When M. Thiers was apprised of the fall of Montmartre, he believed the battle over, and telegraphed to the prefects. For six weeks he had not ceased to announce that, the ramparts taken, the insurgents would fly; but Paris, contrary to the habits of the men of Sedan and Metz and of the National Defence, contested street by street, house by house, and rather than surrender, burned them.
A blinding glare arose at nightfall. The Tuileries were burning, so also the Légion d'Honneur, the Conseil d'Etat, and the Cour des Comptes. Formidable detonations were heard from the palace of the kings, whose walls were falling, its vast cupolas giving way. Flames, now slow, now rapid as darts, flashed from a hundred windows; the red tide of the Seine reflected the monuments, thus redoubling the conflagration. Fanned by an eastern wind, the blazing flames rose up against Versailles, and cried to the conqueror of Paris that he will no longer find his place there, and that these monarchical monuments will not again shelter a monarchy. The Rue du Bac, the Rue du Lille, La Croix-Rouge, dashed luminous columns into the air; the Rue Royale to St. Sulplice seemed a wall of fire divided by the Seine. Eddies of smoke clouded all the west of Paris, and the spiral flames shooting forth from these furnaces emitted showers of sparks that fell upon the neighbouring quarters.
Eleven o'clock.—We go to the Hôtel-de-Ville. Sentinels on far advanced posts made it secure against any surprise; at long intervals a gaslight flickered in the obscurity; at several barricades there were torches, and even bivouac fires. That of the St. Jacques Square, opposite the Boulevard Sebastopol, made of large trees, whose branches swung to and fro in the wind, muttered and fluttered in the redoubtable gloom.
The façade of the Hôtel-de-Ville was reddened by distant flames; the statues, which the reflection seemed to move, stirred in their niches. The interior courts were filled with crowds and tumult. Artillery ammunition waggons, carts, omnibuses, crammed with munitions, rolled off with a great noise under the vaults. The fêtes of Baron Haussmann awoke no such sonorous echoes. Life and death, agony and laughter, jostled each other on these staircases, on every storey, illumined by the same dazzling light of the gas.
The lower lobbies were encumbered by National Guards rolled up in their blankets. The wounded lay groaning on their reddened mattresses; blood was trickling from the litters placed along the walls. A commander was brought in who no longer presented a human aspect; a ball had passed through his cheek, carried away the lips, broken the teeth. Incapable of articulating a sound, this brave fellow still waved a red flag, and summoned those who were resting to replace him in the combat.
In the notorious chamber of Valentine Haussmann the corpse of Dombrowski was laid out upon a bed of blue satin. A single taper threw its lurid light on the heroic soldier. His face, white as snow, was calm, the nose fine, the mouth delicate, the small fair beard standing out pointed. Two aides-de-camp seated in the darkened corners watched silently, another hurriedly sketched the last traits of his general.
The double marble staircase was filled with people coming and going, whom the sentinels could hardly keep away from the delegate's cabinet. Delescluze signed orders, mute and wan as a spectre. The anguish of those later days had absorbed his last vital powers; his voice was only a death-rattle; the eye and the heart alone lived still in this moribund athlete.
Two or three officers calmly prepared the orders, stamped and sent the despatches; many officers and guards surrounded the table. No speeches, a little conversation, among the various groups. If hope had waned, resolution had not grown less.
Who are these officers who have laid aside their uniforms, these members of the Council, these functionaries who have shaved their beards? What are they doing here amongst these brave men? Ranvier, meeting two of his colleagues thus disguised, who during the siege had been among the most beplumed, apostrophised them, threatening to shoot them if they did not at once return to their arrondissements.
A great example would not have been useless. From hour to hour all discipline foundered. At that same moment the Central Committee, which believed itself invested with power by the abdication of the Council, launched a manifesto, in which it made conditions: "Dissolution of the Assembly and of the Commune; the army to leave Paris; the Government to be provisionally confided to the delegates of the large towns, who will have a Constituent Assembly elected; mutual amnesty." The ultimatum of a conqueror. This dream was placarded on a few walls, and threw new disorder into the resistance.