by Michael Hill
I shall never forget the naiveté with which he introduced me into his dismal little cell, describing it all at once as his “parlor,” his “sitting room,” his “sleeping room,” and his “dining hall” . . . Never before had I seen such resignation and such a Christian spirit in any man and never a person so raised above the things of earth.
After his visit to the Archbishop’s “gloomy and naked little cell,” Washburne was convinced the Archbishop was in great peril. After the arrest of Darboy one of the Commune newspapers had written: “The dogs will soon not be satisfied with looking at the bishops . . . but will bite them . . . and not a voice will be raised to curse us on the day in which we shall shoot Archbishop Darboy.”
“I could not conceal from myself the real danger that he was in,” Washburne later wrote, “and I hoped, more and more strongly that I might be instrumental in saving him from the fate that seemed to threaten him.”
While struggling to save the Archbishop, Washburne was also preoccupied with finding a secure house for his family outside Paris. On April 24, with shells falling “thick and fast,” Washburne learned of a safe house in a small town just outside the city. He moved his family there at once. He described it to a friend in Galena as a “little French village four hundred years old. We occupy a cottage near an old château, and we have a splendid yard, garden etc. It is very healthy and pleasant, and Mrs. Washburne and the children are very well.”
Diary—April 25, 1871
The folks left this morning for the country. The morning was bright and pleasant. Mr. McKean went out with them, as it was impossible for me to leave. All the Alsatians and Lorrainians are coming to me to claim my protection as Germans and get passes to leave Paris. At one time yesterday there were no less than 500 of them waiting and blocking up the street near the Legation. Bismarck ought to have sent his minister here before this time to relieve me. He seems, however, to be satisfied with me and is not disposed to let me off . . .
That same day Washburne received a letter from the Papal Nuncio thanking him for his visit to the Archbishop.
The Papal Nuncio, Versailles—to Elihu Washburne, Paris—April 25, 1871
Sir and Dear Colleague:
Truly, I do not know how to thank you for all you have had the kindness to do to aid the worthy Archbishop of Paris. You have done more than I could have hoped for, notwithstanding the confidence with which I was inspired, knowing the sentiments of humanity and of pity of your heart, and the generous nation you represent so worthily in France, and I am sure that the steps you will take with the men into whose hands lies the fate of the Archbishop, will not fail to produce the most favorable result which it is possible to hope for under present circumstances . . .
As the army of Versailles pounded away at Paris, the Communards became more desperate and more depraved.
Diary—May 2, 1871
Fighting going on all the time all about the city, but without perceptible results . . . There is great fury among the insurgents now, and last night they formed a fearful committee—the Committee of Public Safety—which in the first revolution [1789] was a committee simply to legalize butchery. This new committee has full powers and the reign of terror may now commence in earnest any day. I fear for the life of the good old Archbishop. A lot of drunken National Guard broke into the prison Sunday clamoring for his blood and threatening to shoot, but a member of the Commune happened to be there and stopped them.
Washburne would write that the middle of May was “the darkest time in the Commune.” Weeks earlier a decree had been issued ordering the destruction of the Vendôme Column11 and on May 10 the Commune ordered the destruction of Adolphe Thiers’s home at the Place St. Georges. The decree, Washburne noted, “was scrupulously carried out.” For days fanatics set loose by the Communards tore the house apart stone by stone and stripped it of Thiers’s priceless collection of art, rare books, and manuscripts. An indignant and overwrought Washburne would later write, “Such vandalism was without a parallel in all the history of civilization.”
Despite the worsening conditions in Paris, Washburne found time to visit his family, now safely housed outside the city. During one visit on May 7 he was taken ill with a “bilious attack” of nausea, stomach pains, cold sweats, and vomiting. Although confined to bed for a day, he was back at his duties the next afternoon issuing urgent dispatches to Washington about the rapidly changing affairs in Paris. Throughout the siege and reign of terror, Washburne “always rebounded more elastic than ever after a relapse . . .” wrote an observer who knew him in Paris. “His courage kept up the courage of those around him.”
