"Let Paris bristle up with barricades, and from behind these improvised ramparts still hurl at her enemies her cry of war, of pride, of defiance, but also of victory; for Paris with her barricades is inexpugnable."
Great words; nothing but words.
Mid-day.—General Cissey had turned the Ecole Militaire, and thereby forced its last defenders. The soldiers invaded the Esplanade des Invalides and entered the Rue Grenelle St. Germain, when L'Ecole d'Etat-major exploded and put them to flight. Two of our cannon enfiladed the Rue de l'Université; four gunboats, anchored under the Pont-Royal, opened fire on the Trocadéro. In the centre, in the eighth arrondissement, the Versaillese skirmished. At the Batignolles they did not advance, but their shells harassed the Rue Lévis. We also lost many men in the Rue Cardinet, where children were fighting furiously.
Malon and Jaclard, who directed this part of the defence, had since morning in vain applied to Montmartre for reinforcements; so towards one o'clock they themselves went in search of them. Not one of the staff-officers could give them the slightest information. The Federals were wandering about the streets or chatting in small groups. Malon wanted to take them back with him, but they refused, reserving themselves, they said, for the defence of their own quarter. The cannon of the Buttes were mute, being short of cartridges; the Hôtel-de-Ville had sent only words.
Still there were two generals on the heights, Cluseret and La Cécilia, the ex-delegate melancholily airing his somnolent incapacity, while La Cécilia, unknown in this quarter, at once found himself powerless.
Two o'clock.—The Hôtel-de-Ville had again assumed its grand aspect of March. On the right the Committee of Public Safety and on the left the War Office were overrun. The Central Committee was multiplying its orders and exclaiming against the incapacity of the members of the Council, though itself incapable of setting forth a single precise idea. The Committee of Artillery, more beset than ever, could not yet make out its cannon, did not know to whom to give them, and often refused pieces for the most important positions.
The delegates of the Congress of Lyons, conducted by MM. Jules Amigues and J. Larroque, came to offer their intervention, but they had no mandate, and did not even know whether M. Thiers would admit them. They were received rather coldly. Besides, many at the Hôtel-de-Ville believed in victory, and almost rejoiced at the entry of the Versaillese; for indeed Paris seemed to be rising.
The barricades increased quickly. That of the Rue de Rivoli, which was to protect the Hôtel-de-Ville, was erected at the entrance of the St. Jacques Square, at the corner of the Rue St. Denis. Fifty workmen did the mason-work, while swarms of children brought wheelbarrows full of earth from the square. This work, several yards deep, six yards high, with fosses, embrasures, an outwork, as solid as the Florentin redoubt, which had taken weeks to raise, was finished in a few hours—an example this of what an intelligent effort at the right time might have done for the defence of Paris. In the ninth arrondissement, the Rues Auber, De la Chaussée d'Antin, De Châteaudun, the cross-roads of the Faubourg Montmartre, Notre Dame de Lorette, De la Trinité, and the Rue des Martyrs were being unpaved. The large approaches, La Chapelle, Buttes Chaumont, Belleville, Ménilmontant, the Rue de la Roquette, the Bastille, the Boulevards Voltaire and Richard Lenoir, the Place du Château d'Eau, the large boulevards especially from the Porte St. Denis; and on the left bank the whole length of the Boulevard St. Michel, the Panthéon, the Rue St. Jacques, the Gobelins, and the principal avenues of the thirteenth arrondissement were being barricaded. A great many of these works of defence were never finished.
While Paris was preparing for the last struggle, Versailles was wild with joy. The Assembly had met at an early hour, and M. Thiers would not leave to any of his Ministers the glory of announcing the first butcheries in Paris. His appearance on the tribune was hailed by ferocious cheers. "The cause of justice, order, humanity, and civilisation has triumphed," screamed the little man. "The generals who have conducted the entry into Paris are great men of war. The expiation will be complete. It will take place in the name of the law, by the law, with the law." The Chamber understanding this promise of carnage, rose to a man, and by a unanimous vote, Right, Left, Centre, Clericals, Republicans, Monarchists, swore that "the Versaillese army and the chief of the executive power had merited well of the country."[182]
The sitting was at once raised, the deputies rushing off to the Lanterne de Diogène, Châtillon, and Mont-Valérien, to all the heights whence they could, as from an immense Colosseum, observe the butchery of Paris without incurring the least danger. The population of idlers accompanied them, and on this route of Versailles deputies, courtesans, women of the world, journalists, functionaries stung by the same craving, sometimes crammed into the same carriage, displayed before the Prussians and France the spectacle of a saturnalia of the bourgeoisie.