Massacre
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Of 733 people who can be identified as ‘clubistes’ (that is, participating in political clubs), 113 were female (15 per cent) and 198 held some position within the Commune (27 per cent). The average member was somewhat older than the average Communard, and most likely to be drawn from the most working-class neighbourhoods. Organisers saw the clubs as a means of popular education and of maintaining vigilance against the Versaillais’s ‘fifth column’ within the walls of Paris.62
On 16 April Sutter-Laumann asked for two days off from his work in the mairie so that he could join his battalion, which was being sent to reinforce troops in Asnières. The city lay directly in the line of fire of Versaillais cannons appropriately placed at a château in Bécon across the Seine. Sutter-Laumann was fortunate to return with his life. Near Gennevilliers, the Versaillais advanced, approaching so near that he could easily distinguish the uniforms of gendarmes from those of line troops. The National Guards retreated under enemy fire, leaving dead comrades behind. Those reaching the Seine earlier had destroyed the bridge, fearing the Versaillais would use it to cross the river. Sutter-Laumann swam across the Seine and returned to Paris.63
From the start the Commune faced staunch critics, as well as the nearly impossible challenge of governing a divided city still reeling from months of siege even as it prepared for a Versaillais attack. But while ordinary citizens like Sutter-Laumann and his father were willing to wait for the new government to work out its kinks – and even take part in its ministries – their patience would be tested by the Versaillais threat. And, for all its efforts, the Commune would quickly lose (if indeed it had ever had) the confidence of many foreign visitors and most of the bourgeoisie remaining in the city.
Englishman Ernest Vizetelly was one foreigner who noticed that the mood in Paris was shifting. It had become sombre, or ‘more dismal’ as Vizetelly put it. Most workshops had shut down, except those turning out uniforms or other items for the National Guard, and ‘there were no spring fashions and no bargain days’. The wine shops, however, seemed always to be open. One evening Goncourt went out to dine. He asked about the plat du jour. ‘There isn’t one, nobody’s left in Paris’, a waiter replied, referring to his usual clients. Another large restaurant had no diners and ‘the waiters spoke only in low tones’, while well-heeled clients were dining well in Versailles. On 17 April, Goncourt also caught wind of the bourgeoisie’s disgruntlement. He wondered, ‘Are things going badly for the Commune? I am astonished today to find that the population has come back to life.’ He noted occasional shouts against the Commune, including a man in a grey overcoat ‘who goes on up the boulevard defying the angry rowdies and turning around to shout aloud his disdain for the Communards’. Five days later, he observed, ‘The whole length of the Rue de Rivoli there is a procession of the baggage of the last bourgeois making their way to the Lyon railroad station.’ He went to the zoo, and there thought he had found ‘the sadness of Paris. The animals are silent.’
The Commune’s defeat at the hands of the Versaillais in skirmish after skirmish did little to restore faith in the new order. In central Paris, Goncourt watched as four hearses adorned with red flags went by, one carrying ‘a man, half of whose face and nearly all of whose neck have been carried away by a shell, with the white and blue of one of his eyes running down his cheek. His right hand, still black with powder, is upraised and clenched as if it clasped a gun.’64 The bodies of those killed by Versaillais shells were taken to the Hôtel de Ville to await identification by family and friends. Unidentified corpses were photographed in the hope that someone would come looking for a missing person. It was all so grisly. A national guardsman penned a letter to a newspaper reflecting his disgust at returning exhausted from fighting at Issy and Vanves to find the cafés of the boulevard Saint-Michel full of revellers cavorting ‘with drôlesses [female jokers]’, carrying on as usual while other Parisians were risking their lives for the Commune.65
Within the ramparts of the besieged French capital, many upper-class Parisians, who had been unable to get out or who believed the Commune would collapse more quickly than it had, awaited their liberation. These included the Vignon family, who worried most about their property. They had money, jewellery and other valuables in another apartment in the Tenth Arrondissement, now under the supervision of domestic servants. They also owned a house in the village of Clamart just south of Paris, but all was well there. Henri, Paul Vignon’s brother, was safely lodged in Versailles, and from there the former assured his mother in Falaise in Normandy that ‘all the honest and sensible people are deserting Paris’. In Versailles, Henri got up late, purchased the Versaillais newspaper Le Gaulois so he could catch up on the government’s slant on the news – for example, that many foreigners were involved in the Commune – ate lunch, hung around the château, dined again, and went to a café. Henri reassured his mother that he was receiving an indemnity from Versailles of 10 francs a day. In any case, he assured her, the family were still well-off, and money was not a problem.
The Sixth Arrondissement seemed as calm as Falaise. Paul could write to his mother while sitting in a quiet café. Édouard, Paul and Henri’s father, was more than sixty years old, so he did not have to worry about being conscripted into the National Guard of Paris. Paul had managed to avoid service in his unit, which for the moment did not have any officers. He noted that there was no problem getting about in Paris, even on streets where barricades had begun to be built.66
Ten days into the Commune, Édouard Vignon became alarmed about the situation in Paris, which he described by letter to his wife as the absolute power ‘of the most perverse that society can offer’. He did not think that the honnêtes gens (men of property) would let themselves be pillaged and massacred. Édouard lamented that all talk of reconstituting a National Guard ‘of order’ remained only that. For his part, Edouard’s son found measures taken by the Commune to be increasingly ‘absurd’, notably the law on rents and the abolition of conscription and thus of a professional army.
