The insurrection of the 18th of March had come quite unawares upon the authorities, who had neither foreseen it nor attempted to crush it, which would have been easier than generally believed, but unfortunately everybody seemed so overpowered by surprise that the simplest measures of precaution were disregarded, and what was at first but a revolt was soon transformed into a revolution through the negligence of the very people who ought to have been guiltless of carelessness at this grave juncture.
This is not an historical book, consequently I am not going to relate the details of the flight of M. Thiers to Versailles as soon as he heard of the revolt of Montmartre, and of the assassination of Clément Thomas and Lecomte, but I am going to speak of what I myself had occasion to observe on that memorable 18th of March which marked the beginning of the Commune.
I had gone out of my house on the morning of that day, quite unconscious that anything like a revolution, or even a mutiny, was in the air. As chance would have it, I had the necessity to go to Montmartre to see an old servant who had been in the army and was severely wounded at that sortie which Ducrot had attempted just before Paris capitulated. The man was living not far from the Rue des Rosiers, which was to become so memorable. When I reached the last-mentioned street I found it invaded by a most threatening and angry crowd, which kept howling: “Vive la Commune! Vive la révolution sociale!” Realising that matters were getting dangerous, I hastily retraced my steps, and hoped that I should succeed in escaping the attention of the mob, when one of the National Guard stopped me and asked what I was seeking and why I had come there. He would not listen to my explanations, and suddenly said: “Toi tu me fais l’effet d’être un Prussien, montres donc tes papiers” (“You look like a Prussian, just show me your papers”). When I said I had not got them about me, he took me by the arm and said: “Toi, mon garçon, tu iras t’expliquer au poste, allons, marche en avant, ou sinon——” (“Now, my lad, you will go and explain yourself at the guardhouse, march, or else——”) He showed me his rifle. Seeing that things were getting serious, I told my tormentor that if he wanted to be reassured as to my identity, he had better take me to the mayor of the 12th arrondissement, M. Clemenceau, who knew me personally and could vouch that I was not a Prussian spy, which he was taking me for. The man looked at me sharply, and then said: “Clemenceau, Clemenceau, mais avec celui là on ne sait jamais ce qu’il va faire, ce n’est pas un pur” (“Clemenceau, Clemenceau, one never knows what he is up to, he isn’t straight”). I have never forgotten this remark, which perhaps explains better than anything else the strange attitude of M. Clemenceau on that day, and the timidity which he displayed. He has, I know but too well, been bitterly accused of having witnessed, without trying to save them, the execution of the two unfortunate generals. In justice to him, I must say, first of all, that he arrived upon the scene when the executions were already over, and secondly, that his efforts would have probably been quite useless, as at that time he was himself held in suspicion by the leaders of the rebellious movement.
I do not know how my adventure would have ended if by chance one of the National Guard gathered on the spot had not recognised me as a foreign diplomat. Formerly he had been a butler at the Russian Embassy, and of course had seen me there. It is to his intervention that I owed my liberty, which without him would probably have been difficult to obtain. He further gave me an escort, to whom he gave orders to take me safely back to my own house, which, however, they did not do, much to my joy; they left me in the Rue Lafayette, where probably they thought it was not safe for them to venture, owing to their torn and dirty clothes and the loaded rifles which they carried. I made my way on to the boulevards and met at once some friends, to whom I expressed my apprehensions that the revolutionary movement which had broken out would prove much more serious than those of a like nature that had taken place on the 31st of October and the 22nd of January preceding. We were still talking when we were joined by General d’Abzac, one of the aides-de-camp of Marshal MacMahon, of whom I shall have more to say by and by. He told us that M. Thiers had either left or was leaving for Versailles, where it was intended to remove the seat of government.
No one understood why this decision had been taken, and especially taken with such haste. I was afterwards assured, by a person who was in a position to be well informed, that one of the reasons which had induced M. Thiers’ precipitancy was that he believed he would with greater facility be able to disarm the population of Paris if he could excuse this measure by the dread of a revolution breaking out, if it were not resorted to at once.
