Then the order to cease firing is heard, and a train of litterbearers, waving their handkerchiefs as flags, approach from the Avenue Victoria. At the Hôtel de Ville one officer only is wounded, but on the Place lie a dozen victims, two of whom are women.
At four o’clock the 117th Battalion of the National Guard takes up its position before the municipal palace. They are reinforced by a detachment of gendarmes, mounted and on foot, and by companies of Mobiles, under the command of General Carréard.
General Clément Thomas hastens to address a few words to the 117th; later, he paid with his life for thus appearing on the side of order. Finally, General Vinoy arrives, followed by his staff, to take measures against any renewed acts of aggression. Mitrailleuses and cannon are stationed before the Hôtel de Ville; the drums beat the rappel throughout the town, and a great number of battalions of National Guards assemble in the Rue de Rivoli, at the Louvre, and on the Place de la Concorde; others bivouac before the Palais de l’Industrie, while on the other side of the Champs Elysées regiments of cavalry, infantry, and mobiles, are drawn out. The agitators have disappeared, calm is restored, within the city be it understood, for all this did not interrupt the animated interchange of shells between the French and Prussian batteries, and a great number of Parisians, who had twice helped to disperse the insurgents of October and January, thought involuntarily of the Commune of the 10th of August, 1793, which headed the revolution, and said to themselves that there were perhaps some amongst the present insurgents who, like the former, would rise up to deliver them from the Prussians. For these agitators have some appearance of truth on their side: “You are weak and timorous,” they cry to those in power; “you seem awaiting a defeat rather than expecting a victory. Give place to the energetic, obscure though they may be; for the men of the great Commune, of our first glorious revolution, they also were for the greater part unknown. We have confidence in the army of Paris, and we will break the iron circle of invasion.”
Though the Communists have since then shown bravery, and sometimes heroism, in their struggle against the Versailles troops, we are very doubtful, now that we have seen their chiefs in action, whether the efforts they talked of would have been crowned with success. Their object was power, and, having nothing to risk and all to gain, they would have forthwith disposed of public property in order to procure themselves enjoyment and honours. The few right-minded men who at first committed themselves, proved this by the fact of their giving in their resignation a few days after the Commune had established itself.
Tranquillity had returned. In the morning of the 25th, guards patrolled the Place de la Bastille, the Place du Château d’Eau, the Boulevard Magenta, and the outer boulevards. Paris started as if she had been aroused from some fearful dream, and the waking thought of the enemy at her gates stirred up all her energies once more.
The Communists had been defeated for the second time; but they were soon to take a terrible revenge.
The vow made by the Governor of Paris had been repeated by the majority of the Parisians, and all parties seemed to have rallied round him under the same device: vanquish or die. After the forts, the barricades, and as a last resource, the burning of the city. Who knows? Perhaps the fanatics of resistance had already made out the plan of destruction which served later for the Commune. It has been proved that nothing in this work of ruin was impromptu.
The news of the convention of the 28th of January, the preliminary of the capitulation of Paris, was thus very badly received, and M. Gambetta, by exhorting the people, in his celebrated circular of the 31st of January, to resist to the death, sowed the seeds of civil war:—
“CITIZENS,—
“The enemy has just inflicted upon France the most cruel insult that she has yet had to endure in this accursed war, the too-heavy punishment of the errors and weaknesses of a great people.
“Paris, the impregnable, vanquished by famine, is no longer able to hold in respect the German hordes. On the 28th of January, the capital succumbed, her forts surrendered to the enemy. The city still remains intact, wresting, as it were, by her own power and moral grandeur, a last homage from barbarity.
“But in falling, Paris leaves us the glorious legacy of her heroic sacrifices. During five months of privation and suffering, she has given to France the time to collect herself, to call her children together, to find arms, to compose armies, young as yet, but valiant and determined, and to whom is wanting only that solidity which can be obtained but by experience. Thanks to Paris, we hold in our hands, if we are but resolute and patriotic, all that is needed to revenge, and set ourselves free once more.
“But, as though evil fortune had resolved to overwhelm us, something even more terrible and more fraught with anguish than the fall of Paris, was awaiting us.
“Without our knowledge, without either warning, us or consulting us, an armistice, the culpable weakness of which was known to us too late, has been signed, which delivers into the hands of the Prussians the departments occupied by our soldiers, and which obliges us to wait for three weeks, in the midst of the disastrous circumstances in which the country is plunged, before a national assembly can be assembled.
“We sent to Paris for some explanation, and then awaited in silence the promised arrival of a member of the government, to whom we were determined to resign our office. As delegates of government, we desired to obey, and thereby prove to all, friends and dissidents, by setting an example of moderation and respect of duty, that democracy is not only the greatest of all political principles, but also the most scrupulous of governments.
“However, no one has arrived from Paris, and it is necessary to act, come what may; the perfidious machinations of the enemies of France must be frustrated.
“Prussia relies upon the armistice to enervate and dissolve our armies; she hopes that the Assembly, meeting after so long a succession of disasters, and under the impression of the terrible fall of Paris, wilt be timid and weak, and ready to submit to a shameful peace.
“It is for us to upset these calculations, and to turn the very instruments which are prepared to crush the spirit of resistance, into spurs that shall arouse and excite it.
“Let us make this same armistice into a code of instruction for our young troops; let us employ the three coming weeks in pushing on the organization of the defence and of the war more ardently than ever.
“Instead of the meeting of cowardly reactionists that our enemies expect, let us form an assembly that shall be veritably national and republican, desirous of peace, if peace can ensure the honour, the rank, and the integrity of our country, but capable of voting for war rather than aiding in the assassination of France.
“FRENCHMEN,
“Remember that our fathers left us France, whole and indivisible; let us not be traitors to our history; let us not deliver up our traditional domains into the hands of barbarians. Who then will sign the armistice? Not you, legitimists, who fought so valiantly under the flag of the Republic, in the defence of the ancient kingdom of France; nor you, sons of the bourgeois of 1789, whose work was to unite the old provinces in a pact of indissoluble union; nor you, workmen of the towns, whose intelligence and generous patriotism represent France in all her strength and grandeur, the leader of modern nations; nor you, tillers of the soil, who never have spared your blood in the defence of the Revolution, which gave you the ownership of your land and your title of citizen.
“No! Not one Frenchman will be found to sign this infamous act; the enemy’s attempt to mutilate France will be frustrated, for, animated with the same love of the mother country and bearing our reverses with fortitude, we shall become strong once more and drive out the foreign legions.
“To the attainment of this noble end, we must devote our hearts, our wills, our lives, and, a still greater sacrifice perhaps, put aside our preferences.
“We must close our ranks about the Republic, show presence of mind and strength of purpose; and without passion or weakness, swear, like free men, to defend France and the Republic against all and everyone.
“To arms!”
The Government, by obtaining from M. de Bismarck a condition that the National Guards should retain their arms, hoped to win public favour again, as one offers a rattle to a fractious child to keep him quiet; and it published the news on the 3rd of February: