Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  “Père Duchene,” and two humble sheets, “La Caricature” and the “Bouche de Fer.” This was attacking the liberty of the Press, a bad precedent for the party of order and toleration to establish. General d’Aurelle de Paladines, the victorious leader at Coulmiers, and actual general in command of the National Guard, worked with heart and soul to restore discipline. The government arrived in Paris from Bordeaux on its way to Versailles. The people begged that it might stay. Thiers refused and ordered Versailles to be made ready. It would take some weeks to prepare for the reception of the Ministers there, so meanwhile the National Assembly remained in Paris. Thiers occupied the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

  Montmartre was guarded by 500 men and 250 cannon. There were no leaders, unless Assi and Lullier could be called such. Leaders were needed, and the stupidity of the government at once furnished them. The “Third Court-Martial” had been sitting for the last four months in connection with the affair of the 31st of October. Thiers refused to allow them to retain, for the present, their verdict, and Paris presently received the news that Blanqui, Flourens, Levrault, and Cyrille were condemned to death, Doctor Goupil to two years’ imprisonment, and Jules Vallès to six months’. The others were acquitted. The condemned might as well have been acquitted also, as they were all in hiding, and as soon as the news came that judgment had been pronounced the insurgent National Guard welcomed them with open arms. Thiers might have known this. He may have known it. Gustave Flourens came out of his hole and showed himself publicly in the midst of the Belleville battalions in a fantastic costume of major-general and a uniform spangled with gold braid. Regere, Ranvier, Jaclard, and Eudes followed his èxample. Thiers had given the insurgents their officers.

  But now the President of the Council and the Ministers had become seriously frightened. They sent officers of the artillery from the Pépinière barracks to Montmartre to parley.

  “What the h — l do you want?” demanded the sentinels.

  “We want the cannon,” replied these innocent officers.

  “What for?”

  “To distribute them, day by day, to the battalions.”

  “Have you the countersign?”

  “No, two lines from the Governor of Paris will be sufficient.”

  “Passez au large! We don’t know any Governor but the Central Committee.”

  The officers slunk back to Monsieur Thiers.

  “This is very embarrassing,” observed that gentleman, and called a council of war.

  Montmartre was evidently a hotbed of conspiracy. One hundred and fifty thousand National Guards and three hundred thousand women and children owed allegiance to the Central Committee, which brooded like a thunder cloud over the hill of cannon. Attracted by the disorder, the worst elements, the very dregs and scum of Paris, were congregating on Montmartre to join the revolt. Mobiles, Franc-Tireurs, renegade Line soldiers, all came and clamored for the uniform of the National Guard and the five francs a day. Where the money came from was a mystery. Some spoke of Bismarck, some of an Englishman who scattered twenty thousand francs in French money among the hordes.

  Rain fell in torrents and the famous pieces of 7 and the mitrailleuses began to rust. To amuse the Guard, the Central Committee ordered the red flag to be hoisted on the Buttes Chaumont, and down came the tricolor. Paris stared, Monsieur Thiers was almost galvanized into action. Monsieur Roger, chief of staff, urged him to attack with the regular troops and what remained of the loyal National Guard. He said he would and — temporized.

  On the morning of the 18th of March, 1871, the people of Paris read this placard pasted over the dead walls of the unhappy city.

  TO THE PARISIANS.

  For some time past certain irresponsible people under the pretext of resisting the Prussians, who are no longer within your walls, have constituted themselves masters of a portion of the city of Paris. They collect arms, throw up intrenchments, mount guard, and force you to aid them by order of a mythical Committee which pretends to govern a section of the National Guard. This is defiance to the authority of the legal government instituted through universal suffrage. These men, who have already caused so much evil, and whom you yourselves dispersed on the 31st of October, under pretence of defending you against the Prussians, who are no longer in Paris, have mounted and aimed cannon which, if fired, would annihilate your houses, your children, and yourselves. If France once believes that the neccessary accompaniment of the Republic is disorder, then the Republic will be lost.

  Monsieur Thiers wrote well, but two words, concise and unmistakable, addressed to the disaffected, would have answered the purpose better.

  People read the placard and wondered what was coming next. “It is easy,” they grumbled, “to crush those insurgents. One regiment of the Line and horses to drag away the cannon would do it; manifestos and placards won’t.”

  This was true. At that late hour, it would still have been easy to quell the insurrection. The insurgents were fatigued, enervated, confused. Discipline was almost entirely wanting. Strife had arisen in the Central Committee, and Karl Marx, the founder of the International Society of Workingmen, from which the Central Committee took orders, was opposed to the insurrection. From England, where he had taken refuge after his condemnation to death at Berlin, he launched thunderbolts of invective against the revolt. This puzzled and discouraged the National Guard. Thiers believed that this famous letter of Marx would end the trouble. Monsieur Thiers nourished another illusion. He imagined that at the first drum-roll the loyal party of Paris would spring to arms. He gave his orders. About two o’clock in the morning, the drums crashed out in the streets in every quarter of Paris. It was the call to arms, the rappel. Not a battalion arose. At three o’clock the alarm was repeated. Paris slept. At five o’clock, at dawn, the third and last appeal thundered along the streets, while the bugles rang from every square. People were astonished and puzzled. How were they to know who was beating the alarm? After their last response to the call, General Vinoy had threatened them. If they responded now, would he not carry out his threats?

