by Michael Hill
Despite furious fighting between the Communards and Government forces outside the walls of Paris, inside the city the Commune was still the “complete master of Paris,” as Washburne would later write. “Day after day was passing, and nothing was being done. Paris continued to be left at the mercy of the Commune.”
When the Commune had first come to power, Washburne had seen it as a strange and sinister collection of “utterly unknown” men who had “emerged from total obscurity.” But now, firmly in control of the city, they became infamous to the world, embarking upon a savage and bloodthirsty reign of terror.
One of the most sadistic and treacherous of the lot was Raoul Rigault, a young political agitator of middle-class origins who had grown up detesting any form of civilized authority. In his youth he had been fascinated by books about the French Revolution and the bloody terror that gripped Paris during the 1790s. Although only twenty-five years old, he had already been imprisoned three times and once, while incarcerated, had tried to spark a prison revolt with “blood-curdling shouts of ‘Vive la Guillotine!’ ”
Lillie Moulton, the young and beautiful daughter-in-law of Washburne’s friend Charles Moulton, described Rigault as “short, thick-set, with . . . a bushy black beard, a sensuous mouth, and a cynical smile.” He wore tortoiseshell glasses, but even those could not mask the “wicked expression of his cunning eyes.” His beliefs were fueled by a passion for political destruction and personal debauchery. He advocated “sexual promiscuity” and viewed concubinage as a “social dogma.”
Rigault had a bizarre fascination with police tactics and undercover espionage, spending hours peering through a spyglass into the offices of the Prefecture of Police while perched on a Seine bookseller’s stall. After the rise of the Commune, he demanded and received the post of Prefect of Police. Once in power, he set about arresting anyone he deemed an enemy of the Republic.
Washburne himself described Rigault as “one of the most hideous figures in all history . . . Bold, energetic and cynical, he was consumed by the most deadly hatred of society and the most intense thirst for blood. All his associate assassins bowed before his despotic will. No one opposed him, for his gesture was the signal of death. He held in his hand the life of every man in Paris and he wrought his vengeance on every one for whom he took a dislike.”
Washburne would later find a “method” in Rigault’s madness, accusing him of using countless acts of violence to “keep up terror” in the city. Above all, Washburne would come to realize that Rigault “took devilish pleasure in tormenting his victims.”
On April 4, Rigault ordered the arrest and imprisonment of the Catholic Archbishop of Paris, Monsignor Georges Darboy.
Elihu Washburne, Paris—to Secretary of State Hamilton Fish, Washington, D.C.—April 6, 1871
The Archbishop of Paris, Monseigneur Darboy, was arrested the night before last and carried to prison, while his palace was plundered . . . The Abbé Deguerry, the curé of the Madeleine, was also arrested and sent to prison on Tuesday night . . . Four priests were also arrested during the same night and carried to Mazas [prison]. As you may well imagine, the greatest terror prevails among all these people who are now being hunted down. Their fate seems hard indeed. All of them remained here during the siege, suffering unheard of privations of cold and hunger, visiting the sick and wounded, and upholding the courage of the people of Paris . . .
From the moment Adele and the children had arrived from Brussels, Washburne had regretted allowing them to return. Increasingly concerned about his family’s well-being, Washburne decided to move them from the house at 75 Avenue de l’Impératrice to a friend’s home further downtown and out of harm’s way.
Diary—April 8, 1871
Thursday there was a good deal of fighting in all directions and great uneasiness everywhere felt. The arrest of the Archbishop of Paris . . . and scores of priests has created the greatest alarm among all classes. The center of interest on that day was the Avenue of the Grand Army and the Porte Maillot. Constant artillery firing from both sides. Yesterday, Friday, still more firing in the same quarters and an immense crowd of people looking from the neighborhood of the Arch de Triomph. I left the Legation at a quarter before five to come to the house and I stopped there on my way. I should think there were ten thousand people in the Grand Army Avenue watching the firing. I reached the house at five . . . Sue6 then ran down and told me that three shells had struck right near the house—one not more than fifty feet off. Rather too close to be agreeable and so I made up my mind that Adele and the children had better leave the house and go down town . . .
Grack was in the Avenue of the Grand Army about 6 P.M. yesterday when a shell went over the heads of the crowd and struck the Arc de Triomph. He says he never saw such scampering in all his life—men, women and children, running, tumbling, yelling like mad.
Diary—April 9, 1871
Heavy cannonading all day yesterday between the Versailles batteries and the Porte de Neuilly and the insurgent batteries at the Porte Maillot. A good many shells came into the city and many persons killed and wounded. Big firing this morning and shells coming in fast—two fell in the Rue de Chaillot not far from the Legation. Adele and the children are still at Miss Ellis’, but they may have to move from there as the shells are falling not far from them . . .
Elihu Washburne, Paris—to Secretary of State Hamilton Fish, Washington, D.C.—April 9, 1871
It is one week ago today since actual fighting commenced between the Versailles troops and the insurgents . . . There has been but little cessation of the fighting during the week. The successes have been invariably on the side of the government troops, and the Commune forces are now strictly on the defensive . . . [A] large number of shells have fallen in that part of the city in which the Arc de Triomphe is situated, and in which locality a great many of the apartments are occupied by the Americans. One shell fell in the Avenue Joséphine, half a square distant from the Legation and the Champs-Élysées. On going to my house at five o’clock on Friday afternoon last I found that three shells had exploded in the immediate vicinity, one of them striking within fifty feet of my parlor window. Considering it no longer a safe place for my family, I lost no time in removing my wife and children to a less-exposed situation. Coming to the Legation this morning I saw two shells burst at the Arc de Triomphe. I do not know how long this business is to continue, but the communists are evidently expecting an attack, for they have great numbers of soldiers in all the streets running out from the Champs-Élysées. It is estimated that the losses of insurgents in the last week amount to more than seven thousand . . .
Diary—April 10, 1871
I started downtown to the Legation. The shells were just hissing through the air and exploding in the neighborhood of the Porte Maillot and the Arc de Triomphe. I got within about two hundred yards of the Arc when pop went the weasel—a shell struck and burst against the Arc. A piece of shell fell in the street, which a National Guard picked up, all warm and smoking, and sold to me for two francs.7 Up to three o’clock P.M. the shells were falling in all that part of the city. I took a ride in the P.M. to the Grand Boulevard and Rue de Rivoli—great many people out. They had just commenced building a barricade where the Rue de Rivoli enters into the Place de la Concorde. Not much firing today and things are more quiet than they have been for several days. I have just come from Miss Ellis to 75. The folks are still at Miss E’s, but I have to stay in my own house or else the servants will clear out. I will not leave them where I will not stay myself. Down town this P.M. and the streets are somber enough. The day has been blue and chilly.
Even during the constant shelling of the city from the Versailles troops, the rabble of the Commune commenced stripping Paris of its riches. The streets were filled with “violence, blackguardism, vulgarity, indecency,” wrote Washburne. More and more people began to flee, including many of the remaining Americans, all increasingly alarmed at the state of affairs in Paris. Washburne wrote of the dire situation facing the
people as the Commune became more and more desperate:
People were in a state of panic at the atrocities and robberies and burnings of the Commune, and were leaving Paris as fast as possible. In the first half of April it was estimated that the number who left was three hundred thousand. Everybody was concealing or carrying away capital. All the sources of labor were dried up. There was neither trade, commerce, traffic, nor manufacturing of any sort. All the gold and silver that had been found in the churches and all the plate belonging to the government, found at the different ministries, had been seized by the Commune to be converted into coin. The Catholic clergy were hunted down. The priests were openly placarded as thieves, and the churches denounced as “haunts where they have morally assassinated the masses, in dragging France under the heels of the scoundrels, Bonaparte, Favre and Trochu.”
Washburne and the Legation were now swamped with throngs of people “from morning till night seeking passports and ‘protection papers’ for their property.”
To make matters worse Washburne himself was facing possible retribution. The Commune had formed a “bureau of denunciation” to which anyone could simply denounce another as a “Versailles sympathizer,” resulting in the accused being immediately arrested or, in some cases, executed. One Commune gathering denounced Washburne and issued a threat to hang him and destroy the American Legation. Fortunately, nothing ever came of the threat, but he was now increasingly concerned about the danger the Commune posed to his family. He finally decided it was time to remove them from Paris.
Diary—April 12, 1871
Versailles . . . Mr. Berand an American was arrested in coming out here yesterday by the Versailles troops . . . and treated most infamously. He was searched and sent under a guard here and put in prison. It was one o’clock this morning before I got him out. He came to my room and slept on the floor. He was arrested on the old charge of being a “spy.” I had hoped the spy business was played out, but it seems I was mistaken.
Diary—April 13, 1871
. . . was sick yesterday at V[ersailles] with a most horrid cold and hardly went out of my room. Today at 10 A.M. attended a great funeral ceremony of the Generals Clément-Thomas and Lecomte. How strange in regard to Clément-Thomas. He was a splendid man and a life-long Republican and was a long time in exile on account of his principles. And he was the first man murdered by these savages . . .
As we come to the Legation Antoine tells me that the shells have been raining in the neighborhood of the Legation. A piece of shell struck the Legation building and a piece fell in a yard right opposite Miss Ellis where the family is now stopping. I am more and more discouraged every time I go to Versailles and I must confess I see now no immediate end of the troubles and I fear the worst. The insurgents claim recent advantages. The Versailles people are making great preparations to attack, but they seem afraid. The thing may end suddenly and by chance, but the look now is that there will be bloody fighting and terrible times. I am afraid I will have to send the folks away again. The stampede from the city is tremendous . . .
Diary—April 17, 1871
I have been confined to my house since Friday with a bad cold. As there were less shells bursting about the house the folks came up from Miss Ellis on Saturday. But the firing is going on all the time, both cannonading and musketry, so near that it seems almost under the windows. Bang, bang, crack, crack, crack, now the whizzing of a shell . . . And we are all getting used to it. For two weeks we may be said to have been right in the midst of a battle. For more than four weeks, in anarchy and insurrection. Every day makes things worse. Domiciliary visits, arrests, incarcerations . . . pillage. The houses of Thiers and Favre have been sacked, all the ministries robbed . . . The house adjoining ours was entered and sacked the night before last. The same fate would have attended ours had we not been occupying it. The insurgents boast of their successes, but it is all boast. The look to me now is that the city will be besieged by the Versailles people. I must send the family somewhere—perhaps to Germany, perhaps to Fontainebleau. I hardly know what to do. There never was a more horrible condition of things than there is here at present and I see no immediate end to it all. All pretty well except myself.
Diary—April 19, 1871
It is almost always the same that I have to write; always war and worse . . . All is one great shipwreck in Paris. Fortune, business, public and private credit, industry, labor are all in “the deep bosom of the ocean buried.”8 The physiognomy of the city becomes every day more sad. All the upper part of the Champs-Élysées is completely deserted in fear of the shells. Immense barricades are going up at the Place de la Concorde. The great manufactuaries and workshops are closed . . . The cafés close at 10 o’clock and Paris is not Paris when the cafés are shut up. Where I write, at 75, always the roar of cannon, the whizzing of shells and the rattling of musketry. When I came home at 61/2 this evening the noise was terrific. Two shells burst not a great distance from me. It seems that it must have been a regular battle, but I suppose it was only a skirmish. Gratiot went to Fontainebleau today to find a place for the family, but was unsuccessful.
