Millière[[106]]

NOTES:

[105] The 24th May the COMMITTEE FOR PUBLIC SAFETY issued these cold-blooded decrees:—

“Citizen Millière, at the head of one hundred and fifty fuse-bearers, is to set fire to all houses of suspicious aspect, as well as to the public monuments of the left bank of the Seine.
“Citizen Dereure, with one hundred and fifty fuse-bearers, is charged with the 1st and 2nd Arrondissement.
“Citizen Billioray, with one hundred men, is charged with the 9th, 10th, and 20th Arrondissements.
“Citizen Vésinier, with fifty men, has the Boulevards of the Madeleine and of the Bastille especially entrusted to him.
“These Citizens are to come to an understanding with the officers commanding the barricades, for the execution of these orders.

“DELESCLUZE, RÉGÈRE, RANVINE, JOHANNARD, VÉSINIER, BRUNEL, DOMBROWSKI.
“Paris, 3 Prairial, year 79.”

[106] This Millière, formerly an advocate and writer on the Marseillaise, was a native of St-Etienne, and fifty-four years of age, a cool speaker, and advocate of advanced ideas, that got him several imprisonments. In March 1870 he was taken from the prison of Sainte-Pélagie to give evidence at Tours against Pierre Bonaparte for the murder of Victor Noir, where his lucid depositions told greatly against the prisoner. When regaining his liberty he became more revolutionary than ever, writing during the siege in the Patrie en Danger. At the peace he became one of the members for Paris, and sat at Bordeaux and Versailles, agitating social subjects and the law of lodgers. About the 10th of April he took part with the Commune, and at the entrance of the troops was taken at the Luxembourg after having fired six rounds from a revolver, was shot on the steps of the Pantheon, and died as he opened his shirt front, shouting, “Vive la République! Vive la Liberté! Vive l’Humanité!”

XCV.

Certainly I nursed no vain illusions. What you had done, gentlemen of the Commune, had enlightened me as to your value, and as to the purity of your intentions. Seeing you lie, steal, and kill, I had said to you, “You are liars, robbers, and murderers;” but truly, in spite of Citizen Félix Pyat, who is a coward, and Citizen Miot, who is a fool; in spite of Millière, who shot réfractaires, and Philippe, whose trade shall be nameless; in spite of Dacosta, who amused himself with telling the Jesuits at the Conciergerie, “Mind, you are to be shot in an hour,” and then an hour afterwards returning to say, “I have thought about it, and it is for tomorrow;” in spite of Johannard, who executed a child of fifteen guilty of selling a suppressed newspaper; in spite of Rigault, who, chucking the son of Chaudey under the chin, laughingly said to him, “Tomorrow, little one, we shall shoot papa;” in spite of all the madmen and fools that constituted the Commune de Paris, who after being guilty of more extravagances than are necessary to get a man sent to the Madhouse of Charenton, and more crimes than are sufficient to shut him up in prison at Sainte-Pélagie, had managed, by means of every form, of wickedness and excess, to make our beloved Paris a frightened slave, crouching to earth under their abominable tyranny; in spite of everything, I could not have dreamed that even their demoniac fury could have gone so far as to try to burn Paris, after having ruined it! Nero of the gutter! Sardanapalus drunk with vitriol! So your vanity wanted such a volcano to engulf you, and you wished to die by the light of such an auto-da-fé. Instead of torches around your funeral car, you wished the Tuileries, the library of the Louvre, and the Palace of the Legion of Honour burnt to ashes, the Rue Royale one vast conflagration, where the walls as they fell buried alive women and children, and the Rue de Lille vomiting fire and smoke like the crater of Vesuvius.