CHAPTER VII.
THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE TRIUMPHS OVER ALL OBSTACLES AND CONSTRAINS THE MAYORS TO CAPITULATE.
The Central Committee was equal to the occasion. Its proclamations, its Socialist articles in the Officiel, the truculence of the mayors and deputies, had at last rallied round it all the revolutionary groups. It had also added to its members some men better known to the masses.[98] By its order the Place Vendôme was provided with barricades; the battalions of the Hôtel-de-Ville were reinforced; strong patrols remounted the boulevards before the reactionary posts of the Rues Vivienne and Drouot. Thanks to it, the night passed tranquilly.
As the elections on the next day had become impossible, the Committee declared they could only take place on the 26th, and said to Paris: "The reaction, excited by your mayors and your deputies, has declared war on us. We must accept the struggle and break this resistance." It announced that it would summon before it all the journalists libelling the people. It sent a battalion of Belleville to reoccupy the mairie of the sixth, and replaced by its delegates the mayors and adjuncts of the third, tenth, eleventh, twelfth, and eighteenth arrondissements, in spite of their protestations. M. Clémenceau wrote that he yielded to force, but would not himself resort to force. This was all the more magnanimous that his whole force consisted of himself and his adjunct. The Federals installed themselves at the Batignolles on the railway lines, and stopped the trains, thus preventing the occupation of the St. Lazare station. Lastly, the Committee proceeded energetically against the Bourse.
The reaction counted upon famine to make the Committee capitulate. The million of the Monday was gone; a second one had been promised. On the Thursday morning, Varlin and Jourde, going to fetch an instalment, received only threats. They wrote to the governor: "To starve out the people, such is the aim of a party that styles itself honest. Famine disarms no one; it will only encourage devastation. We take up the glove that has been flung down to us." And, without deigning to take any notice of the swashers of the Bourse, the Committee sent two battalions to the bank, which had to give in.
At the same time the Committee neglected nothing in order to reassure Paris. Numerous ticket-of-leave men had been let loose upon the town. The Committee denounced them to the vigilance of the National Guard, and posted upon the doors of the Hôtel-de-Ville, "Every individual taken in the act of stealing will be shot." Picard's police had failed to put an end to the gamblers who every night since the siege had encumbered the streets; a single order of the Committee sufficed. The great scarecrow of the reactionists was the Prussians, and Jules Favre had announced their early intervention. The Committee published the despatches that had passed between it and the commander of Compiègne, to this effect: "The German troops will remain passive so long as Paris does not take a hostile attitude." The Committee had answered with great dignity: "The Revolution accomplished at Paris is of an essentially municipal character. We are not qualified to discuss the preliminaries of peace voted by the Assembly." Paris was therefore without anxiety on that head.
The only disturbance proceeded from the mayors. Authorised by M. Thiers, they appointed as chief of the National Guards Saisset, the madman of the sitting of the 21st, giving him Langlois and Schœlcher as coadjutors, and made every effort to attract National Guards to the Place de la Bourse, where they distributed the pay due to the guards of the invaded mairies. Many came only to get the pay, not to fight. Even the chiefs began to be divided amongst themselves. The most rabid certainly spoke of sweeping away everything before them. Those were Vautrain, Dubail, Denormandie, Degouve-Denuncques, and Héligon, an ex-workingman, an idle fellow, admitted into the bourgeois servants' hall, and bumptious like other lackeys. But many others flagged and thought of conciliation, especially since some of the deputies and adjuncts—Millière, Malon, Dereure, and Jaclard—had withdrawn from the union of the mayors, thus still further setting forth its frankly reactionary character. Finally, some soft-headed mayors, still believing that the Assembly needed only enlightenment, extemporised a melodramatic scene.
They arrived at Versailles on the 23rd, at the moment when the rurals, again plucking up their courage, made an appeal to the provinces to march on Paris. In most solemn attitude these mayors put in their appearance before the tribune of the president, girdled with their official scarfs. The Left applauded, crying "Vive la République!" The Lamourettes returned the compliment. But the Right and the Centre cried "Vive la France! Order! Order!" and with clenched hands they apostrophised the deputies of the Left, who naïvely answered, "You insult Paris!" to which the others replied, "You insult France!" and they left the House. In the evening a deputy, who was also a mayor, Arnaud De l'Ariège, read from the tribune the declaration that they had brought, and wound up by saying, "We are on the eve of an awful civil war. There is but one way to prevent it—that the election of the commander-in-chief of the National Guard be fixed for the 28th, and that of the municipal council for the 3rd of April." These propositions were referred to the Committee.