Mes cahiers rouges
My Red Notebooks
Maxime Vuillaume
II. — A Little Truth About the Death of the Hostages
The Archbishop
a little truth about the death of the hostages
the firing squad
When they had reached the end of the passage, the firing squad halted. Sicard placed himself at the corner of the wall.
Beside him, Fortin. Behind them, the firing squad — about thirty armed men. At the very back, François, who had rejoined the group without having followed the procession, and Genton.
The six hostages had gone, at a sign from Sicard, to stand at the foot of the wall facing the executioners.
Very close to Sicard, first in the row, the helmeted fireman. Then a Fédéré, Lolive, (1) and, a little further off, Mégy, the mechanic from Le Creusot.
The men had loaded their weapons in the infirmary courtyard. They took aim, awaiting the command.
There again, I wanted to know if any exclamation, insult, or protestation had been observed. Nothing. Silence.
Sicard raised his arm. But the command “Fire!” did not pass his lips. He had remembered that he had no weapon. He turned sharply toward Fortin.
— Fortin, your saber!
It was only a gesture, a flash.
(1) Lolive (Joseph), guard in the 24th Fédéré battalion, was not included among the defendants in the trial of the Archbishop. He appeared later, on May 25, 1872, before the court martial. Sentenced to death. Shot at Satory on September 18, 1872.
Fortin drew his saber from its scabbard — the saber Ferré had given him two days before. He handed it to Sicard, who, without raising the weapon — the executioners were so tightly pressed together that he might have wounded one of them — cried:
— Fire!
The squad fired.
All fell, except the archbishop.
— Is the man armored or something! cried Lolive, rapidly reloading his chassepot. (1)
He took aim at the prelate, who put his hand to his chest as he collapsed.
A few isolated shots rang out.
The prison clock struck eight at that moment.
The men of the firing squad left the place of execution, abandoning the corpses, which were transported at night to Père-Lachaise and buried with their clothes, very near the wall that was itself to become famous and be called the Wall of the Fédérés.
Genton and Fortin left the prison and returned to the town hall of the eleventh arrondissement, to draft the report of the execution, as Ferré had instructed them.
On the threshold of the town hall stood at that moment several members of the Commune: Vermorel, (2) who was to be gravely wounded the next day, Jourde, (1) Theisz, (2) Avrial.
— Well! It’s done, Genton told them, approaching. We have just shot the archbishop!
— You have done fine work, Vermorel replied sharply. We had perhaps only one last chance of stopping the bloodshed… You have just taken it from us. Now it is over.
the ferocious dwarf
The Commune would have tried in vain to oppose the massacre ordered by Ferré, just as it tried in vain to oppose the one on the Rue Haxo, two days later, on Friday.
The red sash with gold fringe no longer commanded the slightest respect. It was not even a safeguard for those who still wore it. Delescluze himself — would he not, the following day, be forced to turn back before the injunctions of a mere commissioner, when he would try to pass through the Porte de Vincennes?
News of the execution of the archbishop had spread rapidly through the crowd that thronged the surroundings of the town hall and the prison.
The men of the firing squad had told the details of the drama. The smell of blood that had been floating since morning intoxicated the combatants, now certain that death awaited them in short order — the worst death, that of the reprisals that decimate the vanquished.
One of my friends, Francis Privé, (1) was crossing the square at that moment with Jourde, the finance delegate, and Combault, who had been director general of direct taxes. Jourde wore his red sash. All three approached a group that was arguing noisily.
In the middle of the group, a Fédéré of minuscule stature, a veritable dwarf, his rifle — longer than he was — on his shoulder, was gesticulating and shouting. Abruptly, the dwarf pushes through the crowd and approaches Jourde.
— Well! he cries insolently in his face. They’ve just pumped lead into the archbishop!
— Be quiet, retorted Jourde. You’d do better to go to the front.
The dwarf turned pale. His eyes lit up. He made as if to shoulder his weapon.
— So that’s how it is! You don’t like it, do you lot, that they shoot the priests!
And, even more threatening, while the group closed in around Jourde and his friends:
— Maybe you’d like them to pump some into the members of the Commune too!
A crowd was forming. The three friends withdrew without a word, pursued by the insults of the ferocious dwarf.
Before the Court Martial
Genton, Fortin, and François appeared before the second court martial.
Genton alone was sentenced to death. François received forced labor for life. Fortin, ten years of penal servitude.
The canteen woman Lachaise, who that morning had pointed out Beaufort to the crowd, unconsciously making herself the instigator of the great tragedy of La Roquette, was also among the defendants. She was acquitted. She was retaken later for the Beaufort trial, and this time she was sentenced to death, then had her sentence commuted to penal servitude.
It was Lachaise who destroyed Genton, by affirming that he was indeed present at the moment when she had tried to turn the men of the 66th away from their deadly task.
— Ah! So Genton was there! said the government commissioner triumphantly. Genton was there. That is what I wished to have confirmed.
— But why did you say that? Fortin asked her as they left the hearing.
She, naive and dazed, could only weep, as she had wept before Beaufort, when she saw him backed against the wall of the Place Voltaire.
— But since it is the truth, she kept repeating between two sobs. (1)
Poignant confrontation
One has read above the incident of the saber with which Sicard gave the command to fire — the saber handed by Fortin to Sicard at the very instant when the latter was to make the supreme gesture.
This incident was unknown to the president of the court martial, Colonel De la Porte, and to the government commissioner, Commandant Rustant.
Various witnesses had indeed alluded to the handing over of a saber by one officer to another, but these witnesses were mistaken. They placed the scene of the saber’s transfer below the cells of the West building, shortly after the arrival of the hostages in the first patrol corridor.
At the last hearing of the trial — which numbered thirteen — the president of the court resolved to have Sicard appear, whose name had been mentioned by the witness Jarraud, François’s clerk at the prison, and to confront him with the defendants.
Sicard, who had been arrested, was in one of the prisons of Paris. He was found there, after much searching, consumptive, dying. He was conducted to Versailles, accompanied by Commissioner Clément and three agents, in a cab that moved at a walk. On arrival, they refreshed him and brought him to the bar of the court.
The apparition of this cadaverous figure with haggard cheeks, of frightening thinness, produced upon the defendants and the court a poignant impression. Was this then the man who, with one foot already in the grave, was going to make the truth burst forth?
Sicard is seated in an armchair that two orderlies have brought. He can barely speak anymore. But his eyes shine with an extraordinary brilliance. It is on Fortin that his first gaze fixes.
— I trembled through my entire being, Fortin told me, when I felt Sicard’s burning gaze fixed upon me. What was he going to say in this supreme confession? A single word from him, a single word of truth, meant for me the post at Satory.
Sicard is confronted with the others, with Brigadier Ramain, with the warder Picon, with François — whom he does not wish to recognize — with Genton, with those who designated another defendant, Pigerre, (1) as the officer who led the firing squad, with the clerk Jarraud, who recognizes him, Sicard, and who thereby saves Pigerre.
Fortin’s turn comes. The government commissioner insists that Sicard and Fortin be brought face to face. Could he suspect that the whole truth lies there?