Formerly, the most ultra never dreamed of giving up their patriotism. It was reserved for the members of the Commune to divest themselves of this old prejudice of all nations. They vehemently demanded, during the siege of Paris by the Prussians, the most extreme measures—a general sortie, “des battailles torrentielles,” and fighting to the last. When conspiracy made them masters of Paris, their violence and ferocity against the Prussians changed to obsequious devotedness and civilities of the most amicable nature. Their dishonest protestations were displayed in the columns of the official journal of the Commune with a coolness that makes one blush. The delegate of foreign affairs treated the Prussians, who had just lacerated and humiliated France, and bombarded its capital, as if they were our most faithful allies, and were sacrificing themselves heroically for our safety.
The generals of the Commune, who had been imprisoned some weeks before by the government of the national assembly as Prussian spies and agents, made no change in their patriotic course. The delegate of war, General Trochu, recalled at the tribune, “is making a series of rigorous arrests, the object of which is to assure to the enemy the freedom the pending negotiations confer on them.”
The politicians and chemists of the Commune proved they had been in a good school by borrowing two ideas of M. de Bismarck and M. de Moltke, the very names of which now inspire horror—the system of hostages and the use of petroleum. To ensure the entire payment of the exorbitant requisitions on the invaded
provinces, and somewhat avenge the limited enthusiasm manifested by the humiliated and suffering inhabitants, the Prussians retained the most notable individuals as hostages, and sent them to the prisons of Germany. Citizens Ferré and Raoul Rigault found this system too ingenious and convenient not to be adopted. They took as hostages, and imprisoned them at Mazas and La Roquette, the priests and laymen who, according to the opinion of these servile imitators, had been more devoted to social and national interests than to those of anarchy and demagogism.
Fourteen months ago, a peculiar dictionary was discovered in the headquarters of the Internationale, in which was a list of such words as nitro-glycerine and picrate of potassium, and a recipe for sulphurate of carbon, and the chlorate and prussiate of potassium. At the end of the recipes were these words, significant of the uses to which they were to be applied: “To throw from the windows: to be thrown into the gutters.” If the most formidable of recipes is not to be found there, it is because the citizens of the Commune had not yet learned in the school of Prussian engineers the art of destroying houses and monuments by means of petroleum.
In continuing the account of the horrible deeds of the Commune, I find consolation as a Frenchman in the thought that the murderers and incendiaries of Paris denied not only their God, but their country, and that they were members not only of a criminal, but a foreign league.
I.
THE CLOSING OF THE MADELEINE.
In following with serious attention the various evolutions of the Commune,
we are struck by the contrast between its beginning and its end. Its first essays were rather grotesque than frightful. The statesmen most preoccupied about the quicksands on which it threatened to cast society and the nation did not at first foresee the crimes that are without a name, which made its end one of the most sinister pages in human history. The reason is easily understood. Once masters of Paris, the charlatans and rogues that composed the Commune hoped to become the rulers of France. They saw themselves already at the head of a social revolution, and, encouraged by their unexpected success in the seductive cause of pretended renovation, they set to work in earnest. Hence the deluge of strange and incoherent decrees that became a dead letter, and only served to amuse the careless and frivolous Parisian.