A week has elapsed to-day since the Versailles troops established themselves inside theenceinte, and the fighting has been incessant ever since; this is hard work enough for the assailants, who number nearly 150,000 men; but for the soldiers—if soldiers they can be called—of the Commune, the effort has already been almost superhuman. Gradually diminishing in numbers, constantly finding themselves forced upon a smaller area, and, therefore, the target of a more concentrated fire, hemmed in upon all sides, with ammunition and provisions falling short, exposed to a heavy rain, which has been falling incessantly for 48 hours, unable to seek repose in any spot sheltered from the shells of the enemy, which are pouring in unremitting showers upon every corner of their position, the situation of the Insurgents is desperate in the extreme, and it cannot be denied that they are fighting with an energy and a heroism worthy of a better cause. Reports are so varied and contradictory as to the fate of their leaders that even the Generals of the French army do not know positively who is commanding them; but if the prisoners are to be believed, the irrepressible Cluseret has again risen to the surface, and is the heart and soul of the defence. As the position of the Insurgents becomes desperate, it seems to produce a greater ferocity on both sides. The rebels neither ask nor give quarter; they have made up their minds that death, whether as combatants or as prisoners, is their only alternative, and men and women seem to be lashed up to a frenzy which has converted them into a set of wild beasts caught in a trap, and rendering their extermination a necessity. I went yesterday to the Jardin des Plantes, as the entire left bank of the Seine is now in the hands of the Government troops, and found M. Decaisne, the celebrated botanical professor, still safe and sound, after having passed through three days of unparalleled suspense. On Wednesday therappelhad been beaten by the Insurgents, and notice was publicly given that the Panthéon was to be blown up at 2 o'clock. The result was a general "stampede" of the inhabitants in an agony of terror and dismay. For two or three hours women and children came pouring out of the doomed quarter, unable to save any of their property, and not even yet assured that they had escaped the limits of the explosion. At 5 o'clock no explosion had occurred, and the rumour spread that the attempt had failed for want of a sufficient quantity of powder. I told you how the Panthéon was saved; the people went back to their houses, only to witness severe street fighting, the result of which was to drive the Insurgents slowly across the river, where they made a fierce stand at atête du ponterected at the end of the bridge of Austerlitz. This had only been carried the evening before my visit to it, and bore all the marks of an actual battlefield. Here were eight or ten bodies strewn behind the barricade, with groups of women and young children gathered round inspecting them, and lifting, with a morbid curiosity, the cloths which had been thrown over them to conceal their distorted countenances. These men had been killed in hard fighting, men and accoutrements were strewn thickly around, the houses were smashed and riddled with shot. The barricade, a formidable earthwork and battery, was pounded into a mere heap—everything betokened a bitter struggle; and, indeed, I had already heard from a Staff officer that the Line had lost more heavily at this point than elsewhere. Passing along the side of the canal, we endeavoured to reach the Bastille, but were stopped by a battery which was firing at Père-Lachaise, and which was receiving shells in reply from the cemetery. We therefore retraced our steps past the long gaunt skeleton of the Prefecture of the Police, which was still smoking, and which had contained a body of political prisoners incarcerated by the Insurgents, but released by them in order to work at barricades. This proved their salvation, as they were enabled to effect their escape on the approach of the troops. It is reported, nevertheless, that some still lie buried beneath these smouldering ruins. To the right of the Bastille we could see a heavy volume of smoke rising apparently from a point corresponding to the position of the prison of Mazas. We are still in utter darkness as to the fate of the Archbishop and the clergy in confinement with him, but the tragedy of the Dominicans leaves us little hope. About 20 of these priests were imprisoned on Friday, the 19th, at Fort Bicêtre. On Thursday, when this had to be abandoned, they were hurried away to the Gobelins on the promise of being set at liberty. Instead of this they were driven to work on the barricades, then dragged to a prison in the Avenue d'Italie. At half-past 4 in the afternoon they were visited by a certain M. Cerisier with a company of the 101st battalion of the National Guards, who deliberately loaded in their presence. The outside door of the prison was then thrown open, and they were ordered to leave it one by one. As they marched out singly they were shot successively by order of Cerisier, with the exception of the narrator of the occurrence, and one or two others who were either missed or slightly wounded and escaped. Twelve bodies of these unhappy men have already been recovered.
There is also no doubt that M. Gustave Chaudey, one of the principal editors of theSiècle, and a literary man of some eminence and high character, who had incurred the displeasure of the Communists, has been shot by them. On the other side the executions are wholesale. It is estimated that upwards of 2,000 persons have been shot already on the left bank of the Seine alone, evidently a small proportion of the total number. Wherever women and children are to be observed leaning over the parapet of the Seine intently regarding some object below, one may be sure that the attraction is a group of hideously mutilated corpses of men who have been brought down to the river side, and then with their backs to the wall have met their doom. On the sloping roads leading down from thequaito the river may also be seen inequalities where the road has been recently disturbed and where the freshly-turned earth indicates burial-places. Not far from these bodies were lying several dead horses, from which the people were cutting steaks. The inside of the Hôtel de Ville presents a curious scene, the solid masses of stone and lime of which the rubbish is composed having fallen in in the form of a crater, which fills up the whole central place. Under this mound are said to be buried from 200 to 300 Insurgents who were unable to escape at the last moment, and thus fell the victims of the conflagration they had themselves originated. The mutilation of the ornamental work of this magnificent specimen of architecture is simply hideous; there is scarcely a square inch of thefaçadeuntouched by shot or shell. Anxious, if possible, to judge of the progress of the attack which was being made on the Insurgent position at Père-Lachaise, I reached the Place Château d'Eau, which had been taken the day before from the Insurgents. I found it, however, impossible to go beyond the angle of the Wall near the Ambigu. Here a small crowd was collected which was dispersed by a shot just as I approached, and the place itself was a solitary desert, for it was swept from the heights of Belleville down the Faubourg du Temple. Passing along the Boulevard Magenta, we obtained from the point where the Rue du Faubourg St. Denis traverses the Rue Lafayette, a view of an Insurgent barricade, on which a red flag was still flying, and which was turned by the troops while we were there. We were looking down the long, straight line of street totally deserted, and in the far distance watching the barricade, beyond which rose the occasional puffs of smoke from a musketry fire, when we suddenly saw the red trousers scampering across in twos and threes, and then in larger numbers, and knew that the barricade had been taken, and that it was safe to come out of our cover and walk on the opposite side of the street. All this time the whistling and bursting of the shell overhead was as incessant and loud as I have ever heard on the field of battle. We were directly in the line of fire between Montmartre and Père la Chaise, although completely protected from it, as everything passed overhead. But the terrific rushing through the air of the projectiles, and the cracking and bursting at each end when they reached their destination, made a music which it requires a Parisian education thoroughly to appreciate. Heavy volumes of smoke rose from the besieged quarter, and the destruction of life and property upon the doomed area which the Insurgents have chosen as their final stronghold must be something appalling. Near the angle of the street at which we stood lay the dead body of a man, covered with a cloth, who had been shot not many hours before in an adjoining Court. It was evident from the looks and tone of the inhabitants of this neighbourhood that their sympathies were strongly with the Communists. They muttered gloomily and savagely to each other, scarcely daring to raise their suspicious glances from the ground, for they knew not which of their neighbours might not have denounced them, and that the day of danger was by no means past. Probably two-thirds of the men now gathered at their shopdoors had fought actively for the Commune. At the Prévôté of the 5th corps I had an interesting instance of the effect of denunciations. While there some men who had been intrusted with the arrest of General Henry returned from their expedition. General Henry, it will be remembered, was one of the earliest leaders of the movement, and I went down to see where he had openly established himself as Commander-in-Chief of the National Guard in the Vaugirard quarter. About the 16th of March, or two days before the Revolution several attempts were made to arrest him but the task was so dangerous that they all failed. Throughout the movement this man has exhibited daring and intelligence, and his capture is much desired. In consequence of the information received his haunt was visited, and the result I saw in the shape of a blue Prussian overcoat stained with blood and perforated with a bullet-hole, a tunic still more bloody and torn, a very jaunty braided jacket quite clean and new, a Prussian undress cap, and a very handsome sword. The proprietor had evidently been wounded, and had succeeded in evading his captors, if still alive, by some secret contrivance, which, however, the honour of the denouncer was pledged to discover; it was evident that he had provided himself with a Prussian uniform, in the hope of passing through the German lines, and the blood on his coat would seem to indicate that he had made the attempt and failed. From this barrack, just prior to my visit, had been removed several wounded children, most of them under eight years old. One of the most horrible features of the war in a thickly-peopled city is to be found in the sufferings which it entails upon the innocent who are thus early familiarized with scenes of blood and violence, and who too often, unfortunately, are themselves the victims of them. Thegaminsof Paris love to dabble in petroleum and play with lucifer matches, and revel in destruction and conflagration. More daring than their elders, they stick with their mothers to barricades after the father of the family has deemed it prudent to retire, and numerous are the stories of their heroism and courage. Unfortunately, their propensities for arson render them liable to be shot, and it is sad to see how many children are often comprised in a band of prisoners. I went underground to the cells in which the prisoners were confined at the Prévôté, and wandered along narrow, subterranean passages, where the noisome exhalations were almost stifling, into dark cells, where the eye got at last sufficiently accustomed to the light to distinguish the relics left by the prisoners: here a pair of stays of which some female prisoner had divested herself, there a red cockade, all kinds of articles of clothing steeped in slime of indescribable foulness; and cowering at one end of the corridor a dozen prisoners waiting to know their fate. They were more respectable than usual, and not apparently of a very sanguinary type. They were all men. To-day no less than a hundred women were marched down the streets in one gang. The papers are so full of false reports that it is scarcely safe to give news which has not been verified. Thus, unless I had seen the Genius of Liberty on the top of the column in the Place de la Bastille, and visited the Jardin des Plantes, I might have reported the accounts, of which the papers are full, of the destruction of the figure on the Column and of the animals and rare plants in the gardens, which you will be happy to hear are all in a state of perfect health and preservation. I am afraid, however, it is only too true that half the Gobelins are destroyed, and that 67 of the "Frères de la Doctrine Chrétienne" have been shot by their fellow-Christians of the Commune. A friend of mine saw Madame Millière in a prisoners' gang, and we have authentic intelligence to-day that her husband, one of the most pestilent of the apostles of Fraternity and wholesale slaughter, has been executed.
The streets are full of the National Guards of Order, carrying their rifles to the different dépôts to be given up, for the disarmament of the entire National Guard has been determined on, and it is to be hoped that this most useless body in time of foreign invasion and most dangerous one in moments of internal trouble will be extinguished and abolished for ever throughout all the towns of France. Meantime the Boulevards and streets from which the fighting has receded are slowly waking into life, the tricolor waves from the windows in token of loyalty and sympathy with the Government, and at least two cafés are open on the Boulevards, but as yet only here and there the shutters of a shop are lowered.
The roar of the batteries from Montmartre is still continuous, but it is hardly possible that the Insurgents can continue the struggle for 24 hours longer.
Fighting was going on at Belleville about an hour ago, but still there is every reason the believe that the insurrection is virtually over. A great number of prisoners, escorted by cavalry, have just been marched down the Boulevards. They were said to be 5,000, but this is probably an exaggeration. They came from the Buttes Chaumont, where many of them have been kept two days and a half without food. A more villainous collection of faces I never beheld. There were many women, among them some in men's clothes, some ascantinièresorambulancières, and very young boys and old men. Nearly 1,500 were Regular soldiers, or at least wore their uniform. Their coats were turned inside out, as a mark of disgrace. As they passed through the crowd lining each side of the Boulevards they were met with cries of "A mort, crapule, fusillez-les!" Four women in the Amazon uniform and the Regulars excited special indignation. One prisoner, near the New Opera, refused to march, and was twice stabbed with bayonets. He was then tied to a horse's tail, and afterwards placed on the horse, but he threw himself off, and again refused to march. He was put into a cart and carried off to the nearest place of execution to be shot. Another prisoner, who also refused to march, was dragged by the hands and hair of the head along the road. The crowd called out to the soldiers to shoot him, and declared that but for the presence of the soldiers they would themselves execute summary justice on him. The troops, headed by the Marquis de Galifet, were loudly cheered as they passed.
I went early this morning to Père-Lachaise. Shells were still falling so thickly near the Boulevard du Temple that no one was allowed to pass. I had to go a very roundabout way to get to the Place Bastille, as at numerous barricades everybody who passed was compelled to assist in pulling them down. The barricades were of astonishing strength. Behind the barricade on the Boulevard Mazas lay three bodies of National Guards—apparently shot in its defence. A little lower down on the Boulevard Voltaire lay seven men dead, as if they had there made their last desperate stand. There were some old gray-headed men among them. We were told that their bodies were left there for recognition, and women occasionally came up and claimed them. The Regulars had also suffered severely there, but their dead had been immediately removed. Further on, the stone barricades had been protected by a second line of large sacks stuffed with rags and papers, and piled upon each other. At the corner of Rue Roquette lay over 70 corpses of men, executed for being found with arms in their hands. They lay piled over each other, and the pavement and gutters streamed with blood. The crowd were not allowed to approach them. We entered Père-Lachaise and found it full of troops, chiefly of the Marine Brigade. There is no truth in the stories that the cemetery was defended tomb by tomb. There had been no bayonet or even fusillade fighting there, but the shells had shattered many of the tombs, here and there laying bare the coffins below. The position was so strong that the Marines could account for its abandonment only by the fact that the Insurgents were utterly disorganized for want of leaders. The shelling, however, had been sufficiently vigorous to compel the troops to retire after they took it last night, and to return for reinforcements. They retook the position early this morning. The Insurgents had abandoned a battery of seven guns which commanded the whole position. We could see from it that sharp fighting was still going on at Belleville, probably the last stronghold. As we passed the prison of La Roquette, we heard about ninety rifle-shots and then a mitrailleuse, and were told by the troops that prisoners were being executed. We had great difficulty in passing through the Faubourg St. Antoine, and were stopped by at least fivecordonsof sentries. They told us that the Insurgents wereen fuite, that the Quartier wassuspect, and that, therefore, nobody was allowed to pass. When we got through, many people asked us to put their letters into the post for them, as they were close prisoners. The streets were filled with arms and equipments.
