[255] Thus the seizures made during the house-searches, in virtue of regular mandates, were classed among the acts of theft with violence, pillage, &c., as though these acts had had any personal motive. Now it is necessary to point out that no one gave evidence of theft against the prisoners before the courts-martial; no one could say that the conflagrations had been taken advantage of for pillage.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
"Les déportés sont plus heureux que nos soldats, car nos soldats ont des factions à faire ... tandis que le déporté vit au milieu des fleurs de son jardin."—Discours de l'Amiral Fourichon, Ministre de la Marine, contre l'Amnistie, Séance du 17 Mai 1876.
"Ce sont surtout les républicains qui ne doivent pas vouloir l'amnistie."—Victor Lefranc, Séance du 18 Mai 1876.
NEW CALEDONIA—EXILE—BALANCE-SHEET OF BOURGEOIS VENGEANCE —THE LIBERAL CHAMBER AND THE AMNESTY.
Two days' journey from France there is a colony eager for hands, rich enough to enrich thousands of families. After every victory over Parisian workmen the bourgeoisie has always preferred throwing its victims to the antipodes to fecundating Algeria with them. The Republic of 1848 had Nouka-Hiva; the Versaillese Assembly, New Caledonia. It is to this rock, six thousand leagues from their native land, that it decided to transport those condemned for life. "The Council of the Government," said the reporter on the law, "gives the transported a family and a home." The mitrailleuse was more honest.
Those condemned to transportation were huddled together into four depots, Fort Boyard, St. Martin de Ré, Oléron, and Quélern, where for long months they languished between despair and hope, which never abandon political victims. One day, when they believed themselves almost forgotten, a brutal call resounded. To the surgery! A doctor looked at them, questioned them, did not listen to their answers, and said, "Fit for departure!"[256] And then farewell family, country, society, human life, en route for the sepulchre of the antipodes. And happy he who was condemned to transportation only. He could for a last time press a friendly hand, see tears in kindly eyes, give a last kiss. But the galley-slave of the Commune will only see the taskmaster. At the call of the whistle he must undress, be searched, then have the livery of the voyage thrown him, and, without a farewell, ascend the floating bagnio.
The transport ship was a moving pontoon. Large cages built on the gun-deck shut in the prisoners. In the night these became centres of infection. In the daytime, the uncaged people had but one-half hour to come up on the deck and breathe a little fresh air. Around the cages the jailers stood grumbling, punishing with the blackhole the slightest infringement of the rules. Some unhappy beings made the whole voyage at the bottom of the hold, sometimes almost naked, for having refused to comply with a caprice. The women, like the men, were sent to the blackhole; the nuns who watched them were worse than the jailers. For five months they had to live in this promiscuous fashion in the cage, in the filth of their neighbours, fed upon biscuits often musty, on bacon, on almost salt water; now burnt by the tropics, now frozen by the cold of the South, or by the spray dashing over the gun-deck. And what spectres arrived! When the Orne dropped anchor off Melbourne there were 360 sick of scurvy out of 588 prisoners.[257] They inspired even the rough colonials of Australia with pity. The inhabitants of Melbourne came to succour them, collecting in a few hours 40,000 francs. The commander of the Orne refused to transmit the sum to the prisoners, even in the shape of clothes, tools, and simple necessaries.