CHAPTER XXXI.
"Le commandant Ségoyer a été pris par les scélérats qui défendaient la Bastille, et, sans respect des lois de la guerre, a été immédiatement fusillé"—M. Thiers aux Préfets, le 27 Mai.
THE RESISTANCE CENTRES IN BELLEVILLE—FRIDAY, FORTY-EIGHT HOSTAGES ARE SHOT IN THE RUE HAXO—SATURDAY 27TH, THE WHOLE TWENTIETH ARRONDISSEMENT IS INVADED—THE PÈRE LACHAISE IS TAKEN—SUNDAY 28TH, THE BATTLE ENDS AT ELEVEN O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING—MONDAY 29TH, THE FORT OF VINCENNES IS SURRENDERED.
The soldiers continuing their nocturnal surprises, got hold of the deserted barricades of the Rue d'Aubervilliers and the Boulevard de la Chapelle. On the side of the Bastille they occupied the barricade of the Rue St. Antoine at the corner of the Rue Castex, the station of the Lyons Railway, and the Mazas prison; in the third, all the abandoned defences of the market and of the Square du Temple. They reached the first houses of the Boulevard Voltaire, and established themselves at the Magasins Réunis.
In the darkness of the night a Versaillese officer was surprised by our outposts of the Bastille and shot; "without respecting the laws of war," said M. Thiers the next day. As though during the four days that he had been mercilessly shooting thousands of prisoners, old men, women, and children, M. Thiers obeyed any other law than that of the savages.
The attack recommenced at daybreak. At La Villette the Versaillese, crossing the Rue d'Aubervilliers, turned and occupied the abandoned gasworks; in the centre, they got as far as the Cirque Napoleon; on the right, in the twelfth arrondissement, they invaded the bastions nearest the river without a struggle. One detachment went up the embankment of the Vincennes Railway and occupied the station, while another took possession of the Boulevard Mazas, the Avenue Lacuée, and penetrated into the Faubourg St. Antoine. The Bastille was thus close pressed on its right flank, while the troops of the Place Royale attacked it on the left by the Boulevard Beaumarchais.
The sun did not shine forth. This five days' cannonade had drawn on the rainfall that usually accompanies great battles. The fusillade had lost its sharp, quick voice, but rolled on in muffled tones. The men, harassed, wet to the skin, hardly distinguished through the misty veil the point whence the attack came. The shells of a Versaillese battery established at the Orleans Railway station disturbed the entrance of the Faubourg St. Antoine. At seven o'clock the presence of soldiers at the top of the faubourg was announced. The Federals hurried thither with their cannon. If they do not hold out, the Bastille will be turned.
They did hold out. The Rue d'Aligre and the Avenue Lacuée vied with each other in devotion. Intrenched in the houses, the Federals fell, but neither yielded nor retreated; and, thanks to their self-sacrifice, the Bastille for six hours still disputed its shattered barricades and ruined houses. Each stone had its legend in this estuary of the Revolution. Here encased in the wall is a bullet launched in 1789 against the fortress. Leaning against the same wall the sons of the combatants of June fought for the same pavement as their fathers. Here the conservatives of 1848 gave vent to their rage; but what was their fury compared with that of 1871? The house at the corner of the Rue de la Roquette, the angle of the Rue de Charenton, disappeared like the scenery of a theatre, and amidst these ruins, under these burning beams, some men fired their cannon, twenty times raised up the red flag, as often overthrown by the Versaillese balls. Powerless as it well knew to triumph over an entire army, the old glorious place will at least succumb honourably.
How many were there at mid-day? Hundreds, since at night hundreds of corpses lay around the chief barricade. In the Rue Crozatier they were dead; they were dead too in the Rue d'Aligre, killed in the struggle or after the combat. And how they died! In the Rue Crozatier an artillerist of the army, gone over to the people on the 18th March, was surrounded. "We are going to shoot you," cried the soldiers. He, shrugging his shoulders, answered, "We can only die once!" Farther on an old man was struggling; the officer by a refinement of cruelty wanted to shoot him upon a heap of filth. "I fought bravely," said the old man; "I have the right not to die in the mire."
Indeed they died well everywhere. That same day Millière, arrested on the left bank of the Seine, was taken to Cissey's staff. This Imperialist general, ruined by the vilest debauchery, and who terminated his Ministerial career by treachery,[194] had made of his headquarters at the Luxembourg one of the slaughter-houses of the left bank. Millière's rôle during the Commune had been one of mere conciliation, and his polemic in the journals entirely one of doctrine, and of a most elevated character; but the hatred of the officers for every Socialist, the hatred of Jules Favre, lay in wait for him. The assassin, the staff-captain Garcin,[195] has recounted his crime, head erect.[196] Before history we must let him speak.