Only a few houses in Belleville still hold out. The Insurgents are surrendering by thousands. The insurrection is considered over.
Most of those who founded the Comité du Salut Public have been taken. The Insurgents are being shot by hundreds. In the Faubourg St. Antoine great numbers of men and women were found carrying petroleum, and at once shot.
TheMoniteursays that Félix Pyat and Paschal Grousset left Paris yesterday in a balloon, which passed over Niort towards the sea.
By Saturday evening the various Corps of the Versailles troops, steadily converging on the Insurgents from the North, South, and West, had forced them into their last strongholds of Père-Lachaise, and at the Buttes Chaumont, in Belleville; and M.Thierson Saturday announced that the final attack would be made on Sunday morning. But the troops waited no longer to finish their terrible work. On Saturday Père-Lachaise was taken by GeneralVinoy; in the evening the Buttes Chaumont were carried by GeneralLadmirault. The two corps united, and the remaining Insurgents were forced into narrow space at the edge of theenceinte, where they are hemmed in between the Versailles troops and the Prussians, and must surrender or be killed. They have also been driven out of all the Forts except Vincennes, and those who hold that Fort have asked the Bavarian troops outside to permit their escape. At five o'clock yesterday all fighting had ceased.
"The Revolution is crushed;" but at what a cost, and amid what horrors! "Peace," says M.Thiers, "is about to be restored, but it will not succeed in relieving all honest and patriotic hearts of the profound sorrow with which they are afflicted." We know not, indeed, how or when such relief is to come; for ruin has been wrought and crimes have been perpetrated which will leave on Paris and on Frenchmen an ineffaceable brand. After the first appalling news of the great conflagrations, a faint hope had arisen that the ultimate result might prove less disastrous than had been apprehended, and it is true that a few of the noble buildings which were thought doomed have escaped. But the almost universal wreck would of itself almost obliterate for the moment the sense of relief, and the material ruin now constitutes the least horror in the scene. It is sufficiently distressing to picture every Quarter of the great Capital, which but the other day was the beauty of the world, scarred by conflagrations, torn by shells, pitted with musketry, and stained with blood. It is terrible to think that in a city "like Paris" fire and sword, and instruments of destruction still more hellish, have swept from West to East, and from South to North; that most of its noble palaces are but gaunt and blackened walls, and its finest streets laid in heaps of as utter ruin as the mounds of Nineveh. The mind is overwhelmed by the mere physical spectacle of this whirlwind of blazing destruction suddenly bursting over a noble city so near us, which we knew so well, and the inhabitants of which were but yesterday our neighbours and our friends. But even this is overpowered by the awful human ruin which it expresses and reflects. On both sides alike we hear of incredible acts of assassination and slaughter. The Insurgents have fulfilled, so far as they were able, their threats against the lives of their hostages as mercilessly as their other menaces. The Archbishop ofParis, the Curé of the Madeleine, PresidentBonjean, with priests, gendarmes, soldiers, and other victims to the number of 64, have been shot, and 168 others were only saved by the arrival of the troops. This massacre of distinguished and inoffensive men is one of those crimes which never die, and which blacken for ever the memory of their authors. But in the spirit of murder and hatred it displays the Communists seem not very much worse than their antagonists. It sounds like trifling for M.Thiersto be denouncing the Insurgents for having shot a captive officer "without respect for the laws of war." The laws of war! They are mild and Christian compared with the inhuman laws of revenge under which the Versailles troops have been shooting, bayoneting, ripping up prisoners, women and children, during the last six days. We have not a word to say for the black ruffians who, it is clear, deliberately planned the utter destruction of Paris, the burning of its inhabitants, and the obliteration of its treasures; but if soldiers will convert themselves into fiends in attacking fiends, is it any wonder if they redouble the fiendishness of the struggle? Fury has inflamed fury, and hate has embittered hate, until all the wild passions of the human heart have been fused into one vast and indistinguishable conflagration.
So far as we can recollect there has been nothing like it in history. The siege of Jerusalem may afford some parallel, but Roman soldiers never so utterly lost their self-control as the Versailles troops appear to have done. We are beggared for words to describe the scene, and exclaim that it is hell upon earth. It is nothing less. There are all the physical and all the moral accessories. Fire and brimstone, storm and tempest, torture, insult, hatred, despair, all forms of malice, murder, and destruction, have been raging in Paris during the last few days. Women forgetting their sex and their gentleness to commit assassination, to poison soldiers, to burn and to slay; little children converted into demons of destruction, and dropping petroleum into the areas of houses; soldiers in turn forgetting all distinctions of sex and age, and shooting down prisoners like vermin, now by scores and now by hundreds,—all combine to enact on civilized ground, and within the sight and hearing of their fellow-men, scenes which find a parallel only in the infernal regions imagined by prophets and poets. This is what human nature is capable of; for Frenchmen are men, and we shudder for our race. But, at all events, what hope is to be seen for France in this seething abyss? This tragedy is the end of eighty years of revolutions, of an eighty years' struggle after Liberty and Fraternity, eighty years of attempts again and again renewed to rebuild French Society on a new and harmonious basis. The end is a fiercer hatred, deeper divisions, wilder passions, and more eternal distrust. Will these six days of savage devastation tend to heal the existing breach between the lower and the middle classes of France? Will the mutual slaughter of soldiers and citizens tend towards that essential condition of a happy State; mutual confidence between the Army and the People? Will the blood of another butchered Archbishop sow the seeds of peace between the Priests and their Socialist foes? That which we seem at present to see in this outbreak of hell is the permanent creation of yawning abysses between classes, institutions, memories, and men. Paris may, perhaps, be rebuilt; but what is to wipe out the blood with which every street of Paris is now stained, and when will women cease to hand down to their children the envenomed hatreds of May, 1871? Where, above all, are the signs of that combined generosity, firmness and foresight in statesmen or soldiers which alone could lay the first stone of reconciliation? The prospect is too black for France and for Europe for us to dare look forward. We have no heart at present to balance the faults and crimes of the two sides, or to assign the relative blame. We only see the worst outburst ever yet displayed of human passions; we see it at the close of fifteen centuries of Christian civilization; we see it in one of the most gifted races of the world, and we know not where to look for hope or consolation.
