The Fall of Paris: The Siege and the Commune 1870-71 (22 page)

Several of the British correspondents had already reached the Hôtel de Ville. There the first sight that struck O’Shea of the Standard was ‘a forest of umbrellas’. ‘Most of the men were in uniform, or had some prompting of uniform, if only a cap with a red band; and all were excited….’ There was angry talk about Le Bourget, and O’Shea heard a Belleville Mrs. Malaprop lashing the Thiers peace mission with repeated shouts of ‘
Pas d’amnistie
!’ Elsewhere Bowles innocently asked an angry demonstrator why he was yelling
À bas Trochu!
’ to be told, ‘Well… because he’s come unstuck’. The din was growing tremendous and individual slogans were constantly drowned by raucous blasts of bugles and drums, and chants of ‘
Vive la Commune!
’ Occasionally from the first-floor windows of the Hôtel de Ville, some gesticulating authority would appear to make a speech that no one could catch. Meanwhile, O’Shea noticed that the pavement outside the building itself was only held by ‘a scant line of Breton
Mobiles
’ and was being ‘gradually encroached upon’. At about midday,
Labouchere reckoned there were some 15,000 people outside the Hôtel de Ville, most of them National Guards. Nearly all were either unarmed or else carrying their muskets butt uppermost; a traditional sign that the soldiery was on the side of the Parisian mob.

Conspicuous by their absence were the ‘Red’ leaders. So far the demonstrations in front of the Hôtel de Ville bore all the signs of being spontaneous and unplanned, and indeed it seems that Flourens and his associates were almost as taken by surprise as Trochu. That very morning they were holding a council in Belleville to discuss the situation, when news of the gathering demonstrations reached them. Quickly it was proposed that the Belleville battalions of the National Guard should march on the Hôtel de Ville, overthrow the Government, and replace it with one headed by Blanqui, Delescluze, Pyat, Flourens, and Victor Hugo. Some heated discussion followed, and it was clear that not all the Belleville officers of the
Garde
shared Flourens’ enthusiasm for the project. After October 5th Flourens had been deprived of his command of the five battalions (to which he was in any case not entitled), and now he led only a small élite which he had majestically christened the
Tirailleurs de Flourens
. Both Flourens and the dissenting Belleville
Gardes
were equally mindful of the unfortunate fate of Sapia, and thus it was with only his ‘
Tirailleurs
’, some 400 strong, that Flourens and the other members of the ‘new’ Government set forth for the centre of Paris.

At the Hôtel de Ville the situation was rapidly deteriorating. For a while Arago, the Mayor of Paris and a herculean figure, had held the fort by bellowing back at the mob like an angry bull through the closed grille that protected the entrance. Suddenly a shot was fired; it was never discovered by whom or by which side. Several others followed. No one was hit, but the mob scattered backwards in haste, revealing in the empty space
Mobiles
with bayonets at the ready. There was a momentary panic and word ran round that Trochu had given orders for his Bretons to massacre the ‘sovereign people of Paris’. Meanwhile Arago, realizing that matters were getting beyond him, decided to summon by telegraph all the absent members of the Government. Trochu at once buckled on his sword, put on his epaulets and his cross of
Grand Officier de la Légion d’Honneur
, and with two aides courageously rode out from the Louvre through booing crowds. Before leaving his office, he issued strict instructions to his Chief of Staff, General Schmitz, not to ‘move either a man or a gun without my personal order in writing’. Favre had been discussing armistice terms with Thiers over lunch when the telegram arrived, but he too promptly left, picking up Picard on the way who (not without cause) grumbled all the way ‘We are sticking our heads into a mouse-trap’. Not one of the various members of Trochu’s Cabinet
converging on the Hôtel de Ville seems to have thought of bringing with him any forces.

