History of the Commune of 1871

by Lissagaray

The day before, as a barrister remarked to him, "We are all answerable, not to the public opinion of to-day, but to history, which will judge us;" Merlin had cynically answered, "History! At that epoch we shall no longer be here!" The French bourgeoisie had found its Jeffries.

Early the next day the hall was crowded. The curiosity of the public, the anxiety of the judges, were extreme. Gaveau, in order to accuse his adversaries of all crimes at once, had for two days talked politics, history, socialism. It would have sufficed to answer each one of his arguments, in order to give the cause that political character which he denied it, if one of the prisoners were at last to rouse up, and, less careful of his person than of the Commune, follow up the accusation step by step, oppose to the grotesque theories of conspiracy the eternal provocation of the privileged classes; describe Paris offering herself to the Government of National Defence, betrayed by it, then attacked by Versailles, abandoned; the proletarians reorganising all the services of this great city, and in a state of war, surrounded by treason, governing for two months without police spies and without executions, remaining poor in sight of the milliards of the bank; if he were to confront the sixty-three hostages with the 20,000 assassinated, unveil the pontoons, the jails, swarming with 40,000 unfortunate beings; take the world to witness in the name of truth, of justice, of the future, and make of the accused Commune the accuser.

The president might have interrupted him, the cries of the public drowned his revindication, the court after the first words declared him outlawed. Such a man, reduced to silence, would, like Danton gagged, find a gesture, a cry, which should pierce the walls and hurl his anathema at the head of the tribunal.

The vanquished missed this revenge. Instead of presenting a collective defence or of maintaining a silence which would have saved their dignity, the accused intrusted themselves to the barristers. Each one of these gentlemen stretched a point to save his client even at the expense of his brother lawyers. One barrister was also the Figaro's and the confidant of the Empress; another, one of the demonstrators of the Place Vendôme, begged the court not to confound his cause with that of the scoundrel's near him. There were scandalous pleadings. This debasement disarmed neither the tribunal nor the public. Every moment Gaveau bounded out of his arm-chair. "You are an insolent fellow," said he to a lawyer. "If there is anything absurd here, it is you." The audience applauded, ever ready to pounce upon the prisoners. On the 31st August its fury rose to such a pitch that Merlin threatened to have the court cleared.

On the 2nd September the court feigned to deliberate the whole day. At nine o'clock in the evening it returned to the sitting, and Merlin read the judgment. Ferré and Lullier were condemned to death; Trinquet and Urbain to hard labour for life; Assi, Billioray, Champy, Régère, Grousset, Verdure, Ferrat to transportation in a fortress; Courbet to six months' and Victor Clément to three months' imprisonment. Decamps and Parent were acquitted. The audience retired much disappointed at having got only two condemnations to death.

As a fact, this judicial performance had proved nothing. Could the Revolution of the 18th March be appreciated from the conduct of secondary actors, and Delescluze, Varlin, Vermorel, Tridon, Moreau, and many others, by the attitude of Lullier, Decamps, Victor Clément, or Billioray? And even if the bearing of Ferré and Trinquet had not proved that there had been men in the Council of the Commune, what then did the defection of the majority show if not that this movement was the work of all, not of a few great minds; that in this crisis the people only had been great, they only revolutionary; that the Revolution was to be found in the people, not in the Government of the Commune?

The bourgeoisie, on the contrary, had displayed all its hideousness. The audience, the tribunal, had been on the same level. Some witnesses had manifestly perjured themselves. During the debates, in the lobbies, in the cafés, all the ragamuffins who had endeavoured to dupe the Commune impudently ascribed to themselves the success of the army. The Figaro, having opened a subscription for Ducatel, had picked up 100,000 francs and an order of the Légion d'Honneur for him. Allured by this success, all the conspirators demanded their alms and their order. The partisans of Beaufond-Lasnier, those of Charpentier-Domalain, fell out, recounted their prowess, each and all swearing that he had betrayed better than his rivals.

While society was being avenged at Versailles, the Court of Assizes of Paris avenged the honour of Jules Favre. Immediately after the Commune, the Minister for Foreign Affairs had had M. Laluyé arrested, who was guilty of having communicated to Millière the documents published in the Vengeur. The honest Minister, not having succeeded in getting his enemy shot as a Communard, summoned him before the assizes for libel. Here the former member of the Government of National Defence, the former Minister of Foreign Affairs, the deputy of Paris, publicly confessed that he had committed forgeries, but he pleaded having done so to secure his children a fortune. This touching avowal melted the patres familias of the jury, and Laluyé was condemned to imprisonment for one year. Some months after he died at Ste. Pélagie. Jules Favre was terribly lucky. In less than six months the fusillade and the dungeon had delivered him of two redoubtable enemies.[246]

While the third court-martial was quarrelling with the lawyers, the fourth hurried through its business without phrases. On the 16th August, almost immediately after its opening, it had already pronounced two sentences of death. If the one court had its Jeffries, the other had its Trestaillon in Colonel Boisdenemetz, a kind of wild boar, a drunkard, seeing all red, a wit at times, and correspondent of the Figaro. On the 4th September some women were brought before him, accused of setting fire to the Légion d'Honneur. This was the trial of the petroleuses. The eight thousand enrolled furies who had been announced by the journals of order were reduced to the number of five. The cross-examination proved that the so-called petroleuses were only admirably kind-hearted ambulance nurses. One of them, Rétiffe, said, "I should have looked after a soldier of Versailles as well as a National Guard." "Why," another was asked, "did you remain when all the battalion ran away?" "There were wounded and dying," answered she simply. The witnesses for the prosecution themselves declared that they had not seen any of them kindle fire; but their fate was decided beforehand. Between two sittings Boisdenemetz cried in a café, "Death to all these trulls!"

Three barristers out of five had deserted the bar. "Where are they?" said the president. "They have asked to be allowed to absent themselves to go to the country," answered the commissary. The court charged soldiers with the defence of these poor women. One of them, the Quartermaster Bordelais, made this fine speech: "I defer to the wisdom of the tribunal."