Paris is perfectly tranquil. Shops are opening. The streets are crowded with people examining the amount of damage done. Prisoners in groups of a hundred are being marched under escort down the Boulevards. Fighting ceased about 3 yesterday afternoon. A few shots were fired from the windows at Belleville, where frightful scenes are said to have been enacted. The more desperate characters, felons and escapedforçatsof the worst description, turned at the last moment on their own comrades because they refused to continue the fight. Some women murdered with knives two young men for the same reason. In consequence of the firing from the windows, an immense number of executions occurred. The park of the Buttes Chaumont was strewn with corpses. The soldiers were so furious that the officers found it necessary to warn strangers of the danger of incurring suspicion. A few of the inhabitants of Belleville were declaring openly to passers by that the affair was not yet over, and that terrible reprisals would be wreaked upon the soldiers. These boasts have not yet been fulfilled, but general apprehensions are, nevertheless, entertained that those of the insurgents who have escaped justice will try to inaugurate a secret system of arson and assassination. Constant discoveries of petroleum are still being made. The danger is increased by the fact that women, who, on account of their sex, are more likely lo escape notice, are really the most desperate. Great precautions are taken at night. The streets are full of sentries and all circulation is strictly forbidden. Any one who ventures out without the password runs the risk of being locked up all night. There are diversities of opinion relative to the Archbishop's fate even now. Some people affirm that he has escaped; but the evidence is in favour of his having been murdered at La Roquette.
Fears are entertained of an epidemic consequent upon the hurried burial of so many dead under the pavement of the streets.
The search for Insurgents from house to house is still going on vigorously. It is still very hard either to leave or even to enter Paris, Gourde, the Communist Minister of Finance, has been found. It is said by Insurgents that Cluseret ought to be among the last batch of prisoners taken at Fort Vincennes. This being their last place of refuge it is expected that many other ringleaders will be discovered.
The Communist commander of that Fort sent to the Bavarian General a list of his officers and men, requesting for the former passes into Switzerland, for the latter passes into France. After various negotiations, the affair was left in the hands of General Vinoy, and it was agreed that all the garrison of Vincennes, having never fired a shot, should be detained prisoners only temporarily; but that all fugitives who had taken refuge there should be surrendered unconditionally. The garrison eagerly consented to the terms, and at once put their chiefs in prison. Orders were found on many of them, signed Ulysse Parent, for the burning of the Hôtel de Ville, the Bourse, and other places.
The Luxembourg is to replace temporarily the Hôtel de Ville, and the Staff has already moved there. Everything is going on quietly enough in most parts of Paris, but in the Belleville Quarter life is still unsafe. Not only shots are fired from windows, but occasionally Insurgents fire off revolvers upon officers at a few yards' distance. Many fear that, notwithstanding the large numbers of the Insurgents caught, and the terrible example made, enough have escaped to give further trouble, if not by open resistance, at least by arson and secret assassination. The severities, moreover, exercised by the military authorities have produced a pretty strong feeling of reaction against them, and in some of even the least revolutionary Quarters the troops are scarcely popular, certainly not so popular as when they entered Paris. The Insurgents find many sympathizers to hide them, and assist their escape from Paris.
The policy of England with reference to those who have escaped is watched with great anxiety.
Active measures are being taken to cleanse the streets and rid them of the dead bodies, some of which had been buried where they fell under the barricades, with a foot or two of soil over them. Passers-by are pressed into the service as burying parties, and the English Embassy has received complaints from Englishmen of having been seized for this purpose. The smell of corpses in some places is offensively strong, and it is feared this hot weather following upon the heavy rain may breed a pestilence.
Traffic in the streets at night is getting easier, though thecaféshave to be closed at 11. The unpopularity of the troops is no doubt, in part due to the deeply-rooted Parisian dislike of military rule and the abolition of the National Guard—a measure which, however necessary, under no circumstances is likely to be welcome.
The firemen of Havre who came to Paris to aid in extinguishing the recent conflagrations have returned home to-day.
One of the most important of the "hostages" who suffered death at the hands of the Commune—the most important person of their lay victims—M. Bonjean, was President of the Court of Cassation, and it was only the fact of his holding a high position, and being respected by all persons whose respect was worth having, that can have rendered him odious. He was a very old man, as old at least as the Abbé Deguerry. It was chiefly as a Judge and not as a politician that his name was known to the world, yet, all that was known of him as a politician was in his favour. Indeed, he enjoyed the rare distinction of being, perhaps, the one Liberal member of an Assembly so bigoted and so subservient as was the Senate under the Empire. Notwithstanding his advanced age, he remained firm at his post during the siege and during the far more perilous period of the conflict between M. Thiers and the Comité Central. His arrest was, so to speak, an accident, as he happened to be paying, or expected to pay, a visit, by appointment, to the house of his friend, the Procureur-général, when the police of the Communists were taking possession of the house of the latter officer. He bore his imprisonment, old as he was, with patience and resignation, remarking that for the last 40 years he had been self-condemned to upwards of 12 hours' hard labour a day over his books and papers, and that he could work as well at these in a prison cell as in a palace.
Two days ago I was so fortunate as to meet Mons. Petit, the Secretary of the late Archbishop, who had only escaped from the prison in which he had been confined with the unfortunate Prelate the day before. M. Petit did not himself see M. Darboy executed, though he saw the procession pass and heard the firing. Out of 16 priests and 38 gendarmes confined in the prison, 26 were shot, and the fate of the remainder had been decided upon when an attempt to escape made by the criminal prisoners, who were the original occupants of the gaol, succeeded, and with the help of one of the gaolers the whole body made an attack upon the Insurgent guard, who, in fact, did not wait for it, but abandoned their post as soon as they perceived that all their prisoners were at liberty. The priests succeeded in changing their clerical costume, but not in sufficiently disguising themselves, for M. Petit saw four of his companions shot at the first barricade they reached; he therefore fled back to his prison, and, finding a common prison shirt, he reduced his costume to that garments and took refuge in a bed in the hospital ward. The prison was not again guarded, but those who casually passed through it supposed him to be a sick prisoner not worth notice; and here he remained until Sunday evening, when his suspense was put an end to by the arrival of the soldiery. In the Chapelle Ardente of the Madeleine lies the body of thecuréof that church, who was shot by the side of the Archbishop, and a stream of persons, mostly women, with saddened, awe-struck faces passed through it all yesterday afternoon. The body of the Archbishop has been recovered, and is at the Palace.
