At Petit-Bicêtre they met the general-in-chief, Vinoy. He commanded the officers to be shot, but the chief of the escort reminding him of General Pellé's promise, Vinoy said, "Is there a chief?" "Myself," said Duval, darting from the ranks. Another advanced: "I am the chief of Duval's staff." Then the commander of the volunteers of Montrouge placed himself by their side. "You are awful scoundrels," said Vinoy; and, turning to his officers, "Shoot them." Duval and his comrades disdained to reply, cleared a ditch, and leant against a wall on which were inscribed the words, "Duval, horticulturist." They undressed, and, crying "Vive la Commune," died for it. A horseman tore off Duval's boots and carried them about as a trophy,[113] and an editor of the Figaro took possession of his blood-stained collar.
Thus the army of order inaugurated the civil war by the massacre of the prisoners. It had begun on the 2nd; on the 3rd, at Chatou, General Gallifet had three Federals shot who were surprised in an inn taking their meal, and then he published a ferocious proclamation: "War has been declared by the bandits of Paris. They have assassinated my soldiers. It is a merciless war which I declare against these assassins. I had to make an example."
The general who called the combatants of Paris "bandits" and these assassinations "an example" was a scamp of high life, first ruined, then kept by actresses. Famous for his brigandage in Mexico, he had in a few years obtained a generalship of brigade by the charms of his wife, prominent in the orgies of the Imperial court. Nothing is more edifying in this civil war than the standard-bearers of the "honest people."
Their band in full strength hastened to the Paris Avenue at Versailles to receive the prisoners of Châtillon. The whole Parisian emigration, functionaries, elegants, women of the world and of the streets, all came with the rage of hyenas to strike the Federals with closed hands, with canes and parasols, pushing off their képis and cloaks, crying, "Down with the assassins! To the guillotine!" Amongst these "assassins" was the geographer Elisée Reclus, taken with Duval. In order to give them time to glut their fury, the escort made several halts before conducting their prisoners to the barracks of the gendarmes. They were then thrown into the docks of Satory, and thence carried to Brest in cattle-trucks.
Picard wanted to associate all the honest people of the provinces in this baiting. "Never," telegraphed this Falstaff of pustulous aspect, "have baser countenances of a base demagogy met the afflicted gaze of honest men."
Already, the evening before, after the assassinations of Mont-Valérien and of Chatou, M. Thiers had written to his prefects, "The moral effect is excellent." Odious repetition of those words, "Order reigns in Warsaw," and "The chassepot has done wonders." Ah! it is well known that it was not the French bourgeoisie, but a daughter of the people who spoke those great words, "I have never seen French blood shed without my hair standing on end."
FOOTNOTES:
[111] MacMahon, with his coup-d'œil of Reischoffen and Sedan, saw there 17,000 men. Enquête sur le 18 Mars, vol. ii. p. 22.
[112] "To Versailles, if we don't want again to resort to balloons! To Versailles, if we don't want to fall back upon pigeons! To Versailles, if we don't want to be reduced to bran bread," &c., &c.—Le Vengeur, 3rd April.
[113] These details, related in part by the journals of the time, have been completed by numerous comrades of Duval whom we have questioned. In his mutilated, lying, naïvely cynical book, Vinoy dared to say: "The insurgents threw down their arms an surrendered at discretion: the man called Duval was killed in the affray."