He had hardly 2,500 men to hold Neuilly, Asnières, and the whole peninsula of Gennevilliers, while the Versaillese were accumulating their best troops against him. From the 14th to 17th April they cannonaded the castle of Bécon, and on the morning of the 17th attacked it with a brigade. The 250 Federals who occupied it held out for six hours, and the survivors fell back upon Asnières, where panic entered with them. Dombrowski, Okolowitz, and a few sturdy men hastened thither, succeeded in re-establishing a little order and fortified the bridge-head. Dombrowski asking for reinforcements, the War Office sent him only a few companies. The following day our vanguard was surprised by strong detachments, and the cannon of Courbevoie battered Asnières. After a well-contested struggle, towards ten o'clock, several battalions, worn out, abandoned the southern part of the village. In the northern part the combat was desperate. Dombrowski, in spite of telegram after telegram received only 300 men. At five o'clock in the evening the Versaillese made a great effort, and the Federals, exhausted, fearing for their retreat, threw themselves upon the bridge of boats, which they crossed in disorder.

The reactionary journals made much ado about this retreat. Paris was stirred by it. This fierce obstinacy of the combat began to open the eyes of the optimists. Till then many persons believed it all some dreadful misunderstanding and formed groups of conciliation. How many thousands in Paris failed to understand the plan of M. Thiers and the coalition till the day of the final massacre! On the 4th April some manufacturers and tradesmen had created the National Union of the Syndical Chambers, and taken for their programme, maintenance and enfranchisement of the Republic, acknowledgment of the municipal franchises of Paris. The same day, in the Quartier des Ecoles, professors, doctors, lawyers, engineers, and students placarded a manifesto demanding a democratic and laical Republic, an autonomous Commune and the federation of the communes. An analogous group placarded a letter to M. Thiers: "You believe in a riot, and you find yourself brought face to face with precise and universal convictions. The immense majority of Paris demands the Republic as a right superior to all discussion. Paris has seen in the whole conduct of the Assembly the premeditated design of re-establishing the monarchy." Some dignitaries of the Freemason lodges appealed at once to Versailles and to the Council: "Stop the effusion of such precious blood."

Finally, a certain number of those mayors and adjuncts who had not capitulated till the eleventh hour, like Floquet, Corbon, Bonvalet, &c., pompously got up the Republican Union League for the Rights of Paris. Now they asked for the recognition of the Republic, the right of Paris to govern herself, and the custody of the town exclusively confided to the National Guard; all that the Commune had wanted—all that they had contented against from the 19th to the 25th of March.

Other groups were forming. All agreed on two points—the consolidation of the Republic and the recognition of the rights of Paris. Almost all the Communal journals reproduced this programme, and the Republican journals accepted it. The deputies of Paris were the last to speak, and then only to fall foul of Paris. In that lachrymose and Jesuitical tone with which he has travestied history,[120] in those long-winded sentimental periods which serve to mask the aridity of his heart and the pettiness of his mind, that king of gnomes, Louis Blanc, wrote in the name of his colleagues: "Not one member of the majority has as yet questioned the Republican principle.... As to those engaged in the insurrection, we tell them that they ought to have shuddered at the thought of aggravating, of prolonging the scourge of the foreign occupation by adding thereto the scourge of civil discords."

It is this that M. Thiers repeated word for word to the first conciliators, the delegates of the Union Syndicale, who applied to him on the 8th May: "Let the insurrection disarm; the Assembly cannot disarm. But Paris wants the Republic. The Republic exists; by my honour, so long as I am in power, it will not succumb. But Paris wants municipal franchises. The Chamber is preparing a law for all communes; Paris will get neither more nor less." The delegates read a project of compromise which spoke of a general amnesty and a suspension of arms. M. Thiers let them read on, did not formally contest a single article, and the delegates returned to Paris convinced that they had discovered the basis of an arrangement.

They had hardly left when M. Thiers rushed off to the Assembly, which had just endowed all communes with the right of electing their mayors. M. Thiers ascended the tribune, demanding that this right should be restricted to towns of less than 20,000 souls. They cried to him, "It is already voted." He persisted, declaring that "in a republic the Government must be all the better armed because order is the more difficult to maintain;" threatened to hand in his resignation, and forced the Assembly to annul its vote.

On the 10th, the League of the Rights of Paris sounded the trumpet and had a solemn declaration placarded: "Let the Government give up assailing the facts accomplished on the 18th March. Let the general re-election of the Commune be proceeded with.... If the Government of Versailles remains deaf to these legitimate revindications, let it be well understood that all Paris will rise to defend them."[121] The next day the delegates of the League went to Versailles, and M. Thiers took up his old refrain, "Let Paris disarm," and would hear neither of an armistice nor of an amnesty. "Pardon shall be extended" said he, "to those who will disarm, save to the assassins of Clément-Thomas and Lecomte." This was to reserve himself the choice of a few thousands. In short, he wanted to be replaced in his position of the 18th March with victory into the bargain. The same day he said to the delegates of the Masonic lodges, "Address yourselves to the Commune; what is wanted is the submission of the insurgents, and not the resignation of legal power." To facilitate this submission, the next day the Officiel of Versailles compared Paris to the plain of Marathon infested by a band of "brigands and assassins." On the 13th, a deputy, Brunet, having asked whether the Government would or would not make peace with Paris, the Assembly adjourned this interpellation for a month.

The League, thus well whipped, went on the 14th to the Hôtel-de-Ville. The Council, foreign to all these negotiations, left them entirely free, and had only forbidden a meeting announced at the Bourse by ill-disguised Tirards. It contented itself with opposing to the League its declaration of the 10th: "You have said that if Versailles remained deaf all Paris would rise. Versailles has remained deaf; arise." And to make Paris the judge, the Council loyally published in its Officiel the report of the conciliators.

FOOTNOTES:

[119] Out of 400 pieces cast by Paris during the siege, the Government of the National Defence only accepted forty, on the pretence that the others were imperfect.—Vinoy, Siège de Paris, p. 287.