Mes cahiers rouges. VIII. Deux drames

My Red Notebooks. VIII — two dramas

Maxime Vuillaume

GUSTAVE CHAUDEY

I — SAINTE-PÉLAGIE

dans la prison

1898. I want to see Sainte-Pélagie again before the demolishers have set the pickaxe to it… Sainte-Pélagie. Chaudey. The morning of Wednesday 24 May 1871, when, at the Café d’Harcourt, Raoul Rigault, very near being killed,¹ told me that, the night before, he had had shot the editor of the Siècle, Jules Ferry’s former deputy on the 22nd of January… The prison is deserted. With two friends from earlier days, G., who has guided me, step by step, along the road of the hostages of the rue Haxo, and B., we shall go. B. was, under the Commune, a warder of the prison. He was present at the execution. It was he who, on the round-path, held the lantern, at the head of the funeral cortège.

10 November. B., G., and I. The great door of

Sainte-Pélagie, which gives onto the rue de la Clef, the one we so often crossed in the days of the Empire, is open. A warder, alone. I present the authorization that I went to obtain, a few days earlier, at the Préfecture de Police.

RÉPUBLIQUE FRANÇAISE Préfecture de Police Paris, 8 November 1898. Cabinet of the Prefect

The Director of Sainte-Pélagie is authorized to admit into this establishment, on the day when M. Maxime Vuillaume, accompanied by two persons, shall present himself to visit it, and to provide him with all desirable facilities and all useful information.

                         For the Prefect of Police,
                         The Chief of the Cabinet.

In the margin of the permit, this note, which fixes the date of our visit: “Visited on 10 November with G. and B.”

A flight of nine steps. The antechamber of the clerk’s office. It is there that I shall wait, before the Fourth of September, half-cut Méchin. That head warder Méchin. Old Méchin, who resembled the Emperor astonishingly. Méchin is very proud of this striking resemblance. He is like the imperial ménechme. Tightly buckled into his bluish tunic, shaved, threadbare, shiny at the elbows from the brush, but of meticulous cleanliness, the metal buttons regularly polished, Méchin has all the appearance of a happy head warder. As a rule, he is seated on a straw stool, silent, the bust upright, his legs resting paws on the thighs. When a visitor knocks at the door, Méchin gets up, goes to draw the bolt, half-opens the heavy leaf. One passes through. And Méchin never forgets to sketch the military salute, while loudly jingling his keys. Gill made of Méchin a pretty caricature, which one will find again in leafing through L’Éclipse.²

Méchin had perhaps, in his long career as head warder of Sainte-Pélagie, but one day of terror. The 4th of September. The Press pavilion is, that day, in tumult. Rochefort, Olivier Pain, Paschal Grousset, J.-B. Clément, Vermorel, Charles Da Costa, and others, have heard the cries of triumph. A strong column of bold fellows occupies the approaches to the prison. The flight of steps is invaded. It is the Revolution! Méchin is perplexed. Must he yield? Must he resist? Ah! it is no longer of any use to that good Méchin to resemble the Emperor. The Emperor is no more. Méchin no longer resembles anyone but Radingnet.

The door of Pélagie — we used to say Pélagie, as one says boulevard Michel — gives passage to the flood of invaders… Long live the Republic!… The prisoners are there. People call out to one another. They embrace… A great devil with curly black hair, his eyes and face wide-spread, a red sash about his waist, bursts in like a whirlwind. He seizes Méchin by the collar — the collar of his fine blue tunic — makes him about-turn, forces him to bend his back, and, in a roaring voice:

— On your knees, Méchin… On your knees. The hour has come to pay for all your crimes…

And the colossus, with a gesture of melodrama, brandishes, above the head of the anguished Méchin, an axe, a real axe, whose cutting edge gleams like lightning.

— Méchin, your last hour has come… The Revolution is triumphant… It gives you two minutes to make your last reflections.

— Ah! pardon, pardon, Monsieur Pilotell…

The colossus with the curly hair — it is that great joker Pilotell.

— Come, Méchin, the Republic pardons you.

But Méchin has not relished the joke. He has had a fine fright all the same.

la porte

We talk. We talk. While going through the prison, absolutely empty. Here, the workshop of the common-law detainees. The door is wide open. The floor strewn with tools, with shavings, with straw. There, the chapel. On the altar, an old candlestick, forgotten, dusty, verdigrised. To right and to left, on leaving the chapel, two passages, closed by strong gratings. The left-hand passage gives access to the round-path, there, to the gloomy wall that saw Chaudey fall. The right-hand passage, deep, bordered, at its far end, by a low pavilion. The lodging of the concierge. It is at this little door that, after legend, Madame Roland would sometimes come to seclude herself, in the terrible summer of ‘93. Hooked to the black and wrinkled wall, a cage, where birds frisk and chirp. At the bottom of the garden, where the grass grows through the great paving-stones, a door, which gives onto the rue du Puits-de-l’Hermite. It is through this door that, on the night of Tuesday 23 May, the executioners were introduced.

I look at B. He understands my mute interrogation.

— Yes, it was there they entered… Men of the 258th.

The 258th… my battalion of the Siege, commanded by Longuet… When Longuet was sent to the Commune by the electors of the sixteenth arrondissement, he was replaced at the head of the battalion by Henri Régère, son of M. Régère, member of the Commune for the fifth, the arrondissement of Pélagie.

And I muse… Régère. Rigault. The 258th. If, truly, as Dacosta affirms,³ Rigault was bearer of an order, emanating from the Committee of Public Safety, enjoining Régère to “come to an understanding with the citizen prosecutor of the Commune for the execution of the hostages in his arrondissement,” the choice, for the execution, of the 258th, seems explicable. Régère, having his son near him, communicated to the latter the order of the Committee of Public Safety, asked him for the help of his battalion…

But, for that supposition to be plausible, it would be, first of all, indispensable to know whether the order of the Committee of Public Safety, of which Dacosta speaks, ever existed. Where is that order? Who has seen it? Dacosta seems to be citing it from memory. He does not give the signatories. I have nowhere found the order. Mystery… It is not the only one of that bloody evening…

— Then? it was through this door they entered?

— Yes. And it was thus that, after the fusillade, the corpses — Chaudey and three gendarmes executed after him — were, on hand-carts, transported to the Pitié.

We go back up toward the entrance of the prison, to the clerk’s office where Chaudey was interrogated. And, as I walk, I muse still upon the 248th, on Régère, on the son who was battalion chief, on Rigault… No, Régère cannot have been mixed up in the drama. I knew him. He was a gentle man. His son Henri, either, was no sanguinary. I see him again, in the uniform of brigadier of dragoons, arriving, escaped from Sedan, at our brasserie in the rue Saint-Séverin, on the arm of his father, already one of ours. Longuet chose him, a few days afterwards, as captain adjudant-major… No, again, there is here only a coincidence. Neither one nor the other of the two Régères was accomplice of Rigault. The 248th was of the quarter. It was on guard nearby. About ten men were requisitioned. They came. They did the sinister business.

le prisonnier

To the right of the entrance of the prison, the clerk’s office. It is in this office, a room with four walls once whitewashed, now black, scratched, torn by the abrupt wrenching-away of the shelves on which the dossiers so long slept, that Chaudey was interrogated, before walking to his death.

— I was alone downstairs — B. tells us — when Rigault presented himself at the prison, on Tuesday, toward eleven o’clock. The others, the clerk Benn, the sub-clerk Clément, Préau de Vedel, were with the director, Augustin Ranvier, the brother of the member of the Commune. Rigault, in the dress of a colonel, sabre with steel hilt, revolver thrust into his red sash.⁴ With him, his secretary, in civilian clothes,

André Slom. I did not know Slom. It was Rigault who named him. Without stopping, Rigault enters the clerk’s office. Benn, having been warned, had come down. Rigault takes the register of commitment. He feverishly leafs through the pages. At this moment, a third visitor arrives, in the uniform of a federate, the red scarf worn baldric-wise. A commissary attached to the Préfecture, Clermont. The clerk’s office, empty a moment ago, is full of people. Rigault, always nervous, gets up, takes a few steps, and abruptly, addressing Benn: “Let someone go fetch Chaudey for me.” It was I who went…

— Where was Chaudey’s room?

We climb, B., G., and I, the staircase of the Press pavilion. Chaudey was on the second floor. The room above the director’s apartment. The one which, on the Fourth of September, was occupied by Rochefort. A tiled room. Facing the door, against the wall, an iron bed. To the left, a chimney-piece of grey marble. Leaning against this chimney-piece, I see Rochefort again, the Rochefort of the Empire, tall, gaunt, pale, not allowing one to suspect for an instant that he would one day be, an octogenarian, the sturdy old man of today. Near him, playing with green lizards, a little boy in a costume of black velvet. His young son Octave… But let us leave that. Between the two windows, a table. From these windows, one has a view over the courtyard of the Pitié. In that courtyard, at the hour where we are, are hand-carts, hospital stretchers. It is perhaps on one of these stretchers that was transported, still bloody, the corpse of the shot man…

— When I entered his room — B. continues — Chaudey was seated, there, between these two windows, at his work-table. He stood up briskly, his hand resting on a book he was reading, his great stature wrapped in a dressing-gown. I told him that he was wanted downstairs. He followed me without a word. I accompanied him, always silent, as far as the door of the clerk’s office… Later, after the execution, I returned, with a few friends, to his room. I found, on the table, the work he had just finished, an Ode to the Republic.⁵ Near de Vedel, who was there, seized the paper and carried it away.

We have left the room where Chaudey lived, from 19 May, the date of his transfer to Sainte-Pélagie, having been detained until then at Mazas — until the fatal night. We went up to the upper floor where, often, we had come of old to see our prisoner friends. Vermorel was there, in that low room — little Siberia, as it was called — glacial in winter. Opposite, another room, vast, low also, with four windows opening on an admirable horizon. All that empty, strewn with plaster. Incised into the stone of the windows, the names of occupants. A name, a date, deeply hollowed, in great capitals. RAOUL RIGAULT, 1869.

l’interrogatoire

Often, in the first days of exile, at Lausanne, where Chaudey had numerous friends,⁶ we conversed,

with Slom,⁷ of the 23rd of May. Slom had been present, in the clerk’s office of the prison, at the entrance of Chaudey, at his interrogation by Rigault. Slom is no more. He has left, of that poignant interview, a written account, which his daughter, Mademoiselle Olga Slonczynska, painter, like her father, has been good enough to communicate to me… Before the personnel, gathered in the clerk’s office — the commissary Clermont,⁸ the clerk Benn, the sub-clerk Clément, the librarian Préau de Vedel, the warder Berthier, the brigadier Gentil — Rigault interpellated Chaudey, using “thou” with him. The two knew each other. Rigault, quibbler by nature, as he was a policeman, often came to the Palais, where he met Chaudey. Protot, in our conversations at the Bibliothèque nationale, of which he is a regular, was telling me, not long ago, that the joy of Rigault, exuberant, burst out, was in “catching” Chaudey on some obscure point of procedure. Protot, then a lawyer full of promise — who had defended Mégy at the trial of Blois — has many times witnessed the amusing scenes that gathered, around the two adversaries, the lawyers in their robes. Who could have foreseen, at the moment when Chaudey and Rigault discussed and laughed, the sinister tragedy nevertheless quite near! I copy, word for word, from the manuscript of the friend secretary of the prosecutor of the Commune, the interrogation:

RIGAULT. — Was it you who, from the Hôtel de Ville, asked for troops to sweep the square?

CHAUDEY. — I did my duty.

(Three times the same question, three times the same answer.)

RIGAULT. — Then your duty was to have women and children killed. You killed my friend Sapia. My duty is to tell you that you have three minutes to live.

CHAUDEY. — But I am a Republican.

RIGAULT. — Like your friends of Versailles who tomorrow will massacre us. Come, march.

CHAUDEY. — But, Rigault, I have a wife, a child…

RIGAULT. — The Commune will take better care of them than you… Come, march…

That is all. Slom, on his manuscript, adds these words: “The interrogation was no longer.”

— We were all silent — Slom told me at Lausanne. None of us, before crossing the threshold of Sainte-Pélagie, knew the projects of Rigault. I myself, who had spent the evening with him — we had dined together in a little restaurant of the rue Berthollet where we sometimes went — knew nothing. He had not pronounced, in all the evening, the name of Chaudey. I have often wondered where and when he took his terrible resolution…

— But, do you not think that, for a long time, Rigault had decided to avenge upon Chaudey the death of his friend Sapia, the commandant killed on the 22nd of January? You were at the Préfecture… you must have often seen the widow of Sapia⁹ come, with her mother, to see Rigault… Do you not think that, both of them, demanded vengeance?

(Chardon (J.-B.), member of the Commune, colonel commanding the Federal Legion of the Préfecture de Police. Mes Cahiers rouges, IV, pages 99 and following.)

— Yes. I have seen, several times, Madame Sapia and her mother… But I know nothing of what they may have said to Rigault… I repeat to you, in setting foot upon the threshold of the prison, I absolutely did not know what we were going to do.

— And Clermont, the commissary of police attached to Rigault’s office, who arrived, after the two of you, at Sainte-Pélagie, was he forewarned?

— I know nothing of it. He never told me anything about it.

And, at each of my conversations with Slom, it was so. Chardon,¹⁰ whom I interrogated at Geneva, knew nothing either. And yet, in his capacity as colonel commanding the Préfecture de Police, friend of Rigault, he was very well placed to know. He knew Sapia, and certainly Madame Sapia as well. Nothing. Pilotell however, as we shall see further on, who lived nearer to Rigault, friend of long date from the Latin Quarter, says that he had seen, that morning, Rigault, who told him he was going to Sainte-Pélagie. But Rigault had not told him anything else.

— And Chaudey? After the interrogation?

— Chaudey, since his entry into the clerk’s office, had remained standing… bareheaded. He had kept his dressing-gown. When the interrogation was finished, he cast a glance over those who surrounded him. Rigault had remained seated before the table… B., on a sign from Rigault, went out. He came back with a lantern… The cortège formed. B. at the head. Chaudey. The commissary Clermont. Préau de Vedel, the gun on his shoulder. Two or three others. Rigault last, with me.

le chemin de ronde

I have retraced, in that afternoon of 10 November 1898, with B. and G., the route which Chaudey and his executioners followed, from the door of the clerk’s office to the wall where the terrible drama was unknotted.

To the left, on turning the corner of the office, a long corridor, narrow, ill-lit by day, black at night, which leads to the round-path. A lugubrious passage. Leprous walls. Empty rooms, that had been wash-houses. Storerooms. Sordid recesses, where the refuse of two centuries had accumulated. One walks on enormous paving-stones, disjointed, wobbling. A gutter runs down the middle. On one side, on the left, bordering, a high wall of millstone — as at La Roquette. On the other, the building of the Dette, where, only a few months before our visit, were the common-law prisoners. Detainees of the depot, the prisoners, when they heard, when they saw — for they could see — the firing-party take its place? Then, the cortège. The exclamations. The gunshots…

They must have arrived quickly — in a few minutes — at the bottom of the path, there where it bends, to the right, toward the chapel, and, afterwards, toward the passage and the door of the rue du Puits-de-l’Hermite.

The platoon of the 258th waits. Facing the corner wall.

During the journey, on the testimony of Slom, and also of B., not a word was spoken… The footsteps resound on the pavement…

The lugubrious group advances in the night, cut, from time to time, by a flash. The reflections of the lamp that B., at the head of the cortège, swings in his hand.

Chaudey stops, standing, two or three metres from the corner wall.

Behind him, on a ledge of the millstone, B. sets down his lantern.

