The Fall of Paris

by Alistair Horne

  From March 29th onwards a flood of decrees began to pour out from the Commune, representing in their miscellany the extraordinary confusion over priorities that prevailed in the Hôtel de Ville. Great satisfaction greeted the repeal of the detested rent act, thereby exempting tenants from payment of rent for the previous nine months, as well as a decree suspending the sale of objects pawned at the notorious ‘Monts-de-piété’.1 Gambling was banned; and on April 2nd the Church was disestablished. The Commune somehow found time to issue an ordonnance concerning the Ham Market, one of whose eighteen articles specified that Parisians should not relieve themselves ‘elsewhere than in the public urinals’. There were edicts forbidding the public display of any announcements from Versailles, and threatening looters with the death penalty. Conscription to the regular Army was declared abolished; on the other hand all able-bodied citizens were to enroll for service with the National Guard. About the only other military measure taken at this time was the reoccupation of the southern forts which the regulars had abandoned; while it was sought to forestall any Versailles attack on the city by the following order sent to the officer guarding the western sector of the Ceinture railway; ‘Place an energetic man at this post night and day. This man should mount guard equipped with a sleeper. On the arrival of each train he must derail the train if it does not stop.’

  Thus, as March drew to a close, the revolutionary masters of Paris had lost by their indecision thirteen priceless days since Thiers abandoned the city to them; days which Thiers himself had not wasted. By not taking advantage of their initial superiority to launch an offensive against Versailles, here, in the eyes of Lenin, lay the second of the Commune’s fatal errors. As Marx had written about the Revolution of 1848, ‘the defensive is the death of every armed rising; it is lost before it measures itself with its enemies’. The Commune was about to suffer the consequences of its error, one which Marx’s pupil, Lenin—about to celebrate his first birthday far away at Simbirsk on the Volga—would not repeat when his turn came.

  The Commune marches on Versailles, April 3rd, 1871

  20. Monsieur Thiers Declares War

  IT astonished Dr. Powell, an English physician recently arrived in Paris, to learn that—except for the English Ambulance run by Dr. Cormack—all the others in operation during the Siege had closed down. Explained Dr. Powell; ‘Strange to say, it was not imagined then that any more fighting would take place.’ Once the excitements, alarms, and revolutionary zeal of the first days had calmed down, the bourgeois and uncommitted elements were agreeably surprised at how normal life in Paris still seemed to be. Although some of the extreme-Left Press, such as the reincarnated Père Duchesne, ranted and threatened as alarmingly as had any during the Siege, there were still few actual incursions into civic liberties. As yet there had been no expropriation of private property; two right-wing and extremely hostile newspapers, Le Figaro and Le Gaulois, had been seized, otherwise the rest continued unmolested. In the first flush, the revolutionaries—urged on by the new Police Chief, Raoul Rigault—had arrested over four hundred people between March 18th and 28th, but most of these (like Clemenccau) had been released again. Questing after a ‘strayed’ American subject, Washburne’s private secretary, McKean, obtained a glimpse of a court martial which struck him as a chilling echo of 1793, and in his dispatch to Secretary of State Fish of March 25th, Washburne himself had singled out a curious report filed by the ‘general’ commanding Montmartre, Gamier, a former dealer in cooking utensils:

  He says in the first place, that there is ‘nothing new; night calm and and without incident’. He then goes on to say that at five minutes after ten o’clock two sergeants de ville were brought in by the franc-tireurs and immediately shot. He continues, ‘At twenty minutes after midnight, a guardian of the peace, accused of having fired a revolver, is shot’. He closes his report of that calm night ‘without incident’ by saying that a gendarme, brought in by the guards of the twenty-eighth battalion, at seven o’clock, is shot.

  But, despite these early excesses, there was no suggestion so far that a new Terror had been imposed upon Paris; anti-Communards did not yet go to sleep in constant fear of the knock on the door in the early morning.