I have now explored Paris in every direction to judge with some degree of accuracy of the extent of the damage done, but I will spare you any detailed account of those scenes of havoc and ruin, that I have partly described already which differ in their character according to the agent of destruction, and which consist of ruins caused by shells and ruins caused by fire. Houses which have been destroyed by shells present a far more ghastly appearance than those which have been burnt, and the aspect of the street at Point du Jour is calculated to strike the imagination of those who are now entering Paris for the first time from Versailles by that gate. The same may be said of the houses on both sides of the Avenue de la Grande Armée, and in the neighbourhood of the Porte Maillot; but nothing that I have seen equals the Auteuil Railway Station, where the building, the line, and the railway bridge have all been crumpled up together, as if some giant hand had squeezed them into a shapeless mass. The iron bridge still spans the road, but with rails and girders so contorted and covered withdébristhat we were afraid to drive under it for fear the slight concussion caused by a carriage passing beneath might bring the tottering mass down on our heads. A little beyond, a sentry is placed to prevent people passing beneath a house which is on the verge of crumbling to the ground. It is a lofty, handsome building, elegantly furnished, and quite new, which has been completely cut in two, and the furniture of each successive story is thus exposed. One room on the fourth floor was apparently a boudoir, for the rich crimson-covered furniture stands trembling at the edge of the "parquet," and a heavy armchair threatens with the least jar to come down with a crash into the middle of the road. It was reserved for French artillery to complete the work which the German artillery began. I drove round this same road some days after the first siege, and, compared to their present condition, these suburbs might then have been considered well preserved and habitable. Looking at the longenceinteof fortifications with its battered breaches and crumbling embrasures, one is puzzled whether M. Thiers deserves more credit for the skill with which he put it up or for that with which he has knocked it down.
Anxious to see to what condition the conquerors have reduced the Insurgent stronghold at Belleville, I have returned from penetrating its disagreeable recesses. As usual, even in peaceful times, the lower part of the Faubourg du Temple was densely crowded with an agitated, restless throng, composed principally of women. Most of the shops were shut, probably because their owners were either shot or in prison. Those who lounged in their doorways looked surly and suspicious; nor is this much to be wondered at, for during the last two days every domicile has been searched in this Quarter from attic to cellar, and every street swarms with denouncers and soldiers. As we approached Ménilmontant the crowd became thinner, and the soldiers more numerous, until they almost lined the street on either side. Here and there were piles of broken arms and heaps of National Guard coats and trousers. The road was literary strewn with caps, which had been torn from the heads of prisoners and flung in the mud. Old women were rummaging in the heaps for something worth taking away which was not of a military character, as their operations were closely watched by the soldiery, who were by no means of an amiable type. Here were no signs of fraternization or amicable intercourse. At one place at least a dozen omnibuses were collected and crammed with arms and military stores, a magazine of which I saw in the process of being emptied. Three thousand Orsini bombs were also found. I have specimens of two kinds in my possession; one is circular, flat, and hollow, about six inches in diameter and an inch and a half thick, and fitted all round its edge with little hammers, which play upon a glass case inside filled with nitro-glycerine. Whichever way the bomb falls it is sure to strike one of these hammers, which explodes the nitro-glycerine. The other is a zinc ball, rather smaller than a cricket ball, filled with powder and covered with nipples, upon which are percussion caps. It cannot fall without striking a cap and exploding. It is natural that the discovery of such objects should exasperate the soldiery, for whom they were intended, and who cannot yet walk with any feeling of security along streets filled with a population who employ such diabolical engines of destruction. Hitherto, in most of the instances in which they have been used, the culprit has been a woman; more reckless and vindictive than the men, they have, in many instances, literally courted death, forcing their fate by acts of violence when escape was evidently impossible. Near the top of the steep hill which leads to the Mairie of Ménilmontant were severalcordonsof sentries, through which we had some difficulty in passing, owing to a commotion which had scarcely yet subsided, and which showed how combustible were the materials of which the population here is composed. There had been an altercation between a sergeant of the Line and a citizen, in which the latter had offered some violence and had been shot on the spot; his body was still palpitating on the pavement as I came suddenly and unexpectedly upon it, and we were warned, by an angry cry of "au large" from a sentry, that it would be a very simple matter in the then temper of the soldiery to meet the same fate. It is easy to imagine the scowling looks and stifled curses of the men and women glaring from doorways and windows at the execution of a friend before their eyes, and we began to feel that we were objects of equal suspicion and dislike on either side. At every step we were challenged, and the fact that we had a military pass made it clear to the Bellevilleites that we were their enemies. We had now reached the crown of the hill—the very heart of Belleville, and the last stronghold of the Insurgents. It was crowded with soldiery: an hour in Belleville under existing circumstances is enough to satisfy the morbid appetite for excitement which may tempt people to go there. Notwithstanding the crowds on the Boulevards, many of the shops are still shut, in consequence of the absence of their owners from Paris. The difficulties of entering and leaving the city are still so great that many days must elapse before the ordinary population can return. Meantime, the want of gas makes the streets as they were in the darkest moments of the siege, and the gloom after dark, combined with the dangers of arrest, does not tempt people to remain abroad much later than 10 o'clock.
Yesterday, out of one of the houses from which a shot had been fired, an innocent Englishman, who, being elderly and deaf, knew nothing of what had happened, came downstairs unsuspectingly on to the pavement into the middle of the crowd, and had a very narrow escape for his life. Some ingenious self-constituted detective called out "That's the man," and the crowd, having long waited in vain for somebody, were only too glad to have a victim thus extemporized to their hands, and if a few of the cooler and more humane bystanders had not interfered, the Englishman might have been murdered in cold blood and in broad daylight. As it was, he got off with no more serious injury than torn clothes and a mauling which may keep him to his bed for a fortnight.
What, to those who have witnessed the recent transformation scenes in the great Parisian melodrama, is newest and strangest is the crowd of well-dressed holyday-making loungers streaming so thickly over the broad pavement that it is no easy matter to get through them, and occupying every available chair outside the adjoiningcafé. Where in the world do they all come from? Many of them have stories of their recent experiences to tell which, well arranged, might make the fortune of a theatrical manager—stories so sensational that one would feel bound to refuse them credence if they were not in perfect harmony with the sensational scenes of which every third man's personal experience has supplied him with a specimen. One man has been close prisoner in a cellar two days and nights while fighting has been going on all around him and over his head. Another has had to fly amid bullets from the suffocating smoke of burning buildings, his ears still ringing with the cries of poor wretches who could not muster up their courage for the rush, and who risked a lingering death under the fallen ruins.
Numerous corpses have been dug out of cellars over which had fallen masses of burning houses, and many probably still remain, at which it is impossible to get. In the Rue Royale and its immediate neighbourhood last night the air was tainted with the unmistakable smell of putrefying bodies, which, it was supposed, were lying under the huge masses of smouldering woodwork and masonry still heaped upon them. The fire, though the engines have been at work at it six days and nights, has not yet been completely extinguished, and last night I and a friend, although he had his wife to protect him, were compelled to take our turn at the pumps. We in vain pleaded that we would not leave the lady alone. The head of the pressgang who had kidnapped us would be delighted to take care of her while we worked, and as soon as it appeared that we were only to work a short time—not to be kept on indefinitely into the small hours of the night—we were not sorry to lend a helping hand. A fresh batch of captives, condemned to hard labour, shortly came up and replaced us. One of our objections to being kept long at work was that it was getting late, and that after dark it is no very easy or safe matter to go about the streets.