Elihu Washburne, Paris—to Secretary of State Hamilton Fish, Washington, D.C.—May 11, 1871
The crisis seems to be really approaching. You will have seen the announcement of the capture of the fort of Issy by the Versailles troops, and the report this evening is that the fort of Vanves has also fallen. The government, having apparently completed the preparations, is now attacking Paris with great fury . . .
The insurrectionary force are said to have been withdrawn from these positions, and the resistance that will be made by the insurgents will be in other parts of the city. I thought a week ago that the opposition would be greater than I am now satisfied it will be . . .
The desperate wrangles in the Commune, and the quarrel between that august body and the central committee, which were all well known to the public, added to the general excitement . . . Signs of demoralization are everywhere visible. The National Guard is being weakened every day, not only by its losses in actual combat and in prisoners, but by the vast numbers of desertions. Almost every man who has the chance to do so with any degree of safety to himself is slipping out of the service, and instead of an army of sixty or eighty thousand, as claimed a week ago, I do not believe one-half that number can be counted on today. A good many think that, in the present feeling of discouragement, the government troops could enter and retake Paris without any serious resistance; but others, of an equal number, look upon a desperate contest and the shedding of a great deal of blood as inevitable. The worse things grow, the more desperate the Commune becomes . . .
The Archbishop is still in prison, and his situation is becoming daily more and more dangerous. I am interesting myself officiously in endeavoring to have him exchanged for Blanqui,12 who is under sentence of death . . . for his . . . part in the attempted insurrection of the 31st of October last. The Commune has once agreed to make the exchange, which M. Thiers declined, but the Archbishop, whom I saw in prison yesterday, thinks he may now agree to it, in view of the increasing dangers to which he is exposed . . .
Diary—May 11, 1871
Quite an exciting day yesterday . . . The Versaillais are pounding away very hard and there is an evident demoralization in the Commune. It really looks as if the end were coming. Called yesterday to see the Archbishop again . . . The National Guard are deserting fast and things are getting desperate . . . They are still working on the Column Vendôme and hope to get it down before the city is taken . . .
Diary—May 12, 1871
The Commune is more and more desperate and now has a regular revolutionary tribunal in working order . . . Six more papers suppressed this morning, making in all twenty-one. What a splendid republic we have here.
Diary—May 16, 1871
The Commune is getting more and more outrageous. The Column Vendôme still stands, but they give out that it is going to fall every day. The consequence is that thousands and thousands of people stand watching it all day long . . . Thiers refuses to exchange the Archbishop of Paris for Blanqui . . .13
Later that day the Vendôme Column was toppled at last. For weeks those in charge of bringing it down had stalled and delayed its demolition. Finally, after strong threats from the leaders of the Commune, May 16 was set as the date for its destruction. It was to be a day of great festivity, with special invitations issued for the event. To prepare for the tremendous shock which would come from the fallen column, tons of
manure and straw were piled at its base and “shop-windows within half a mile were pasted over with strips of paper to prevent their being broken,” wrote Wickham Hoffman.
At 3 P.M. on May 16, a crowd of some 10,000 heard a band strike up the “Marseillaise.” Moments later the column was pulled down with a “mighty crash.” Amid the shattered ruins of the memorial, people shouted “Vive la Commune.”
Diary—May 16, 1871 (continued)
5:30. The act of vandalism has been accomplished. The grand Column Vendôme has this moment fallen, the greatest infamy of modern times and a blot upon the civilization of the age. I did not see it fall and did not want to. I rode down the Boulevard at half past two and I should think there were 20,000 people . . . to see it come down.
In the midst of the outrages and atrocities of the Commune, Washburne received a personal letter from his old Galena friend President Ulysses S. Grant.