Paul could also imagine reaction by the honnêtes gens against these ‘bandits’. His reflections reveal the emerging biological discourse differentiating the ‘healthy’ part of the population and those so corrupted that they had to disappear. Paul distinguished between people who had property and those who did not. The family property was a constant theme in the correspondence of the Vignon family. Édouard received a worrying order from a justice of the peace to take items of value from their apartment in the Tenth Arrondissement, which had been ‘sealed’ until lawyers could adjudicate ownership after the recent death of a relative. The residence was near enough to Montmartre that it might suffer ‘an indiscreet visit from ill-intentioned men’. Édouard moved the nicest furniture to a room well inside the apartment and took things of value to the apartment in the Sixth Arrondissement, where he believed there was nothing to fear because of the social composition of the quartier. He carried family deeds and titles to be locked away. For the Vignon family, the Commune put at risk ‘all of society, the future of France, and especially private fortunes’, including theirs. Édouard mused about moving his family and fortune to the mountains of Switzerland. He was not the last French person of means to consider such a decision.
For the moment, Paul could not complain. He was pleased to have heard that ‘the members of the Council of the Commune have begun to eat each other, a good sign’. Paul reassured his mother on 1 April that, ‘We continue to enjoy the most perfect tranquillity. I walk about all day, looking for ways of occupying my time.’ Paul went to a café every day to see his friends, read in the garden of Cluny Museum or in the Jardins du Luxembourg, and played whist. He strolled the boulevards alone or with his father. Paul observed clergy walking through his neighbourhood without the slightest problem. His National Guard unit, commanded by ‘Citizen cook Lacord’, operated under the principle of inertia, stronger than resistance.
In the meantime, the Vignons’ two domestics took care of one of their apartments, going to daily
Mass, asking God ‘to bestow the most precious blessings on our excellent masters and on their dear family’. The servants noted wistfully that ‘Monsieur’s newspaper’ was no longer to be found, only Le Cri du Peuple and Père Duchêne, of which the Vignons did not approve. Their concierge was under pressure from the Commune to make available empty apartments to Parisians whose homes had been blown apart by Versaillais shells. Each day the domestics told the concierge that they were expecting friends of the Vignon family to arrive at any time. The servants had worries of their own, with a brother-in-law and brother in the Army of Versailles. ‘Monsieur is really so good’, they wrote, ‘to think of our dear soldiers.’67
Paul avoided walking on or near streets near his apartment, afraid of seeing men with whom he had served during the siege who might ask why he was not in uniform. One day, Paul went to the Palais de Justice to pick up some papers and ran into a lawyer he vaguely knew. His colleague knew that Paul had served in the National Guard during the Prussian siege, and encouraged him to join up again. The lawyer could make sure that he would retain his former rank of captain, adding that Paul would see ‘that the Commune is an honest and legitimate government’. Paul refused, telling him very coldly that he knew what he had to do, and was not about to join the Commune. Miffed, the lawyer turned around quickly and walked away.68 Despite run-ins like this, Paul decided not to try to leave Paris for the time being, thinking that fleeing could well be more dangerous than remaining in the city.69
At the very end of March, the railway line to Versailles along the right bank of the Seine had been cut, but the train on the other side of the river continued to operate. Paul’s brother Henri had no difficulty getting from Versailles into Paris on 30 March to spend the evening with his father and brother. Likewise, Paul got to Versailles without difficulty to visit his brother. However, many Parisians were not as fortunate as the Vignon family in exchanging news, and even visits, with their families. The Versaillais seized letters sent from Paris via Saint-Denis ‘by the thousands’; some got through but many, indeed most, did not. Édouard worried that his and Paul’s letters might no longer get out of Paris, as was the case during the Prussian siege. Yet at the same time he rejoiced that increased surveillance by the Versaillais and Germans might prevent Communard propaganda directed at the provinces from getting out. Thiers’s government, unsurprisingly, was at the same time bombarding the provinces and indeed other countries with fanciful accounts of what was going on in Paris.70
The failure of the Commune’s forces to defeat the Versaillais at Courbevoie on 2 April pleased the Vignon family. National guardsmen retreated down avenue de Neuilly and into Paris, followed by Versaillais shells. Henri left his father and brother and headed back to Versailles via Sceaux. Nearing the valley of the Bièvre he heard sounds of combat uncomfortably near. Henri came upon paysans who advised against his chosen route, warning that he would soon find himself in the middle of the fighting. Finally reaching Versailles, he watched as Communard prisoners arrived under escort. About 20,000 people waited to have a look at them. The troops and gendarmes were greeted with enthusiastic shouts, while the captured national guardsmen were insulted and even struck. The presence of guards prevented the Versaillais crowd from going so far as to massacre the captured soldiers. The soldiers made clear, however, that they wanted nothing more than to storm Paris and ‘take care of these revolutionaries’. Henri wrote to his mother that the Communards had suffered losses of between 1,000 and 1,500 men, and that the Army of Versailles had only 25 wounded. That the Versaillais troops had decided ‘to give no quarter’ pleased the Vignons. Captured Communards who had ‘deserted’ from the regular army had been immediately shot. Henri considered this an ‘energetic and good example’.71
Édouard Vignon’s confidence in the French army was renewed after Courbevoie. Once it had reached full strength, Édouard was sure it would show the Parisians a thing or two. The bourgeois was not disappointed that attempts at conciliation or some sort of negotiated settlement had failed. Yet Édouard assured his wife that she should not be afraid for Paul and Henri – they would not be forced to march. Édouard was sure that, when the Versaillais launched an assault on Paris, ‘the brave National Guardsmen of order’ would rise up and the rout of the ‘bandits’ would be complete: all that would remain would be ‘to re-establish order with severity’. He had heard that the National Guard fighting at Châtillon and Clamart had encountered not gendarmes, but rather regular French troops, who could not be missed because of their red trousers. National Guardsmen had reason to be discouraged.
