[120] Sometimes even to falsification. In his account of the 9th Thermidor, he makes Barrère say to Billaud-Varennes, "Do not attack Robespierre;" and on the strength of this expatiates on the greatness of his hero. Now, the report of Courtois that he quotes, hoping, no doubt, that no one would examine the accuracy of the statement, says, "Attack only," and not "Do not attack."
[121] It seems there was a split in the League. The Radicals, Floquet, Corbon, &c., disapproved of this semi-commanding attitude, and boasted of it later on before the Committee of Inquiry into the 18th March; but during the Commune they made no public protest against this address.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE MANIFESTO OF THE COUNCIL—THE COMPLEMENTARY ELECTIONS OF THE 16TH APRIL SHOW A MINORITY WITHIN THE COUNCIL—FIRST DISPUTES—THE GERMS OF DEFEAT.
For the second time the situation was distinctly marked out. If the Council did not know how to define the Commune, was it not in the most unmistakable manner, and before the eyes of all Paris, declared to mean a camp of rebels by the fighting, the bombardment, the fury of the Versaillese, and the rebuff of the conciliators? The complementary elections of the 16th April—death, double election returns, and resignations had given thirty-one vacant seats—revealed the effective forces of the insurrection. The illusion of the 26th March had vanished; the votes were now taken under fire. Also the journals of the Commune and the delegates of the Syndical Chambers in vain summoned the electors to the ballot-box. Out of 146,000 who had mustered in these arrondissements at the election of the 26th March, there came now only 61,000. The arrondissements of the councillors who had deserted their seats gave 16,000 instead of 51,000 votes.
It was now or never the moment to explain their programme to France. The Executive Commission had on the 6th, in an address to the provinces, protested against the calumnies of Versailles, but had confined itself to the statement that Paris fought for all France, and had not set forth any programme. The Republican protestations of M. Thiers, the hostility of the extreme Left, the desultory decrees, had completely led astray the provinces. It was necessary to set them right at once. On the 19th, a commission charged to draw up a programme presented its work, or rather the work of another. Sad and characteristic symbol this; the declaration of the Commune did not emanate from the Council, its twelve publicists notwithstanding. Of the five members charged to draw up the project, only Delescluze contributed some passages; the technical part was the work of a journalist, Pierre Denis.
In the Cri du Peuple he had taken up and formulated as a law the whim of Paris a free town, hatched in the first gush of passion of the Vauxhall meetings. According to this legislator, Paris was to become a Hanseatic town, crowning herself with all liberties, and from the height of her proud fortress say to the enchained communes of France, "Imitate me if you can; but mind, I shall do nothing for you but set an example." This charming plan had turned the heads of several members of the Council, and too many traces of it were visible in the declaration.
"What does Paris demand?" it said. "The recognition of the Republic. Absolute autonomy of the Commune extended to all localities of France. The inherent rights of the Commune are: the vote of the communal budget; the settlement and repartition of taxes; the direction of the local services; the organisation of its magistracy, of its internal police, and of education; the administration of communal goods; the choice and permanent right of control over the communal magistrates and functionaries; the absolute guarantee of individual liberty, of the liberty of conscience and the liberty of labour; the organisation of urban defence and of the National Guard; the Commune alone charged with the surveillance and assurance of the free and just exercise of the right of meeting and of publicity.... Paris wants nothing more ... on condition of finding in the great central administration, the delegation of the federated communes, the realisation and practical application of the same principle."