"Enough of militarism! No more staff-officers with their gold-embroidered uniforms! Make way for the people, for the combatants with naked arms! The hour of the revolutionary war has struck! The people know nothing of learned manœuvres. But when they have a gun in their hands, pavement under their feet, they fear not all the strategists of the monarchical school!"
When the Minister of War thus stigmatises all discipline, who will henceforth obey? When he repudiates all method, who will listen to reason? Thus we shall see hundreds of men refusing to quit the pavement of their street, paying no heed to the neighboring quarter in agonies, remaining motionless up to the last hour waiting for the army to come and overwhelm them.
At five o'clock in the morning the official retreat began. The chief of the general staff, Henri Prodhomme, had the War Office precipitately evacuated, without carrying off or destroying the papers. The next day they fell into the hands of the Versaillese, and furnished the courts-martial with thousands of victims.
On leaving the Ministry, Delescluze met Brunel, who, set at liberty only the evening before, had at once rallied his legion, and now came to offer his services, for he was one of those men of convictions too strong to be shaken by the most cruel injustice. Delescluze gave him the order to defend the Place de la Concorde. Brunel repaired thither, and disposed 150 tirailleurs, three pieces of 4 cm., one of 12, two of 7 on the terrace of the Tuileries and by the bank of the river. He provided the St. Florentin redoubt with a mitrailleuse and a piece of 4; that of the Rue Royale, at the entrance of the Place de la Concorde, with two pieces of 12.
In front of Brunel, at the Place Beauvan, some men of the 8th legion made vain efforts to stop the fugitives from Passy and Auteuil, and then betook themselves to put the quarter in a fit state of defence. Barricades were thrown up in the Faubourg St. Honoré as far as the English Embassy, in the Rue de Suresne and Ville-Levêque; obstacles were heaped up at the Place St. Augustin, the opening of the Boulevard Haussmann, and in front of the Boulevard Malesherbes, when the Versaillese presented themselves.
Early in the morning they had begun their onward march. At half-past five Douai, Clinchant, and Ladmirault, passing along the ramparts, debouched on the Avenue de la Grande Armée. The artillerists of the Porte-Maillot, turning round, beheld in their rear the Versaillese, their neighbours for some ten hours. Not a sentinel had denounced them. Monteret filed off his men by the Ternes; then, alone with a child, charged one of the cannon of the Porte-Maillot, fired his last round at the enemy, and succeeded in escaping by the Batignolles.
The column Douai remounted the Avenue as far as the barricade in front of the Arc de Triomphe, which they took without a struggle, the Federals hardly having time to carry off the cannon that were to have surmounted the Arc de Triomphe. The soldiers marched up the quay, and ventured on the silent Place de la Concorde; suddenly the terrace of the Tuileries lighted up; the Versaillese, received with a point-blank volley, fled as far as the Palais de l'Industrie, leaving many dead.
On the left the soldiers occupied the abandoned Elysée, and by the Rues Morny and Abbatucci debouched on the Place St. Augustin, where the barricades, hardly begun, could not resist, and towards half-past seven the Versaillese installed themselves at the Pepinière Barracks. The Federals formed a second line in the rear, closing the Boulevard Malesherbes at the top of the Rue Boissy d'Anglas.
On the left of Douai, Clinchant and Ladmirault continued their movement along the ramparts. The important works at the gates of Bineau, Courcelles, Asnières, and Clichy, directed against the fortifications, became useless, and the Ternes were occupied without striking a blow. At the same time one of the Clinchant divisions passed by the outer ramparts. The Federal battalions on duty at Neuilly, Levallois-Perret, and St. Ouen were assailed with balls from the rear—(this was the first intimation they got of the entry of the Versaillese)—and many Federals were taken prisoners. Others succeeded in returning to Paris by the gates of Bineau, Asnières, and Clichy, spreading panic and rumours of treason in the seventeenth arrondissement.
The rappel had been beaten all night in the Batignolles, and had called out the sedentary guards and the youths. A battalion of engineers rushed forward to encounter Clinchant's skirmishers, and began firing in front of the Parc Monceaux and the Place Wagram, when the National Guards, deceived by their red trousers, opened a deadly fire upon them. They retreated and laid bare the Parc, which the Versaillese occupied, and then pushed on to the Batignolles. There they were stopped by barricades rising on all sides; on the left, from the Place Clichy to the Rue Lévis; in the centre, in the Rues Lebouteux, La Condamine, and Des Dames; on the right, La Fourche, the rival position of the Place Clichy, had been fortified, and soon the Batignolles formed a serious outwork for Montmartre, our principal fortress.