Soon after the arrival of the Ministers, the mob recovered its nerve, and—no doubt goaded on by the actual sight of the objects of their wrath—surged forward again. This time their impetus carried several hundred into the building before the
Mobiles
could close the gates again. The major in command of the three companies of
Mobiles
within the vast building, threatened with being overwhelmed by the invaders, drew his sword. His men rushed to his assistance, striking right and left with their rifle-butts. At this point, Trochu, who had been discussing in the first-floor conference room whether the mob could be drawn off with a promise of immediate municipal elections, appeared on the stairs and ordered the
Mobiles
to offer no resistance, but to withdraw to their barracks. He then returned to his discussions, locking himself and the Cabinet in, and leaving Arago and others to harangue the invaders on the staircase. Twice Rochefort (whose resignation Trochu had refused) was sent out as an appeaser, but even this former darling of the mob had evidently lost his old touch. After angry hands had tried to pull him down and voices actually cried ‘
Á bas Rochefort!
’ he simply walked out in disgust; disappearing for ever from the Hôtel de Ville and the Government which he had forsaken.
¹
At least once Trochu himself left the conference in an attempt to pacify the mob by what he described as ‘
objurgations patriotiques
’ in one of his famous, verbose orations. Inside the ‘
Salon Jaune
’ situated on the western corner of the Hôtel de Ville with two windows facing the Seine and two overlooking the mob seething in the Place outside, the Government was stolidly continuing its debate, with Picard urging that a date be fixed immediately for the long-promised elections. Some time after 3 p.m., an abatement of the occasionally deafening tumult from the corridor seemed to indicate that enthusiasm among the insurgents was beginning to wane, and that some were actually departing. Then all of a sudden there was a flurry of trumpets, the doors of the ‘
Salon Jaune
’ burst open, and in strode Flourens, magnificently booted and spurred and carrying a great Turkish scimitar.

Behind Flourens came Blanqui, Delescluze, Pyat, Millière, and most of the ‘Government’ proposed that morning in Belleville. One notable absentee was Hugo, whose invective had done so much to raise the temperature of the ‘Reds’ to its present level, but who was now prompt to dissociate himself from the results. To make himself heard and his will felt above the hubbub, Flourens leaped up on to the
conference table. Up and down it he strode, issuing orders right and left, kicking over inkwells and scuffing up the green baize with his spurs, his boots on a level with Trochu’s nose. Labouchere, who had infiltrated in Flourens’ wake, heard him (before being hustled out again by the mob) call upon both Trochu and the Trochu Government to resign, an invitation which Favre politely declined. Millière then passed up to Flourens a draft order decreeing the arrest of Favre, but Flourens refused to sign it on the grounds that the insurgents had insufficient force with which to effect an arrest. Despite the Government’s refusal to be deposed (which manifestly discountenanced the ‘Reds’), the process of replacing it now ensued regardless. Once again the spectacle of September 4th was repeated, with a snow-flurry of paper slips descending on the expectant mob in the Place below. Many of the lists of the ‘Committee of Public Safety’ (as the traditionalist-minded ‘Reds’ intended to call themselves) began with the name of Flourens, especially those that the brash major had scribbled out himself. But it was Dorian whom the mob most persistently called for, just as less than two months ago it had in its fickleness howled for Trochu: Dorian, former industrialist and now Minister of Works, the most universally respected man in the ‘old’ Government.

A reluctant candidate, who sped from one group to another displaying a truly remarkable diplomatic flair, Dorian affably told the ‘Reds’ that he could not, under the circumstances, accept their offer. Confusion and indecision set in, revealing the ‘Reds’’ lack of planning behind the coup of that day, as well as their inherent disorganization that was to feature so largely in bringing them to disaster the following spring. Swiftly the insurgents broke up into groups and caucuses to discuss a substitute for Dorian. As Lissagaray, the ‘official’ historian of the Commune, later wrote, ‘Each room had its own government, its orators, its
tarentules
…. Thus that day which could have revitalized the defence vanished in a puff of smoke. The incoherence of the
avant-garde
restored to the Government its virginity of September.’ Tempers rose. The insurgent leaders began to quarrel among themselves; Blanqui declined to have Flourens on his ‘list’, and Delescluze did not want Pyat. Meanwhile more and more of the mob were pressing into the Hôtel de Ville, the real
canaille
of Paris, many of them drunk. With no particular political aims, some invaded and looted the kitchens; furniture was smashed and a superb plan of Paris drawn up by Haussmann himself was cut to pieces. As they surged up the great staircase, even the heavy iron banisters were seen to give menacingly. Reaching the rooms where Flourens and the ‘Red’ leaders were wrangling, these agents of the ‘dark people’ added to the chaos by themselves standing on tables and demanding a hearing.
As he opened his mouth, one was neatly felled by a heavy inkstand hurled from out of the mob; another incessantly blew a trumpet, while a third beat a drum. Blanqui became submerged, was kicked, had his venerable white beard pulled by toughs who did not recognize the frail old man, and was buffeted hither and thither, until he collapsed in a corner half-senseless. The air inside the Hôtel de Ville had become almost unbreathable. Of it, the fastidious Captain d’Hérisson remarked:

The mob brought with it its particular odour. The smell of its pipes and cigars alone contended with a stink as of wet dogs… and of dried sweat which exhales from a mass of troops, especially when those troops are dirty and have only been partially washed by the rain.