Elihu Washburne, Paris—to Secretary of State Hamilton Fish, Washington, D.C.—April 20, 1871
I am certain that I never believed that it would fall to my lot to live, with my family, in a city of two millions of people in a state of insurrection for such a length of time as the present one has already lasted. I should be too happy if I could advise you that I could see any prospect of a termination of the terrible state of things existing here. Nothing comes to us from Versailles, that can be relied on, to show that effective measures are soon to be taken to expel the insurgents from power and to re-establish the authority of the government in Paris. To be sure, we hear rumors of attack and assault in great and overpowering force, and then other rumors of another siege; but day after day passes away without particular results further than heating still hotter the blood and inflaming still further the existing hatreds and animosities . . .
On Thursday, April 19, 1871, Washburne was approached by the Papal Nuncio in Paris, Flavius Chigi, to help secure the release of the imprisoned Archbishop Georges Darboy. Earlier efforts to enlist the assistance of the British envoy at Versailles had failed. Now Chigi was turning to the American Minister as his only hope, appealing to him “in the name of the right of nations, humanity, and sympathy” to do what he could to save the life of the Archbishop.
Washburne knew the Archbishop to be “a man eminently beloved by all who knew him, sincerely devoted to the interests of his church and distinguished for his benevolence and kindness of heart.” Washburne had also admired the fact that the Archbishop had remained in Paris throughout the war and siege to help protect and aid those suffering from hunger and cold. When he first heard of the Archbishop’s arrest, he “considered it among the most threatening events that had taken place” since the rise of the Commune.
Three days later, on April 22, Washburne met with the Papal Nuncio at Versailles to discuss the case. There were indications that Darboy had been taken hostage by the Commune to be offered in an exchange for political prisoners held by the government. Sensing the urgency of the Archbishop’s plight, Washburne agreed to help at once. “I fully sympathized with the Nuncio,” Washburne wrote, “and had no hesitation in telling . . . [him] . . . that I was at his disposal to do everything in my power.”
Diary—April 23, 1871
Sunday evening. The Pope’s Nuncio, the Friar General of Paris and some other high dignitaries of the Catholic Church, having made a strong appeal to me to interpose my good offices in behalf of the Archbishop of Paris, cast into prison by the Commune, I went this morning to see General [Gustave-Paul] Cluseret9 on the subject. He could give me no encouragement in regard to the Archbishop, as he was held as a hostage. I then told him I must see the Archbishop to satisfy myself in regard to his treatment in prison, the state of his health and his wants. He said that was reasonable and that he would immediately go with me to the Prefect of
the Police and get the permission. So we all started off (Mr. McKean10 was with me) and made our way to the Prefecture. And what a horrid place that, even in the best times. So immense, so somber, so frowning with its dark and crooked ways, its damp and dismal cells. Now all filled with the National Guard with their dirty and sinister look. We go upstairs and downstairs, through dark passages, turning this way and that way. What mysteries within these walls, what stories of suffering, torture and crime. We at last reach the sanctum and Mr. [Raoul] Rigault. The prefect signs a pass to permit me and my secretary to freely visit the Archbishop. Then McKean and I start for Mazas and without difficulty are admitted. We are ushered into a visitor’s cell and soon the Archbishop is sent in. Poor old man, with his slender form, bent person, long beard and countenance haggard with disease. He was very glad to see us, for up to the day before he had been a prisoner in secret and he had seen no person from the outside before us since his imprisonment. Though fully appreciating his dangerous position, he was wonderfully cheerful and charming in his conversation. He said he was simply awaiting the logic of events and prepared for any fate that might await him. He uttered no word of complaint against his persecutors, but he was disposed to consider the mob as bad as the world generally thought them to be . . . No man was ever more beloved for his liberality, generosity and kindness . . . He is confined in one of the ordinary cells of the prison designed for malefactors, about ten by six with one little window. His furniture consists of one little wooden chair, a little table and a prison bed. As a political prisoner he is permitted to get his food outside. I offered him any assistance he might want, but he said he had no need of anything. I shall try and send some newspapers to him and will visit him every few days. There are forty other priests in the same prison of Mazas.
Washburne was deeply touched by seeing the Archbishop in such a state: