guns to quench their burning thirst. All the young men who were found in the streets were provisionally put under arrest, for they feared everyone, even children, and horrible vengeance and thirst for blood had seized upon all. Suddenly an isolated shot would be heard, followed a minute or two after by five or six others. One knew reprisal had been done.
At about four o’clock in the afternoon, when the quarters of Belleville and Clichy were pretty well cleared of troops, two insurgents were walking, one behind the other, in the Rue Léonie. The one who walked last lifted his rifle and fired carelessly in the direction of the windows; the report sounded very loudly in the silent street, and a pane of glass fell in fragments to the ground. The insurgent who was in front did not even turn his head; these men seem to have become quite reckless and deaf to everything.
What the troops feared the most were the sharp-shooters hidden in the houses, aiming through little holes and cracks; suddenly a snap would be heard, and the officers would lift their glassed to their eyes; more often nothing was to be seen at all, but if the slightest shadow were visible behind a window curtain, the order was, “Search that house!” The executions did not take place in the apartments. Now and then an inhabitant or two were brought down into the street, and those never returned!