Throughout this spectacle of mounting bedlam Trochu had maintained an almost superhuman sang-froid. While Flourens and his fellows paced up and down the conference table above him, he had calmly puffed away at a cigar, observing their antics. One of the British correspondents claimed that ‘a sardonic smile played round the soldier’s mouth’, and in some curious way he seems almost to have enjoyed the humour of the situation. Then, as the ‘Red’ leaders began to row among themselves and the mob grew more unruly, Trochu quietly removed his epaulets and decorations and handed them to one of his aides. His conduct, thought O’Shea, was thoroughly ‘noble’, and it set an example that was followed by the rest of the Government—with the possible exception of Garnier-Pagès. The old man with his comic high collar and flocks of white hair divided neatly down the centre had collapsed completely when, in the midst of expatiating to the mob ‘I have witnessed three glorious revolutions’, he was rudely told to ‘shut up’. Sobbing and laughing at the same time he mumbled to Flourens, ‘I am going home, to my family; and tomorrow I shall no longer take any part in politics’. Otherwise the calm inspired by Trochu, while it averted any incident that might easily have led to bloodshed, also had a subversive effect on the insurgents, torn as they were by indecision and fraternal wrangles. The sergeant of the
Garde
detailed off to keep Trochu under surveillance appears to have been particularly impressed by the general’s bearing. Proudly explaining that he had served a long time in the Zouaves, he treated Trochu with marked deference, and while the bickering was at its height remarked to him, ‘
Voyez-vous, mon général
, these are the sods who have made us take arms at the double, and led us here without knowing what to do’; and then yelled to Flourens at the top of his voice:

Florence, ma vieille, tu faiblis!
¹

It was now beginning to get dark. The Trochu Government had been held captive for several hours, and so far no serious attempt had been made to liberate it from the outside. To the exterior world it looked as if the ‘Reds’ had pulled off a
fait accompli
. The ever-vigilant Goncourt, having read on people’s faces signs ‘of the great and terrible things that are in the air’, had made his way through the rainy darkness and sodden crowds to the Hôtel de Ville. There the sight of ‘the workers who had led the movement of September 4th sitting on the sills with their legs dangling outside’ told him the worst. ‘The Government had been overthrown and the Commune established….It was all over. Today one could write:
Finis Franciae
….’. At this moment, with superb irrelevance, he was asked by an old lady if ‘the price of Government stock was quoted in my paper’. As he walked home, he saw a young National Guardsman ‘running along the middle of the Boulevard, shouting at the top of his voice ‘To arms, damn you!’ Gloomily he speculated: ‘Civil war, with starvation and bombardment, is that what tomorrow holds in store for us?’ His pessimism was shared by Minister Washburn, who had come away from a visit to the Hôtel de Ville at six o’clock with the conviction that ‘the revolution had been practically accomplished, and that we should have a genuine Red Republic’.

Though Flourens and his ‘
Tirailleurs
’ had achieved what looked effectively like a siege within a siege, the blockade of the Hôtel de Ville was in fact as far from perfect as a ‘Red Republic’ was from establishment. Jules Claretie, who had tried to enter the building, had been told by a ‘Red’ sentinel, ‘You cannot pass without a
laissez-passer
…. Signed by whom, I don’t know, but it has to have a blue stamp’. But despite this requirement, he had got in and out again without much difficulty. As the hours wore on numbers of the
Tirailleurs
had wandered off to find food and drink—or just to get out of the pouring rain—and the blockade became even laxer. Somewhere about this time, Picard, who had been so unhappy about going to the Hôtel de Ville in the first place, managed to slip out undetected through a small side door and safely reached the Ministry of Finance in the Place Vendôme. From his office there, the only member of the Government at large, he set about organizing the liberation of his colleagues.