XXVII.
To whom shall we listen? Whom believe? It would take a hundred pages, and more, to relate all the different rumours which have circulated to-day, the 4th of April, the second day of the horrible straggle. Let us hastily note down the most persistent of these assertions; later I will put some order into this pell-mell of news.
All through the night the drums beat to arms in every quarter of the town. Companies assembled rapidly, and directed their way towards the Place Vendôme or the Porte Maillot, shouting, “A Versailles!” Since five this morning, General Bergeret has occupied the Rond-Point of Courbevoie. This position has been evacuated by the troops of the Assembly. How was this? Were the Federals not beaten yesterday?
(One thing goes against General Bergeret in the opinion of his troops: he drives to battle in a carriage.)
He has formed his troops into columns. No less than sixty thousand men are under his orders; two batteries of seven guns support the infantry; omnibuses follow, filled with provisions. They march towards the Mont Valérien; after having taken the fort, they will march on Versailles by Rueil and Nanterre.[[34]] After they have taken the Mont Valérien! there is not a moment’s doubt about the success of the enterprise. “We were assured,” said a Federal general to me, “that the fort would open its doors at the first sight of us.” But they counted without General Cholleton, who commands the fortress. The advance-guard of the Federals is received by a formidable discharge of shot and shells. Panic! Cries of rage! A regular rout to the words, “We are betrayed!”[[35]] The army of the Commune is divided into two fragments: one—scarcely three battalions strong—flies in the direction of Versailles, the other regains Paris with praiseworthy precipitation. Must the Parisian combatants be accused of cowardice for this flight? No! They were surprised; had never expected such a reception from Mont Valérien; had they been warned, they would have held out better. After all, there was more fright than harm done in the affair; the huge fortress could have annihilated the Communists, and it was satisfied with dispersing them. But what has become of the three battalions that passed Mont Valérien? Bravely they went forward.
In the meantime another movement was being made upon Versailles by Meudon and Clamart. A small number of battalions had marched out during the night, and are massed under cover of the forts of Issy and Vanves. They have managed to establish a battery of a few guns on a wooded eminence, at the foot of the glacis of Fort. Issy, and their pieces are firing upon the batteries of the Versailles troops at Meudon, which are answering them furiously. It is a duel of artillery, as in the time—the good time, alas!—of the Prussians.
Up to this moment the information is tolerably clear; probable even, and one is able to come to some idea of the respective positions of the belligerents. But towards two o’clock in the afternoon all the reports get confused and contradictory.
An estafette, who has come from the Porte Maillot, cried to a group formed on the place of the New Opera-house, “We are victorious! Flourens has entered Versailles at the head of forty thousand men. A hundred deputies have been taken. Thiers is a prisoner.”
Elsewhere it is said that in the rout of that morning, at the foot of Mont Valérien, Flourens had disappeared. And where could he have found the forty thousand men to lead them to Versailles?
At the same time a rumour spreads that General Bergeret has been grievously wounded by a shell. “Pure exaggeration!” some one answers. “The General has only had two horses killed under him.”