President Ulysses S. Grant, Washington, D.C.—to Elihu Washburne, Paris—May 17, 1871
I have not written to you whilst shut up in Paris because I did not know that anything but purely official dispatches were proper, or would be so considered by the Prussians, to send through the lines. I thought none the less frequently of you however, and the relief from care and anxiety which you sought in a foreign Mission. Your time will come I trust for relief. Already you have the reward of your services in the gratitude and pride the American people feel for the glorious course you pursued in standing at your post which all others, like situated, had deserted . . .
In the middle of May, Raoul Rigault issued a general order revoking any permission to see prisoners held by the Commune, including Washburne’s pass to see the Archbishop. On May 18, Washburne sent his private secretary to Rigault protesting the order and requesting special permission to visit Darboy in prison. At first Rigault denied the request, telling the secretary he was “very much indisposed to give” what Washburne desired. However, after repeated protests, Rigault relented and Washburne was once again granted leave to see the imprisoned Archbishop.
Diary—May 19, 1871
Fighting and banging away all the time most furiously, but yet the troops don’t get in and we are almost worn out with waiting and waiting. The Commune gets every day more furious and outrageous. Today they threaten to destroy Paris and bury everybody in the ruins before they will surrender . . . I have also just seen the Archbishop in prison and he is feeble and I do not believe he can live long in that miserable hole . . .
That same day, he wrote Secretary of State Fish in Washington informing him that the French government in Versailles had refused to exchange Blanqui for the imprisoned Archbishop.
Elihu Washburne, Paris—to Secretary of State Hamilton Fish, Washington, D.C.—May 19, 1871
Since I have commenced writing this dispatch, I have again visited the Archbishop, to communicate to him that it was impossible to effect his exchange for Blanqui. I am sorry to say I found him very feeble. He has been confined to his pallet for the last week with a kind of pleurisy; is without appetite, and very much reduced in strength. He is yet cheerful, and apparently resigned to any fate that may await him . . .
On May 20, while working at the Legation, Washburne received news that a squad of National Guard was attempting to seize his house at 75 Avenue de l’Impératrice. “They pounded away vigorously at the great door which entered the courtyard, while the servant held a parley with them,” Washburne later reported:
The leader of the squad said to her that they had been sent to take possession of the house, and that they intended to do so. She told them that it was the house of the Minister of the United States, and that they had no right to enter. They answered that they did not care to whom the house belonged, or who lived there, and that they intended to enter: and further, that if she would not open the door (which was a very heavy one, and securely fastened), they would go back to their post and procure reinforcements and then break in.
Washburne immediately dispatched a letter to Paschal Grousset,14 the Commune’s Delegate for External Affairs, demanding protection. Grousset agreed and sent a force which intercepted the “brigands of the National Guard” before they invaded Washburne’s home. Washburne would later write that “never before had matters in Paris looked so dark and threatening to me as on that day.”
The next day, Washburne paid another visit to the Archbishop:
I no sooner got inside than I saw there was a great change in affairs. The old guardians whom I had often seen there were not present, but all were new men, and apparently of the worst character, who seemed displeased to see me. They were a little drunk, and were disputing each other’s authority. I asked to see the Archbishop, and expected to be permitted to enter his cell, as I had hitherto. The request was somewhat curtly refused, and they then brought the unfortunate man out of his cell into the corridor, to talk with me in their presence. The interview was, therefore, to me very unsatisfactory, both from the surroundings and from the condition of distress in which the Archbishop seemed to be. It was impossible to talk with him freely, and I limited myself to saying that while I regretted that I had nothing encouraging to communicate to him, I had taken pleasure in calling to see him in order to ascertain the state of his health and if it would not be possible for me to render him some further personal service. Such was the situation that I thought proper to bring my interview to a speedy close, then it was, for the last time, I shook the hand of the Archbishop and bade him what proved to be a final adieu.
The next day, May 22, 1871, the government at Versailles launched its final all-out assault on the Paris Commune. The Communards had sworn that if Paris were taken they would “bury everything in a common ruin.”