No other light. At the angle of the wall of the building of the Dette, on the right, a bollard, formerly surmounted by a street-lamp hung on a rope. The street-lamp, whose groove I saw, still existing at the time of our visit, was already removed in 1871. B.’s lamp alone lit the scene.¹¹

Rigault places himself against the wall on the left, the millstone wall. Behind him, Slom, and, beside him, the commissary Clermont.

Against the wall of the building of the Dette, on the right, B. and Préau de Vedel.

About in the middle of the round-path, but closer to the wall of the Dette, the platoon. Twelve men of the 258th, commanded by a lieutenant.

Chaudey is standing. He has not made a gesture. Not a movement.

Abruptly, Rigault draws his sabre.

— Long live the Republic! Chaudey cries, three times.

— Fire! Fire! Rigault cries.

Chaudey falls…

A noise of arms… butts striking the paving… A single, isolated shot…

« J’ai fait mon devoir. »

The interrogation of Chaudey, in the room of the clerk’s office of Sainte-Pélagie, has given rise to diverse versions. When he was at the Chantiers prison of Versailles, awaiting his appearance before the council of war which condemned him to the death penalty, Préau de Vedel drew up a note which he handed to Edgar Monteil, also detained,¹² a note that Monteil published in 1885.¹³ The version Préau de Vedel gives of the interrogation is not exact. It is lengthened with invented details. The interrogation was brief. And it is its brevity that makes it the more poignant still. Préau de Vedel does not give that answer that he, three times, in a strong voice, Chaudey: “I did my duty.”

All those who knew Chaudey have never doubted that he had cried out this protestation… That cry, it is Chaudey entire… Chaudey knows only legality. The émeute is for him a crime against the Republic and against the law. He is of an indisputable bravery. All of a piece, his former secretary at the Hôtel de Ville on the 22nd of January, Eugène Courbet, was telling me. Chaudey is, however, not a man of the first rank. Perilous situations, like that which surprised him at the Hôtel de Ville on the 22nd of January, find him somewhat disconcerted. But he has duty before him. And this duty he is resolved to carry out to the end. The émeute rumbles. Representative of the threatened Government, Chaudey will defend it. He will hold his head against the émeute. If, even, as Slom said, he himself does not take the necessary measures, if it is another than himself who “sweeps the square,” he will assume all the responsibilities. He will not think for a minute of disowning his conviction.

André Slom

Numerous legends — sinister legends — have come to augment still further the horror of the quadruple fusillade of the round-path of Sainte-Pélagie. One of these legends has André Slom in view. Every time we met and conversed — it was always — of the Commune, Slom protested energetically against the role assigned to him by the accounts — among others, that of Préau de Vedel, published by Monteil — of the incidents of the tragic night. Slom’s protestations bore principally on the attitude attributed to him in the course of the execution of the three gendarmes, an execution that followed, at half an hour’s interval, and at the same place, that of Chaudey. The three gendarmes were placed against the wall. Rigault commanded the fire. Two fell. The third had been hit only in the round-path. He was pursued. Caught up with near the chapel, he was brought back before the wall and shot.

It is at this moment, when the gendarme escapes, that, according to the account of Préau de Vedel, Slom would have seized the revolver of the commissary of police Clermont, to pursue the fugitive.

— I never did that, Slom always told me. I had no need, first of all, to take Clermont’s revolver. I had one. While we were taking refreshment at Sainte-Pélagie, after having left the little restaurant of the rue Berthollet, a Slom on us from a window. On arriving at the prison, I asked whether one could not be given a revolver. They gave me an ordnance revolver, without cartridges. It is this same revolver that I left on the table of Rigault’s room, at the Hôtel Gay-Lussac, when, on the morrow, Wednesday, Rigault and I were surrounded by the soldiers…¹⁴ When the command of “Fire!” was cried, one of the gendarmes fled toward the round-path, on the right. It was then that Clermont seized my revolver, not loaded, as I have just said. Passing behind the firing-party, and before Préau de Vedel, he ran in search of the gendarme, whom he found crouched near the chapel. He brought him back to the foot of the wall.

Such is the truth, re-established by Slom in a handwritten note placed at the head of a copy, belonging to him, of the pamphlet of Edgar Monteil.¹⁵

l’arrestation

It has been said and written everywhere that Gustave Chaudey had been arrested in the offices of the Siècle by Pilotell. It was not Pilotell who arrested Chaudey. When, on 13 April, he went to the residence of the former deputy-mayor of Paris, the latter was absent. Pilotell searched, returned to the Préfecture de Police, and charged one of his subordinates, Henneron, with proceeding with the arrest. I asked Pilotell to give me a detailed account of the incidents that surrounded the arrest. Here is, without changing anything in it, the letter I received from Pilotell. I transcribe it as an historical document.

London.

My dear friend,

… After the usual luncheon at the Préfecture de Police, on 13 April, where we were always a score or so¹⁶ — Edmond Levraud, Jourde (often), Rigault, Dacosta, Chalain, members of the Commune. Edmond Levraud, Dacosta (Gaston), Slom, Réglain, Cattelain (chief of the Sûreté), Giffault, Clermont, Wurth, Regnard, occupied functions at the Préfecture de Police. Roullier (Édouard), member of the Commission of Labour. Villaumié, the Maurist historian of the French Revolution, great-grand-nephew of Joan of Arc. (The journal la Commune of 29 April 1871 publishes the following note: “A great-grand-nephew of Joan of Arc, M. Villaumié, brother of our historian, has just died at Nancy, at 80. As leader of partisans in 1814 and 1815, he rendered to his country signal services.”)

commissary. On arriving at the residence, we entered. Madame Chaudey asked what I desired.

— Madame, I said to her, I have the sad mission of arresting your husband.

— But, monsieur…, he is not here.

— At what hour will he return?

— I do not know.

— Will you, madame, I beg you, give me the keys of this desk?

I pointed to the work-desk covered with papers and letters.

— I do not have those keys.

— Very well, I said, turning to Henneron. Go fetch a locksmith.

A quarter of an hour later, the right-hand drawer of the desk was open. I found there papers of some importance, and, in addition, a draft of a letter, not finished, which I read.

“My dear Picard,

“I was left alone¹⁷ the day before yesterday, at the Hôtel de Ville (evidently the 22nd of January) and I took it upon myself to defend it. Delegates of several constituencies arrived. I likewise received some of them. I did not receive the others. One thing struck me profoundly, that was their great youth…”¹⁸

The rest escapes me. I am sure that there was no allusion to orders given to the Breton soldiers to fire upon the crowd, when Sapia was struck dead. There was in the drawer of Chaudey’s desk two bags containing about 820 francs in gold and silver.

Henneron said to me:

— This money must be confiscated and taken to the Préfecture.

He took the two bags.

— But, monsieur, you are leaving me without money, said Madame Chaudey.

— Have you enough with a hundred francs? I said to Madame Chaudey, drawing out the only banknote I had on me… Besides, madame, you have only to address yourself to me, at the Préfecture de Police. My name is Pilotell.

This receipt has been published. It was thus conceived:

“Found in the drawer of the desk of M. Chaudey some papers and a sum of 820 francs, which we take away, until further orders, to the Préfecture. Signed: G. Pilotell.”¹⁹

Henneron, when we returned to the Préfecture, placed the papers and this sum on Raoul Rigault’s table.

I had learned on going out that Chaudey was to go to the Siècle between five and half past six. I gave Henneron the written order to arrest him, which was done.

Chaudey was interrogated the same evening by Rigault. I was not there. But I know what passed.

Chaudey said and repeated to Rigault that he had done his duty.

The prisoner perhaps spoke in too patronizing a tone to the delegate of the Pre-Préfecture de Police who was interrogating him.

— Enough of this, said Rigault. You will be taken to Mazas and we shall see what we shall have to do next.

I was sent for, and, Rigault, briefly:

— You are going to take Chaudey to Mazas. Take with you Cattelain and Henneron.

Here we are off all four in an open carriage. It was a superb night. Chaudey seated next to me, Cattelain and Henneron opposite.

Chaudey wore a large overcoat and a top hat. He was talking very quickly and wanted to have the movement (of the Commune) explained to him…

Arrived at Mazas, Chaudey, turning to me:

— I have had nothing yet…

And as he made as if to draw money from his pocket:

— It is useless, I said. Henneron, go fetch something to eat, and bring a few cigars.

On leaving Chaudey, I held out my hand, which he took, saying to me:

— You shake hands with me…

— Why not, I said. I am not your judge. I have orders to execute. That is all.

— Would you, Chaudey resumed, I beg you, have a letter delivered to my wife?

— Why don’t you seal it?

— You may close it. I promise you that the letter will be delivered tomorrow morning… (It was already night.)

As for the execution, I knew that Raoul Rigault was to go to Sainte-Pélagie.²⁰ I was that day (23 May) with Ferré, whom I left in the rue Hautefeuille never to see again. I saw Rigault again only dead, rue Gay-Lussac, the morrow (24 May) at five o’clock.

Yours, G. PILOTELL.

I had put to Pilotell two questions. Here they are, with the answers:

1° Did Madame Sapia (the widow of the commandant Sapia killed on the 22nd of January) and her mother come often to the Préfecture de Police?

— I never knew — Pilotell answered me — either Madame Sapia or her mother. I never heard of their visits to the Préfecture. That does not mean that they never came there.

2° Do you know whence came the resolution taken by Rigault to shoot Chaudey? Sudden. Or already decided long beforehand.

— I believe — Pilotell answered me — that Rigault was thinking of a longer duration for the Commune, and of a condemnation of Chaudey (by the jury of accusation).²¹ Seeing as Ferré did, at the entry of the troops, that the members of the Commune were not acting, they (Ferré and Rigault) took all the responsibilities upon themselves. Rigault, besides, had never forgiven Chaudey for the death of his friend Sapia.

Théodore Sapia

Who then was Sapia, whose name resounds, like a knell, on every page of the terrible story of the death of Chaudey?

Théodore-Emmanuel Sapia was, at the beginning of the war, captain commanding the 4th company of the 1st battalion of the mobiles of Eure-et-Loir, at Chartres. Revoked on 14 September for having wished, as he later explained, to proclaim the Republic, he arrived on the 17th at Paris, and settled at Montrouge, 112, chaussée du Maine. He had himself enrolled in the National Guard. After a few days, he was captain-treasurer, then, on 30 September, commandant of his battalion, the 146th. On 8 October, he assembled his men at the Champ d’Asile, and gave them a rendezvous at the Quatre Chemins, in front of the church of Saint-Pierre, to march, at the first signal of the drums, upon the Hôtel de Ville.²² Violent protests. The guards seize him and conduct him to the Place. He passed, on 20 October, before a council of war; he was acquitted. He was none the less revoked. Henceforth, he would sign only “revoked commandant of the 146th battalion.”

The debates of the trial before the council of war²³ — we leave aside the appreciations of the tribunal — make us acquainted with Sapia. Enlisted at 17, in 1855 — born at Paris on 6 January 1838 — he was sub-lieutenant in 1861. He resigns. He takes part in the campaigns of China and Mexico. It seems that between these two expeditions, his health was rather seriously compromised, since in 1862, he had to undergo treatment at Charenton. On 1 October 1863, he writes to Marshal X (the name is not cited) a letter, read at the council of war, in which he says: “The long fatigues of the campaigns of China had laid me low. I thought myself for a moment, and on the advice of the doctors, unfit and for ever for any active life; and quite against my will were the pressing external solicitations, I sacrificed a whole military life already well filled. By imperial decree of 15 September, His Majesty deigned to receive my request (for reintegration). Since that period, monsieur le Maréchal, I live only on memories and regrets, and I pass in a useless action precious time which I burn to consecrate to the service of His Majesty.” Sapia resumed service, but only to resign again on 20 September 1866, at San-Luis-de-Potosi.

Sapia is what is called a hot-head, but he is of an incontestable bravery. His defender, Maître Lachaud, invokes on this subject a note from General de Négrier. When one writes the name of Sapia, no officer of the army, one cannot help thinking of that other officer, former lieutenant of vessel, Lullier, brave, he too, and equally exalted. Sapia was sometimes, according to those who lived near him, of an exaltation bordering on madness. Sapia is well connected. His father, secretary-general of a ministry under the Restoration. His sister, Madame Pierre de Castellane. His brother, central receiver of finances at Paris. He sends verses to Madame la Comtesse Sapia. He enjoys high protections. He owes his rank of captain of the mobiles of Eure-et-Loir to the support of General Soumain.

Sapia, revoked from his rank of chief of the 146th, does not mix in the revolutionary movement. He gives articles to the Patrie en Danger of Blanqui. He directs a newspaper, the Résistance, “democratic organ of the fourteenth arrondissement,” where the collaborators are Raoul Rigault, J. Martelet, who will later be secretary of the Commune, Gaston Da Costa, who will be substitute of the prosecutor of the Commune, Raoul Rigault, Henry Bauer. Tall, of distinguished bearing, elegant, with brown hair and moustaches, Sapia is a fluent orator. He is assiduous at the public meetings of the time when he appears at all the manifestations. He signs the Affiche Rouge (Place au Peuple! Place à la Commune! 5 January 1871). All those whose names we pronounce here, Monteils, Gentelini, Champy, Humbert, Brundely, Chardon, Lucipia, Martelet, Léo Melliet, Régère, signed the Affiche Rouge…

On 22 January 1871, Sapia is in the front rank, against the railings of the Hôtel de Ville. The fusillade drives him back to the avenue Victoria, where he is killed. When I entered, with my battalion, on the square, I crossed a group that was carrying to the Hôtel-Dieu a gravely wounded commandant, stretched on a red eiderdown. It was Sapia…²⁴

II — L’HÔTEL DE VILLE

le 22 janvier

The 22nd of January killed Gustave Chaudey.

From the evening of the émeute, the legend is created. Chaudey gave the order to “sweep the square.” In the newspapers, in the vehement conversations that had replaced the clubs, everywhere, Chaudey is accused of having given to the Breton mobiles who occupied the Hôtel de Ville the order to fire.

22 January 1871. First bloody day of the Siege. Three days before Buzenval. Six days before the capitulation. In the night that precedes, the night of the 21st to the 22nd, the invasion of Mazas, where Flourens, Léo Melliet, Alphonse Humbert, Doctor Pillot, and others, are prisoners. Prisoners for the Affiche Rouge. All will be, later, of the Commune. Flourens, who will have his skull split, by a gendarme’s sabre-stroke, at Chatou. Léo Melliet, member of the Commune and member of the Committee of Public Safety. Doctor Pillot, member of the Commune. Alphonse Humbert, one of the three editors of the Père Duchêne. The taking of Mazas, the émeute of the morrow, two incidents that hold tightly together.

The 22nd — a Sunday — the place de Grève is full of people. A crowd more curious than hostile. Women, children, idlers. The idleness of the Siege has given the habit of the public square. Groups where speakers warn. Cries of “Down with Trochu! Down with Vinoy! War to the end! Rationing!” Armed men in small number. Toward two o’clock, begin to arrive in the platoon of Arcole detachments of the thirteenth and fifth arrondissements. By the rue de Rivoli, the rue du Temple, those of Belleville and the Batignolles. This battalion, or rather, a hundred men of the thirteenth, parade, butts in the air, crying: “Levée en masse! Rationing!” These last are pacific. The others go to mass themselves in front of the gate of the palace. Posted a little everywhere, avenue Victoria, rue de Rivoli, place Saint-Bon, the rue du Renard, the rue de la Coutellerie, guards, in packets of three or four, the chassepot slung. Blanqui is there, somewhere. At the Café du Gaz, rue de Rivoli.

