THURSDAY 25TH—THE WHOLE LEFT BANK FALLS INTO THE HANDS OF THE TROOPS—DELESCLUZE DIES—THE BRASSARDIERS[192] STIMULATE THE MASSACRE—THE MEMBERS OF THE COUNCIL EVACUATE THE MAIRIE OF THE ELEVENTH ARRONDISSEMENT.
A few thousand men could not indefinitely hold a line of battle several miles long. When night had set in, many Federals abandoned their barricades in order to snatch a little rest. The Versaillese, who were on the look-out, took possession of their defences, and the glimmering of dawn saw the tricolor where on the eve had floated the red flag.
In the darkness the Federals evacuated the greater part of the tenth arrondissement, whose artillery pieces were transported to the Château d'Eau. Brunel and the brave pupilles de la Commune still stood their ground in the Rue Magnan and on the Quay Jemappes, the troops holding the top of the Boulevard Magenta.
On the left bank, the Versaillese erected batteries at the Place d'Enfer, the Luxembourg, and the bastion 81. More than fifty cannon and mitrailleuses were levelled at the Butte aux Cailles; for, despairing of taking it by assault, Cissey wished to crush it with his artillery. Wroblewski, on his side, did not remain inactive. Besides the 175th and 176th battalions, he had under his command the legendary 101st, which was to the troops of the Commune what the 32nd brigade had been to the army of Italy. Since the 3rd April the 101st had not rested. Day and night, their guns hot, they had roamed about the trenches, the villages, the fields; the Versaillese of Neuilly, of Asnières, ten times fled before them. They had taken three cannon from them, which, like faithful mastiffs, followed them everywhere. All citizens of the thirteenth arrondissement and the Mouffetard quarter, undisciplined, undisciplinable, wild, rough, their clothes and flag torn, obeying only one order, that to march forward, mutineering when inactive, when hardly out of fire rendering it necessary to plunge them into it again. Sérizier commanded, or rather accompanied them; for indeed their rage was their only commander. While at the front they attempted surprises, seized outposts, kept the soldiers in alarm. Wroblewski, uncovered on his right since the taking of the Panthéon, secured his communications with the Seine by a barricade on the Bridge of Austerlitz, and furnished the Place Jeanne d'Arc with cannon, in order to check the troops who might venture along the railway station.
That day M. Thiers dared to telegraph to the provinces that Marshal MacMahon had just, for the last time, summoned the Federals to surrender. This was an odious lie added to so many others. Like Cavaignac in 1848, M. Thiers, on the contrary, wanted to prolong the battle. He knew that his shells were setting Paris on fire, that the massacre of the prisoners, of the wounded, would fatally entail that of the hostages. But what cared he for the fate of a few priests and a few gendarmes? What cared the bourgeoisie if it triumphed amidst ruins—if on these ruins it could write, "Paris waged war with the privileged; Paris is no more!"
The Hôtel-de-Ville and the Panthéon in the power of the troops, their whole efforts concentrated upon the Château d'Eau, the Bastille, and the Butte aux Cailles. At four o'clock Clinchant resumed his march towards the Château d'Eau. One column, setting out from the Rue Paradis, went up the Rues du Château d'Eau and De Bondy; another advanced against the barricade of the Boulevards Magenta and Strasbourg; while a third from the Rue des Jeuneurs pushed on between the boulevards and the Rue Turbigo. The corps Douay on the right supported this movement, and endeavoured to remount the third arrondissement by the Rues Charlot and De Saintonge. Vinoy advanced towards the Bastille by the small streets that abut upon the Rue St. Antoine, the quays of the right and of the left banks. Cissey, with more modest strategy, cannonaded the Butte aux Cailles, before which his men had so often turned tail.
Painful scenes were enacted in the forts. Wroblewski, whose left wing was covered by them, relied for their preservation upon the energy of the member of the Council who had assumed the functions of delegate. The evening before the commander of Montrouge had abandoned that fort and had retreated to Bicêtre with his garrison. The fort of Bicêtre did not hold out much longer. The battalions declared that they wanted to return to the town in order to defend their quarters, and the delegate, in spite of his threats, was unable to retain them; so, after having spiked their guns, the whole garrison returned to Paris. The Versaillese occupied the two evacuated forts, and there at once erected batteries against the fort of Ivry and the Butte aux Cailles.
The general attack on the Butte did not begin till mid-day. The Versaillese followed the ramparts as far as the Avenue d'Italie and the Route de Choisy, with the view of making sure of the Place d'Italie, which they attacked from the side of the Gobelins. The Avenues d'Italie and De Choisy were defended by powerful barricades which they could not dream of forcing; but that of the Boulevard St. Marcel, protected on one side by the conflagration of the Gobelins, could be turned by the numerous gardens intersecting this quarter, and the Versaillese succeeded in doing this. They first took possession of the Rue des Cordillières St. Marcel, where twenty Federals who refused to surrender were massacred, and then entered the gardens. For three hours a long and obstinate fusillade enveloped the Butte aux Cailles, battered down by the Versaillese cannon, six times as numerous as Wroblewski's.
The garrison of Ivry arrived towards one o'clock. On leaving the fort they had set fire to a mine which sprung two bastions. Soon after the Versaillese penetrated into the abandoned fort, and then there was no struggle, as M. Thiers tried to make it appear in one of those bulletins in which he very cleverly intermingled truth and falsehood.
Towards ten o'clock on the right bank the Versaillese reached the barricade of the Faubourg St. Denis, near the St. Lazare prison, outflanked and shot seventeen Federals.[193] Thence they went to occupy the St. Laurent barricade at the junction of the Boulevard Sébastopol, erected batteries against the Château d'Eau, and by the Rue des Récollets gained the Quay Valmy. On the night, their debouching on the Boulevard St. Martin was retarded by the Rue de Lanery, against which they fired from the Ambigu-Comique Théatre. In the third arrondissement they were stopped in the Rue Meslay, Rue Nazareth, Rue du Vert-Bois, Rue Charlot, Rue de Saintonge. The second arrondissement, invaded from all sides, was still disputing its Rue Montorgueuil Nearer the Seine, Vinoy succeeded in entering the Grenier d'Abondance by circuitous streets, and in order to dislodge him the Federals set fire to this building, which overlooks the Bastille.