Large crowds took advantage of the free permission accorded yesterday to pass through the gates of Paris, and to-day the streets are filled to overflowing with sightseers examining the ruins and other traces of the siege. Many foreigners have already arrived, some for pleasure, some to recommence business operations.
Arrests are still numerous of men and women, many of the arrested apparently belonging to the respectable classes.
It has been proposed to set on foot throughout Europe a subscription to restore the public buildings destroyed in Paris.
It is hoped that in two days the telegraphs will again be open to the public. The post is already working well, thanks to the exertions of M. Rampont.
All impediments in the way of entering and leaving Paris have been removed, as I said; persons are only required to show their passports when demanded by the police.
The military authorities have entertained favourably the requests of theatrical managers for permission to re-open the theatres, but the re-opening of thecafés chantantshas not yet been authorized.
Aubry, agent of the International Society and treasurer of the Commune, was arrested yesterday.
It is said that, until further orders, no one is to be allowed to pass the gates of Paris after 9 p.m. Patrols of cavalry traverse Paris and the environs all night.
TheFigarocalculates the number of insurgents still at large in Paris who have escaped military justice at 50,000 men. These persons will, it thinks, always constitute a source of danger, and will only await a favourable opportunity for exciting disturbances.
A gang of prisoners passing down the Boulevard is a never ending source of interest, and with some reason, for the prisoners now are not the scum of Belleville and La Villette, swept at haphazard out of their lanes and alleys, but the more prominent men, who have been lying hid ever since, and are being discovered or denounced singly, so that there are seldom more than two or three in a batch, and these are generally persons of note. I saw two parties yesterday, one containing three men and two women, all of quite a different type from the ragged hangdog squads that used to be driven past between lines of cavalry. These were well-dressed, gentlemanlike men and modest, respectable-looking women who seemed by no means either afraid or ashamed of the position in which they found themselves. On another occasion I observed two men, also of thebourgeoisieclass, both of them very superior to usual prisoners. One of them had his hands tied firmly behind his back. They both boldly looked the crowd that followed them in the face; but the arrest which caused the greatest interest was that of M. Paschal Grousset, who was caught hidden and disguised as a woman at 39 Rue Condorcet, and who was honoured with a conveyance and a cavalry escort to protect him from the crowd. M. Pyat still succeeds in evading the authorities, and there is even some doubt whether the numerous persons who went to see the body of M. Deslescluze when it was exposed in the church of St. Elizabeth, and who declared that they recognized it, were not the victims of a delusion, and whether that gentleman may not still turn up like Sir Roger Tichborne to discomfit the minds of his old friends, who now seem uncertain whether they know him or not.
Monday being the first day when the gates of Paris, as well as the railway stations, were open to the public, there was an influx and efflux on a large scale, the people who swarmed in were people from a distance who had taken refuge in the country, and were returning with their baggage to their homes. Those who swarmed out were for the most part sightseers whom events have kept close prisoners in Paris for the last two months, and who are now flocking to the outside of theenceinteto visit their former haunts of pleasure in the immediate vicinity, which are now desolate wastes, and to compare the condition of the suburbs as damaged by the Germans with their present condition as destroyed by themselves. An examination for arms and weapons to be extended to every room in Paris is now being made, and the military authorities continue their activeperquisitionsfor men and documents with tolerable success. Upon two successive occasions, however, shots have been fired within the last few days from a window in a house in the Place Beauveau upon officers, fortunately without injury, but the would-be murderer has not been found.
Ten thousand incendiary bombs have been discovered in the catacombs. As 23,000 were manufactured by the Commune according to documents found on prisoners, and of these not many were used, a large number are believed to be still somewhere concealed.
Nearly all the missing pieces of the Colonne Vendôme have been recovered. It is thought the Column can be exactly restored.
A strange proposal is made to preserve untouched the ruins of the Hôtel de Ville. It is seriously discussed, and finds many advocates.
On the extradition question the more moderate journals suggest that Government should content itself with demanding the surrender of those Insurgents against whom it can make out some case of ordinary non-political crime.
Crowds still flock from all parts into Paris.
Perfect tranquility prevails, though numerous arrests continue to be made.
It is believed that the prisoners will be classified in three categories, the first consisting of persons against whom only minor charges are preferred, the second of those charged with offences which entail transportation, the third of criminals of the worst class, some of them being accused of offences which may be punished by death.
The funeral of the Archbishop of Paris and the other distinguished hostages assassinated by the Commune is expected to be a very imposing ceremony. A Commission of 50 Deputies will officially represent the Assembly on the occasion, but a very much larger number of Deputies will attend. The chief of the Executive power and the other members of the Government will be present at Notre-Dame, where the funeral service will be celebrated to morrow morning at 11 o'clock.
The body of the Archbishop will be removed from the Archiepiscopal Palace, in the Rue de Grenelle, at 10 o'clock. It will be carried on a bed of state by seven Deacons. The seven Suffragan Bishops of the Archdiocese of Paris will act as pall bearers.
Monseigneur Darboy will be interred in the tomb of the Archbishops of Paris in the vaults of the Cathedral See.
The Abbé Duguerry will be burried in the vaults of the Madeleine, and the other hostages in the Cemetery of Père-Lachaise.
The cause of the delay in opening the courts-martial at Versailles to try the Communist prisoners is that a supplementary act of indictment has been rendered necessary by the discovery of important documents on several of the recently-arrested members of the Commune.
The inhabitants of the second Arrondissement have been warned that everybody who does not give up his firearms may be tried before a court martial.
An Anglo-Indian ex-officer is said to be gravely compromised in the Insurrection, but the number of British subjects engaged in it appears to have been ludicrously exaggerated:—not 20 have had cases made out against them.
The number of Communists belonging to the International and similar societies is estimated at 120,000. Arrests are still numerous. One of the men who shot the Archbishop, and for whom the police had long looked in vain, was yesterday arrested at his funeral.
TheJournal officielpublishes a circular note of M. Jules Favre, dated the 6th inst., in reference to the causes of the Parisian Insurrection. The principal of these is the collecting together of 300,000 workmen who were brought to Paris by the works executed under the Empire, and who were led away by Jacobin agitators, and who were vanquished on the 31st of October.
After that came the action of the International Society composed of working men, the doctrines and dangers of which are explained in the circular.
It is calculated that 70,000 travellers entered Paris between Saturday and Tuesday by the Northern line alone. Many had to travel in luggage vans. Paris, notwithstanding, does not appear full. Most of the visitors make a very short stay. The dull condition of trade is loudly complained of.
The idea of burning the corpses which have not been properly buried has been abandoned; it is proposed to exhume all those buried in the Parc des Monceaux, the Jardin du Luxembourg, and other temporary burial places, and to transfer them to a new cemetery beyond Fort Vanves.
One hundred and fifty pretended firemen were executed yesterday at Versailles.
