At Creuzot, also the proletarians were defeated. Yet the Socialists administered the town from the 4th September, the mayor, Dumay, being a former workman at the iron works. On the 25th, at the news from Lyons, they spoke of proclaiming the Commune. At their review on the 26th the National Guards cried "Vive la Commune!" and the crowd accompanied them to the Place of the Mairie, held by the colonel of cuirassiers, Gerhardt. He ordered the foot-soldiers to fire. They refused. He then ordered the cavalry to charge; but the guards levelled their bayonets and invaded the mairie. Dumay pronounced the abolition of the Versailles Government, proclaimed the Commune, and the red flag was hoisted.
But there, as everywhere else, the people did not move. The commander of Creuzot came back the next day with a reinforcement, dispersed the crowd, which was standing curious and passive in the square, and took possession of the mairie.
In four days all the revolutionary centres of the east, Lyons, St. Etienne, and Creuzot, were lost to the Commune.
FOOTNOTES:
[102] He then and there inaugurated this incomparable lying campaign, the progress of which we shall closely watch. On the 19th he said, "The army, to the number of 40,000 men, is concentrated in good order at Versailles." There were 23,000 men (the number given by himself in the Enquête) totally disbanded. On the 20th: "The Government did not want to enter into a bloody struggle, though provoked." By the 21st the army had grown to 45,000 men: "The insurrection is disavowed by everybody." On the 22nd: "From all sides the Government is offered battalions of mobiles to support it against anarchy." On the 27th, while the votes were being counted: "A considerable proportion of the population and of the National Guard of Paris solicits the help of the provinces to re-establish order."
[103] "Considering," said they in their declaration, "that the Provisional Commune of Lyons, acclaimed by the National Guard, is no longer feeling itself supported by them, the members of the Commune declare themselves released from their engagements towards their electors, and resign all powers they have received."
[104] Certain infamous evidence must be quoted in full in order to give a notion of the delirium tremens of the great bourgeoisie when speaking of the Commune. Four months after these events the Prefect Ducros, the inventor of the famous bridges of the Marne, deposed before the Commission d'Enquête sur le 18 Mars: "They did not respect his corpse; they cut off his head. In the night, horrible to say, one of the men who had participated in the assassination, and who has been put on his trial, came to a café offering those present pieces of M. De l'Espée's skull, and cracking under his teeth pieces of the same skull." And Ducros dared to add: "The man had been arrested, put on his trial, and acquitted." Horrible imaginings, which even the Radicals of St. Etienne have stigmatised.