Nevertheless the revolution did break out, and for once the government found itself utterly unable to crush it. There was no army, and, what was worse, there were no leaders. The troops taken captive at Sedan and at Metz were only just returning, and it was to be dreaded that, very justly infuriated against their former generals and commanders, they would not feel disposed to listen to them or to follow them, especially if they were ordered to fight against their fellow men, and this, furthermore, in presence almost of the enemy who had not yet left Versailles or its neighbourhood.
I left Paris at the end of March, indeed I was one of the last of the diplomatic corps to go away. I went to Versailles, as everybody else did, and happened to be present at the first review held by MacMahon of the troops that had just returned from their German captivity. This review had been rather dreaded, because it was uncertain how the soldiers would receive the unfortunate chief, to whose military mistakes they owed their misfortunes. Nevertheless the ceremony went off comparatively well, though the troops preserved an absolute silence and did not greet their former commander either with enthusiasm or with disapproval. Afterwards I had occasion to ask an officer how it was that this review had taken place without the slightest manifestation of any kind. He replied to me that the soldiers did not want to give way to their feelings in presence, as it were, of the enemy, and that it had been very wise to hold this first meeting between them and MacMahon under circumstances that excluded the possibility of any attempt to make him aware of the angry feelings which were entertained in regard to him by the troops whom he had led to defeat and to a shameful surrender.
During the two months which I spent in Versailles, until the end of the Commune, I found many opportunities of talking with leading French politicians gathered there, as to the future prospects of the country. They were unanimous in maintaining that the Republic would not be able to hold out very long, and that a monarchical restoration was imminent. Some went even so far as to believe that the Empire still had many partisans, and that, provided Napoleon III. himself consented to give up his rights and pretensions to his son, the Bonapartes might still reascend the throne. They had kept their popularity among the working classes, who undoubtedly had reaped great advantages from the solicitude concerning their welfare which the Emperor had exercised on their behalf ever since he became the Head of the State. Whatever may be said now, the idea of a Republic becoming permanent was not then congenial to the mass of the nation, who felt more in unison with a Sovereign, no matter who that Sovereign might be. The only one who saw clearly the future was M. Thiers, who, in one of his conversations with an intimate friend, forgot himself so far as to say that “The Republic has long years of life before it this time.” He did not add that he thought so because he was himself at its head.
I do not think that any nightmare can be more awful than the last four days which preceded the entry of the troops of Versailles into Paris. I will only mention briefly the assassination of the Archbishop, Monsignor Darboy, together with other victims, and the desperate resistance which was offered on the heights of Père-la-Chaise to the army of M. Thiers by the remaining Communards, who had fled there for safety, the interior of Paris no longer offering asylum to them. All these things are matters of history, but, to the stranger who had seen the capital in all its glory during the last years of the Empire, it seemed that the effect of the cataclysm which had taken place would never be erased, nor the gay city ever recover the appearance of peace and prosperity it had enjoyed before the horrors of the Commune had occurred. There was something too sinister for words in the sight of the ruins which greeted the troops of Versailles when at last they occupied the town. The sight of the destroyed Tuileries and the burned streets, which testified to the horrors which they had witnessed, appeared as things almost too terrible to be true.
But, even in those days of terror, the indifference of the French people to everything that did not personally concern them, could not fail to strike one. As soon as order was more or less restored, life began as usual, and the only lamentations which one heard were directed towards individual misfortunes and losses, rather than towards the misfortunes of the nation, the prestige which had been destroyed, and the humiliations that had been endured. Having one day the opportunity of discussing with a tradesman in my neighbourhood the sad and terrible events which had occurred, I asked him whether the change of government had affected commerce and industry, and I was very much surprised to hear him reply that it had not, because the Germans had spent so much money that one had not been able to perceive any difference. When I expressed my wonder that France had accepted their money with the satisfaction which he seemed to feel, he simply remarked that “C’est bien égal à qui nous vendons nos pommes de terre; l’important c’est de les vendre, et nous en avons vendu bien plus pendant l’année qui vient de s’écouler que nous ne l’avions jamais fait auparavant” (“It is quite indifferent to whom we sell our potatoes; the only important thing is to sell them, and we have sold ever so many more during the last year than we had ever done before”).