  Thiers, pressing his nose against a window pane in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, saw his aides-de-camp come galloping into the courtyard.

  “Well?” he said, when they entered.

  “Scarcely two hundred National Guards have responded,” was their report.

  “Gentlemen,” observed Monsieur Thiers, with solemn conviction, to the members of his Cabinet who entered at that moment, “this affair really begins to look serious.”

  Then a gamin passed along under the window singing:

  “C’est Adolphe Thiers, qu’on me nomme,

  Sacré nom d’un petit bonhomme.”

  A great stillness fell on the company. A staff officer coughed gently behind his immaculately gloved hand.

  At two o’clock in the morning, the sky was one dazzling sheet of clustered stars. A soft wind blew over the fortifications, bringing with it a breath of awakening spring. The streets were deserted, the houses dark and silent. Behind the Palais de l’industrie, a small camp-fire smouldered among the trees of the Park.

  At half-past two, the Avenue Malakoff and the Place de l’Etoile were suddenly filled with shadowy marching legions. At the same hour, masses of silent men issued from the Bois de Boulogne and swept up the avenue toward the Champs Élysées, and from the Palais de l’industrie cavalry appeared, followed by the clink! clink! of moving cannon. It was General Lecomte’s brigade under orders from Thiers on their way to capture the cannon on the heights of Montmartre.

  Silently the troops moved down the deserted avenue, lighted only by the stars, swung across the Place de la Concorde, through the rue de la Paix, and then separating into detachments took the small winding streets which lead to the hill of Montmartre. The cavalry halted in the Place Pigalle before the fountain. The 76th of the Line occupied the rue Houdon and the rue l’Abbaye. A mitrailleuse was planted to sweep the rue des Martyrs. Then General Lecomte sent out a detachment of police to seize the import
ant post of the Moulin de la Galette, which guarded the cannon. The police crept up in the darkness, until one of them stumbled and fell with his sabre and rifle clanking on the pavement.

  “Qui vive?” shouted the startled insurgent sentry.

  A shot answered him and he fell. The post ran out but were seized and disarmed. The guard at No. 6 rue des Rosiers were captured asleep at their posts, and the troops and police closed in about the cannon. At five o’clock in the morning General Lecomte sent word to General d’Aurelle de Paladines that the cannon were taken, and sappers were demolishing the intrenchments, and he begged him at once to bring horses to remove the cannon to the city below. De Paladines came himself, and wanted to know what General Lecomte meant; Thiers had given him no orders for horses.

  “Good God!” cried General Lecomte, “has he neglected to send the horses?”

  D’Aurelle de Paladines shouted to his men to move the cannon by hand, and the soldiers at once began to drag a piece of 7 through the mud and down the steep, slippery street to the foot of the hill. A great crowd of men, women, and children had gathered to watch them, and from every house National Guards ran out, rifle in hand, crying: “Thiers has betrayed us! A coup d’état! Lecomte is robbing us of our cannon!”

  De Paladines sent messenger after messenger in hot haste to Thiers, begging and imploring him to send horses and harness.

  “It will take my men a day to move seven or eight of these guns by hand,” he wrote. “Our force is small, and our men have not been fed. We have no provisions, and every second may mean life or death.” At eight o’clock the equipages and horses had not arrived. The crowd grew more menacing. The regular troops, tired and hungry, waited for their food to arrive. General Vinoy came up, demanding the reason of delay, and more messengers were despatched to Thiers.

  “Treason! Robbery! Down with Vinoy! Down with Paladines! Down with Thiers! Down with the cannon thieves!” yelled the crowd.

  “Go to h — l,” replied a small bugler of the 76th, and the crowd set up a shout of laughter.

  “Sonny,” cried a handsome young woman, in sabots and a red skirt, “do you want this cake?” and she handed the bugler a bit which the poor little fellow devoured eagerly.

  “Good for you!” shouted the crowd. “Wait! You are our brothers! If you are hungry we will get you food!”

  In an instant loaves of bread and bottles of wine were brought to the troops who, half-starved, received them with delight. In vain their officers interfered and threatened. “We are hungry, the National Guard give us food, why should we fire on them? They are our brothers!”

  “Vive la Ligne!” shouted the crowd.

  “Vive la Garde Nationale!” shouted the Regulars. The soldiers of two companies of the 76th, recently recruited from Belleville, began to fraternize with the crowd. An officer ordered them back, but they laughed in his face. A throng of women and children pressed around the artillerymen who were moving the cannon away. The artillerymen resisted, laughing, but the crowd hoisted them on their shoulders, crying “hurrah for the artillery!” and others dragged the cannon back to the intrenchments. A company of foot chasseurs were ordered to fire on the National Guard. The rifles fell to a level, but women ran out and covered their husbands and brothers with their own bodies.

