Massacre (27 page)

That night national guardsman Émile Maury awoke at 2.00 a.m. to the sound of drums calling him to guard service near the ramparts. No more than 200 of his battalion showed up, though for once, Maury did. He moved with the small column along the exterior boulevards. Four ‘determined
ambulancières
’ led the way, followed by a drummer and an officer on horseback. A red flag bobbed among them. At place d’Italie, they stopped and stacked their rifles. Other battalions were supposed to meet them there, but none showed up. Maury and a friend went into a wine shop and decided to return to their homes in Paris, an occurrence that may been increasingly common. When the small column moved on to Gentilly, near Fort Bicêtre, they were not missed.
⁵⁵

Maury’s battalion was not the only one whose numbers were depleted, and not only because of absentee guardsmen like Maury. Since 21 May, the Versaillais move against Paris had killed at least 4,000 men, and a good number of women and children as well; 3,500 Communard prisoners had been taken.
⁵⁶
On that same day, Dombrowski noted that from Point-du-Jour to Porte d’Auteuil the situation was ‘bad’. He had only 4,000 fighters in the sector of La Muette, 2,000 at Neuilly, and a mere 200 at Asnières and Saint-Ouen. Troops could not be left on the ramparts, where they were fully exposed to cannon fire from Issy and Moulineaux.
⁵⁷
Versaillais shelling was unrelenting.

Still, on that warm and sunny Sunday of 21 May, it was as if nothing were amiss. Somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000 people turned out for a Sunday concert in the gardens of the Tuileries. The American W. Pembroke Fetridge found there ‘a hot stream of people who belonged to every nationality and rank of life … there were shopkeepers and their wives … gentlemen whose National Guard trousers were rendered respectable by the grey jacket or blouse of a citizen; humdrum housewives who approved everything, and gaped their admiration of so much gorgeous wall-colouring in the Tuileries Palace.’
⁵⁸
Maxime Vuillaume observed an officer wearing medals and polished boots, with a sword at his side and his
képi
in hand, chatting amiably with a rather large bourgeois lady who was fanning herself with a handkerchief. National guardsmen sang ‘La Marsaillaise’, ‘Les Girondins’, ‘Le Chant du Départ’ and other classics from the French Revolution. The café-concert singer Madame Bordas, wearing a ‘flowing robe, draped with a scarlet sash … [standing] like a
warlike apparition … a goddess of Liberty from the popular
quartiers
’, belted out ‘As for the rabble! Well, there … That’s me!’ At the end of the final refrain, she wrapped ‘herself in a red flag, pointing with outstretched arm to the invisible enemy, urging us to pursue him with our hatred and crush him mercilessly. The crowd is in raptures.’ Two women passed the hat for orphans of the Commune.

Even as the concert went on, shells fired by the Versaillais cannons were now being launched from within the walls of Paris, landing on the Champs-Elysées. One crashed to earth at nearby place de la Concorde. At 4.30 p.m., the concert ended, but not before a lieutenant-colonel jumped up on the stage and announced, ‘Citizens, Monsieur Thiers promised to enter Paris yesterday. But he is not here.’ He invited everybody back for another concert in a week’s time. Posters announced a performance at the Opera the next day. Those attending a club meeting that evening heard a report that a Versaillais attack had been turned back with losses of at least 4,000 line troops – which was clearly not the case – with the assurance that the enemy would face more of the same if they dared attack again. Paris seemed calm.
⁵⁹

Monsieur Thiers was not in Paris, but his troops were, and for the moment no one in the Tuileries Gardens knew it. A full-fledged assault on Paris had been planned for 22 or 23 May. But at about 3.00 p.m. on 21 May, Jules Ducatel, an employee of Ponts-et-Chaussées, had signalled from the ramparts at the Point-au-Jour to Versailles forces camped not far away that Communard forces had left bastions 65 and 66 undefended. Porte Saint-Cloud was also vulnerable. A Versaillais naval officer entered cautiously, looking left and right, and then went into several nearby houses to make sure that it was not a trap. Returning to his trench, he telegraphed generals with the astonishing news. Within an hour, line troops commanded by General Félix Douay had entered the capital. Porte de Saint-Cloud and then Porte d’Auteuil fell without resistance, and Versaillais troops soon snared 100 prisoners at a munitions storage area on rue Beethoven.