Chaudey is alone at the Hôtel de Ville.

The mayor, Jules Ferry, has left his deputy the heavy responsibility. Ferry is at the Ministry of the Interior, where he is attending a conference on provisioning, on what remains of victuals. And yet, the émeute is in the air. For two days, troop movements have been continuing in view of resisting an attack on the Hôtel de Ville. Mobile battalions have been brought to the Concorde, to the Palais de l’Industrie, to the church of Saint-Eustache. The gendarmerie is at the Carrousel. At the Hôtel de Ville, the mobiles of Finistère fill the Throne Room of the first floor, the Saint-Jean Room, the courtyards. The storm is ready. Let a gunshot be fired, on one side or the other, and the fusillade will roll, mortal… Chaudey is alone.

Two o’clock. A little before. A deputation of the Republican Alliance — Tony Révillon²⁵ and Simon Dereure²⁶ — asks to be introduced to the Government. The Republican Alliance — its principal members, Delescluze, Arthur Arnould, Cournet, Levraud,²⁷ and others — is in permanent session, nearby, at 60 rue de Rivoli. From the windows giving onto the square, Delescluze will see the fusillade. Chaudey receives the delegates. He shows them the dispositions taken.

Half past two. Another delegation. This one more acrid. It is led by a young captain of the 73rd battalion of the national guard, Captain Montels. Champy, who will be a member of the Commune; Gentelini, who was a candidate and was not elected, accompany him. Montels will recount, further on, his interview with Chaudey.

Ten to three. Behind the railing of the monument, in front of the principal door, the middle door, which is surmounted by the bronze bas-relief of Henri IV, three officers. Colonel Vabre, military commandant, since 5 November, of the Hôtel de Ville. Captain adjudant-major Bernard. The commandant of the battalion of mobiles of Finistère, Comte de Legge. Facing them, leaning against the railing, some of them attempting to climb it, armed national guards. Among them, Sapia, in commandant’s uniform, red sash about the waist, trousers tucked into the boots. All the windows of the Hôtel de Ville are closed. Not a head. Not a gun-barrel. Mounted on the pedestal of a gas-lamp, Captain Montels speaks, his right arm raised, his left embracing the lamp-post. All around, a compact group…

The tragic minute has come… Abruptly, the windows of the Throne Room have opened. There was heard as a sound of shutters and panes… The guns are aimed. The fusillade breaks out. The Hôtel de Ville is veiled in a cloud of white smoke… All this in less than a minute… The square ripostes. Behind each obstacle, heaps of sand, street-lamps, corners of streets, the guards, kneeling, fire… How long did it last? A quarter of an hour. Twenty minutes… The square is empty. A dozen bodies lie…

On this day of 22 January 1871, on the invasion of Mazas, on the émeute, I have interrogated some friends, last witnesses of the great days. M. Ernest Courbet, who occupied at the time, near Chaudey, the post of administrative secretary and who was at the Hôtel de Ville on 22 January, has been good enough to reconstitute for me the procès-verbal relative to the two delegations, such as it was dictated the morrow by Chaudey. Captain Montels, who was chief of the 12th legion of the Commune, has sent me from Sfax, where he resides, the account of his day. Alphonse Humbert, who was one of those delivered from Mazas, and one of the combatants of the morrow. Alexandre Girault, since deputy of Paris, one of those who forced the door of the prison, took fire, too, on the square. Paul Martine was, near his friend Malon, member of the municipal Commission of the seventeenth arrondissement. He has recounted to me the touching story of the brave little drummer of the Batignolles detachment, whom a bullet laid low avenue Victoria, very near Sapia.

les deux délégations

Two delegations present themselves at the Hôtel de Ville, and are received by Chaudey. What was said in the course of these interviews, as much by the delegates as by Chaudey, has been known up till now only by the accounts, so subject to controversy, of the newspapers. Here is the note that was addressed to me by M. Ernest Courbet:

Administrative secretary of Chaudey, deputy at the mayoralty of Paris, from 10 November 1870 to 18 March 1871, I assisted him on the day of 22 January at the Hôtel de Ville. On the morrow he dictated to me the procès-verbal of the reception of the delegations that presented themselves, before three o’clock, to ask him about the attack of the venerable municipal edifice by a column of national guards arrived from the rue du Temple, skirting the façade of the Hôtel de Ville, and attempting to penetrate it through the door of the south pavilion. However rapid was the attempt at surprise, the door of the pavilion was nonetheless precipitately closed on the head of the column, in advance of the troop, who remained alone prisoner, wounded, not gravely, by a gunshot in the left arm and in the head. This captain, whose name I have forgotten, was conducted to the door of the square…

Here now is the account of Chaudey, such as it was given to me, that I transcribed and that was signed by its author, in the form of a procès-verbal of a witness’s deposition, appearing to emanate from the criminal clerk’s office of the Palais de Justice.

Two delegations presented themselves at the Hôtel de Ville in the first part of the afternoon. The well-known journalist, Tony Révillon, led the first. The visitor inquired of his colleague of the Parisian press about the dispositions he thought he should take in certain eventualities. He wished to know what would be the attitude of the defenders of the Hôtel de Ville, in case an armed attack should occur. Chaudey did not hesitate to make this declaration: “If they use violence, we shall riposte by force.” Tony Révillon having then [drawn] Chaudey to the window of his cabinet giving on the square, observed to him that the crowd was pressing there as on a feast-day. The women and children were flocking there, and, except the presence of a man in a smock carrying [a gun] slung at the strap, no peculiarity seemed to indicate that one was at the moment near an explosion of popular anger. The delegation, at this instant of the interview, manifested an extraordinary anguish: Tony Révillon observed how dreadful it would be if this crowd of women and children, caught between two fires, should leave any of its own on the pavement.

To dissipate the apprehension of his colleague, Chaudey, remaining firm in his purpose, gave him the assurance that if the defence of the Hôtel de Ville imposed the use of arms, the formal order, duly reiterated, would be given to the mobiles on guard at the Hôtel de Ville to fire above the discharges of their guns, to disperse from the square the persons drawn there by curiosity. (This consigne was exactly observed.) Upon these words, Tony Révillon, reassured, withdrew.

The second delegation had at its head Captain Montels, who was the spokesman. With an assurance which was justified by the disasters of 19 January, he complained of the incapacity of the generals charged with the command of the troops called to the operations of sortie, and he demanded, impetuously, that the authority which they did not know how to use against the enemy, be immediately withdrawn from them and placed in the hands of chiefs more capable of leading their soldiers into combat, and more careful of a good use of the lives offered for the defence of the fatherland.

In response to these criticisms formulated, M. Chaudey, referring to an extreme decision, recalled that since 31 October the seat of the Government of National Defence had been transferred from the Hôtel de Ville to the Place Vendôme, and that the members of the Government alone had qualification to receive the exposition of the grievances and wishes of the delegation and to give it whatever follow-up was suitable. He added that to assure to this manifestation a useful effect, the delegation must support its demand with the presentation of a list of officers worthy of the confidence of all. “You well understand,” he continued with his restrained Franc-Comtois accent, “that unknown men whose bravery is not in doubt, but whose experience of the things of war is uncertain, could not reasonably ever give their soldiers the energy nourished by the reasoned hope of vanquishing.”

To a request for clarifications on certain contested points, here is what M. Ernest Courbet wrote me further:

Saint-Germain-en-Laye, 20 August.

The column of national guards which, by the rue du Temple, arrived opposite the Hôtel de Ville, deployed along the railing and, captain at the head, tried to force the entrance of the Prefect’s courtyard. It was at this moment that gunshots were heard and that the attack was made against the troop on Victoria, by guards who occupied both sides of the avenue as skirmishers, leaving free the roadway where they ran the risk of being uselessly decimated.

The death of Sapia, at the spot occupied today by a newspaper-vending kiosk, opposite no. 2 of the avenue Victoria, took place a few moments before a surprise in echo of the beginning.

Bernard Salvador,²⁸ who died as editorial secretary of the Officiel, remained in my cabinet to follow, from a corner of the window, the movement and its peripeties. He is, to my knowledge, the only one who remained at that post of observation. We went and came, distressed at seeing wounded and dead fall on the place de l’Hôtel-de-Ville.

During this time, Mahias²⁹ was receiving the notables of Saint-Denis in the Gallery of Landscapes, forming a corridor of the landing of the first floor below the entresol and leading to the Throne Room, today the deliberation room of the Municipal Council.

The notables of Saint-Denis, whom the Germans were beginning to bombard, came to ask for requisition slips for lodging in the quarter of La Chapelle. Mahias, having exhausted his quantity of these slips, the notables wished to leave the Hôtel de Ville. We were at the height of the fusillade and there was great danger in crossing the square. We therefore kept the delegates of the bombarded city until the cessation of the gunshots. At that moment, M. Monier, secretary of Hérisson,³⁰ and I, accompanied them well beyond the sinister place of the struggle.

It is under the windows of the Hôtel de Ville, on the door of the square, that the first gunshots came from…

                                           E. COURBET.

de Mazas à la place de Grève

Alphonse Humbert was, on 21 January, at Mazas. With him, we shall be present at the invasion of the prison, the climb to Belleville, the return to the Latin Quarter, where he lives, and, finally, the fierce afternoon when he fought in the ranks of the émeute.

— I had been arrested — Humbert tells me — for having signed the Affiche Rouge. I occupied, at Mazas, one of the cells on the ground floor of the sixth division. I was sleeping with closed fists, when a din wakes me up with a start. I interrogate my watch. Half past eleven. “Open the door!” says a heavy voice known by its metallic ring. Cries. Violent colloquies. “Open, in God’s name… Take a butt-blow in the kidneys… Stick your revolver under your nose… I’ll massacre you!” And I muse… There has been an émeute. Perhaps an insurrection… The troops, drunk, invading the prisons… A turning is preparing… Suddenly my door opens. A foray of armed men rushes in. Dumont, Gigault, Girault, who embraces me. “Come, get up and clear off. They’ve recognized you outside…” Dumont and Girault, both from Belleville. Girault, soon, will be with me on 22 January, where he dresses me. I go out barely clothed, I pass before terrified men, the warders, mute, no more understanding than I, dumbfounded. We cross the wicket. The courtyard is full of armed national guards, as dumbfounded as the warders. Here we are outside. At last I learn. Mazas was guarded only by a company of a battalion of order. About fifty of our friends had said to themselves that there was a fine coup to be made there. They had arrived under arms, silently, wrapped in greatcoats wall-coloured — the high millstone walls of Mazas. On the square, they had dispersed. One had rolled big carts taken from the Lyon station, to mask the rumbling of the cannon. The gas-lamps extinguished. Commands in half-voice. “Bring forward a company on the left… Another on the right…” They had summoned the garrison, terrified. With cries and crowbars taken from a neighbouring yard, they had begun to unseal the stones of the surrounding wall. In fact, they were a very small number of victors. We were free… The first effusions passed, one thinks of what next. We cannot stay there… We must act. And act quickly. First of all, where do we go?

We discuss. Flourens, Léo Meillet, a few others. Shall we go to the Hôtel de Ville? I am of that opinion. Nothing will be easier than to extend the coup which has just succeeded so well. Carry off a post. Take possession of the central power. At dawn, Paris will learn that we are the masters. Surely, it will not drive us out. Anger is great against the men of the National Defence… of the National Treason, as the people say… Flourens proposes something else. It is in the midst of the people that we must go. To Belleville. Flourens is followed. To Belleville, then. Here we are on the march. Flourens disappears. We wait, wait. Where is he. He is sought. He is found, shut up in a room, very busy drafting a proclamation to the Parisian population… Day has come… We come down, a few of us, to the Latin Quarter.

Two o’clock. I leave alone for the Hôtel de Ville where I have already gone for a turn during the night. My gun slung. On the square, Eudes and Goupil.³¹ We enter the Café de la Garde Nationale. Eudes tells me that Blanqui is quite near, in a house of the rue Saint-Bon. But Blanqui, neither on the square, nor at the Café de la Garde Nationale, nor anywhere, all day. I was told that he was at the Café du Gaz. I did not see him there.

One goes, one comes. Groups. Armed men, pell-mell with a swarming crowd. It is a Sunday. Big heaps of sand, scattered, a little everywhere, on the square. The railings that enclose the Hôtel de Ville are closed. Between the railing and the façade of the monument, very near the great entrance door, two or three officers, including a colonel of the national guard, buckled, booted, sabre at side, hard face, brick-coloured, moustaches and side-whiskers in points.

— Colonel Vabre. The governor of the Hôtel de Ville.

— Perhaps. I did not know him… Suddenly — and toward three o’clock — I see emerging, from the rue du Temple, a column of national guards in green greatcoats, drum beating, flag topped with a red cap. As their tall fellow, strong, moustached, Goubault,³² one has often said that the column was led by Malon. No. I did not see Malon. The column goes to range itself along the railing. It seems to me that they are hardly more than one to one hundred and fifty.

Dumont, of Belleville — little Dumont, as he is called… He climbs the railing… I see him for an instant, gesticulating, as if he were apostrophizing, with violence, the officers… The colonel of national guard — Vabre, you say — turns… He unhooks his sabre, strikes with the hilt on the great closed door… The blows are distinctly heard… The windows of the first floor open… The mobiles shoulder the guns… The fusillade breaks out… The façade of the Hôtel de Ville is half veiled in smoke… The reply comes from the square… I see little Dumont save himself, limping… Has he been wounded?… I do not know… Dumont, fist in the air, an old woman who shows her fist, howling… As a skirmisher, kneeling near her, takes aim and fires…

— Before the fusillade, was any isolated gunshot fired, coming from the national guard?

— None… Of that I am certain. I was there, attentive… Not a shot was fired before the colonel, turning, struck with the hilt of his sabre the door of the Hôtel de Ville…

— The fusillade… how long did it last?

— Ah! that… I have no idea… A quarter of an hour. On both sides… Perhaps more. I was as if mad… I had one knee on the ground on the pavement of the rue de Rivoli, near the Café de la Garde Nationale, and there, I was burning my two packets of cartridges, firing on the façade, at random, feverishly loading and reloading my chassepot…

— Yes. It is even said that, with a last shot, you killed the hands of the great clock.

— A joke, invented by Vallès… Did I break the hands?… You might have broken them and I would hardly have had the time to make sure of it… I was in the smoke… I told you, at random, without seeing… Plunged in an inexplicable [state] that drove me on… Exaltation… A thought of vengeance… The will to act in such a way that no one could say I was not there.

— Did you see Sapia?

— No. He was on the avenue Victoria. I did not leave the Café de la Garde Nationale and its approaches.

— And after the fusillade?

— My cartridges exhausted, I rise and remain there, musing on I no longer know what; still trembling, leaning on my gun… A few shots, coming, I believe, from the houses of the rue de Rivoli, still burst out. I hear myself called…

— But come in then… Do you see?… I go in… The morning, this same room, had held a club. I had there called to arms… I remember… They push me into the room behind. They disarm me. They make me raise my hands… Now, I have only to leave. To the left. To the right. They could not say that I had fled. Not only did I come to the rendezvous, but I fought… I make my way, on all fours — they were still firing — toward the door. To cross it, I must disturb the corpse of an old man with a white beard, killed by the first discharge of the mobiles… I think that, once past the points, I went to meet up with everyone at the brasserie of the rue Saint-Séverin, at Glaser’s.

— Let us return — I say to Humbert — to the Vabre incident. Do you believe that Vabre’s signal, then colonel military governor of the Hôtel de Ville, striking with the hilt of his sabre the great door, was the signal, agreed in advance, that gave to the mobiles placed inside the order to fire on the square?