  “Fire!” shouted the captain; not a shot responded. Other troops were ordered to clear away the constantly increasing crowd, but they refused. Their officers threatened them with sabre and revolver, but they stood doggedly inactive.

  “The National Guard has fed us. We will not fire on women!” they replied.

  “Hello you! the handsome soldier with the brown moustache!” cried a pretty girl from the crowd. “Will you stay with us?”

  “Will you give me something to eat?” said the soldier, seriously.

  “Yes, indeed, food and drink.”

  The soldier accepted a bit of bread and a glass of wine.

  “To the health of the Republic,” he replied, and drained the glass.

  “Vive la Republique! Vive la Ligne! “ cried the people.

  The officers were powerless. Some threw down their swords and walked away weeping with rage and mortification. Some broke their swords over their knees and flung them into the street. Suddenly drums were heard and the Federal battalions, colors flying, bayonets shining, poured into the street from every side. General Lecomte shouted to them to halt, but they pressed toward the regular troops, followed by the crowd. In vain Lecomte ordered his troops to charge and clear the street. The company which was guarding the “Tower of Solferino,” a café, raised their rifles, butt upwards, and refused to budge.

  “Death to Vinoy! Death to Thiers! “ howled the rabble that had followed the Federal battalions. A crashing volley drowned their howls. The National Guards had fired on the Line.

  “Tiens!” said a gamin, pausing before the body of a soldier of the 17th foot chasseurs which lay in a pool of blood beside one of the cannon, “here is another of Monsieur Thiers’ friends.” Then he went away whistling:

  “C’est Adolphe Thiers qu’on me nomme,

  Sacré nom d’un petit bonhomme.”

  CHAPTER IV. “THE EIGHTEENTH OF MARCH.”

  SO began the day of the famous 18th of March. Landes, lying back in his cab, knew nothing of what was passing on Montmartre, and kept urging the fat old cabby to hurry. The request was received with stolid indifference. After a while the cabman jerked his head half-way round and, addressing vacancy, called Heaven to witness that he was doing his best. This broke the ice, and Landes stepped over the cushions in front and, without further ceremony, took a seat beside the driver.

  “It is pleasanter up here,” he observed.

  “Now, Monsieur,” exclaimed the cabman, horrified, “you know this is against regulations.”

  “I don’t deny it,” replied the young man, lighting a cigarette and passing another to the driver.

  “He doesn’t deny it!” cried the cabby, raising both hands to Heaven. He immediately lowered his hands, however, accepted the cigarette, and whispered confidentially: “Monsieur must be a student of the Quarter?”

  “That’s exactly what Monsieur is.”

  “All wickedness is permitted to students.”

  “Shut up, and look out where you ‘re driving,” said the American, pleasantly. They had just escaped overturning a young man who stopped in his tracks and cursed them foully. It was Weser, but Landes did not recognize him in the uniform of a National Guard. The cabman, utterly unable to forego such an opportunity for invective, drew rein to reply. Landes took his reins away and sent the whip whistling about the horse’s ears.

  “Pas de blague,” he said. “Depechez vous! Allons! en route!”

  In vain the cabby shouted for assistance, and besought help from a lounging Line soldier. He cried “Police!” and “Au secours!” but the passers-by only laughed. They rattled over the Pont-au-Change and passed the Louvre, where Landes, tired of his amusement, restored the driver his reins and whip with a threat for the future if he lingered by the way. In the Place du Carrousel, a battalion of the Line stood at ease before the Pavilion de Rohan, but allowed them to pass without question.

  The cabman had recovered his spirits and was chanting merrily as they entered the rue des Martyrs.

  “Monsieur is a gay monsieur,” he chuckled, winking pleasantly at Landes.

  “Thank you, my friend, my spirits are unimpaired.”

  “I also am gay!” caroled the cabby. “I love—”

  His voice was lost in the ringing report of a rifle, and he tumbled clean out of his seat to the pavement. The horse reared, trembled, and dashed up the street at full speed. Landes seized the fallen reins and sawed away at his mouth. He heard people shouting, he caught a glimpse of passers-by scattering in all directions, then there was another shot, and he saw Pagot, in the uniform of a National Guard, lowering a smoking rifle from his shoulder. Before he had time to think, he was blocks away, the terrified horse galloping in the direction
of the rue Blanche. A policeman ran into the street and tried to seize the horse’s head, but was struck and hurled out of the way. Then they bore down upon a cordon of troops who shouted and brought their bayonets to a level, but the horse plunged through these and, swerving into the gutter, crashed against a lamp-post and sank in a quivering heap. Landes kept right on over the horse’s head and sat up several paces farther along, frightened, astonished, but unhurt.