CHAPTER XXVIII.
TUESDAY 23RD—MONTMARTRE IS TAKEN—THE WHOLESALE MASSACRES—WE LOSE GROUND—PARIS ON FIRE—THE LAST NIGHT OF THE HÔTEL-DE-VILLE.
The defenders of the barricades slept on their paving-stones. The hostile outposts were on the watch. At the Batignolles the Versaillese reconnaissance carried off a sentinel. The Federal cried out with all his might, "Vive la Commune!" and his comrades, thus warned, were able to put themselves on their guard. He was shot there and then. In like manner fell D'Assas and Barra.
At two o'clock La Cécilia, accompanied by the members of the Council, Lefrançais, Vermorel, and Johannard, and the journalists Alphonse Humbert and G. Maroteau, brought up a reinforcement of 100 men to the Batignolles. To Malon's reproaches for having left the quarter without succour the whole day, the General answered, "I am not obeyed."
Three o'clock.—To the barricades! The Commune is not dead! The fresh morning air bathes the fatigued faces and revives hope. The enemy's cannonade along the whole line salutes the break of day. The artillerists of the Commune, from Mont-Parnasse to the Buttes Montmartre, which seem awaking, answered as well as they could.
Ladmirault, almost motionless the day before, now launched his men along the fortifications, taking all the gates from Neuilly to St. Ouen in the rear. On his right, Clinchant attacked by the same movement all the barricades of the Batignolles. The Rue Cardinet yielded first, then the Rues Noblet, Truffaut, La Condamine, and the lower Avenue of Clichy. Suddenly the gate of St. Ouen opened, and the Versaillese poured into Paris; it was the Montaudon division, which since evening had been operating in the exterior. The Prussians had surrendered the neutral zone, and so, with the help of Bismarck, Clinchant and Ladmirault were able to take the Buttes by the two flanks.
Nearly surrounded in the mairie of the seventeenth arrondissement, Malon ordered the retreat on Montmartre, whither a detachment of twenty-five women, come to offer their services under the conduct of the citoyennes Dimitrieff and Louise Michel, were also sent.
Clinchant, pursuing his route, was arrested by the barricade of the Place Clichy. To reduce these badly disposed paving-stones, behind which hardly fifty men were fighting, required the combined effort of the Versaillese of the Rue de St. Pétersbourg and their tirailleurs of the Collége Chaptal. The Federals, having no more shells, charged with stones and bitumen; their powder exhausted, they fell back upon the Rue des Carrières, and Ladmirault, master of the St. Ouen Avenue, turned their barricade by the Montmartre Cemetery. About twenty guards refused to surrender, and were at once shot by the Versaillese.
In the rear, the quarter Des Epinettes still held out for a time; at last all resistance ceased, and about nine o'clock the entire Batignolles belonged to the army.
The Hôtel-de-Ville knew nothing yet of the progress of the troops when Vermorel rushed thither in search of munitions for Montmartre. As he was setting out at the head of the waggons he met Ferré, and, with the smile familiar to him, said, "Well, Ferré, the members of the minority fight." "The members of the majority will do their duty," answered Ferré. Generous emulation of these men, who were both devoted to the people, and who were to die so nobly.