— I know nothing of it… nothing at all. Had Vabre, in a meeting of the civil and military authorities present at the Hôtel de Ville, been left free in the choice of the opportunity?… I know nothing of it, I repeat. It may be… All that I can say is that he struck the door violently, and that, at that very moment, the mobiles fired… That, I heard and saw… That is all I know of that 22 January… When I returned from Caledonia, I received from Pierre Denis a letter full of violent attacks against Chaudey, whom he accused of having given the order to fire. According to Pierre Denis, Jules Ferry, who, as you know, was not on 22 January at the Hôtel de Ville, where, rather, he came only after the fusillade, would have sharply reproached Chaudey for his attitude… But Pierre Denis, pure Proudhonian, had never liked Chaudey…

— It has been written that before the fusillade of the mobiles, a man climbed up on a street-lamp, or on the railings of the Hôtel de Ville, had fired a first shot? Would this man not be Dumont, little Dumont of Belleville?

— No. I followed with my eyes Dumont, whom I knew quite well, from his arrival with the battalion led by Combault, to the moment when, having wished to scale the railing, I saw him go away limping… I affirm in the most formal manner that he did not fire…

— Who was Dumont?

— A friend of Belleville. Former secretary, I believe, of the Gambetta committee of 1869. After the Commune, he was not prosecuted. At the founding of the République française, he entered the newspaper as page-setter. I saw him no more.³³

— And Sapia?

— I saw him sometimes at the Delegation of the Twenty arrondissements… I did not really know him.

— Protot, Rigault, never spoke to you of the incidents of the Chaudey affair?

— Never.

le capitaine Montels

Often, at Geneva, during the long, unoccupied days of exile, we spoke of the 22nd of January, of the deadly fusillade, of the responsibilities incurred. Montels was one of us. I have noted what he told us. His interview with Chaudey. The gunshots of the square. The death of Sapia. When we had, both of us, left Switzerland,³⁴ we exchanged letters. And always, the 22nd of January returned in our written conversations. The 21st and 22nd of January. The prison of Mazas. The émeute of the Hôtel de Ville.

Mazas et Belleville

— On 21 January — Montels wrote me — we had no intention at all of carrying off Mazas. It was chance, for me at least, that decided it.

Member of the Corderie,³⁵ delegate of the twelfth arrondissement, captain of the 5th company of the 78th battalion, I had concurred without rank, despite the two revocations that had struck me, having taken part in the days of 30 and 31 October at the head of my company. Tridon devoted to this subject a few lines in the Patrie en Danger, I had been re-elected unanimously by my fine men, less one voice, that of the sub-lieutenant, a churchwarden.

For an attempt at an insurrectional movement, we had made a rendezvous at nine in the evening on the place de l’Hôtel-de-Ville.

After a call to arms, in the Bourdon hall, I leave at the head of my men. I had with me a few friends. Doctor Sercy, a cooper-workman turned doctor, Charvet, killed during the Week of May on the Austerlitz bridge, Chaussevert, a workman-carpenter of the faubourg. Old Brandely. Others. Chaussevert was carrying a red flag.

On our arrival at the Hôtel de Ville. Black, cold night. No one in the streets. Near the candelabrum of the middle, Émile Moreau, one of the defenders of the Butte-aux-Cailles, the one who searched the Dominican of Arcueil.³⁶

— No one has come, Moreau tells me.

— Let us wait still. We are going to traverse the faubourg calling to arms.

On the way, we meet a troop coming from the Bastille. Friends of Belleville, little Dumont, who would be wounded the next day. Lavalette.³⁷ About fifteen guards. We are climbing, when someone says:

— If we went to deliver Flourens and the others…

Agreed.

Before Saint-Paul, we cross a cellular carriage. The idea that our prisoners might be in it passes through my head. I stop the carriage short. It contained only thieves… We file toward Mazas… At the end of the rue de Lyon, I place my men at the corners to watch the street. Others watch the boulevard Mazas… We seize the picks and shovels of the road-menders, in order to be able to open a trench under the door of the prison… Not too long. Two men detach themselves, strike the door with redoubled blows. A voice speaks of opening. They enter, parley and come out. At this moment, a strong push gives us all passage. I enter one of the last, leaving behind me sentinels… You know the rest. The keys are seized. We deliver everyone. Flourens, Humbert, Dupas. We had forgotten Léo Melliet. Charvet notices it. He is sent for. He comes out half-dressed. I help him to dress, on a bench.

The invaders of Mazas — as has been seen by the account of Alphonse Humbert — climb to Belleville. Flourens refuses to come down to the Hôtel de Ville, where he will not appear all day. Montels is, he too, gone up to Belleville. It is there that he resumes his account.

— It was — he continues — three o’clock in the morning, when we abandoned the mayoralty of Belleville. The night was glacial. Before going back down toward the centre of Paris, we had had, Doctor Sercy and I, a sharp altercation with Flourens, whom we sharply reproached for his inaction. The prisoners of Mazas delivered without striking a blow. The mayoralty of Belleville occupied. Malon ready to march with the battalions of the Batignolles. Duval and Léo Melliet masters of the thirteenth arrondissement. Sérizier and the 101st. Groups from the fifth and sixth. We ourselves, Sercy and I, sure of taking, when we wished, as we had already done on 31 October, the mayoralty of the twelfth. We pointed out to Flourens this admirable revolutionary situation. But we had to march at once. Flourens did not answer. Or he answered with a few discouraged words. “How many are we? About twenty! In two or three hours, we shall be surrounded. Better that we separate.” Sercy and I, downcast, left Flourens. At noon, we were at the Bastille, where our comrades were to wait for us.

la Bastille et l’Hôtel de Ville

Few people on the square. Here and there, groups of three, four persons, who chat tranquilly. Here is Charvet, who brings me my musketoon. We go through the groups, trying to gather them into a single sheaf. Useless trouble. The armistice. The revictualling… “But,” says someone, “the revictualling can only have begun after the armistice!” And M. the captain of national guard, about forty, by the rue Saint-Antoine. Red flag. Guns charged on the shoulder. At the corner of the quai Bourdon, a little group of armed national guards come out of the ballroom, where a club was being held. They join us. “Long live the Commune! No armistice! Down with the traitors!” Rue Saint-Antoine, men detach themselves from the discussing groups. “Where are you going? — To take the Hôtel de Ville and proclaim the Commune! — We’re going to fetch our guns.” One of our comrades, sent ahead as scout, comes back running. The square is already full of people. Rue du Temple, armed guards. Our men place themselves at the corner of the rue Saint-Bon. From there, they will be able to fire at ease on the windows of the Hôtel de Ville.

The Hôtel de Ville. Crowd. Leverdays,³⁸ Vaillant, in artilleryman’s dress, clothed in a long brown carrick, Émile Moreau, in the midst of a group of national guards of the Rochebrune battalion, with their tunics the colour of a capuchin’s robe. “Sapia is looking for you,” Moreau says to me. “He is there, to the right of the Henri IV door.” Leaning against the railing, some of those who had been at Mazas and Belleville. Dumont, Lavalette. While I am talking with Constant Martin, I see arriving Vallès and Roullier. Vallès stops before the railing, near Dumont. I shake hands with Champy, who is with Gentelini. Both friends of the Corderie. People speak, around us, of the delegation now with the Government. Tony Révillon, Dereure. If we, too, went to demand an accounting from the people of the Hôtel de Ville? From Ferry? We decide to go there. It will be I who shall speak, being the highest in rank.

Behind the railing, three officers. Two officers of mobiles. A commandant, of tall stature. A captain adjudant-major, fat, squat, high-coloured. A colonel. The colonel has a curt manner of speaking. The commandant and the captain adjudant-major stand, facing the door. Vallès and Dumont, leaning against the railing, look at them fixedly. The colonel stands before the gate of the railing, the keys of which he holds in his hand.

The great door of the Hôtel de Ville half opens. It is the delegation coming out. I recognize Tony Révillon.

la délégation devant Chaudey

Champy, Gentelini and I prepare to cross the gate of the railing.

— Another delegation! the colonel, governor of the Hôtel de Ville, Colonel Vabre, says to us in a violent tone. Who are you? In whose name do you present yourselves?

— In the name of the Committee of the Twenty arrondissements.

— Ah yes! the famous Corderie Committee… How many are you?

— Three. Here are our delegate cards. We wish to speak to the Government.

— I will have you brought in. But this will be the last delegation that I shall let pass. That’s enough of that.

The gate opens. We pass.

In the Hôtel de Ville. It is about half past two. Under the vault of the great door, which has closed again upon us, a platoon of mobiles, arms at rest. Further on, in the courtyard, another platoon, of about twenty files. On the right, the men in piles. On each step of the staircase we climb, on the right and on the left, two soldiers face each other. An officer precedes us. On the first floor, a door opens. We are in a great room where, conversing when we enter, five or six persons. Standing, behind a table covered with a green carpet, a man of tall stature, Chaudey. Behind, Étienne Arago, standing also, his hand passed into his waistcoat. Protot bald, greying side-whiskers at the temples. At the back, a young man, fair, fine, with curly hair. Some secretary. I learned only later the name of the young secretary of 1871. This deserves to be recounted.

In 1885, I was living in Tunis. My occupations took me one day to the residency. I am shown into the cabinet of the resident-general, where M. Jules Cambon, today ambassador at Berlin, received me with his accustomed good grace. “We were but six that day at the Hôtel de Ville, Chaudey, Arago, the three others and myself, who fulfilled then near Jules Ferry the functions of secretary. You were therefore, Monsieur Montels, one of the three delegates. — Perfectly, I answered, I am the captain who conversed with Chaudey. — Monsieur Montels, Cambon resumed, I had rather meet with you here than at the Hôtel de Ville on 22 January, for you appeared to be in great wrath that day…” Let us return to the account.

All three, Champy, Gentelini and I, wore the uniform of the national guard. Hardly are we before the table, when Chaudey, without any other preamble, sizing us up:

— Who are you? Who sent you? What do you ask?³⁹

— We are the delegates of the twenty arrondissements of Paris, I answered; here are our cards. As to the mandate which we have received, we wish to expose it to the Government itself.

— The Government does not sit at the Hôtel de Ville, and I rather think that it will not put itself out to receive you. But I will transmit to it the exposition of your mission.

— My comrades and I are charged with protesting against any attempt at an armistice. The armistice, it is the preface of the capitulation. We do not want to capitulate. To capitulate, when Paris can put in line more than 400,000 men! It would be a shame. We must fight. Paris yielding, it is the Republic that disappears. We do not want France to become a second Poland. Paris can still fight and conquer. For more than four months, the Government has fooled and deceived us. We forced it to manufacture cannon. It does not wish to fight. Let it resign therefore and yield place to the Revolutionary Commune.

— The Commune! — Chaudey interrupted — That is a word. Paris can no longer struggle. It has no more provisions…

— No more provisions! Jules Ferry already told us that on 18 September. I was there… We wish to fight… If we need generals, we make them with colonels, with commandants, and even with simple captains. We have had enough of sacrifice-generals. Make way for the generals of the Revolution…

— Look here — Chaudey resumes — captains suddenly turned generals. That is when we would be victorious! Let the captain I have here before me be named general, and the Prussians, beaten flat, will raise the siege… Well! we have not capitulated to these combinations. The Government will resist these follies. We shall not do as on 31 October. We shall repulse the émeute by force. Our precautions are taken to receive…

It is then that I interrupted with violence:

— Delegates of the people, I said, we have not come here to hear your threats. To those who sent us, we shall repeat your words. We shall tell our comrades that to the exposition of our patriotic anxieties, which you had the duty to appease by some words of comfort and hope, you have answered only with threats. We have no more to discuss with you.

We leave the room. Led by an officer, we cross the Throne Room. At each of the windows giving on the square, four or five mobiles, arms at rest. Soldiers on the stairs. Soldiers under the vault. The piles are broken up. We go out. “Now, no more delegates,” says the colonel.

la fusillade

Hardly have we appeared when the crowd surrounds us. I am literally carried to the foot of the nearest candelabrum. I am hoisted up on the base. I keep standing by embracing the column with my left arm, the right remaining free for the report which is awaited, and which I shall certainly accent with a few gestures. I expose what we have seen. The mobiles all ready. I repeat the words of Chaudey. “No impatience,” I say, in conclusion. “We are waiting for reinforcements. The people will decide. We are at its orders.” I set foot on the ground, abandoning my improvised tribune, and was holding out my hands to take the musketoon Charvet was handing me, when a shot, sharp and muffled, like a revolver-shot fired from under a coat, burst out from the direction of the railing, there where I had seen, before entering the Hôtel de Ville, Vallès and Dumont. I was told later that this revolver-shot had been fired at the three officers standing behind the railing. It was then that the colonel, drawing his sabre, rushed toward the door of the Hôtel de Ville, which he struck, three times, with the hilt. Simultaneously, arrived at the run, by the rue du Temple, a strong platoon of national guards. The vanguard of the Batignolles. Malon to their word. The platoon halts and ranges itself before the railing, to the left of the Henri IV door. Coming from the quays, drums beating, red flag, with decided bearing, in four ranks, the 101st, Sérizier at the head.⁴⁰

At the blows struck with the hilt of the sabre by the colonel, the door of the Hôtel de Ville opened wide, giving passage to the mobiles posted under the vault. Startled by these preparations of battle, the crowd rushes violently back. Caught up, enveloped by the whirlwind, I hear the gunshots break out. I see, avenue Victoria, a group of national guards firing, knee on the ground. Others take shelter, to riposte, behind heaps of sand or the lamp-posts. The fusillade crackles. Shots come from the windows of the first floor of the Hôtel de Ville. These are the mobiles of the Throne Room, whom we have just seen. I rejoin my friends posted rue Saint-Bon, at the angle of the cut-corner house whose women’s display windows show an immense grey frock-coat, a tailor’s sign. I fire with my comrades. My last shot shatters the panes of the last left-hand window of the first floor… We are warned that the republican guards, coming by the Pont-Neuf, are preparing to surround us… The game is lost. I cross at a run the rue de Rivoli. I see Vaillant, wrapped in his carrick, with his back to the Café de la Garde Nationale. I tell him we are about to be surrounded. We hasten the last combatants and we lose ourselves in the rue du Temple…

ceux de Belleville

My old friend Alexandre Girault was one of those — as has been seen by the account of Humbert — who invaded Mazas. Girault, who was deputy of Paris, after having done eight years of penal servitude in Caledonia, was, during the Siege, one of the most determined militants of Belleville. Here is what he recounted to me of his two days of 21 and 22 January:

On 21 January — Girault tells me — I was on the place de l’Hôtel-de-Ville with a few men of our company. The 2nd of skirmishers of the 33rd battalion, 37th regiment of march. The signal for the invasion was to be given at three o’clock. It did not come. We wait. Finally, night having fallen long since, a counter-order arrives. The matter was put off to the morrow, the 22nd. We had only to go back up to Belleville. Rue du Temple, abruptly, one of us, Demay, cries: Let’s go to Mazas. Felessus cries in his turn. We were twenty-five or thirty. We turn back, and we engage in the rue de Rivoli. At Saint-Paul church, we meet a group of little fellows, former skirmishers of the 33rd battalion of Germain Casse,⁴¹ passed to the 1st company of skirmishers of the 25th battalion — mine. Someone proposes to ring the tocsin. Other guards had joined us. By my order — I was family councillor and I had some authority over the company, as well as over a captain Seguin — we extinguished all the gas-jets along the route.