The Committee of Public Safety learned from a message sent by Dombrowski that Versaillais forces were inside Paris, advancing through Passy. They sent several men to La Muette to confirm this, and the men somehow returned ‘with the most reassuring news’ that all was well. Delescluze, incredibly enough, refused to allow the ringing of the tocsin and simply denied that the Versaillais had penetrated the walls of Paris.
⁶⁰

After having deserted his battalion early that morning, Émile Maury and his father walked along deserted boulevards and could hear gunfire far away. Everything ‘seemed to suggest that something awful was going to
happen’. The tocsin, which by now was ringing its call of great alarm, and the roll of drums followed them home, while the gunfire in the distance appeared as a ‘shroud of death and of mourning over the great city’. Émile believed that the Commune could not win. He did not want to die in a revolution that he did not really understand.
⁶¹

That day Archibald Forbes, a British journalist, wanted to interview General Dombrowski, who was overseeing the defence of Paris from the Château de la Muette. At the Ministry of War on the Left Bank, the British journalist was astounded by ‘the utter absence of red tape and bureaucracy there … a shock to the system of the Briton’. He there received a pass to allow him ‘to witness the military operations in the capacity of a correspondent’, both inside and outside of Paris. Both had been granted with a ‘simple “fine”’.

The Commune had requisitioned his horse, however. Forbes needed a carriage. As they passed Pont de Jéna, the battery on Trocadéro opened up. The Versaillais cannons on Mont Valérien replied. Telling Forbes he had children and would take him no further, the driver deposited the journalist on the Grande Rue de Passy. Nearby houses were virtually empty ‘but a large colony of shell-holes’ could be seen. Forbes saw Communard soldiers and even some sailors lounging ‘idly about the pavements’. No one seemed at all afraid, although Versaillais shells were landing ‘pretty freely’.

General Dombrowski greeted Forbes cordially, even with enthusiasm. ‘We are in a deplorably comic situation here,’ he said, with a smile and a shrug, ‘for the fire is both hot and continuous.’ The likable ‘neat, dapper little fellow … with very little gold lace’ spoke no English but, like Forbes, was fluent in German. His staff of eight to ten young men ‘seemed thoroughly up to their work’. Dombrowski chatted as he read dispatches and ate, asking Forbes if he knew anything about possible German intervention. A battalion commander came to report that the Versaillais forces were pouring through the gate of Billancourt. A shell hit the château but the general did not seem worried. An adjutant took Forbes up to the roof, where they could see puffs of smoke as Versaillais sharpshooters tried to pick off
fédérés
on the ramparts. Dombrowski admitted that he would have to abandon the ramparts from Porte d’Auteuil to the Seine. He counted on the second line of defence and believed that the Army of Versailles would have to fall back. The Polish commander insisted ‘there is plenty of fight still in our fellows, especially when I am leading them’.

Dombrowski asked Forbes to follow him as he left to observe for himself the progress Versaillais troops were making. They scurried down rue Mozart, with Versaillais guns ‘in full roar’. As they came upon
reinforcements waiting for Dombrowski on quai d’Auteuil, they learned that the Versaillais also had taken Porte Saint-Cloud. Communard forces had begun to fall back right and left, and brief counter-attacks failed. Forbes lost sight of Dombrowski and never saw him again.
⁶²

Forbes himself retreated to the second line of Communard defence, which stiffened behind the railway line. By 11.00 p.m., all was quiet. Forbes made it to rue de Rome, and then Trocadéro, in a dense fog.

As Dombrowski orchestrated the city’s defence, even more line troops marched through the gates of Auteuil, Passy, Sèvres, Saint-Cloud, and Versailles, readying for a massive assault at dawn.

Arthur de Grandeffe entered Paris on 21 May along with the Volunteers of the Seine. The residents of Passy, a relatively prosperous neighbourhood, treated them as long-lost friends, telling them stories of Communards smashing crucifixes. A lady offered Grandeffe and others soup that she had prepared for them. Beyond, they came upon dead insurgents. One was still alive, sitting on the ground, propped up against a wall. No one left the ranks of the Volunteers to help him. Grandeffe considered the prisoners he saw ‘the scum of Paris’. One could not reason with them. In his view, they had to be dealt with harshly. If not, French society risked falling back into ‘barbarism’.
⁶³

