Thus this day, which might have buoyed up the Defence, ended in smoke. The desultoriness, the indiscipline of the patriots restored to the Government its immaculate character of September. It took advantage of it that very night to tear down the placards of Dorian and Schœlcher; it accorded the municipal elections for the 5th, but in exchange demanded a plebiscite, putting the question in the Imperialist style, "Those who wish to maintain the Government will vote aye." In vain the Committee of the twenty arrondissements issued a manifesto; in vain the Réveil, the Patrie en Danger, the Combat, enumerated the hundred reasons which made it necessary to answer No. Six months after the plebiscite which had made the war, the immense majority of Paris voted the plebiscite that made the capitulation. Let Paris remember and accuse herself. For fear of two or three men she opened fresh credit to this Government which added incapacity to insolence, and said to it, "I want you," 322,000 times. The army, the mobiles, gave 237,000 ayes. There were but 54,000 civilians and 9,000 soldiers to say boldly, no.
How did it happen that those 60,000 men, so clear-sighted, prompt, and energetic, could not manage to direct public opinion? Simply because they were wanting in cadres, in method, in organizers. The fever of the siege had been unable to discipline the revolutionary party, in such dire confusion a few weeks before, nor had the patriarchs of 1848 tried to do so. The Jacobins like Delescluze and Blanqui, instead of leading the people, lived in an exclusive circle of friends. Félix Pyat, vibrating between just ideas and literary epilepsy, only became practical[18] when he had to save his own skin. The others, Ledru-Rollin, Louis Blanc, Schœlcher, the hope of the Republicans under the Empire, returned from exile shallow, pursy, rotten to the core with vanity and selfishness, without courage or patriotism, disdaining the Socialists. The dandies of Jacobinism, who called themselves Radicals, Floquet, Clémenceau, Brinon, and other democratic politicians, carefully kept aloof from the working-men. The old Montagnards themselves formed a group of their own, and never came to the Committee of the twenty arrondissements, which only wanted method and political experience to become a power. So it was only a centre of emotions, not of direction,—the Gravilliers section of 1870-71, daring, eloquent, but, like its predecessor, treating of everything by manifestoes.
There at least was life, a lamp, not always bright, but always burning. What is the small middle-class contributing now? Where are their Jacobins, even their Cordeliers? At the Corderie I see the proletariat of the small middle-class, men of the pen and orators, but where is the bulk of the army?
All is silent. Save the faubourgs, Paris was a vast sick chamber, where no one dared to speak above his breath. This moral abdication is the true psychological phenomenon of the siege, all the more extraordinary that it co-existed with an admirable ardour for resistance. Men who speak of going to seek death with their wives and children, who say, "We will burn our houses rather than surrender them to the enemy,"[19] get angry at any controversy as to the power intrusted to the men of the Hôtel-de-Ville. If they dread the giddy-headed, the fanatics, or compromising collaborators, why do they not take the direction of the movement into their own hands? But they confine themselves to crying, "No insurrection before the enemy! No fanatics!" as though capitulation were better than an insurrection; as though the 10th of August 1792 and 31st May 1793 had not been insurrections before the enemy; as though there were no medium between abdication and delirium. And you, citizens of the old sections of 1792-93, who furnished ideas to the Convention and the Commune, who dictated to them the means of safety, who directed the clubs and fraternal societies, entertained in Paris a hundred luminous centres, say, do you recognise your offspring in these gulls, weaklings, jealous of the people, prostrate before the Left like devotees before the host?
On the 5th and 7th they renewed their plebiscitory vote, naming twelve of the twenty mayors named by Arago, four amongst them, Dubail, Vautrain, Tirard, and Desmarets, belonging to the pure reaction. The greater part of the adjuncts were of the Liberal type. The faubourgs, always at their post, elected Delescluze in the nineteenth arrondissement and Ranvier, Millière, Lefrançais, and Flourens in the twentieth. These latter could not take their seats. The Government, violating the convention of Dorian and Tamisier, had issued warrants for their arrest, and for that of about twenty other revolutionists.[20] Thus, out of seventy-five effective members, mayors and adjuncts, there were not ten revolutionists.
These shadows of municipal councillors looked upon themselves as the stewards of the Defence, forbade themselves any indiscreet question, were on their best behaviour, feeding and administering Trochu's patient. They allowed the insolent and incapable Ferry to be appointed to the central mairie, and Clément-Thomas, the executioner of June 1848, to be made commander-in-chief of the National Guard. For seventy days, feeling the pulse of Paris growing from hour to hour more weak, they never had the honesty, the courage to say to the Government, "Where are you leading us?"
