The Fall of Paris: The Siege and the Commune 1870-71 (23 page)

Well might it be asked why, with the enormous forces at the Government’s disposal in Paris, this liberation had not already been effected. The answer was simply that there was no one to give the orders. General Tamisier, the commander of the National Guard, was a prisoner in the Hôtel de Ville, and so was Edmond Adam, the Prefect of Police; General Schmitz, like a good soldier, was still
awaiting written orders from Trochu. Ducrot, commanding the most powerful and dependable units in Paris, was isolated in his H.Q. out at Porte-Maillot, and heard no rumour of the uprising until about 5 p.m., roughly the time when Picard was making his escape. The fire-eating general, who had long wanted to settle the ‘Reds’ once and for all with a ‘whiff of grapeshot’, promptly and on his own initiative ordered a whole infantry division to arms, plus one battery of 12-pounders and one of
mitrailleuses
, and stood by to march on the Hôtel de Ville.

As officers sent out on reconnaissance returned with progressively worse news and still no orders arrived from Schmitz, Ducrot became almost overwhelmed with impatience. Finally, at 6.30 p.m. a telegram arrived from Picard, calling on Ducrot to report to him at the Ministry of Finance. Preferring to remain at the head of his ‘expeditionary force’, instead he dispatched a major from his staff to tell Picard that he was only waiting for the word ‘go’ to enter the city and ‘chase out the insurgents’. Ducrot’s emissary found Picard in his office, surrounded by people, in an atmosphere dense with hubbub and movement.

All over Paris drummers had beaten out the
rappel
(a sound that struck a chill in the hearts of people in whom it was associated with the ‘Terror’ of the Great Revolution), calling all the National Guard to arms, and already the Place Vendôme was crammed with loyal battalions. Picard told the major what he had done, and at once gave the authorization for Ducrot to march. On his way back to the Porte Maillot, the idea occurred to Ducrot’s emissary to call in on General Schmitz at the Louvre. There he was confronted with even greater confusion than
chez
Picard, with order heaping upon counter-order. Schmitz, though completely distracted, agreed to transmit Picard’s authorization to Ducrot by telegraph. At about 8.30 p.m. the major was in the act of mounting his horse to return to Ducrot, when who should appear on the threshold of the Louvre, surrounded by an immense crowd and wearing the
képi
of a simple National Guardsman, but Trochu himself?

One of the ‘loyal’ battalions of the National Guard to obey Picard’s summons, the 106th commanded by Major Ibos, had marched to the Hôtel de Ville, where the heavy rain had already thinned out the mob outside, and had managed to penetrate the building. There had been some buffeting with the proletarian Guards there, but no shooting. Indeed, the 106th seems to have been greeted with a certain amount of
bonhomie
by the rival elements, who no doubt expected to convert it to their cause. Reaching the ‘
Salon Faune
’, Ibos found Flourens still pacing the conference table, and immediately leaped up beside him.

Something resembling a brawl ensued, during which a section of the maltreated table collapsed. In the uproar that followed (perhaps aided by the turning of a blind eye by Trochu’s disgruntled guard, the ancient Zouave), a posse of Ibos’s men surrounded the Head of State, hustled him down the stairs and thence out of the Hôtel de Ville, with Jules Ferry clinging to his wake. More than one account describes Trochu as being literally carried off in the arms of a gargantuan National Guardsman; a version he strenuously denied, though admitting that someone did thoughtfully remove his general’s
képi
with its tell-tale gold braid and replace it by his own.

On regaining his headquarters, Trochu, apparently greatly shocked to learn of the orders that had just been transmitted to Ducrot, at once countermanded them. His motives seem to have been governed less by fear that the Prussians might choose this moment, when Ducrot’s forces were deployed elsewhere, to launch an all-out assault on the city, than by fear of the carnage his subordinate would wreak upon the mob. Post-haste Ducrot’s major rode forth with his new orders, but was astonished to learn at Porte-Maillot that the general, finally overcome by impatience as he had been once before, at Châtillon, had already left for Paris at the head of an immense column at 7.30 p.m. Meanwhile, Ducrot had sent on ahead another orderly, Captain Neverlée of the Dragoons, to inform Schmitz at the Louvre of his impending arrival. Neverlée too was turned about by Trochu with orders for Ducrot to halt immediately and report in person to the Louvre. By the time Neverlée returned, Ducrot had reached the Étoile. Although fuming with rage, he did what he was told. On his arrival at the Louvre, Ducrot forcefully represented that the Government ‘had to act immediately with energy, crush the insurgents and liberate their prisoners by force’. He begged Trochu to let him fire into the mob; he could disperse it in five minutes, and his
Mobiles
were eager to sink their teeth into the
Garde
. Trochu refused. The prevailing view was that extreme methods should be shunned, that the remaining members of the Government held by the insurgents—Favre, Simon, Arago, Dorian, Le Flô and others—should be liberated by negotiation, and that repressive measures should be postponed till the morrow.