  Indeed, although the dispensation of law had all but come to a standstill with the ‘disappearance’ of most of the Parisian judges as well as the police (who were hardly encouraged to venture out on patrol by the kind of treatment recorded above), order was astonishingly well maintained. ‘Robberies, assaults, and other crimes became’, as Dr. Powell claimed with corroboration from many others, ‘a very rare occurrence as far as I can remember.’ The streets seemed unusually empty, and people went about calling each other ‘citoyen’; Rampont of the Post Office having carried out his threat and decamped with all his officials, both mails and telegraph services were temporarily halted (something which had never happened throughout the Siege); and Washburne noted occasionally meeting wedding parties on their way to the Mairie, the ‘distracted’ groom wondering whether he would find there a mayor who could marry him, or whether it had been turned into a Communard ‘guard-house’ instead. But people still got married, and everyday existence went on much as before. In fact, the Rev. Gibson reckoned that he had ‘never seen the streets so well swept since the Siege’. Eight theatres were reopened on the Commune’s orders, and, as the sunny spring weather settled in, so too did the euphoria of the simple supporters of the Commune. To the underprivileged, the oppressed, the frustrated of Paris, these last few days must have possessed an unimaginable magic, must have been golden with promise. There is something about these days that reminds one a little of the tragic optimism of the Hungarian freedom fighters during the brief period of revolutionary liberty in 1956, while Khrushchev was marshalling his tank divisions in the east; or of the heady euphoria of Polish ‘solidarity’ in 1980.

  By the first days of April, Thiers, having scraped the bottom of the barrel, having brought in Mobiles from all over the provinces and mobilized the gendarmes and ‘Friends of Order’ National Guards escaped from Paris, had managed to muster over 60,000 troops at Versailles. This already exceeded by some 50 per cent the total permitted by the Peace Treaty with the Germans, and they were a mixed lot. No plan to reconquer Paris had yet been formulated, but in anticipation of this, on March 30th, two squadrons of cavalry carried out a reconnaissance in the Courbevoie area, just across the Seine from the suburb of Neuilly. It was apparently conducted on the sole initiative of the Marquis de Gallifet, the dashing general who had led the desperately heroic last cavalry charge at Sedan, now returned from a German prisoner-of-war camp. Later a close friend of the future Edward VII, Gallifet, the elegant, witty, and savagely sarcastic courtier, whose wife had been one of the Empire’s most famous beauties, renowned for the extravagance of her costumes at Louis-Napoleon’s masked balls, was to fill a prominent and dread role in the final chapter of the Commune. Though he seemed the very essence of the panache-et-gloire generals of the Second Empire, Gallifet had had experience which was perhaps peculiarly appropriate to the kind of warfare now facing the French regular Army. The influential Marquise had obtained him a command in Louis-Napoleon’s Mexican campaign (no doubt to give herself greater freedom of action in Paris); a war against the irregulars of Juarez in which the French troops became accustomed to taking few prisoners. Gallifet had acquired there a reputation for being both fearless and ferocious, as contemptuous of his own suffering as he was of that of others. At a dinner party he had shocked young Mrs. Moulton with details of his Mexican experiences: ‘He had been shot in the intestines and left for dead on the field of battle. He managed by creeping and crawling, “toujours tenant mes entrailles das mon képi”, to reach a peasant’s house, where the good people took care of him….’ Now, so the impressionable lady was assured, he wore a silver plate with his name engraved on it ‘to keep the above mentioned entrailles in their proper place.’

  Light as it was, Gallifet’s reconnaissance of March 30th succeeded in dislodging a
small outpost held by the Commune National Guard; thus the report reaching Thiers cannot have given any impressive account of the state of the Paris defences. Two days later, an encouraged Thiers held a council, the proceedings of which were kept strictly secret, but to the Assembly he announced that same day:

  The organization of one of the finest armies possessed by France has been completed at Versailles; good citizens can thus reassure themselves and hope for the end of a struggle which will have been painful, but short.

  This was nothing less than a declaration of war; painful the struggle would certainly be, but not short.