The Commander of the 9thArmy Corps of Paris has issued a notice, stating that the surrender of arms has been slow, and the last delay has expired. The military authorities will, therefore, treat the offenders with severity. Active searches have been made in the Rue St. Honoré to-day.
The Courts-martial at Versailles will try the prisoners exclusively for offences against the common law, and will not consider them as political offenders.
The close inspection which has been made of the sewers in Paris has already led to the discovery of large quantities of weapons and ammunition, and also of many ex-Federalist combatants, who, despairing of escape from the regular troops, sought refuge in the subterranean passages with whatever provisions they could secure. The greater part of these miserable creatures are in a most deplorable condition from hunger and the poisonous atmosphere of their hiding places. On Friday, at the angle of the Rue Vavin and the outer Boulevard, the scavengers found five bodies in the sewer, one that of an officer, and all mutilated by rats. The bodies were brought out by means of ropes, and after search for papers and documents, were interred in the Mont Parnasse Cemetery.
On Wednesday the Commissary of Police for the Quartier Saint Victor received information that the ex-General of the Commune, Rossel, was in concealment at the Hôtel Montebello, upon the Boulevard St. Germain. The Commissary proceeded to the hotel, and upon searching the place found in a room on the third floor a person dressed in the uniform of the Eastern Railway service. Upon being questioned this person stated that his name was Tirobois, that he was an engineer living at Metz, but had been summoned to Paris by the railway managers on account of the pressure of traffic on the line. 'Are you sure of that?' asked the Commissary. 'Parbleu.' 'Well, in the name of the law I arrest you. You are Rossel.' 'I? not at all.' The prisoner was taken to the Prefecture de Police established at the Barracks of the Cité, and thence in a boat to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where the head-quarters of the municipal police are established. During the whole of the journey thither, being closely pressed with questions by the Commissary, the pretended Tirobois continued his denials. Upon being further interrogated at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he replied, 'I have told you all I know about myself. Do not ask me any more.' Tirobois was then conveyed to the Ministry of War, where he was confronted with a number of persons who were detained in custody. Some of these declared that he was Rossel, but others, the majority, denied that he was the Communist ex-General. About 10 o'clock at night the prisoner was formally questioned as to his history. When the customary question, 'What is the name of your mother?' was put, he became confused, turned red, and, suddenly springing up, exclaimed, 'Why carry on this pretence any longer. Of what good is this acting and these lies. Yes, I am Colonel Rossel.' After this avowal the prisoner was removed under escort to the dépôt of the Prefecture. Upon being searched there was found 225f. in notes, a political article, and a longitudinal section of the different public monuments in Paris. The next day he was taken to Versailles and lodged at the Grandes Écuries. His real description is Louis Nathaniel Rossel, born at St. Brieuc (Côtes du Nord), September 9, 1844, of Louis and of Sarah Campbell. TheFigarostates that the artist Courbet was captured at the house of one of his friends, a pianoforte maker in the Rue St. Gilles. He was concealed behind a bedstead, and, upon being threatened with a revolver, gave himself up without attempting resistance.
The destruction at the Gobelins has not been so extensive as had been apprehended. Only a small portion of the buildings has been burnt, and work has already been resumed in the parts which have been spared. Even in those rooms which have been destroyed not all the works of art have been lost, and especially the "Dead Christ" after Philippes de Champagne, and the portrait of Louis XIV, after Rigault, have been saved. The collection of ancient patterns has also been preserved.
Some disquieting rumours about the condition of La Villette have caused the troops quartered there to be strongly reinforced; nevertheless, perfect tranquility so far prevails.
Business is greatly improving, orders forarticles de Pariscoming in pretty freely, and the fine weather bringing increasing crowds of visitors.
Some further important arrests have been made, including Urbain, alleged to have been the principal instigator of the massacre of the hostages.
Paris is rapidly resuming its old appearance. The Cafés and Concerts in the Champs Élysées recommence to-morrow, and various theatres are re-opening.
People, in France, are discussing the causes of the late insurrection, and measuring the consideration to which the Insurgents, whether as rebels or refugees, are justly entitled. That the tendency of opinion should be strongly against the Communists is natural, for the justification of their revolt appears difficult, while their last acts have excited universal abhorrence. It is, indeed, perfectly true that they had no grievance against the Government which they defied, for though, perhaps, the National Assembly might not have voted for a Republic, no Republic which could have been voted by any Assembly of Frenchmen would have satisfied the Insurgents of Paris. The political leanings of the Assembly may be put out of the question in searching for the origin of the Civil War. That war was hatched in the brooding minds of Parisian workmen, intent on one single object, and it became practicable when the Revolution of September last put arms in their hands and the capitulation of February left them there still.
The one fixed idea of the workmen of Paris was that work entitled them to something more than wages. They had so long and so intently contemplated the relations between labour and capital that they knew nothing of any other elements of human society, or of any other classes beyond employers and employed. They saw that a hundred workmen got their five francs a day each, and that the single person who hired them got his thousands a year. We are not aware that, as a rule, they were ill-paid or overworked, or in any way oppressed. We should infer rather that they were in the receipt of good wages, that they possessed education as well as skill, and that they had leisure enough and to spare for discussion and thought. The misfortune was that they thought of one subject only, until at last their conceptions grew actually monstrous. It was not all at once that they reached the doctrines recently declared. There is a wide difference between the ideas of 1871 and those of 1848. At the latter period the labourer was held simply to be worthy of his hire, and nothing was proposed beyond such an organization of labour as would insure a constant supply of work for all who wanted it, at wages determined rather by considerate adjustment than unrestricted competition. But the men of the Commune had advanced far ahead of such old Tories of Socialism and Democracy asLedru RollinandLouis Blanc. Still occupied with the one single prospect of their daily life, and regarding the relations between capital and labour as the be-all and end-all of existence, they had reached the conclusion that all capital should be transferred bodily to themselves; that they alone ought to constitute society, that all other classes should be dispossessed as worthless, and all established institutions abolished as effete. They began their demolition with the nation itself. They would have no nation, no France, no French Government. They renounced not only all Kings and Emperors, but all Presidents, all Conventions, and all Parliaments, the latter especially. In the place of such authorities they proposed to substitute Committees of working men, and to cut up the country into such areas as Trade Unions might conveniently govern. For their own particular Union they thought Paris might serve well enough, and so they stipulated for their own sovereignty within these limits under the title of the Commune. On those terms—every other species of authority and power being excluded—they believed they could put into practice their one idea of turning their own little world upside down and making the working class everything and other classes nothing. As they never looked beyond their own workshops, they considered that none but working people had ever done any duties or suffered any wrongs, and that no others, therefore, were entitled to any rights. The one object of their hatred, envy, and antagonism was capital, and they resolved to take capital into their own hands. For the future they would lead easy lives, and be the lords instead of the slaves of their old and detested enemy.
