History of the Commune of 1871

by Lissagaray

Thus the Council of the Commune disappeared from history and the Hôtel-de-Ville at the moment of supreme danger, when the Versaillese penetrated into Paris.

The same prostration reigned at the War Office, where they had received the news at five o'clock. The Central Committee went to Delescluze, who seemed very calm, and said, what many indeed believed, that the fight in the streets would be favourable to the Commune. The commander of the section of the Point du Jour having just come to report that nothing serious had happened, the delegate accepted his statements without corroboration. The chief of the general staff did not even think it worth while to go and make a personal recognisance, and towards eight o'clock he had this incredible despatch placarded: "The observatory of the Arc de Triomphe denies the entry of the Versaillese; at least, it sees nothing that looks like it. The commander (Renaud) of the section has just left my cabinet, and declares that there has only been a panic, and that the gate of Auteuil has not been forced; that if a few Versaillese have entered, they have been repulsed. I have sent for eleven battalions of reinforcements, by as many officers of the general staff, who are not to leave them till they have led them to the posts which they are to occupy."

At the same hour M. Thiers telegraphed to his prefects, "The gate of St. Cloud has fallen under the fire of our cannon. General Douai has dashed into the town." A two-fold lie. The gate of St. Cloud had been wide open for three days without the Versaillese daring to pass it, and General Douai had crept in very modestly, man by man, introduced by treason.

At night the Ministry seemed to wake up a little. Officers flocked thither asking for orders. The general staff would not allow the tocsin to be sounded, on the pretext that the population must not be alarmed. Some members of the Council pored over the plan of Paris at last, studying those strategical points that had been forgotten for six weeks. When it was necessary at once to find an idea, a method, and give precise instructions, the delegate shut himself in his cabinet in order to frame a proclamation.

While in the midst of Paris, confident in her trustees, a few men, without soldiers, without information, prepared the first resistance, the Versaillese continued to slip in through the breaches of the ramparts. Wave on wave their flood grew silent, veiled by the dusk. By degrees they massed themselves between the railway line and the fortifications. At eight o'clock they were numerous enough to divide into two columns, one of which, turning to the left, crowned the bastions 66 and 67, while the other filed off to the right on the route to Versailles. The first lodged itself in the centre of Passy, occupying the St. Périne asylum, the church, and the place of Auteuil; the other, having swept away the rudimentary barricade constructed on the quay at the top of the Rue Guillon, towards one o'clock in the morning, by the Rue Raynouard, scaled the Trocadéro, neither fortified nor manned on this side, and at once took possession of it.

At the Hôtel-de-Ville the members of the Committee of Public Safety had at last assembled. Billioray alone had vanished not to appear again. They knew nothing of the number and position of the troops, but knew that under the cover of night the enemy had entered Passy. Staff officers sent to the Muette to reconnoitre came back with the most reassuring news. Thereupon, at eleven o'clock, a member of the Council, Assi, entered the Rue Beethoven, where the lights had been put out. Soon his horse refused to advance; it had slipped down in large pools of blood, and National Guards seemed to lie asleep along the walls. Suddenly men sprang forward. They were the Versaillese waiting in ambush; these sleepers were murdered Federals.

The Versaillese were slaughtering within the walls of Paris, and Paris knew it not. The night was clear, starlit, mild, fragrant; the theatres were crowded, the boulevards sparkling with life and gaiety, the bright cafés swarming with visitors, and the cannon were everywhere hushed—a silence unknown for three weeks. If "the finest army that France ever had" were to push straight on by the quays and boulevards, entirely free of barricades, with one bound, without firing a shot, it would crush the Commune of Paris.

The volunteers held out on the railway line till midnight; then, exhausted, left without any reinforcements, they fell back upon La Muette. General Clinchant followed them, occupied the Auteuil gate, passed by that of Passy, and marched on the headquarters of Dombrowski. Fifty volunteers for some time still kept up a skirmish in the château, but outflanked on the east, about to be closed in from the Trocadéro, at half-past one in the morning they beat a retreat on the Champs-Elysées.

On the left bank General Cissey had the whole evening massed his forces at about 200 yards from the enceinte. At midnight his sappers crossed the moat, scaled the ramparts, without even falling in with a sentinel, and opened the gates of Sèvres and Versailles.

At three o'clock in the morning the Versaillese inundated Paris through the five gaping wounds of the gates of Passy, Auteuil, St. Cloud, Sèvres, and Versailles. The greater part of the fifteenth arrondissement was occupied, the Muette taken; taken all Passy and the heights of the Trocadéro, taken too the powder-magazine of the Rue Beethoven, immense catacombs running underneath the sixteenth arrondissement, crammed with 3,000 barrels of powder, millions of cartridges, thousands of shells. At five o'clock the first Versaillese shell fell upon the Légion d'Honneur. As on the morning of the 2nd December, Paris was asleep.