After several voices had raised themselves in support of Ducrot, however, Trochu produced one of his typical compromises. The ‘loyal’ National Guard that had congregated in the Place Vendôme would alone march to surround the Hôtel de Ville; while at the same time two battalions of
Mobiles
, notably Bretons, that were housed in the nearby Napoléon Barracks would carry out an ingenious Trojan-horse tactic. There was, as one of Trochu’s staff pointed out, a
subterranean tunnel some one hundred yards long linking the barracks with the Hôtel de Ville, built by Napoleon I so that the Hôtel de Ville could be garrisoned against an uprising within five minutes. In all probability its existence was unknown to the insurgents, who could be taken by surprise by armed
Mobiles
emerging in their midst. At about 10 p.m., with drums beating and trumpets sounding, the ‘loyal’, bourgeois
Garde
marched out of the Place Vendôme, headed by Jules Ferry.

The scene now switches to the Prefecture of Police where Juliette Lambert had spent an afternoon of ‘mortal anguish’. That morning her husband, Edmond Adam, the Prefect of Police, had gone to the Hôtel de Ville in response to Arago’s call. To distract herself from worrying about Adam, Juliette paid a vist to Fort Romainville at the east of Paris. On her way back she had passed through Belleville, which she found ‘in full mutiny’. The ‘menacing’ faces everywhere filled her with alarm. Reaching the Hôtel de Ville she interrogated the huge crowd in the Place as to what was going on within: ‘They answered quite gaily “
tout est fini
”. I continued my questions and understood nothing from the replies’. The worst seemed to be confirmed by the appearance of Flourens, riding in triumph among the mob on one of his splendid mounts, to the acclaim of his supporters, whom ‘he thanked with a look, with a gesture, or with words’. Returning to the Prefecture at about 4.30 p.m., she learned to her great concern that Adam had still not returned from the Hôtel de Ville and that nothing further had been heard of him. For two nerve-racking hours she waited. Then news of Adam arrived, via an extraordinary figure: Frontin, a retired police superintendent now serving with the National Guard. According to Frontin, Adam had been taken with the Government, but it was some hours before his identity had been revealed. There were then angry howls of ‘Arrest him’ and, as chief of the mob’s traditionally greatest enemy, the police, prospects looked extremely unpleasant for Adam. At this moment, however, Frontin appeared, ‘arrested’ him, briskly marched him down the corridors of the Hôtel de Ville, and ‘escorted’ him to freedom, whence Adam had immediately reported to Schmitz at the Louvre.

Juliette stayed on at the Prefecture, awaiting her husband’s return; then suddenly three to four hundred insurgents appeared on the Quai outside. At their head was a young man who, until that morning, had been a simple clerk at the Prefecture and who had only come to notice through the unusual interest he had shown in the police dossiers. His name was Raoul Rigault, the fugitive that Renoir had helped in the Forest of Fontainebleau a few years earlier. Rigault now stalked into the Prefecture, producing a paper signed by Flourens
stating that he, Rigault, was to replace Adam as Prefect. Pouchet, Adam’s deputy, coolly and deferentially informed Rigault that only an hour previously he had received a similar order appointing someone else, and politely suggested that Rigault return to sort matters out with Flourens. Rigault flew into a tantrum, called Flourens ‘
idiot, bruyant
,
¹
imbécile!
’ and stamped out again. A short while later another note arrived from Flourens, this time begging the Police to look for his horse, which had strayed in the mêlée outside the Hôtel de Ville, and ending with the P.S. ‘Please remit the horse to the bearer’. Next, the ‘Scarlet Pimpernel’ figure of ex-Superintendent Frontin reappeared, this time very smartly dressed and carrying a rifle, with fresh news about Adam. The Prefect, it appeared, had gone on to the Place Vendôme, in quest of the National Guard battalions he had ordered to stand by that morning, only to be told that twenty-five had been despatched to the Hôtel de Ville, but that most of them had strayed on the way. It was disheartening news. Then Trochu had been released and the plan to reoccupy the Hôtel de Ville drawn up; whereupon Adam had promptly volunteered to lead the detachment which was to ‘Trojan horse’ the insurgents.