Diary—May 22, 1871
This day will always live in the history of France. For more than nine weeks I have lived here in a reign of terror and matters have gone on regularly from bad to worse. And it seemed as if it would never end. The last days have been most anxious ones as the brigands of the Commune have become utterly desperate. Every day for the last two weeks had I hoped to hear in the morning of the entry of the Government troops, but every morning I have been disappointed. I dined out last night and returned to my lodgings about eleven o’clock and I saw no more signs of the troops coming in than I had seen for the last two weeks. Yet at that moment they had . . . entered at the Porte St. Cloud. The entry was a complete surprise both to the troops and the insurgents [Communards]. I awoke at 6 this morning and heard a good deal of talking in the house and I thought something might possibly be up and so I rang for the servant who came and told me nothing had taken place. In a few minutes, however, the same servant returned and said that the tricolour floated on the Arc de Triomph. Gratiot and I dressed very hurriedly and I went at once into the Avenue Joséphine and sure enough there was the tricolour waving in triumph on the top of the Arc. The concierges and the few people in the avenue were out and they all met me with congratulations upon their deliverance from the reign of terror. Gratiot and I then hurried down the avenue and immense bodies of troops were advancing along the route of Versailles . . . towards the Place de Concorde. An attack had been made on the barricades at the latter point and the cannonading and firing of the mitrailleuse and musketry was very heavy. Soon all came to a halt and after remaining with the troops till half past seven we returned to Miss Ellis’ for our coffee. After coffee I went to the Arc de Triomph and passed the barricades into the Avenue of the Grand Army. As the troops entered the city, in their rear that whole quarter had been suddenly abandoned at 41/2 this morning and what a wreck! The houses on that splendid avenue are all riddled, the streets torn up, the trees cut off by shells and presenting altogether a most dreadful aspect. The barricade near the Arc is a monstrous one, twenty feet high and nearly fifty feet wide. But it proved of no earthly use.
Since nine o’clock and up to this hour I have been down with the troops expecting every hour that the Place de la Concorde would be taken. I got tired of waiting at two o’clock a
nd came back to the Legation. At about nine o’clock the insurgents began to bombard our part of the city from their batteries at Montmartre and the shells came thick and fast. They have stopped for some time and the report is that the troops have taken that battery. If that prove true, the business may be over before tomorrow morning, for with the immense number of the troops coming in, said to be 80,000, they can soon surround the Place Vendôme, the Place de la Concorde and the Hôtel de Ville. The Commune have been completely surprised and they are now fighting for dear life, under great disadvantages. There are a good many deserters in the National Guard and the moment one is taken, he is shot at sight. There are a good many sailors manning the insurgent gunboats on the Seine . . . The day is magnificent and thank Heaven we are safe in our quarter as it is all in the possession of the troops. I can now go back to my house and we will have no more bombs. I have no time now to express my detestation and abhorrence of the Commune and the National Guard and the whole gang of brigands and assassins who have held this city by the throat for so long a time. A week longer all the great monuments would have been destroyed, all foreigners pilloried. The wretches had just got matters into working order. The Column had fallen, Thiers’ house had been demolished . . . Friday I saw myself the scoundrels cutting out the great bas relief of Henry the 4th at the Hôtel de Ville. It is a mistake—Montmartre is not taken, for a shell from there has this instant burst right across the street from the Legation. Everywhere the troops have been received with enthusiasm by the few people remaining, and with the cry of ‘Vive la Ligne!’ . . .
5:45 P.M. Have just taken a long ride . . . The havoc has been dreadful—the houses are all torn to pieces, cannon dismantled, dead rebels, &c, &c. One could hardly conceive such destruction. We saw immense numbers of troops coming in and all through the streets of Passy. Our house has escaped wonderfully. The piece of shell that entered it did but little harm further than smashing some windows. Returning to the Legation we find the fighting still going on at the Place de la Concorde and it would seem this is to be a long business . . .