History of the Commune of 1871

by Lissagaray

The priests were no more wanting in the prisons than at the fusillades. The chaplain of Richemont said to the prisoners, "I know that I am here in a forest of Bondy,[243] but my duty," &c. On the day of St. Magdalene the Bishop of Algiers, making a delicate allusion to the saint of the day, said to them, "That they were all Magdalenes, but not repentant; that Magdalene had neither burned nor assassinated;" and uttering other evangelical amenities.

The children were shut up in a part of the women's prison, and were just as brutally treated. A corporal, the secretary of Mercereau, kicked open the stomach of a boy; another received the bastinado, and lingered for a long time at the infirmary. The son of Ranvier, twelve years old, was cruelly beaten for refusing to betray the hiding-place of his father.

All these unfortunate prisoners of the pontoons, the forts, and the houses of correction were for several months devoured by vermin before their cases were inquired into. The Versaillese Moloch held more victims than he could digest. After the first days of June he disgorged 1,090 persons reclaimed by the reactionists. But how to draw up indictments against 36,000 prisoners? It was all very well for Dufaure to let loose all the police agents of the Empire into the prisons; in the month of August only 4,000 prisoners had been interrogated.

Still it was necessary to satiate the rage of the bourgeoisie, which wanted a sensational trial. A few celebrities who had escaped the massacre had been taken, some members of the Council of the Commune, of the Central Committee, Rossel, Rochefort, &c. M. Thiers and Dufaure got up a grand performance.

This trial was to be the model one, to serve as a type for the jurisprudence of the courts-martial, for the prisoners were to be judged by the same soldiers who had conquered them. The old procureur and his president applied all their pettifogging cunning to lowering the debate. They refused the character of political men to the accused, and reduced the insurrection to an ordinary crime, thus securing to themselves the right of cutting short effective defences, and the advantage of condemnations to the bagnio and to death, which the hypocritical bourgeoisie pretends to have abolished in political cases.[244] The third court-martial was carefully selected. The commissary chosen was Gaveau, a low energumen, who had shown signs of mental alienation, and had struck the prisoners in the streets of Versailles; the president, Merlin, a colonel of engineers, one of the capitulards of Bazaine's army; the rest an assortment of trusty Bonapartists. Sedan and Metz were going to judge Paris.

The ceremony commenced on the 7th August, in a large hall containing two thousand seats. Personages of rank reclined in the red velvet arm-chairs; deputies occupied three hundred seats; the remainder belonged to the bourgeois of note, to "honest" families, to the aristocracy of prostitution, and to the howling press. These talking journalists, these brilliant dresses, these smiling faces, these toyings with fans, these gay bouquets, these opera-glasses pointed in all directions, reminded one of the most elegant first-night performances. The staff officers, in full uniform, smartly conducted the ladies to their seats, not forgetting to make the indispensable bow.

All this scum boiled over when the prisoners appeared. There were seventeen: Ferré, Assi, Jourde, Paschal Grousset, Régère, Billioray, Courbet, Urbain, Victor Clément, Trinquet, Champy, Rastoul, Verdure, Decamps, Parent, members of the Council of the Commune; Ferrat and Lullier, members of the Central Committee.

Gaveau read the accusation act. This revolution was born of two plots, that of the revolutionary party and that of the International; Paris had risen on the 18th March, in answer to the appeal of a few scoundrels; the Central Committee had ordered the execution of Lecomte and Clément-Thomas; the manifestation of the Place Vendôme was an unarmed manifestation; the head-surgeon of the army had been assassinated while making a supreme appeal to conciliation; the Commune had committed thefts of all kinds; the implements of the nuns of Picpus were transformed into instruments of orthopedy; the explosion of the Rapp magazines was the work of the Commune; desirous of kindling violent hatred of the enemy in the hearts of the Federals, Ferré had presided at the execution of the hostages of La Roquette, set fire to the Ministry of Finance, as was proved by the facsimile of an order written in his hand, "Burn Finances!" Each one of the members of the Council of the Commune had to answer for facts relating to his particular functions, and collectively for all the decrees issued. This indictment, worthy of a low police agent, communicated beforehand to M. Thiers, indeed made of the cause a simple affair of robbery and arson.

It took up a whole sitting. The next day, Ferré, interrogated the first, refused to answer, and laid his conclusions upon the table. "The conclusions of the incendiary Ferré are of no moment!" cried Gaveau, and the witnesses against him were called. Fourteen out of twenty-four belonged to the police; the others were priests or Government employés. An expert in handwriting, celebrated at the law-courts for his blunders, affirmed that the order "Burn Finances" was certainly in Ferré's hand. In vain the accused demanded that the signature of this order should be compared with his, which figured very often in the jail register; that at least the original should be produced, and not the facsimile. Gaveau exclaimed indignantly, "Why, this is want of confidence!"

Thus set to rights from the outset as to the plot and the character of their judges, the accused might have declined every debate; they committed the fault of accepting it. If even they had proudly revindicated their political character! But it was not so; some even denied it. Almost all, confining themselves to their personal defence, abandoned the Revolution of the 18th March, whose mandate they had solicited or accepted. Their preoccupation for their own safety betrayed itself by sad defections. But from the very dock of the accused the voice of the people thus denied arose avengingly. A workman of that brave Parisian race, the first in labour, study, and combat, a member of the Council of the Commune, intelligent and convinced, modest in the Council, one of the foremost in the struggle, the shoemaker Trinquet, revindicated the honour of having fulfilled his mandate to the end. "I was," said he, "sent to the Commune by my co-citizens; I have paid with my person; I have been to the barricades, and I regret not having died there; I should not to-day assist at this sad spectacle of colleagues who, after having taken their share in the action, will no longer bear their part of the responsibility. I am an insurgent; I do not deny it."