Midnight passed anxiously at the Prefecture. Once again, the good Frontin materialized, mysteriously, ‘as if through a wall’; now disguised as one of Flourens’ ‘
Tirailleurs
’, and bearing a vivid account of the successful recapture of the Hôtel de Ville. Down the subterranean passage Adam and his men had crept, lighting the way with resin torches, and up through a trap-door in the cellars of the Hôtel de Ville, where they gave a terrible fright to a group of insurgents brewing up peacefully around a fire. The alarm was sounded, but too late; Adam and the Breton
Mobiles
swiftly reached the main staircase. Adam, continued Frontin’s bulletin.

wishes that the Hôtel de Ville be evacuated and that there should be no killing. It’s not as easy as that. There are some bright lads who refuse to come down. The
Mobiles
are at the bottom of the great staircase, ready to fire; the Belleville ‘
Tirailleurs
’ are at the top, ready to reply. The Prefect is in the middle of the staircase, alone, backed by one side to pacify the others so that they can then be pushed outside. If there’s a shot, the first one will be for him! The insurgents threaten to kill M. Jules Favre, if the
Mobiles
advance. The Prefect replies that if they touch M. Jules Favre, M. Jules Simon, or any of the other prisoners, not one of
them
would get out alive. ‘We are the stronger’, says he, ‘Look out of the windows….’

‘I am going to see if
M. le préfet
is still on his staircase’, ended Frontin, and once again slid out into the night.

Out of the countless, and often conflicting, accounts of that extraordinary day, little can be certain, but Frontin’s story of the re-entry into the Hôtel de Ville seems to have been reasonably accurate. There now ensued lengthy parleys aimed at effecting a bloodless evacuation of the building by the insurgents, in which Dorian and Delescluze (who, in the course of this evening of wrangling, had now emerged as the ‘Red’ with the greatest qualities of leadership) played the principal roles. On and on the negotiations dragged, until Ferry with his force of loyal National Guards surrounding the exterior of the building could hardly desist from intervening. At last an agreement was reached; the Government would hold immediate elections and there would be no reprisals against any of the insurgents; in return, the Government captives would be released and the Hôtel de Ville peacefully evacuated. Dorian’s promises were endorsed by Adam and Ferry, and hands were shaken all round. At 3 a.m., the march-out began. Heading the procession, farcically reminiscent of guests going in to a banquet, came General Tamisier arm-in-arm with Blanqui; then came Dorian with Delescluze, and the rest of the Government amicably paired off each with an insurgent leader. The latent comedy of the situation seemed an appropriate epilogue to all that had gone before that day. Conspicuously absent alone was the slippery Pyat who, true to form, had ‘disappeared’ the moment the tide seemed to be turning. At the rear of the notables was Adam, keeping a wary eye on his
Mobiles
and exhorting the ‘Red’ Guardsmen to shoulder their muskets, instead of carrying them dejectedly butt downwards: ‘You have not been conquered.’ Until 5 a.m. the defile continued. There had been, Adam estimated, between seven and eight thousand men inside the building. Then Adam returned to bed, ‘broken with fatigue, but contented’, according to his wife. The ever-attentive Minister Washburne, before turning in that morning, noted ‘all the streets deserted and the stillness of death everywhere. What a city! One moment revolution, and the next the most profound calm!’ The astonishing uprising had ended as suddenly as it had begun, and without a single casualty; it was indeed, as Flourens remarked cynically, ‘Trochu’s only successful military operation during the whole siege’.

Alas for France, what ended in the small hours of November 1st was in one sense only a beginning. Later that morning, the weary Adam was woken by Picard in person, his habitual gaiety completely restored. ‘Well, Adam’, he cried, ‘have you given orders for the arrest of Messieurs Pyat, Blanqui, Delescluze, Flourens, and Millière, and the other leaders of last night’s invasion? It has been done, hasn’t it?’ Adam was shattered. The Government, he told Picard, had
solemnly promised that there would be no reprisals. No, replied Picard, the honour of the Government was not committed; he for one had not been consulted. All that day there were bitter arguments in the Government Council, with Adam taking part. From the earliest Ducrot had been applying pressure on Trochu to carry out swift justice, including the summary execution of some of the leaders as an example, and the Ministers themselves were still seething with outrage at the indignities they had suffered. Finally it was decided that Ferry and Adam’s promises to the insurgents constituted only ‘an armistice’. There was a heated row between Adam and Ferry when Adam declared that this was simply casuistry, and that he would refuse to break his word.