Here we are facing Mazas, making much noise to appear numerous. Captain Seguin has us range ourselves against the walls of the prison. Excellent precaution. We are exactly one hundred and twenty-five. Blows of gun-butts on the paving. Commands for the manoeuvring of cannon. We harness ourselves to a watering-cask, forgotten there, that we roll with great noise, like a gun-carriage. “Break down the door,” commands the captain. We were all at this warlike simulacrum, when we learn that one of us — I knew later that this parleyer was a lieutenant, Bergeret, the Bergeret of the Commune — had taken upon himself to parley with the post of national guards of the prison for the entry of a few delegates. The door opens. Bergeret enters. The guards inside wanting to close the door again, it is violently pushed from outside. It remains open. A great devil braces himself with feet and hands to defend the door. I delicately place the pommel of my sabre-bayonet between his shoulder-blades, and accompany this gesture with a solid stroke of the palm of the hand. The column collapses. Little Denny has already slipped between his legs. This time, the entry is free. No one tries any more to oppose our entry.

Our prisoners, Bauer, Flourens, Léo Melliet, Humbert, are quickly delivered. I did not find Humbert. And as it seemed to me that the warder, of whom I demanded the number of his cell, was hardly hurrying to inform me, I took advantage of the moment when he was turning his back to me to make him feel, in the fleshy part of his individual, the point of my sabre-bayonet… And it was terribly sharp, the bayonet… The citizen made a half-turn, and he rushed to the door of Humbert’s cell, which he opened. Fresh manifestation of bad humour at the exit. Guards and warders formed a circle in the rotunda, near the exit door. We were only four left in the prison. Guillaume, who was deported, Dumont the typo, the other Dumont who was killed at Issy, and I. Our shining bayonets in the wind. That was still enough to bring back goodwill. When we were in the street, we caught up with our comrades who, with Flourens, were already two hundred metres ahead. Where were we going? Some wanted to go to the Conciergerie, to carry off Tibaldi.⁴² Humbert and I proposed to go to the Hôtel de Ville. Flourens wanted to rouse Belleville. Flourens was followed, without listening to the advice of those who pointed out that we were moving away from the battle and from action.

At Belleville, our number had doubled. We march against the danger. We enter the mayoralty, then opposite the church of Saint-Jean-Baptiste, at the hour where opens the rue du Jourdain. There, it is decided to go to wake up the battalion chiefs, that they may rally their men. But the battalion chiefs received very badly, for the most part, the delegates of Flourens. The others did not take the matter seriously. The tocsin was rung, to which no one answered. During this time, some of the national guards who had come to swell our ranks were busy emptying a cask of wine, which they had set up and staved in to draw from it more at their ease. At daybreak, we separated. There remained at the mayoralty, with Flourens, only a few men, and the drunkards collapsed against the half-emptied cask…

Belleville had not marched. We were hardly more fortunate when, in the morning, we tried to gather combatants. Swelled by a few guards of the 39th battalion — a battalion of the 12th — we traversed the streets singing the Marseillaise, the Carmagnole, calling to arms. Before us, an old drummer beat the charge with a rage worthy of a better fate. We were no more than a dozen, when we descended toward the Hôtel de Ville. We did not encounter a cat in the faubourg du Temple. At the level of the rue de la Verrerie, we perceive in enfilade the façade of the Hôtel de Ville and a part of the square. We take a few more steps… Suddenly, an isolated shot, and, almost at once, a fusillade which, visibly, by the smoke, comes from the windows of the palace. Bizarre observation, the bullets carry into the shops of the rue de Rivoli, to the right of the rue du Temple. A few seconds afterwards, the demonstrators, men and women, having rapidly [scattered], I realize this fact which, an instant before, seemed inexplicable. The marksmen, the mobiles encamped in the Throne Room, firing from behind the façade walls, through the open bays, putting themselves thus under shelter from the assailants. Their weapons fire fan-wise, some reaching the rue de Rivoli, others the square.

I also see, distinctly, three or four officers of mobiles directing themselves from the principal door toward the little post installed on the side of the rue de Rivoli. They were going to reach this post, when, Guillaume and I, we fire on them. One of them seems to us hit. We file, by the rue de la Coutellerie, toward the avenue Victoria where there are still, when we arrive, some marksmen. It is one of them who shattered the hands of the clock. A wounded guard, hopping on one leg, rejoins us. I see him carry off a dead man, or one gravely wounded. Behind the heaps of sand, men stretched out, who get up and save themselves running. We regain the rue du Temple, where we meet a wounded man, whom two comrades support and conduct to the nearby pharmacy. The troops arrive. Mounted chasseurs and line troops. The moment has come to clear off. We have only the time, Guillaume and I, to pass between the first ranks of the chasseurs, preceded by Vinoy… We remain a few moments longer rue du Temple, where we are in safety, and we go back up to Belleville.

le petit tambour

The Batignolles, where Malon exercised a preponderant action, had already distinguished themselves on 31 October. They furnished, on 22 January, about a hundred combatants. It is the detachment of the Batignolles that arrived by the rue du Temple, tricolour flag in the wind, topped with a red cap. Paul Martine,⁴³ member of the municipal Commission of the seventeenth and friend of Malon, has given me the following account, to which the incident of the death of the little drummer Léon Bousquet gives a particularly tragic and poignant character.

The morning of the 22nd, I am before the mayoralty, where I cross Captain Dauvergne, of the 91st battalion. “Well! this time, we march on the Hôtel de Ville?” Agreed. I run home, where I take down my artilleryman’s musketoon. I have no cartridges, but I have a solid bayonet, well sharpened. It has already saved my life on 31 October. Outside, the general is being beaten. The drummer, a very young guard, small, thin, fair. I have often met him at the club of the rue Lemercier. His name, Léon Bousquet, student of pharmacy. Poor little Bousquet! In a few hours, he will be struck dead, avenue Victoria, very near me… Behind the drummer, march two armed guards, gun on shoulder. One of them, old Father Malézieu, blacksmith-workman, an old of the old, who fought with Barbès, and who was deported in June. I join the group. The drum still beats. Little by little, the national guards come out of the houses, gun in hand, and take their place with us. Almost all of the 91st, the revolutionary and patriot battalion — in those times it was all one… Suddenly, we see running up, raising his arms, a fat man. The mayor, François Favre. He summons us to disperse. François Favre has been said after 31 October. We continue our route, without otherwise troubling ourselves about the municipal summons. But we need a chief. Someone goes to fetch, avenue de Clichy, the commandant of the 91st. But he is not, they do not wish to be at home.

We traverse the quarter, Bousquet still beating the general. For an hour Bousquet has been making his drum sound. We are about fifty. Most familiar faces. It is about noon. We still have no officers. We disperse. Rendezvous, at one o’clock, boulevard des Batignolles, at the top of the rue de Rome, at the corner of the new Chaptal college.

Hunger beginning to gnaw at my entrails, Bousquet, who has slung his drum over his shoulders, is with me. He has found, I do not know how, the means to procure for me a piece of bread. We enter at a wine-merchant’s, place des Batignolles, at the corner of the rue des Dames, and we share the bread — what bread! — drinking, standing, a glass at the counter.

Let us hurry to the rendezvous. Between the railing of the railway and the unfinished buildings of the college. The volunteers are more numerous than at the time of our separation. I shake the hand of little B., always jovial, and of his elder brother Ferdinand,⁴⁴ always melancholy. Here is Benoist Malon, our elected deputy, our friend to all. Varenne in simple guard’s dress, soft hat, boots turned up over the trousers. Toward two o’clock, a little before, we are quite one hundred and fifty. Three officers. Captain Fontaine, lieutenants Jouvard and Hoemelle. Captain Dauvergne is no longer there.

On the way toward the Hôtel de Ville. We form ourselves into three platoons of fifty. Ranged in two files, we hold the whole width of the roadway. Sabre in hand, at the head, Fontaine. At his sides, Malon and Victor Clément, who was elected to the Commune by the seventeenth.

While walking, we shouted cries. “War to the end! Down with the traitors!” I shouted with all my strength: “Down with Trochu! Long live the Nation!” Bousquet furiously beat his drum. We descend the rue de Rome. The passers-by look at us. — “Where are you going? — We are marching on the Hôtel de Ville. We are going to throw them out by the windows.” Place de l’Opéra, numerous crowd on the pavements to see us file by. Always the cry, at the top of our lungs. “Down with Trochu!” A well-dressed gentleman cried out, gesticulating: “Yes! and long live the Prussians, eh!” Two of ours hurl themselves at the insulter. He has already disappeared in the crowd. On the boulevard, a kid says to his neighbour: “Those are Blanqui’s men!” A platoon of dragoons, turning bridle as soon as we approached. Boulevard Sébastopol. Square des Arts-et-Métiers. It is there that is the rendezvous, the concentration of the insurrectional forces. Malon leaves us.⁴⁵ He goes to rejoin, at the mayoralty of the second, the mayors and deputies of Paris, gathered to take counsel on the situation. We range ourselves along the square, facing the théâtre de la Gaîté. We have been there an hour. Some grow impatient. I can hold out no longer. I leave the ranks, and, the musketoon slung, I make for the place de Grève.

Place de l’Hôtel-de-Ville, an enormous crowd. No armed combatants. Thick groups of idlers. Petty bourgeois, quarry-men, women, children. The façade of the Hôtel de Ville has a sinister aspect. Doors and windows closed. What is going on inside? I arrive at the railing that borders the monument. I learn that the Throne Room is packed with Breton mobiles… It is about three o’clock… Suddenly, a roll of drums from the direction of the rue de Rivoli. Someone says: “It’s Belleville coming down with cannon.” It is not Belleville. It is our Batignolles men who, already, are skirting the monument… Ten paces from me, a tall fellow, hooked onto a street-lamp, gesticulates and speaks loudly…

What is it? What is happening?… A great noise of windows being opened… Gunshots… A great grey cloud, lazy with smoke… Around me, people cry, run, jostle, flee on every side… More gunshots… This time, they come out in front of me, avenue Victoria… I see, through the smoke, the barrels of the guns crossing in the embrasures of the windows, on the first floor, at the Throne Room… And I have not a single cartridge… I have come with my musketoon, but I have nothing with which to load it… Around me, national guards fire with their percussion guns… But here the entrance door of the Hôtel de Ville opens, and a new discharge strikes at random, into the mass… They are indeed Breton mobiles, with the white cross, the ermine, on their caps… I am now on the pavement of the Café de la Garde Nationale, at the corner of the rue de Rivoli… A bullet strikes, in front of me, an old man, in the nape… The sergeant of mobiles of the Seine — I learned it from his mouth a few minutes later — discharges the six bullets of his revolver upon our assailants: I see old Malézieux, who fires, standing, in full view, howling I know not what. He has near him his son, a kid of fifteen, who fires, he too, with rage, beside a kid of fifteen, a little Bousquet falls… I rush toward him. He is wounded. He is carried away… What did I do next? At the corner of the boulevard and the rue de Rivoli, at the angle of the square Saint-Jacques, the beginnings of a barricade… The mounted gendarmes… They charge at a gallop… I enter the corridor of a house, where a good man, with a wooden leg, gives me drink. “You’re going to get yourself arrested,” he tells me. “You are a head.” And, entering the lodge — it was the concierge: — “Here, take this hat.” It is hatted with a bowler hat, with my artilleryman’s tunic and my musketoon untouched by gunshot, that I regained the Batignolles.

— And, when the fusillade broke out, I asked Paul Martine, no shot had been fired from the square?

— None. The Breton mobiles discharged their arms without the least summons having been made. I was in the front rank. The whole volley of projectiles passed over my head, going to strike those who were at the other edge of the square… What memories! Sometimes I think of those who were with me… Old Malézieux. Deported after the Commune, he returned to Paris at the amnesty, old and exhausted. One day, he was found hanged. Misery… Lieutenant Jouvard. Killed on his barricade, 22 May, at the Batignolles… Little Bousquet, our valiant little drummer. When he was lifted up avenue Victoria, a few friends carried him to a little café near the Châtelet. After putting civilian clothes on him, he was taken to the Hôtel-Dieu, where he died. We accompanied him, on a superb February morning, to Père-Lachaise. Louise Michel spoke at his tomb, where we planted a little red flag…

L’ORDRE DE TIRER

figures and quantities, I receive the news that they are threatening to attack the Hôtel de Ville, etc.” (1)

Truly, this is no time, when the insurrection is at the gates, to be counting the number of sacks of flour — what flour! — that still remain. This task can be put off until tomorrow. And if Ferry believed, when he was leaving the Place de Grève, that the riot would not yet break out on that day, why does he not hurry back when he is warned that the conflict may, from minute to minute, break out? The first dispatch from Cambon, reproduced above, is sent at 1:55. It should have sufficed to enlighten Ferry. On the contrary, — the following dispatch relates it, — he refuses to take the demonstration seriously. He contents himself with sending M. Robinet fils. (2) As for himself, he does not leave the Ministry of the Interior until everything is over. He arrives when the dead have already been picked up.

Ferry, a member of the Government, mayor of Paris, possessed the authority necessary to restore a little order to the extraordinary disorder that reigned at the Hôtel de Ville. Chaudey, asking de Legge to avoid opening fire, is heard only by half. They could have refrained altogether. Ferry was in a position to order. Had a single isolated shot been fired on the square, just one, had it struck anything other than the stones of the façade, that was not sufficient provocation for the order of the deadly fusillade to be given. Ferry, a man of cool blood and resolution — he showed it on the 18th of March — would have held in check the over-zealous partisans of opening fire.

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(1) Parliamentary inquiry into the acts of the Government of National Defense. Depositions of witnesses. Volume II, page 416. (2) The father, Dr. Robinet, is deputy of the municipality of the sixth arrondissement, the mairie of the Place Saint-Sulpice.

He could have forbidden, just as he had forbidden the execution, demanded by Vabre and by the military authority, of the prisoners taken on the square. He would likewise have forbidden the officers of the Breton mobiles from firing without an order from him, a member of the Government. And the bloody day would not have dishonored the last days of a siege in which the whole population, that of the faubourgs first of all, whom privations affected the most, gave proof of the most admirable courage and the purest patriotism.

devant le Jury d’accusation

At the Bibliothèque Nationale. I have Protot read the deposition of commandant de Legge before the Commission of inquiry. Protot was delegate of the Commune to Justice. It is Protot who drafted the so-called decree on Hostages of April 5, as well as the decree of April 23, organizing the Jury of accusation. I place before his eyes the three dispatches from Cambon to Jules Ferry. The deposition of commandant de Legge… We talk… Chaudey was to appear, on May 23, before the Jury of accusation of Versailles. The Versaillais having crossed the ramparts a few days later, did the prisoner of Sainte-Pélagie appear before his judges?

— Chaudey — the former delegate of the Commune to Justice told me — was to appear before the Jury of accusation in the first days of the week that followed the entry of the Versaillais. The Jury of accusation had held its first session on May 19. The jurors were convoked for the following sessions of May 22 and 23. Chaudey would have been free to produce all the testimony that he might have judged useful to his defense. In particular, that of personalities,

[continued — chapter heading repeats]

military or civilian, commandant de Legge and Cambon, others, as he saw fit, who were at the Hôtel de Ville on January 22. He could have been defended by a lawyer of his choice. He could have defended himself. The jurors were chosen from among the delegates of the National Guard, that is to say the elite of the battalions, themselves already chosen by their peers. These delegates were, apart from the small shopkeepers, peaceable, moderate citizens. They would have decided Chaudey’s case as our jurors today decide an assize matter. The decree of April 20 required, for condemnation, a majority of eight votes out of twelve (out of the twelve jurors). The current law fixes that majority at seven votes… Chaudey had chosen, I believe, Maître Rousse as his lawyer. Maître Rousse came to see him at the Ministry and asked me for the authorization to communicate with his client, an authorization which he was granted, the broadest possible… I know nothing more… I repeat, if Chaudey had produced, before the jury, proofs, whether written or by witnesses, demonstrating that he had not given the order to fire on the crowd on January 22, he would have been cleared, and the doors of Sainte-Pélagie would have opened before him.

