The latter, for seventeen hours,[179] had looked silently on the entry of the troops of Versailles. In the morning the columns of Douai and Ladmirault, their artillery and their waggons, had met each other, and become entangled on the Place du Trocadéro. A few shells from Montmartre[180] would have changed this confusion into a rout, and the least check met with by the troops on their entry would have been for Paris a second 18th March; but the cannon of the Buttes remained mute.
Monstrous negligence, which alone would suffice to condemn the Council, the War Office, and the delegates of Montmartre. Eighty-five cannon and about twenty mitrailleuses were lying there, dirty, pell-mell, and no one during these eight weeks had even thought of cleaning them. Projectiles of 7 cm. abounded, but there were no cartridges. At the Moulin de la Galette three pieces of 24 cm. alone were supplied with carriages, but there were neither parapets, blindages, nor even platforms. At nine o'clock in the morning they had not yet fired; after the first discharge the recoil overthrew the carriages, and much time was required to set them up again. These three pieces themselves had very little munition. Of fortifications or earthworks there were none; merely a few barricades at the foot of the external boulevards had been begun. At nine o'clock La Cécilia sent to Montmartre, and found the defence in this disgraceful state. He immediately addressed despatches to the Hôtel-de-Ville, conjuring the members of the Council to come themselves, or at least to send reinforcements of men and munitions.
A similar thing occurred at the same time on the left bank at the Ecole Militaire. Face to face with its park of artillery, the Versaillese since one o'clock in the morning were manœuvring on the Trocadéro without a single cannon shot being fired at them. What, then, was the governor of the Ecole about?
At daybreak the Langourian brigade attacked the huts of the Champ-de-Mars. The Federals defended themselves several hours, and were only dislodged by the shells of the Trocadéro, which enkindled a conflagration.[181] They then fell back upon the Ecole, and for a long time checking the effort of the troops, gave the seventeenth arrondissement time to rise. The quay as far as the Légion d'Honneur, the Rues de Lille, De l'Université, and the Boulevard St. Germain up to the Rue Solferino were being barricaded. Half-a-dozen of the armlet conspirators, led by Durouchoux and Vrignault, were coming down the Rue du Bac at great speed, when a member of the Council, Sicard, arrested them before the Petit St. Thomas. A bullet struck Durouchoux; his acolytes carried him away, and took advantage of the occasion not to appear again. The Rue de Beaune, Verneuil, and St. Pères were put in a state of defence, and a barricade was thrown up in the Rue de Sèvres at the Abbaye-au-Bois.
On the right Cissey's soldiers descended the Rue de Vaugirard without hindrance as far as the Avenue du Maine; another column filed off along the railway, and at half-past six reached the Mont-Parnasse station. This position, of supreme importance, had been utterly neglected; about twenty men defended it, and they were soon short of cartridges, and obliged to retreat to the Rue de Rennes, where, under the fire of the troops, they constructed a barricade at the top of the Rue du Vieux Colombier. On his extreme right Cissey occupied the Vanves gate and lined the whole railway of the west.
Paris rose to the roar of the cannon and read the proclamation of Delescluze. The shops were at once shut up again, the boulevards remained empty, and Paris, the old insurgent, resumed her combative physiognomy. Estafets dashed through the streets, and remainders of battalions came to the Hôtel-de-Ville, where the Central Committee, the Committee of Artillery, and all the military services were concentrated.
At nine o'clock twenty members of the Council had assembled. A miracle! There was Félix Pyat, who had cried "To arms!" in his paper that very morning. He had put on his patriarchal air. "Well, my friends, our last hour has come. Oh, for myself what matters it! My hair is grey, my career run out. What more glorious end could I hope for than that of the barricade. But when I see around me so many in the prime of youth, I tremble for the future of the Revolution!" Then he demanded that the names of the members present should be entered, in order to mark out distinctly those true to their duty. He signed his name, and, with tears in his eyes, the old comedian trotted off to a hiding-place, surpassing by his last cowardice all his former villainies.
A sterile meeting this, spent in discussing the news of the day; no impulsion given, no system of defence propounded. The Federals were left to their own inspirations—left to look after themselves. During the whole past night neither Dombrowski, nor the War Office, nor the Hôtel-de-Ville had thought of the battalions outside the town. Henceforth each corps had nothing to expect but from its own initiative, from the resources it might be able to create and the intelligence of its chiefs.
In default of direction proclamations abounded.
"Let good citizen rise! To the barricades! The enemy is within our walls. No hesitation. Forward, for the Commune and for liberty. To arms!"