  In Paris, Thiers’s announcement finally confronted Commune leaders, then involved in arguments over the disestablishment of the Church, with reality. Amid much disagreement and confusion, it was agreed that the Paris forces should march upon Versailles in five days’ time; meanwhile, Bergeret would carry out a strong reconnaissance towards Courbevoie. But Thiers acted first. It was April 2nd, Palm Sunday. Goncourt, one of the ‘good citizens’ addressed by Thiers, began his diary for that day: ‘A cannonade at about ten, o’clock, in the direction of Courbevoie. Thank God! Civil war has begun.’ As the day went on, Goncourt noted that ‘the cannonade died away. ‘Is Versailles beaten? Alas, if Versailles suffers the least reverse, Versailles is lost!’ There were indeed ugly rumours as the ever-inquisitive Goncourt hastened into the centre of Paris. But there, as usual studying ‘people’s faces, which are like barometers of events during revolutions, I discerned a concealed satisfaction, a sly joy. At last a paper told me that the Bellevillites had been beaten!…’

  Goncourt’s entry was a fair summary of the day’s skirmishing. Thiers had backed up Gallifet’s reconnaissance with a strong attack on Courbevoie where the Communards, reinforced after the alert of the 30th, were entrenched at the Rond Point. The action was clearly visible from Paris. Washburne, disappointed at having seen none of the fighting during the Siege, found it ‘a singular sight to my family on that Sunday morning to watch from the upper windows of my residence the progress of a regular battle under the walls of Paris, and to hear the roar of artillery, the rattling of musketry and the peculiar sound of the mitrailleuses’. But it was difficult to tell for some time who was winning. Indeed, at Courbevoie itself there was doubt to begin with. The Versailles regulars were repulsed, and one battalion of the line broke with ominous cries of ‘Vive la Commune!’ On the other hand, the Zouaves were said to have attacked vigorously, shouting, ‘Vive le Roi!’ Suddenly, it was the story of Buzenval all over again. Under pressure, the rebel National Guard, still no better trained or disciplined than in January, some drunk and all doped with over-confidence, panicked and abandoned their positions. Across the bridge and up the Avenue de Neuilly they fled, offering to all who would listen the excuses heard so often during the Siege; above all, the dismal plaint, ‘Nous sommes trahis!’ Ex-Guardsman Child, on his way home from Palm Sunday service, met some of them and remarked acidly ‘suppose they wanted what was most needful, “pluck”.’ It was, he added, a ‘dull day. Quite suitable to the événements.’

  Almost without opposition Gallifet’s men seized the vital bridge at Neuilly. The success, small though it was, gave a boost of tremendous importance to the shaky morale of Thiers’s forces. Casualties had been low on both sides, but among the victims had been the unfortunate inmates of a girls’ school in Neuilly, hit by Government shells as they were departing on a Palm Sunday outing. It was a prelude to what lay ahead for the civil population of this part of Paris, but there was also that day a casualty which was to set off an even more tragic chain-reaction. With the Versailles troops had been Surgeon-Major Pasquier of the Gendarmerie, the principal doctor attached to Vinoy and apparently a much-beloved figure. According to the Government version, Pasquier had volunteered to go towards the Pont de Neuilly, under a flag of truce, to negotiate with the insurgents; according to the Communards, they simply saw a figure whose sleeves were covered in gold stripes, assumed he was a general, and shot him down. Wherever the truth lay, the killing caused great indignation among the Versailles troops, and Thiers—condemning it as an atrocity on a par with the murder of Thomas and Lecomte—made maximum capital out of it.

  Thoroughly shaken out of its tranquil euphoria by the news of the Versailles attack, all Paris was trembling; some of it with rage. Larded with references to ‘Chouans, Vendéens, and Bretons of Trochu’ which betrayed the historical fixations of its Jacobin members, the Commune emitted a hysterial proclamation, announcing:

  The royalist conspirators have ATTACKED.

  Despite the moderation of our attitude, they have ATTACKED….