And, while Protot was speaking, I was thinking that, even if, in spite of all the proofs Chaudey might have furnished, whether through the voice of his defender or in the course of a personal defense, he would have found before him an implacable accuser, in the person of Raoul Rigault. (1) When he had drawn up the rolls of the Jury of accusation, Raoul Rigault, then prosecutor of the Commune, had reserved to himself the right to make the requisition in person in the Chaudey case. Raoul Rigault, who had resolved to send to his death his friend Sapia…

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(1) Rigault had insisted on conducting himself — Dacosta told me — the inquiry into the Chaudey affair. The latter had appeared twice before him. The minutes of these two interrogations disappeared in the fire of the Préfecture and of the Palais de Justice.

le mur

Some months after the visit I made with G. and B. to the old prison, chance led me to the rue Monge. I wanted to see what remained of Sainte-Pélagie, of the Press pavilion, of the registry, of the “wall” perhaps… Where the prison had stood, a vast empty space, encumbered with building materials. I made my way through the maze of rubble and quarry-stones… A path still paved with large stones… It is the chemin de ronde. The sinister route that the cortège of the shooters followed… Abruptly closing the path, some fifty meters off, a wall of large millstone blocks, bare, dismantled, with, at the height of a man, a ledge… The wall, alone left standing in this ruin, was the wall at whose foot Gustave Chaudey had fallen.

ANNEXE

OBSERVATIONS ÉCRITES PAR ANDRÉ SLOM (1)

Observation on the engraving representing the execution of Chaudey. — Slom never bore any name under the Commune, nor arms. On the night of May 23 to 24, while he was going with Raoul Rigault to Sainte-Pélagie, someone fired from a window upon them on the way from the rue Berthollet to the prison. — On arriving at his destination, he then asked if some weapon could not be lent to him. — He was given a regulation revolver without cartridges. — The officer or the soldier who found this revolver on R. Rigault’s table at the Hôtel Gay-Lussac was able to confirm that it had never been used.

Disposition of the chemin de ronde and the positions occupied by Chaudey and the firing squad

The daylight left to see Chaudey did indeed exist, [here Slom’s sketch reproduced in facsimile on page 95] but on the right, that is to say between the firing squad and the wall A. Thus, at C, the squad; beside it, to the left, against the wall B, Raoul Rigault, Slom, secretary, and Clermont, commissioner. Préau de Vedel, on the right, against the wall A.

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(1) This note, transcribed by Slom at the head of a copy of Edgar Monteil’s brochure, L’Exécution de Gustave Chaudey et de trois gendarmes, refutes, page by page, the author’s assertions. Monteil’s brochure was published in a very small number of copies; the reader may consult the copy at the Bibliothèque Nationale, Lb57 8261.

NOTES DE SLOM SUR LE TEXTE DE MONTEIL

Page 13. — If Raoul Rigault came to Sainte-Pélagie with the plan of having Chaudey shot, he did not speak of it to Slom, who was summoned on official business.

Page 15. — The official report (procès-verbal) was dictated to Slom, secretary of the Procurator of the Commune, only after the execution of Chaudey and before that of the gendarmes; moreover, Préau de Vedel acknowledges this. It is certainly he who gave the text to the inquiry, who indeed admits to the copy, but holds it to be from a deposition. It is, moreover, exact in its substance.

Page 18. — The whole interrogation of Chaudey, up to the phrase: Vive la République! (page 21, at the bottom), is absolutely inaccurate. Already in 1875, I gave the details in a letter to Leloup. (1) These papers must have been remitted to M. Castagnary, of the Siècle, after Leloup’s death. Here it is, if not textually, at least in the most complete sense: (Here the interrogation as it has been reproduced on page 23 of the present cahier). The interrogation read at greater length. Préau de Vedel has been accused of having fired on Chaudey: that is false.

Page 23. — When Préau de Vedel came to tell Rigault, after the execution of Chaudey, that the firing squad was asking to know what they had been made to do, Rigault said to him: “You are right not to make them think of it.” It was then that he sent Slom to read or dictate the contents of the procès-verbal he had just dictated. Slom read no interrogation, and the squad and the bystanders cried: “Vive la Commune!”

Page 24. — Execution of the gendarmes. — The gendarmes were placed against the rampart wall that turns to the right.

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(1) Leloup (Félix), examining magistrate attached to the criminal tribunals of the Commune (April 8), then judge at the civil tribunal (May 13).

The actors and spectators of the drama were placed as I have said. When the command began, one of the gendarmes fled toward that part on the right. It was then that Clermont asked Slom for his revolver (unloaded, moreover), and, passing behind the firing squad, toward wall A and in front of Préau de Vedel, ran into the open space on the right. R. Rigault then shouted to him: “Do not kill him, at least, bring him back.”

I saw none of the details of these executions, neither the coups de grâce given to Chaudey, nor the flight of the gendarme, nor their execution. Placed behind the squad, I could scarcely make out Chaudey’s silhouette. At the moment of the detonation, I heard the very distinct cry of the soldier: “Vive la République!”

That is the whole truth about this event.

Paris, June 23, 1887. ANDRÉ SLOM.

ÉDOUARD MOREAU

I — LE SIÈGE

Genève

Geneva, 1871. — One evening, leaving a meeting of the Society of the Proscribed, (1) Arthur Arnould (2) has received from Paris a letter, which gives us some news of those of whom we no longer hear… Édouard Moreau. We have often wondered what had become of Édouard Moreau, member of the Central Committee of the 18th of March, civil commissioner (in May) attached to the delegate at War, then Delescluze, then, until the defeat, director of the Intendance… Gouhier, (3) who knew Édouard Moreau very well, recounts that Moreau is in

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(1) From the moment of their arrival in Geneva, the proscribed of the Commune had grouped themselves with a view to mutual assistance. Most of them, if not all, had reached the land of exile in a precarious situation. (2) Arthur Arnould, member of the Commune. (3) Charles Gouhier, member of the Central Committee. See Mes Cahiers rouges, VII, pages 52 and following.

London, seeing no one, living completely isolated. Word has it that before his departure he had had handed over to the Government, by a well-known personality, 40,000 francs, the balance of the cash of the Intendance, of which he held the keys… But no one can verify Gouhier’s assertions. Here is the letter of Arthur Arnould, who was of the fourth arrondissement, like Moreau… Moreau is not alive. He has been shot at the Lobau barracks. Arrested on the rue de Rivoli. Taken to the Court-martial at the Châtelet… It had already been said… The newspapers had recounted it… But had not the newspapers also said that Vallès had been shot, and Billioray and Vaillant, and old Gaillard, (1) and so many others… Now, Gaillard is here, with us, listening to the reading of Arnould’s letter. Vallès is in London, as is Vaillant. The information brought by Arnould’s letter is brief. Moreau, taken at the moment when he was returning home, on the Thursday morning of the Week, had been led to the barricades, was never seen again. Massenet (2) neither. Noro, (3) who lived for a long time in the quarter of the Hôtel-de-Ville, where Moreau lived, does not know him. Arnould met him at the Town Hall only at rare intervals. Only Gouhier frequented him assiduously. He was with him at the Ministry of War. He followed him everywhere. Yet Gouhier did not know Moreau before the end of the Siege. He saw him to his knowledge at the Vaux-Hall, at the meeting from which issued the Federation of the National Guard… Moreau never signed, during the Siege,

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(1) See Mes Cahiers rouges, II, page 187. (2) Massenet de Marancourt, commandant of armament. (3) Noro, chief of the 20th battalion, then of the 7th legion.

And we begin to talk of Moreau. Who among us knew him? Arnould evokes his memories. Thirty to thirty-five years old, head held high, blue eyes, luxuriant hair thrown back, a full blond beard. Always in civilian clothes. Sometimes a kepi of simple rank… Massenet confirms… Moreau, according to him, was performed at the Français. He was of noble family, and concealed his real name. And Gouhier launches into an enthusiastic eulogy of Moreau, who was his everyday friend, from the 18th of March, when he saw him for the first time, or one of the first times, until the end. He left him only the day after the Mairie of the eleventh, after the fusillade of Beaufort. (1) He did not see Moreau again… Gouhier confirms, what we all know, that Moreau was designated by his colleagues of the Central Committee to draft the first proclamations… The conversation continues… Very few of us knew Moreau during the Commune. Gaillard, who commanded the barricades, never saw him. Massenet (2) neither. Noro, (3) who lived for a long time in the quarter of the Hôtel-de-Ville, where Moreau lived, does not know him. Arnould met him at the Town Hall only at rare intervals. Only Gouhier frequented him assiduously. He was with him at the Ministry of War. He followed him everywhere. Yet Gouhier did not know Moreau before the end of the Siege. He saw him to his knowledge at the Vaux-Hall, at the meeting from which issued the Federation of the National Guard… Moreau never signed, during the Siege,

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(1) See Mes Cahiers rouges, II, page 23. (2) Massenet de Marancourt, commandant of armament. (3) Noro, chief of the 20th battalion, then of the 7th legion.

any proclamation. Not the Red Poster (Affiche Rouge) of January 5, ‘71. Not the poster of the day of the entry of the Prussians… (1) He was not of the 31st of October, nor of the 22nd of January. He was not of the Corderie… (2) Where does he come from? How did he burst, suddenly, without revolutionary antecedents, into the great movement of the 18th of March?… His life remains shut up, mysterious, almost enigmatic, between his entry into the Hôtel de Ville and the tragic end — now we are sure of it — at the infamous Lobau barracks.

rencontre

1910. Forty years later. In the house of friends, I am introduced to a lady, elderly, full of distinction, who, immediately, when we were alone together, brings the conversation around to the Commune. She has read my account of the hostages, (3) the chapter on the Archbishop, where I recount the death of captain de Beaufort. We talk. Memories crowd to my interlocutress’s lips, clear, vivid.

— I — she tells me — knew Monsieur de Beaufort very well… Charles de Beaufort, first cousin of Édouard Moreau… Both lived with their aunt, madame de Bauvière, 10, rue de Rivoli… Édouard Moreau, having arrived in Paris in the first days of August ‘70, had found his cousin there again. From that time, they were never apart… Beaufort, in a battalion of the National Guard of the faubourg Saint-Antoine… Monsieur Moreau in the 187th battalion of the National Guard. Arron-

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(1) See the reproduction of these two posters in Les Murailles politiques françaises, pages 450-1 and 457. Paris, Lederwiller, 1878. (2) Hall of the rue de la Corderie-du-Temple, where the Committee of the Twenty Arrondissements sat. (3) Mes Cahiers rouges, Cahier II, pages 187 and following.

dissement… When Monsieur Moreau came to the Hôtel de Ville on the 18th of March, Charles de Beaufort followed him there, to enter, shortly after, the Ministry of War, in the capacity of staff officer… You know that the unfortunate Monsieur Moreau perished at the Lobau barracks… I was with him when he was arrested, on the Thursday of the May Week, on the rue de Rivoli, at his aunt’s. The evening before, Charles de Beaufort had been shot, as you recount, at the Roquette… Charles de Beaufort… I see him still, tall, slender, always coquettishly groomed, with his black hair, his brown eyes, very elegant in his uniform of captain adjutant-major, with the gold aiguillettes on the blue tunic. Brave, devoted. His death, by his own kin, was an abominable error…

These few phrases of my visitor taught me many things. Perhaps I was going to know, in full, who Édouard Moreau was. I ventured a question.

— Monsieur Moreau? Whence did he come, when he arrived in Paris in the first days of August?

— Monsieur Moreau was in London when the declaration of war broke out. He had been there since 1868, the date at which he had left Paris, with his wife and his young child… In London, he had taken an interest in a business of manufacturing artificial flowers. (1) As soon as war was declared, his resolution was quickly taken. He, very patriotic, did not wish to remain abroad when he could serve his country. He returned to France around the 18th of August, and headed at once for Paris, where he arrived around the 20th. I saw him there often. I myself had enlisted, for the duration of the war, in the ambulances of the Sisters of France. I was attached, until the end, to the brigade of general de la Marionne, with the stay at Bobigny, on the Saint-Denis road… Monsieur Moreau

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(1) It is perhaps for this reason that Lissagaray (Hist. Commune, Dentu edition, page 121), who was ignorant of Moreau’s antecedents, as well as of his kinship with de Beaufort, attaches to his name the description of “small commission-agent in merchandise.”

was, for his part, in the 187th battalion, commandant Boudin. He marched, in the war companies, at Champigny and at Buzenval… He was brave, with a cold bravery, and of an ardent patriotism… I still have letters from him…

My interlocutress had fallen silent, as if her thought were turning entirely back toward those distant and poignant memories.

— But, I asked, monsieur Moreau… what was he doing in Paris before leaving it to go and settle in London?

— Monsieur Moreau… I met him for the first time in 1865… He was then a playwright, at the Théâtre Rossini, at Passy, rue de la Tour, a theater which has not existed for a long time, a little piece whose title I no longer recall. You will certainly find the title of this piece at the Society of Dramatic Authors, of which he was a member. The piece, a comedy in one act, was signed under the name he then bore, and which is his, E. Moreau de Bauvière. He gave articles to various literary journals. He often read me poems, some of which he composed. He composed musical works. He wrote a mass with music which was performed. He drew charming scenes. When I saw him for the first time, he had just married a young woman, titled like himself. Nothing at that moment let one foresee his destiny. Nothing. He was not mixed up in the political movement. No one could have predicted that he would disappear in so brief a span, victim of the frightful revolutionary tempest.

I was now informed about the person of Édouard Moreau. I understood, only then, the reason for the silence around him. Absent from Paris for three years, with no tie to any political group, no one knew him when he came back in 1870. No one possessed his features, published for the first time here, thanks to the intelligence of my interlocutress, who was good enough to entrust to me

the precious photograph she possessed. She also entrusted me with some letters, those that remained to her and that she had been able to keep, or to recover. For she too had to flee. Her crime was to have continued to give, as an ambulance-nurse, to the wounded of the Commune, the care she had given to the wounded of the Siege.

vers Paris

Édouard Moreau has left London. He has stopped for a few days in a village of the Orne, near Argentan. He is there with his young son. The following letter, undated, must be from the 15th to the 20th of August. It alludes to the affair of la Villette (1) which is of August 13, and to the new minister of War, Palikao, minister since August 10. An extremely curious remark. Édouard Moreau not only does not share the sentiments hostile to the Empire. He would rather be disposed to place in it all his confidence, and to hope still that the Emperor might draw France from the abyss into which she is already plunged.

Tuesday evening.

Your letter is disconsolate and disconsolating. Beware of letting yourself share the mobility of the Parisian, who today counts what he was acclaiming yesterday, and counts on acclaiming it anew tomorrow. If the Athenians are dead, they live again within the walls of Paris. One must see the question in all its facets and together; it is impossible that the new

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(1) On August 15, 1870, Blanqui and a hundred or so of his friends, among whom Eudes and Brideau, who were condemned to death and freed on September 4, attempted to seize the fire-station post of the boulevard de la Villette.

minister (1) should not in forty-eight hours unroll the chaos that maréchal Lebœuf has left him, and, before regularizing secondary movements, before even running to the principles of the riot, which is essentially Prussian, (2) he must move and mass the military elements, which is being done at this moment with vigor. You see that our agitators have quit the game once the game has become national: the Marseillaise withdrew with Rochefort the moment the word Patrie! was uttered. The revolution, which felt poorly behind the coffin of Victor Noir, (3) does it in its breeches at the sound of the Prussian cannon. Incapable of leading, they seek only to discredit those who do lead. People are not marching, it is true, but they are organizing the most powerful defense ever gathered, and you shall soon see a prodigious crushing; it is with several million men that France is going to kill Prussia, the past, and divine right. Besides, you see that the Prussians understand it; arm at the foot, they are afraid of their first successes; they sense that the Emperor, hanged, fallen, despised, is still capable of a prodigious stroke, if some one of their assassins does not come in time; they say here that they know themselves lost; they know that they came only to fatten themselves on our furrows. History is preparing for us a great page, and the time that you believe lost is the mysterious time in which the form is preparing to turn the leaf. Courage! Courage! Nothing is lost; nothing is degenerate.

… We left Rouen at last; they sent us from station to station, changing the route, because the line’s service was disorganized for the transport of the mobiles. Thus we covered more than one hundred and twenty leagues during the night, waiting two hours at one point, three at another. Toward

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(1) Maréchal de Palikao, who had succeeded maréchal Lebœuf on August 10 as minister of War. (2) The newspapers of the Empire affirmed that the affair of la Villette had been prepared by Prussian spies. (3) Allusion to another newspaper story, depicting Rochefort fainting at the obsequies of Victor Noir, at Neuilly.

midnight, they declared to me that they could only convey me to Éconché the day after next. I had to content myself with going to Argentan, where I arrived at three in the morning, having lost my trunks in the innumerable transfers that had been made; I had them set off in search, and I was answered that they would be found again at Serquigny, and that I would receive them the next day. I therefore went across the town, woke a livery-stable keeper, and at four in the morning set off. By six, I was here. By eleven, I was on my feet, although I had gone to bed broken by this long stretch. I went to Rânes. Frightened people, trembling, returning from having attempted to set fire to M. Lebœuf’s château, discouraged by the precipitate departure of all the young men. I run right and left, to the Mayor’s, in whom I succeed in setting fire to his heart, into the inns where I waken courage and hatred; I have not wasted my time. At eight, I came back and went to bed, exhausted, but happy, having shown myself to have not gone out for nothing. I shall not perhaps have volunteers, but I have thrown a grain of enthusiasm that may sprout. The Mayor complains of having no orders. Well, I tell him, act of yourself; your power is enormous, you are the nation, it is in you that her strength lies; up! Thank you, he replied, I begin tomorrow. He seized my hands: Vive la France! he said; I shall rouse the peasants — same impulse.

… In two days, my dear Abel (1) has already grown red and brown, he is the admiration of everyone; he is passed from lips to lips. How lively! How spirited! How lovable! How precious! And strong! And mischievous! And proud! And in fact, he laughs at everyone, runs after the chickens, drags wheelbarrows, carries baskets twice as heavy as himself, smears himself with cherries, imitates the lowing of the cows, brings in the horses: dada! asks of the servants pats from his

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(1) Édouard Moreau’s young child. We have not felt that we should suppress this passage, which testifies to the boundless affection Moreau bore his son.

father, crying: hue!… We shall find each other again after this moment of agitation, our conscience happy, and proud to have for fatherland that of the soldiers of Reichshoffen. According to all probability, I leave the day after tomorrow for Paris…

E.

arrestation

Édouard Moreau is in Paris. And here, shortly after his arrival, he is the hero of an extraordinary adventure. He is arrested as a Prussian spy. He! While going for a walk out toward the advance lines — Paris was not yet completely closed — he had reckoned without that mad terror of espionage which had invaded the Parisian population. Everywhere spies were seen. His golden beard, his blue eyes, was not that a son of blond Germany! It took no more, in those days when so much naïveté allied itself with so much heroism, to have someone arrested. The letter is still undated.

11 p.m.

An adventure happened to me today.

An errand had brought me beyond Boulogne, toward the river. I was walking on the bank, and I began to read the newspaper. I had been there about an hour and a half, and I was preparing to return toward Paris, when someone tapped me on the shoulder.

— Who are you? — And you? — I am a customs officer. But answer me. — On what grounds? — You have been reported for walking here for more than an hour; works of defense are being carried out; you are suspect: I arrest you.

You can guess what my first impulse was; but fortunately I reflected in time that this man was obeying an order, and that after all there were reasons for it. I demanded only that he not touch me, and I followed him. He took me to an engineer who had sent him, and who made me undergo a sort of interrogation in the open air. A circle began to form. He is a Prussian! He is a spy! I made a movement and looked for the one who had said this last word; but they took me by the arms, searched me, and brought me into a customs post where the interrogation was renewed. I protested against the seizure of my wallet which only a magistrate had the right to take, and it was returned to me (after a letter had been opened). Two men were charged with taking me to Boulogne and handing me over to the gendarmerie. I made this first journey escorted by two revolvers.

Having arrived at the gendarmerie, third interrogation, and order to take me between two gendarmes to the commissioner of police to have my arrest carried out in proper form. New journey with prohibition against putting my hands in my pockets. I was fuming. I thus did a good half-league, the passers-by lining the way. Twenty times I thought I was going to fall. At last I arrived. Fourth interrogation. Name, first names, age, station. Where do you come from? Where are you going? Have you any money? When I said that I had arrived from London: Oh! oh! said the commissioner. They searched me again and even examined my tobacco-pouch.

In the course of the questioning, the commissioner asked me if I knew a person in office. I named M. R. In one pocket, there was a letter addressed by me to M. L. After comparing my handwriting with that of the address, which I declared to be in my hand, the commissioner opened it and read it under his breath; then placing himself in the middle of the office where curious people had followed me, he read it aloud (it is hot, perhaps). At the last words, the commissioner came toward me. “This letter is magnificent, monsieur, will you do me the honor of touching my hand?” They applauded. In two or three the reading of my letter brought tears

to their eyes. It is the first time my pen has been of any use to me.

But, oh formalities, M. R.’s name having been written in the interrogation, I had to be taken to him to be identified, and that he should give a certificate. I went out, and this time twenty hands were stretched out toward me. A plainclothes agent accompanied me to Passy. M. R.’s brother-in-law recognized me, and at eight, I was set at liberty… for two francs for the agent’s trip. I could not finish describing all my impressions to you…

E.

Champigny

Here we are on the eve of the great sortie of November 30. The famous proclamation of general Ducrot, posted on the walls, makes every heart vibrate. Moreau is part of the war companies of the 183rd battalion of the National Guard. A simple guardsman, in “chocolate” greatcoat. The two following letters testify to Édouard Moreau’s ardent patriotism. The Fatherland is for him “the great Idol” to which he is proud to sacrifice himself. Where did he fight? At Villiers? At Bonneuil? At Champigny? He does not say.

Monday (November 28).

… We receive an order of departure for the coming night; there will be, we are told, a great affair. Information gathered at Headquarters: “once outside, we may perhaps be a month without coming back in.” So much the better: for I confess that I am beginning to be sickened by all the cowardices that are beginning to declare themselves. If we meet, let us not pass one another without seeing each other — 183rd battalion, commandant Boudin, joined in regiment with two others, under the command of lieutenant-colonel

Duval; the 183rd has chocolate-colored greatcoats, and we rather resemble the coachmen of a good household. With this information, you will be able to spot us from afar. If I were wounded and we were not on the other side of the Prussians, for they intend, I believe, to attempt a break-through, I would try to have myself transported either to madame de Bauvière’s or to the ambulance of the Théâtre-Français, unless I had been shoved off to the rue Vandrezanne. In any case, you will find information at the commandant’s, 24, rue Jacques-Cœur. I tell you all this because if I were gravely struck, I would want to see you. In any case, there are always at my concierge’s two letters addressed to you, which I would beg you to have collected and kept. (1) Let this be said once for all; for it is possible that the plans may be deranged and that we will quite simply return in the evening, or that we may remain stamping our feet at the outposts.

Monday evening.

Counter-order: we leave only on the night of Tuesday to Wednesday, at four in the morning. I cannot tell you what painful impression I have had all this day. I see all my comrades bidding farewell to those they love, parents, wife, children, mistress; I have no one, and I shall set off with good kisses filling my heart but without one upon my lips. Each carries one of those talismans that make up the faith of the family: a mother, a sister, a beloved has made or embroidered a cigar-case, a tobacco-pouch, has given a sash, has specially made the flannel breastplate that is to keep a little warmth

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(1) We have had in our hands these two letters of Édouard Moreau. From one of them, dated November 26, 1870, we detach the following passage, a new profession of patriotic faith by the future member of the Central Committee: “We are finally going to set off. In a few days we shall have had the honor of risking our lives for France. Tomorrow we receive our camping kits; the day after tomorrow we leave Paris at break of day, and we have the promise of being launched on the line of attack, in the first battle, which will take place within three days, if nothing comes to thwart our plans…”

during the long and lonely night-watches of the lost sentinels. More than one has put there, at the place of the breast, in the place of the heart, those adolescent kisses to which they attach the virtue of repelling bullets. I, nothing!… I certainly do not believe in the utility of these fetishes; but I believe in the sentiments they represent… Come, come, one must not let oneself give way to these ideas. Come, rifle loaded and forward… to die for the Fatherland! One must intoxicate oneself in the cult of this great idea, in order to be able tomorrow to lay down what is most beautiful for her… I am going to bed to prepare for the fatigue. We are announced for the coming night a forced march… Au revoir or adieu.

E.

31 décembre 1870

The following letter, written on the last day of that terrible year 1870, lays bare the tender, familial soul of Édouard Moreau. His patriotic preoccupations have not for a single instant made him forget his duties as a father. Far over the walls of the besieged city, there is a little being who is to him alone his whole life and all his hopes. It is of him that he is thinking. Heart patriotic and loving, it is always toward his cherished son that Moreau’s thought will go, when, already condemned, he plunges, with his companions in misfortune, through the wide gate of the horrible slaughterhouse where the most frightful, and the most undeserved of deaths awaits him.

December 31, 1870. — January 1, 1871. Midnight.

Happy new year. Yes, in spite of the dreadful crisis we are passing through, I want to greet the new year with you. Besides, it is when one is unhappy that one may, with the more justice, form wishes: the moment is therefore never better chosen. May the year that comes bring with it

the last debris of our shames and the last stage of our reverses; may the one that comes be the dawn of a bloody night from which we shall have emerged stronger and better; may it rise on the horizon swaddled like a divine child in victorious bands, bands of the three colors floating over us in the breath of liberty.

If, from this high prospect, we lower ourselves to ourselves, I wish you as much strength and health as we have courage; as much rest and well-being in the future as you now have fatigues and privations; the more reward in that you seek so little.

For myself, I wish for myself all that may be desirable for Baby… Would you believe that I owe still dreams of happy future in the midst of the horrible nightmare in which I hear constantly a little voice calling me? — When I left him, he stretched out his little hands toward me, he said: Papa, papa!, weeping to see me leave; not a minute of my life has passed since without my seeing in thought the most affectionate of children; and, also, at every moment, there pass through my mind and my heart flashes illuminating a picture of the future where a calm and happy hearth reunites us with this dear little being on our knees. — When shall I see him again! — It would yet take little to overturn all that…

Come, away with black ideas! The new year shall regenerate, repair, edify… When the Nile overflows, it is a scourge; when it has returned to its bed, it has left blessings behind. So with this war; it will be 1870 followed by 1870. — It is going to be our future. Fortune and fortune often run after those who flee them; you are of those; all is perhaps awaiting at the end of the road we are following, a road that passes through battlefields and where we shall perhaps not be overturned…

So we leave each other for that; but as the reveille is usually beaten for us toward two in the morning without our being warned, I am going to bed at all hazards.

E.

rêves

A letter curious in its conclusions. Would not Moreau’s patriotism find more occasions of being satisfied if, instead of remaining in the National Guard, he took his place in a regiment of the line? The question had been debated between him and the addressee of the letters here published. Decidedly, Édouard Moreau remains a simple guard in the 187th battalion.

I have not answered you on the subject of the 49th of the line. The reason is that I cannot render greater services by giving any impulse whatever in the National Guard than placed in a squad of the line. Occupied without having yet done anything truly appreciable, I have already done more than I would have done in the army. The formation, the clothing, the arming of my battalion, its active employment, my presence at the outposts, the rectification of a trench, the prolongation of another, the resistance to ideas of discouragement, a thousand details of the generals, and other small details that escape me myself, have made me good for something. — Let a few rays of sun come and ideas will sprout in me. I have a little of the pigeon, of the engineer, of the partisan chief, and of the tribune; from this mixture a result will issue, you may be certain, all the more since I have neither pride nor ambition.

E.

résistance

The capitulation is signed. (1) We shall see Moreau’s dreams realized. From this mixture, as he said, of general, engineer, partisan chief, and tribune, will emerge the member of the Central

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(1) January 28, 1871.

Committee, soon civil commissioner at the Ministry of War of the Commune. The last letter, the last note of Édouard Moreau, before the 18th of March, is the following:

February 24.

I have thrown my whole weight to fortify this spirit of resistance to the bitter end. (1) If you are no longer to see me again, I bid you adieu. E.

These few lines say all the state of mind of Moreau, on the eve of the entry of the Prussians. (2) He was one of those whom an exasperated patriotism pushed to accept the project, at once sublime and senseless, of barring the road to the victorious enemy, of opposing by arms the German occupation. He has, once more, made the sacrifice of his life…

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(1) A meeting of the delegates of the National Guard had taken place on February 18 at the Tivoli-Vauxhall, where it had been resolved to march against the invading enemy, at the first signal of the Prussians’ entry. Moreau is certainly alluding here to this meeting, which he must have attended. (2) March 1, 1871.

II — LA COMMUNE

à l’Hôtel de Ville

The day after the Eighteenth of March. With the whole Central Committee, Édouard Moreau sits at the Hôtel de Ville. It is by this triumphant note that he announces it. At the late hour at which he writes it, he has just drafted the long manifesto that will appear in the Officiel of March 20. He is its sole author. The final phrase is in his manner, sometimes declamatory. Here is this short note:

Hôtel de Ville, March 19. Night.

We have succeeded and I am not dead. How is it? If, in the wholly exceptional position in which we find ourselves, something happens to me, you will tell my son that his father sat at the Hôtel de Ville and signed decrees. Thank you for thinking of me. E.

A letter, this time longer, written, like the preceding note, in the night, after some stormy session of the new power. Édouard Moreau explains

the reasons that have dictated his attitude. He is of those who, refusing to present themselves to the Commune, (1) have, according to the promise made in the declaration of March 20, loyally laid down the mandate the people had confided to them.

ADMINISTRATION DÉPARTEMENTALE ET MAIRIE DE PARIS March 26. 1 a.m.