In those pretensions and those desires originated the Revolution just suppressed. The war thus undertaken was a Civil War, conducted without the least respect to any laws of war at all. The flight of the Government left the entire Capital not only with all its resources, but with all its treasures and all its inhabitants, in the hands of the insurgents. With these advantages they preferred their demands. They asked for the Capital of France to be delivered over to them as an estate or province within which they might proscribe the worship ofGod, appropriate every form of capital, and depose all authority and all ranks in favour of their own. Failing this, and in the event of their being defeated in the actual war, they asked for amnesty and liberty to depart. At first they reckoned on victory, for the Assembly appeared disorganized and its armies wavering; the support of other great towns was anticipated, and the outlaws of every country in Europe—the veterans of the universal Revolution—had carried their swords to the service of its latest and ripest expression—the Parisian Commune. Moreover, they had tremendous means of extortion in their hands. They held possession of all that was precious and admirable in the Capital of France, and they declared that, if they were neither allowed to prevail nor permitted to escape, they would spare nothing in their vengeance. In preparation for the worst they stored combustibles in the noblest edifices of the city, and then, laying their hands on some of the most eminent and venerated of its inhabitants, they penned them in a body for the contingency of prospective slaughter. They had no more personal animosity against MonseigneurDarboythan against any statue in the Tuileries or the Louvre. Animate and inanimate objects were marked for destruction on precisely the same grounds—the necessity of putting stress upon the enemy; and the threat was actually executed because its execution might improve the effect of terrorism another day. Of laws or of rules of war these men took not the slightest account. The military leaders of the insurrection had been trained in combats where every imaginable expedient had been held lawful, and the Committee of the International thought no price too high for the realization of their fixed idea. Soldiers and workmen alike were prepared for any extremity of outrage either in pursuit of victory or prosecution of revenge.
Such was the cause and such the conduct of this two months' war; but a war, nevertheless, it was, waged by a political insurrection on behalf of a political object. It is very true that the Insurgents aimed at no form of polity known to the world, and that it would have been impossible to content them by any measure of civil freedom or political rights. Their chief and most peremptory demand was, not for any rights of their own, but for the suppression of the rights of others. They denounced the extension of the suffrage to the rural population, and, as they were in a very small minority themselves, they protested against the right of any majority to outvote them, though they were preparing all the while to impose their own will on a constituency of ten times their number.
Such are my summary reflections concerning that gigantic insurrection.
Now, my Dear, that I have brought my daily correspondence to an end, happy shall I be, if such as may happen to read my small volume can find the perusal of it as interesting as you told it was to you.
I don't expect to stay much longer abroad: I shall soon return to England but quite heart-rent at what my eyes have witnessed, and notwithstanding my admiration for the noble qualities of the french nation, more than once, I fear, I shall not be able to refrain exclaiming:Poor France!
The Palais Royal, built on the site of Cardinal Richelieu's Palace, faces the Louvre, and adjoins the Place des Victoires. Given by Louis XIV, to his brother the Duke of Orleans, it passed from him to the Regent Duke. Here, but not in the existing edifice, the Regent and his daughter held their incredible orgies; here lived his grandson Egalité, who rebuilt the palace after a fire, and relieved his embarrassments by erecting the ranges of shops. The Palais Royal Gardens were the nursery of the First Revolution; they were the favourite resort of Camille Desmoulins and the other mob orators not yet sitting in Convention; and in them was unfurled, on the 13th of July, 1789, that tricolour flag which was to prove even a deadlier symbol than the red and white roses plucked once for England's woe in our own Temple-gardens. At the Palais Royal Egalité hatched the plots which ended in his execution, when it was disposed of by lottery, to be bought back, repaired, and beautified by the Orleans family after the Restoration, and inhabited by them till the second death of the Monarchy, in 1830, removed them to the Tuileries. In 1848 the palace was plundered and the interior destroyed by the mob, who at the same time burnt Louis Philippe's fine library. The Palais was turned into a barrack, but when the new Republic developed into an Empire, it naturally changed back again into a palace. The Emperor made it over to his uncle Jerome, who left it to Prince Napoleon, by whom it was fitted up in sumptuous style. The great staircase and its balustrades and the Galerie des Fêtes were fine in art and in general effect, but nothing that may have been destroyed can be half so great a loss as the Library which went in 1848, or as the Hôtel de Ville, a magnificent structure, dating in part from 1628. The additions of 1842 to this municipal palace cost 640,000l., and some of the saloons were the most gorgeous in Paris, perhaps in the world. Here in the days gone by, the Prefect of the Seine was wont to entertain his 7,000 guests in the great gallery, with its gilt Corinthian columns and 3,000 wax lights, the whole suite of rooms measuring more than 1,000 yards in length. In and about the building were some 500 statues of French celebrities, from Charlemagne to Louis XIV, in a full-bottomed wig. Painting, gilding, carving, glass, and velvet here had done their utmost, and as a specimen of magnificence in the modern French taste the furniture and decorations of the Hôtel de Ville were unrivalled. The building, however, was far from depending altogether on its sumptuous upholstery. Not only was the architecture worthy of all praise and the art of much of the decoration as intrinsic as its gold, but here had been enacted many famous and infamous scenes in the history of Paris. Here the first Commune held its bloody sittings; here Robespierre took refuge with his partisans, and was found by the soldiers with his broken jaw; the "Citizen King" was presented here to the people by Lafayette from a central window; here the soldiers were quartered in 1848; and here in 1871 was the stronghold of the last Commune, less bloody in its life but more desperate in its death than the first.
The Palais de Justice is a vast pile, which includes the Sainte Chapelle, numerous courts of law, and the Prison of the Conciergerie. Anciently the site of palaces inhabited by the Kings down to Francis I., afterwards the meeting place of the Parliaments of Paris, it has been repaired and rebuilt since 1831 at a cost of nearly 1,000,000l. The courts of law open from the vast but inelegant Salle des Pas Perdus, which answers to our Westminster-hall. One of these courts was the Chamber of the Tribunal Revolutionnaire, and communicated by a small door with the Conciergerie Prison. In the precincts of the Palais stands, or stood, the Sainte Chapelle, an exquisite specimen on a small scale of the best style of Gothic architecture. The Chapelle was finished in 1248, having been built by Pierre de Montereau to enshrine the thorns of our Lord's crown and the wood of the Cross, relics bought for an immense sum from the Emperor Baldwin by St. Louis, and carried through the streets of Paris by the King barefoot. In 1791 the Sainte Chapelle became a club, then a corn store, then a record office; Louis Philippe commenced its restoration, and up to the fall of the Empire about 2,000,000f. had been spent upon it. It is in two stories, corresponding with the floors of the ancient palace; the lower chapel, or crypt, was intended for the servants, the upper, on a level with the Royal apartments, for the Royal family. The glass is exquisite, and the statues of the twelve Apostles date from the 13th century, and are admirable specimens of the art of their age. A small square hole to the south of the nave communicates with a room in which Louis XI was wont to sit and hear mass without fear of assassination.