The next day, the twenty-second of March—henceforth one of the saddest dates in the history of Paris—I was on duty at the church of the Madeleine—that is to say, appointed to receive, from six o’clock in the morning till ten at night, those persons who sought the religious or charitable ministry of the priest, and to afford them all the satisfaction within the limits of possibility.
As the pacific manifestations on the eve had produced a favorable moral effect, it was proposed to renew them during the day, as I learned from some of my friends, known to be devoted to the cause of liberty
and order, so strangely compromised. The aim they had in view and the means to which they had recourse were not only incontestably legal, but also in conformity with the interests and dignity of all the inhabitants of Paris. Therefore, far from concealing them, they openly discussed them, hoping they would be understood and appreciated as they deserved to be. They desired to promote, by means of persuasion and conciliation, respect for order and the laws, disregarded by the bold ringleaders and a part of the national guards led astray. In the midst of ruins accumulated by an unfortunate war, they wished to declare the assembly of the representatives of the country in session at Versailles to be the sole power charged to watch over our destinies, that we should rally around them and await their solution of the inextricable difficulties of the moment. The inhabitants of the Place Vendôme and the neighboring streets, wounded, and not without reason, at seeing their quarter invaded and occupied by the national guards from other quarters, who prevented travel, terrified their families, and paralyzed all commercial transactions, proposed to claim their rights, as inhabitants of the first arrondissement, to become the police of their own quarter. They violated no right, they were not lacking any propriety, in begging the citizens of the arrondissements of Montmartre and Belleville, who were installed there without any notice, to leave it to their own care. Not only are those who live in the Place Vendôme Parisians as well as the inhabitants of Belleville and Montmartre, but it was evident to those who knew Paris that four-fifths of the national guards that held possession of the Place Vendôme on the twenty-first, and especially on the twenty-second of March, had never seen Paris three
years previously. Paris is rather the theatre than the author of the revolutions that take place there.
Revolutionists and rioters belong to all parts of France and Europe, and in disastrous times they hasten to Paris, hoping to catch fish in the troubled waters.
I have studied all the large cities of Europe from a political and social point of view. For reasons too extended to be enumerated here, not one is like Paris, the rendezvous of all suspicious and corrupt characters—of the unfortunate who are at variance with the laws of their own country, and of men of no class who are ready to become revolutionary agents—and these are the worst of all. After the siege it had endured, the state of agitation and prostration resulting from so great a struggle, so much suffering, and so many deceptions, could not fail to attract the leading charlatans and rogues of all parts of Europe. It is not to the honor of the popular class at Paris, the most frivolous and the most credulous in the world, that these new-comers met with a success beyond their expectations, for they became in a moment our masters. Thanks to this cosmopolitan invasion, and also to the departure of too large a number of genuine Parisians who feared the Prussian bombardment less than the mob of international agents, Paris, the brilliant centre of elegance, art, and of intellect, as well as a financial and political centre, became, according to the expressive comparison of the Times, an infernal caldron, which terrified all Europe, and in which mingled and seethed all human passions.
The party that was playing its part at Paris was not Parisian or French, but exclusively social. It was a flock of birds of prey, a herd of roaming wild beasts, who had hastened from
the four cardinal points to fall on the capital of France, which a five months’ siege had weakened. The International agents wished to found the Commune, and, to realize the idea of the Commune, which especially clings to locality, home, the fireside, the steeple, the associations and traditions of domestic interest, they summoned to Paris all their boon companions of the Old and the New World, and forced the real inhabitants of Paris to take refuge in the provinces or abroad. It was a revolting cynicism, pregnant with disaster.
At half-past two, some persons, filled with terror and indignation, entered the Madeleine to inform me of a sinister catastrophe. The agents of the pacific manifestation, who had proposed on the eve to traverse the principal streets of the city, crying, Vive la République! Vive l’Ordre! Vive l’Assemblée Nationale! had become the victims of a horrible ambuscade. After passing through the Rue de la Paix, a large number of respected citizens of Paris, unarmed, and influenced only by the patriotic desire of securing, by the most inoffensive means and for the benefit of all good citizens, the triumph of equity, law, and a spirit of conciliation, had been met at the entrance of the Place Vendôme by a murderous fusillade from the insurgent national guards. The reports of the number of the killed and wounded varied, but it must have been considerable.
At the same time, I saw from the outer colonnade of the Madeleine the shops hastily shut up and people fleeing in disorder from the direction of the Place Vendôme. Every face expressed wrath and consternation. Some national guards of the eighth arrondissement hastened to rally around the church to watch over the public security.