Nothing was lost in the beginning of November. The army, the mobiles, the marines numbered, according to the plebiscite, 246,000 men and 7,500 officers: 125,000 National Guards capable of serving a campaign might easily have been picked out in Paris, and 129,000 left for the defence of the interior.[21] The necessary armaments might have been furnished in a few weeks, the cannon especially, every one depriving himself of bread in order to endow his battalion with five pieces, the traditional pride of the Parisians. "Where find 9,000 artillerists?" said Trochu. Why, in every Parisian mechanic there is the stuff of a gunner, as the Commune has sufficiently proved. In everything else there was the same superabundance. Paris swarmed with engineers, overseers, foremen, who might have been drilled into officers. There lying wasted were all the materials for a victorious army.
The gouty martinets of the regular army saw here nothing but barbarism. This Paris, for which Hoche, Marceau, Kleber would have been neither too young, nor too faithful, nor too pure, had for generals the residue of the Empire and Orleanism, Vinoy of December, Ducrot, Luzanne, Leflô, and a fossil like Chabaud-Latour. In their pleasant intimacy they made much fun of the defence.[22] Finding, however, that the joke was lasting a little too long, the 31st October enraged them. They conceived an implacable, rabid hatred to the National Guard, and up to the last hour refused to utilise it.
Instead of amalgamating the forces of Paris, of giving to all the same cadres, the same uniforms, the same flag, the proud name of National Guard, Trochu had maintained the three divisions: the army, mobiles, and civilians. This was the natural consequence of his opinion of the Defence. The army, incited by the staff, shared its hatred of Paris, who imposed on it, it was said, useless fatigues. The mobiles of the provinces, prompted by their officers, the cream of the country squires, became also embittered. All, seeing the National Guard despised, despised it, calling them, "Les à outrance! Les trente sous!" (Since the siege the Parisians received thirty sous—1s. 2½d.—as indemnity.) Collisions were to be feared every day.[23]
The 31st of October changed nothing in the real state of affairs. The Government broke off the negotiations, which, notwithstanding their victory, they could not have pursued without foundering, decreed the creation of marching companies in the National Guard, and accelerated the cannon-founding, but did not believe a whit the more in defence, still steered towards peace. Riots formed the chief subject of their preoccupation.[24] It was not only from the "folly of the siege" that they wished to save Paris, but above all from the revolutionists. In this direction they were pushed on by the great bourgeoisie. Before the 4th September the latter had declared they "would not fight if the working-class were armed, and if it had any chance of prevailing;"[25] and on the evening of the 4th September Jules Favre and Jules Simon had gone to the Corps Législatif to reassure them, to explain to them that the new tenants would not damage the house. But the irresistible force of events had provided the proletariat with arms, and to make them inefficient in their hands became now the supreme aim of the bourgeoisie. For two months they had been biding their time, and the plebiscite told them it had come. Trochu held Paris, and by the clergy they held Trochu, all the closer that he believed himself to be amenable only to his conscience. Strange conscience, full of trap-doors, with more complications than those of a theatre. Since the 4th of September the General had made it his duty to deceive Paris, saying, "I shall surrender thee, but it is for thy good." After the 31st October he believed his mission two-fold—saw in himself the archangel, the St. Michael of threatened society. This marks the second period of the defence. It may perhaps be traced to a cabinet in the Rue des Postes, for the chiefs of the clergy saw more clearly than any one else the danger of inuring the working-men to war. Their intrigues were full of cunning. Violent reactionists would have spoilt all, precipitated Paris into a revolution. They applied subtle tricks in their subterranean work, watching Trochu's every movement, whetting his antipathy to the National Guard, penetrating everywhere into the general staff, the ambulances, even the mairies. Like the fisherman struggling with too big a prey, they bewildered Paris, now apparently allowing her to swim in her own element, than suddenly weakening her by the harpoon. On the 28th November Trochu gave a first performance to a full-band accompaniment. General Ducrot, who commanded, presented himself like a Leonidas: "I take the oath before you, before the whole nation. I shall return to Paris dead or victorious. You may see me fall; you will never see me retreat." This proclamation exalted Paris. She fancied herself on the eve of Jemmappes, when the Parisian volunteers scaled the artillery-defended heights; for this time the National Guard was to take part in the proceedings.