Henri excitedly related to his mother news of a successful Versaillais attack on the barricades at pont de Neuilly on 6 April, one of which had included an overturned omnibus, another a railway carriage. The Army of Versailles crossed the Seine and occupied the first houses of Neuilly. Communard defenders taken prisoner had been killed; as Henri explained, ‘the mot d’ordre [watchword] is to take no prisoners, to shoot everyone who falls into their hands’. He assured his mother that ‘foreigners’ were playing a major part in the Commune, and repeated propaganda reports that the British government had informed the Versailles government that 5,200 pickpockets were on the way across the English Channel to add to the chaos in the capital.72
Henri amused himself by once or twice joining the Versailles troops as they went on expeditions near the walls of Paris. He found such excursions a little dangerous, but ‘truly admirable’. He could judge for himself the effectiveness of the artillery duels between the two sides. As the Communards returned fire from Point-du-Jour, he and his friends decided it would be prudent to return to Versailles. But he was convinced that his exile in Versailles would soon end. After all, Thiers had announced that soon his troops would be inside Paris.73
In early April, it remained fairly easy to get in and out of Paris. Céline de Mazade remained in Paris for the first six weeks of the Commune to oversee the operation of her husband’s textile manufacturing company, which had factories in Oise, north of Paris, and a warehouse in the capital. Her husband Alexandre stayed away from the capital to avoid being conscripted into the National Guard. The couple supported Versailles and complained that the Commune was hurting business. Good labour had become difficult to find. Céline de Mazade managed to leave Paris regularly and to ship silk out to the company warehouses, sometimes with the help of bribes. She was not the only one to rely on their method to move in and out of the city.74 But as Thiers’s propaganda continued to flood into Paris, accompanied by wounded soldiers returning from battle, wealthy and foreign-born Parisians – even those who had held out – began to see the appeal of escape.
The US Legation was jammed with French citizens asking for passports. By late April, Ambassador Elijah Washburne had provided more than 1,500 laissez-passers (diplomatic passes) to Alsatians, who could now claim to be German subjects. He became increasingly pessimistic about the entire situation, reporting on 20 April, ‘Fortune, business, public and private credit, industry, labour, financial enterprise, are all buried in one common grave. It is everywhere devastation, desolation, ruin. The physiognomy of the city becomes more and more sad … and Paris, without its brilliantly lighted cafés, is Paris no longer.’75
But for those who could not claim foreign citizenship in order to escape the city and avoid service in the National Guard, bribery was the best, if not the only, option. The ongoing fight with Versailles troops meant that the National Guard was in dire need of men to fight, so they did everything in their power to round up those shirking their duty. National guardsmen demanded information from concierges on who lived in the buildings they tended, and they searched apartments, looking for men trying to avoid service. Those men between twenty and forty years of age who were discovered hiding and who resisted were hauled off, and told that they would be put up front during the next skirmish. The Commune cut off their daily wage, in the hope that spouses might pressure them to serve. Yet some men still managed to leave by bribing guards to look the other way
. John Leighton noted that one could go to the Gare du Nord and claim to be seventy-eight years old, and a guard might well reply in playful jest, ‘Only that? I thought you looked older.’ Leighton heard that some residents of Belleville and Montmartre were earning ‘a nice little income’ helping people get out, even by clambering over the walls.76
Wickham Hoffman, secretary of the US Legation, also managed to go back and forth to Versailles, where he had found lodgings, thanks to his embassy. (Versaillais shells hit his Paris apartment building eight times.) Hoffman travelled to and from his office with passes easily obtained from both sides. But as he had to go through German-held Saint Denis in order to get back into Paris by train, the journey grew from twelve to over thirty miles, taking three hours each way. Friends asked him to travel out of Paris by road, using their horses and carriages so as to bring them to Versailles. Hoffman wryly noted that ‘if the Communist officers at the gates were close observers, they must have thought that I was the owner of one of the largest and best-appointed stables in Paris’. His principal complaint during the Commune was that his landlady had run out of his favourite champagne.77