  Those who still regarded the Commune as nothing more than a legally elected municipal council were profoundly and genuinely shocked. The boulevards ‘were terribly agitated’, reported Edwin Child, ‘at every turning almost were to be met battalions marching, their drums and clarions creating a most awful discord. On arriving Rue Royale, met them all united together and marching, so they said, straight to Versailles, but doubt if they will ever get there.’ At the Hôtel de Ville there was the usual disunity. The ‘generals’ of the Commune, Eudes, Duval, and Bergeret, demanded an immediate counter-attack; Pyat, who for the past three days had been clamouring for action in Le Vengeur in much the same tone as he had employed against Trochu during the Siege, now backed down, to the fury of Duval. Finally a plan was arrived at, under which massed units of the National Guard would march upon Versailles the following day, April 3rd, in three columns. On the right, Bergeret, and Flourens, heading on either side of Mont-Valérien towards the village of Rueil; in the centre, Eudes, advancing via Meudon and Chaville; with Duval securing the left flank by an attack on the same Châtillon heights that had so embarrassed Ducrot during the Siege. The plan itself was unexceptionable; but it relied too much on the striking-power of the National Guard, and ignored the fact that—through the disgraced Lullier’s oversight—Mont-Valérien was now held by enemy gunners.

  The force which set out from Paris early on the morning of the 3rd was more of a mob than an army; it proximated closely to the sortie torrentielle for which its leaders had pleaded throughout the first Siege. But in the haste and the disorganization the National Guard omitted to take along its most powerful military card—the two hundred cannon, the original casus belli, which still remained in the artillery park at Montmartre. What it lacked in equipment and training, though, was more than compensated for by the National Guard’s confidence in itself, despite the reverse of the previous day. All felt that one ‘whiff of grapeshot’ would suffice to disperse the demoralized ‘royalists’. No one was more confident than the commanders. Bergeret, a former bookseller’s clerk, who arrived at dawn at the assembly area in a phaeton, caparisoned in sashes and great knee-boots that reminded one somehow of a Dumas musketeer, declared in a first dispatch: ‘Bergeret himself is at Neuilly. Soldiers of the Line are all arriving and declaring that, except for the senior officers, no one wants to fight.’ Flourens, too, was there, magnificent as ever in his Cretan uniform—blue pantaloons, immense scimitar, and Turkish belt crammed with pistols. In his turn, he telegraphed back to the Hôtel de Ville: ‘We shall be the victors… there cannot ever be a doubt of that.’ Still the festive mood of those halcyon March days prevailed, and one Communard chronicler, Edmond Lepelletier, was reminded of ‘a horde of turbulent picnickers, setting out gaily and uncertainly for the country, rather than an attacking column directing itself towards a formidable position’. In ragged but dense ranks, without any scouts, the Bergeret-Flourens column sauntered across the Seine, keeping to the centre of the road. Up on to the Bergères plateau they strolled, close to the scene of Trochu’s final disaster.

  Then one of the powerful guns spoke from the fortress of Mont-Valérien, towering above the expedition. The aim was not particular distinguished, but one shell fell amid the packed masses of Bergeret’s column, followed by another. An officer was cut in two. It was enough. No one—least of all Bergeret—seems to have expec
ted this, and like the detonation that ignites a powder magazine, panic flashed back along the whole straggling column. It split in two, the rear fragment scattering at top speed back across the Seine. On the far side of the river a Times correspondent came across ‘two officers hiding in a house, and the men were begging the villagers to lend them clothes in order that they might not be caught in uniform by the troops’. Demoralization could hardly have been more complete. But, isolated at the head of the column, the ever-audacious Flourens and a now rather less confident Bergeret still decided to press on towards Versailles with the remnants of the vanguard, some 3,000 men, that still remained to them.

  The Communards had fallen into a trap. As soon as Bergeret’s troops deployed on to the plain, the Versailles cavalry swept down on them. He too fell back across the Seine. Flourens was now left alone with a handful of his faithful Chasseurs and Cipriani, his comrade from Cretan days. Displaying an almost suicidal courage, and ignoring Cipriani’s exhortations to beat a retreat back to Paris, he continued sadly on to Rueil. At an inn in the village, he took off his famous belt, scimitar, and pistols, and flopped down, exhausted. During the night Rueil was surrounded by troops commanded by one Colonel Boulanger, who had fought with conspicuous gallantry at Ducrot’s Great Sortie and would, at the end of the next decade, give his name to a bizarre episode in French politics, the Boulangist movement. According to one account, Cipriani and Flourens were denounced by the villagers; Cipriani was struck down at once, and Flourens led out unarmed. A mounted gendarmerie captain, apparently recognizing him, cleft his head in two with one savage sabre blow.