After camping in the park of Malmaison, Albert Hans and his battalion of the Volunteers of the Seine moved to Rueil, where they awaited orders to return to Asnières. In the evening, a rumour spread that line troops had passed through the ramparts at Pont-du-Jour, easily taking Auteuil, and, commanded by Clinchant, were moving rapidly towards Trocadéro. The ‘joyous’ Volunteers of the Seine soon followed, crossing a wooden bridge, the horses and wagons generating a rumble that sounded like distant gunfire.
⁶⁴

From the moment the first Versaillais troops entered Paris, it became clear that Communards could expect little in the way of mercy from them. Some of the first summary executions carried out by the Versaillais took place in Passy and Auteuil, where there had been virtually no fighting. A reporter for
Le Gaulois
came upon about thirty bodies, and asked around. Troops had lined up victims along a ditch and dispatched them with a
mitrailleuse
. A merchant confirmed that the first killings had involved two men put up against the door of a tobacco shop.
⁶⁵

Eager to finish with the ‘bandits’, the Volunteers of the Seine reached Porte d’Auteuil. They passed overturned cannons with shattered carriages, a burnt-out railway station, and houses that had been blown apart. The
Volunteers came upon the bodies of
fédérés
whom even Albert Hans had to admit had shown courage by remaining at their position as shells rained down from the Bois-de-Boulogne. One man was still breathing, and, after some Volunteers threatened to shoot him, was finally given a drink of eau-de-vie, and then left along the side of the road with a blanket thrown over him, before a priest or someone from the neighbourhood arrived with a stretcher.

Coming upon a half-destroyed fort along the ramparts, Hans and the others came upon more bodies and the first group of prisoners they had seen. The boulevard Beauséjour was littered with
képis
, military sacs and even guardsmen’s trousers whose occupants had hurriedly left them behind for fear of being arrested. At the Château de la Muette, where Archibald Forbes had interviewed Dombrowski the day before, the troops found several dozen Communards hiding in woods and gardens. A concierge had hidden about a dozen Communard volunteers, young men and boys aged twelve to seventeen. They let the boys go.

In a charitable establishment for young women, which Communards had converted into a small barracks, Hans was outraged to find graffiti and obscene drawings scrawled on the walls, and empty bottles and garbage that had been left here and there. Finally Hans reached the Arc-de-Triomphe and the
beaux quartiers
of western Paris. Here, as in Passy, they were saluted with great enthusiasm. A woman came down from her apartment, dutifully followed by several servants, who distributed cigars, wine, bread and other food to the soldiers. She insisted that the troops return to her residence to rest up briefly.

Moving past the church of Saint-Augustin, Hans reached Parc Monceau. When they arrived, troops had just executed a dozen ‘deserters’ – that is, soldiers fighting for the Commune who were considered to still be in the French army. The scene smelled of fresh blood, in sharp contrast to the spring scent of the surrounding greenery.

After camping at place Wagram, the Volunteers took their first prisoners. Several claimed not to have fought, yet their rifles, which they had not had time to clean, revealed otherwise. One admitted that he had participated in a recent encounter at Levallois but had been in the National Guard because he had no work. ‘This poor devil’ had been caught between being ‘mistreated’ by the Communards if he did not fight or being taken by the Versaillais if he did.

At rue Cardinet, some
fédérés
called out from behind a barricade that they would surrender, wanting assurance that, if they laid down their arms, they would not be harmed. They hesitated. A couple of the Volunteers,
including Hans, went forward and convinced three of them to give up. One kept repeating, ‘I did as the others. I could not do anything other than they had.’ Believing that he had come upon someone who was clueless and not a scoundrel, Hans told him to remain quiet, fearing that he could well end up like the Communards he had seen as they passed Parc Monceau. Hans spoke with another
fédéré
, whom he believed to be drunk, when shots came from the Communard barricade. The Versaillais responded with fire and Hans took refuge in a shop. Eventually the remaining
fédérés
abandoned their barricade and fled.

Hans and other Volunteers were ordered to take the prisoners to a post, from which they would be transferred to a court-martial. Hans worried about the guardsman whom he had taken prisoner, fearing that he would be shot, particularly as he was technically a deserter from the army. Moreover, the prisoner’s
livret
recounted only several punishments for insignificant lapses. The captive asked Hans if he thought he would be shot. Hans told him that he should simply deny his name and gave him a story to relate, in the hope that he would be sent back to the mass of prisoners. When the Volunteer asked the man to repeat to him the story, he was incapable of doing it. Hans then turned him over to someone he knew of good heart. By chance, the plan worked, and Albert Hans saved his life.