CHAPTER XII
THE COMMUNE
1871
“Cette Commune qui venait de faire sombrer le Paris héroique dans le Paris sanglant et incendiaire.”—Mme. Adam, Souvenirs.
“In each human heart terror survives
The ravin it has gorged.”—Shelley, Prometheus
For five months France had been ruled by an oligarchy. The ministers who took office on the 4th of September were responsible to no parliament. No legislative body had succeeded the Corps Legislatif, the members of which, as we have seen, had unceremoniously quitted the Palais Bourbon on that autumn Sunday which saw the birth of the Government of National Defence.
But now at the conqueror’s bidding there was to be a National Assembly. A clause in the Capitulation of Paris stipulated for its election. Accordingly, throughout France, even in the departments occupied by the enemy, elections were held on the 8th of February. They resulted in the return to “Bismarck’s Parliament,” as Mme. Adam called the National Assembly which on the 12th of February met at Bordeaux, of about one hundred and eighty republicans—radicals and moderates being almost equal—of about four hundred and fifty monarchical conservatives, legitimists and Orleanists being about equal, and finally of thirty Buonapartists.[219]