I am going to tell you why I have persisted up to this point. I entered definitively into this current with a well-defined, well-fixed aim. I said to you one day: “it is now only a matter of time,” but I wanted this time to be devoted to something. You are quite enlightened, or you must have seen that it required some grave resolution on my part to draw me out of an obscurity that is for me a sort of pride and conscience. I know that in radical revolutions like this one, hatreds and ambitions soon rise to the first place; I know that the first word forgotten there is that of Fraternity, and I have wanted in this unleashed furnace at least one spark of it. Each of my minutes has been employed in tying up some bond that was breaking, each of my words has carried an idea of conciliation. Twenty times, by a word, by a step, I have prevented blood from flowing. By a step, I mean my simple person in the midst of workers, my brothers, of whom I had quickly made friends. It has often sufficed that I beg of them on the place des Vosges that no shots be fired. When I was carried to the Hôtel de Ville, I tried, in the councils, to have this people I love make its great peaceful revolution, with the majesty befitting a lion that awakens from a torpor of twenty years. I dreamed it, mounting simple and strong to government, loyally laying down its mandate at the agreed-upon term. When I saw

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(1) The elections for the Commune had been fixed for March 26.

the elections fixed, since I had been put up as a candidate, I went publicly to lay down this mandate, and to refuse the place the Commune offered me. The next day, I received from you the same counsel. You see that we understood each other better than you thought. In short, the bourgeoisie did not want to make concessions, and truly, it owed them, and many; it did not want frankly to put itself in the popular cause; its ill will will perhaps paralyze the best-intentioned efforts. We shall see… E.

à Versailles

A single line. But what hopes, what dreams in these few words. We are leaving for Versailles! This is from April 3, when, full of enthusiasm, certain of bedding down that evening before the Assembly, the Commune’s troops set off as if for a military stroll. The awakening was to be terrible. But Édouard Moreau was of those who believed themselves sure of triumph. If ever handwriting betrayed thought, that of Édouard Moreau, on that day, is the very expression of his enthusiasm. Usually thin and slender, the writing is broad, tall, imperative. The V of Versailles proudly hurls its swollen stems, like steel, in tracing this bellicose capital. Édouard Moreau dreamed, at the same time as of Versailles, of Victory. (1) Here is this line:

We are leaving for Versailles. Until soon, I hope. E.

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(1) See the facsimile, page 143.

Comité Central

Édouard Moreau writes seldom. His multiple occupations have dried up his pen. Here is an interesting letter. Édouard Moreau seems to have had a preponderant influence in the councils of the Central Committee, when the latter resolutely entered into struggle with the Commune. On May 3, the date of the letter that follows, Rossel has been, since the 1st, delegate at War. The Central Committee, which has taken over almost all the services of the Ministry of War, sees in him an obstacle. Rossel is a soldier above all. He demands discipline. He is firmly determined to put a little order into the disorder that the inertia of Cluseret has allowed to grow. He will break the Central Committee. I have already recounted (1) that on this date of May 3 when Moreau writes, finding myself with Rossel in his cabinet, the new delegate at War, perceiving in the courtyard a group of members of the Central Committee in uniform, turned abruptly: “If I had them shot, there, right now!” he said. Rossel left a few days later. And this hostile attitude of intriguing multiplied still further the incredible disorder that reigned in the direction of military operations. Édouard Moreau writes the following letter on leaving one of the sessions in which the members of the Committee, aided by the chiefs of legion, were pursuing their conspiracy against the Commune.

MINISTRY May 3, 1871. OF WAR 2 a.m.

We are coming out of session. The Central Committee had called to its meeting the twenty chiefs of legion of Paris; fifteen are

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(1) Mes Cahiers rouges, III, page 127.

come. This convocation was made after a decree taken by colonel Rossel, on a new formation that strikes at our Federation of the National Guard. It was decided unanimously that we should all go tomorrow to the Commune to make known to it our will, which is: 1° The suppression of the Ministry of War. 2° Its replacement by us, the Central Committee. We have resolved finally that, if the Commune did not accord us this, we should pass over its head, reminding it that it is not the government, but simply the communal administration, and that the National Guard, represented by us, was the sole legitimate force of resistance of Paris. In a word, the men of the 18th of March oppose the Revolution they made, and are going to act revolutionarily. If the Commune accepts, I propose the following decree, to be immediately posted: Considering that all the inhabitants of Paris are jointly responsible for the defense of their hearths attacked by a monarchical faction; Considering that the population of Paris fights only to defend itself, and that defense is legitimate by all means; Considering that the liberty and property of good citizens must be safeguarded, honesty and dignity sacredly preserved. On the proposal of the Central Committee of the National Guard, and in the name of a peaceful revolution attacked by arms. The Commune of Paris decrees: 1° The mass levy is proclaimed. 2° Every French citizen, holding titles or functions of minister, director general, marshal, admiral, general, colonel or chief of corps, in any capacity whatever, who, within three days, shall not have given his adhesion to the cessation of hostilities or laid down his arms borne against

Paris, shall be condemned to death, his movable goods shall be seized, his immovable goods razed to the level of the ground, the land sold in public square, and his name shall be inscribed on tables of infamy exposed at the corners of the main thoroughfares. 3° Full and entire amnesty is granted to all those who conform to the preceding article. 4° Shall be punished with death every citizen convicted of treason, of espionage, of theft of public funds, or of hoarding foodstuffs. 5° Shall be severely repressed: every arrest made without a regular warrant, every individual attack on individual liberty and on property, every calumnious attack, by writings, on the present government of Paris. 6° Are requisitioned according to the needs of the defense: all doctors of medicine and health officers for the service of ambulances and hospitals, according to age; all mechanics, founders and manufacturers shall be able to serve in armament; all engineers and architects shall be able to be employed at earthwork. 7° Women and volunteer children shall be employed in the making of cartridges, clothing, etc. 8° Every drinking establishment from which a citizen shall come out in a state of drunkenness shall be immediately and definitively closed. 9° The present decree shall be repealed immediately after the cessation of hostilities and when Paris shall have, as a guarantee, the disbanding and return to their hearths of the army of Versailles.

If you want true revolution, honest and nervous, here it is. I do not know whether the Commune, always trembling, will accept; but the resolution is taken, and my colleagues seem resolved.

If we succeed, I demand, immediately after, the elections for the Constituent Assembly. I am falling with sleep. E.

Another note:

MINISTRY May 8, ‘71. OF WAR

Whatever may happen shortly, do not be astonished. Come and see me: there is something new and important. E.

The next day, May 9, Moreau is named by the Committee of Public Safety civil commissioner of the Commune attached to the delegate at War, Delescluze. Some days later, on the 17th, he is charged with the direction of the Intendance. It is in this function that defeat will surprise him. The defeat, he did not foresee it so close, he who, in the letter of May 3, sketched a program so meticulously detailed of what he wanted to do. He, who was dreaming — inexplicable blindness — of calling for elections for a Constituent Assembly!

III — L’HOMME DE LETTRES

au Théâtre Rossini

I have found again, at the Society of Dramatic Authors, the title of the little piece given by Édouard Moreau at the Théâtre Rossini of Passy, Une Pointe d’Aiguille. This comedy in one act was performed, at the opening soirée of the theater, newly built at 76 rue de la Tour, on March 27, 1867, as is mentioned in the Figaro of that day, under the rubric “Échos des Théâtres”:

This evening, at 7:15, the Théâtre Rossini opens. If you take a carriage on the boulevard to go and attend this inauguration, say to the coachman: — To Passy, 76 rue de la Tour. That is the place. They play three pieces. A prologue, À Passy, by MM. Félix Savard and Baralle; a comedy in one act, entitled Une Pointe d’Aiguille, by M. E. Moreau de Bauvière; and a comic opera in one act: La Dernière Vendetta, by MM. Émile Thierry and Schubert.

It has been impossible for me to find a printed copy of Édouard Moreau’s comedy. The Bibliothèque

Nationale does not possess one. Has it ever even been published? The Bibliothèque Nationale possesses a sixteen-page brochure, which must be a magazine article pulled separately and put under cover, entitled l’Enquête Agricole, by E. Moreau de Bauvière, 1866 (legal deposit 3290). But no mention whatever of the comedy at the Théâtre Rossini!

Édouard Moreau’s comedy does not seem to have had much success, according to the Figaro. The Théâtre Rossini, built by a former merchant of the quarter, was, besides, from the time of its opening, prey to multiple worries, and soon had to close its doors.

From this same period of 1867, we possess of Édouard Moreau, who then signed E. Moreau de Bauvière, — he wrote out the particle and the name that follows only after the war — a few minor poetic works, written without pretension, which one will nevertheless read with curiosity:

Monday, night, May 6.

To Mademoiselle …

IF I WERE IN LOVE WITH YOU!

If I were in love with you, In our hours of tête-à-tête My gaze, more tender and more sweet, Would unceasingly make a feast for you. If I were in love with you, There would come an adored minute When I would speak of those two follies That one knows not, but invents, If I were in love with you.

If I were in love with you, At the moment when the sap rises, In May, month of newlyweds Where one loves, so they say, If I were in love with you, Just like a cat in the gutter I would think out some mi…a…ows!… To touch a soul of stone, If I were in love with you.

If I were in love with you, Of your arms and their tenderness I would want to make halters That would imprison me without cease. If I were in love with you, Your eyes with their divine caresses Would be my treasures, my jewels, And I would count up my riches If I were in love with you.

If I were in love with you, With a senseless ardor Perhaps I would be jealous Of a glance or of a thought, But however severe you might be, I would find, to be absolved, Some good means, I hope, If I were in love with you.

If I were in love with you, When some desire takes hold of me, My mind topsy-turvy Near you would beat the country. If I were in love with you, I would excite you, perhaps, Justifying your wrath, To throw me out the window, If I were in love with you.

If I were in love with you, In my arm, cradling you bent over, I would hold you on my knees Smiling and half-reclined. If I were in love with you, At the hour of greyer tints, Perhaps toward the bolts… But hush! I would do… silly things If I were in love with you.

THE DROP OF INK

Black confidence

There are practical men. (Physiology of the nineteenth century)

1

My pen took from the inkwell The drop of ink I see, What will you become, black pearl? Tell me what is passing in you? I shall obey you, my poet. I am the great and the banal, Blasphemy and the cry of feast, I am both Good and Evil!

2

Let us speak of God; that is the principle. Do you wish to pray or to blaspheme? He is: from him all things partake; We must know him and love him. He is not; wise is he who denies him; Reason condemns faith, The word God, with nothing to support it, Is but a crown without a king!

3

Science enlightens the world; Let us carry its book wide open! Let its ray, deep gleam, Shine, illuminate openly! — Science harms us, my sisters; It emancipates minds: Let us know to put out the lights, The efforts, the impulses, the noises!

4

Each for all! That is the device Which must rule humanity. To each his portion of the cold wind And of your hard bread, Charity! — Each for himself. The beggars are droll… I have earned my roof, my clothes, Furs for my shoulders, They have known how to earn nothing: too bad!

5

When our poverty hides itself Under the long folds of a proud rag, Let us never let a stain be seen Through the holes of the cloak! I take my good where I find it… A great fool who does not act so I am honest, I prove it, Nothing is clearer: I have succeeded!

6

To marry! Courage and joy!… Two together is to seek one’s happiness; Two together is to struggle in the way; Two together is to keep one’s honor!

A contract. It is an invoice That each spouse acquits at the bottom… A name is worth so much… But the bride Gives in addition her body as makeweight…

7

Love is the blood of our being, Divine association… The soul of the child to be born… It is almost a creation! — All is sold! Everyone is for sale… For him who has succeeded in the marketplace. Let us buy; but let us know to take from it Only the pleasure… or the profit.

8

I can still, O my Poet; I can still sign with one stroke The order to the executioner for a head, Or endorse the warrant of Jean Huss! All is sold, of the martyr one mutilates, Glorifying the blighted name, With the one word: Gospel, Make a Cross of a pillory!

9

Thus spoke the black pearl; Then it said: Your plan conceived, Write: I shall be your history! The work is the man unwittingly! O Jew of thought Take care, for you shall remain… For, your existence past, Glorious, Cursed, you shall live!

THE DANCE OF MEMORIES

Tongs in hand I dream, And while stirring my fire, At the memory that rises from it I am going to say a last adieu… What do I see there? It is my Lisette, Gentle sprite of the hearth Who, with vapor of cigarette Veils her coquettish face.

Dance, dance (bis) Dance, dance, dear memory, Dance, dance (bis) Into my wicked heart you come to bless!

Lisette, the weather is superb: To Romainville! A cervelas sausage! Our tablecloth, for us, was the grass, And the cabinet, the lilacs. Then, coming back from Romainville, Of bootees and the corset, In ardor, my unskilled hand Made the lace crack.

Dance, dance (bis) Dance, my joyous memories, etc…

Do you remember the garret With its refrains of gaiety, And then, the sun that ventured Toward you, its impudent gaze? When in its indiscreet search It came, kissing your white breasts, Teasing you on your little bed, Ah! what cries, what childish laughter!

Dance, dance (bis) Dance, amorous memories, etc.

But one day, where then is Lisette? Where then is she? And all falls silent. Last word of my daisy, My mistress was abandoning me! In the sky my star hides itself… My sad happiness flew away, And gently, on my moustache My first tear ran down…

Dance, dance (bis) You have taught me to suffer. Dance, dance (bis) My heart wishes still to bless you…

E. M. DE B.

Here, finally, is a piece of banter by E. Moreau, “sire de Bauvière,” dated the “most holy day of Easter”:

On this most holy day of Easter of the present year one thousand eight hundred and sixty-seven

Damoiselle,

If, as Plato gives the reasoning, men best lead themselves to the advancement and progress of their intellect by conversing together, certes well and highly precious is it to me and to my profit the happiness of your discourse, in which are seeds and germs of grave and sweet lessons of sapience.

If equally the maxims of Pythagoras of Samos in his theories of musical sounds be veridical, then certainly it ought to follow your voice,

upon which I infer within my interior because of its succession of concentric cycles agitated in the air.

I cannot enlighten you in all this as does Maître Alcofribas Nasier the abstractor of quintessence and very learned in the sayings of the great Gargantua Pantagruel; that is, his son Pantagruel; but, after him, I shall repeat to you: “one must open the box to draw out the drug, and break the bone to suck out the marrow.” This said on the occasion of words not fit to express thought in detail.

In sum, and not to submit your benevolence to too long a trial, I beseech you to continue it toward me, and not to bring me round to the opinion of our beloved my lord the king François, the first of the name, who is: Often does woman vary — as appears on a stained-glass window where the said king inscribed this sentence with his own hand.

Upon which, may you give me leave to kiss with much respect and friendship your hand, and I pray Messire God that he keep you in joy and have you in his most holy keeping.

Of your Grace and Beauty the devoted and faithful liege

E. MOREAU SIRE DE BAUVIÈRE

IV — LE CHATELET

défaite

The defeat strikes Édouard Moreau like a thunderbolt. On the 3rd of May, he was dreaming of a Constituent Assembly. On the 21st of May, the army of Versailles is in Paris. A rifle-shot from his cabinet as chief of the intelligence bureau at the Ministry of War. I have before me, at the moment I write, the envelope of a letter addressed to him, in May, by a foreign journalist coming for news, and which bears as superscription: “Monsieur Moreau, delegate to the Federation, at the Ministry of War, 98, rue Saint-Dominique-Saint-Germain.” Édouard Moreau, who receives every day from reporters — the word was already in circulation — circumstantial reports, has not yet learned that they are bearing down upon Paris, and that, however valiant the resistance may be, the Commune is in advance vanquished, and the Constituent Assembly relegated to the most distant night.

If defeat surprises Moreau, the fires, which

begin from Tuesday, terrify him. In the most exasperated hours of his patriotism, he has not glimpsed such terrible reprisals. From Monday, the day after the entry of the troops, he leaves the Ministry of War, which everyone, moreover, has left. (1) With his friends Gouhier and Gaudier, his colleagues, he goes from the Hôtel de Ville to the rue Basfroi, where the members of the Committee who have not abandoned the struggle are sitting. It seems that he has worked, in every order, to seek a ground of conciliation between the Commune and the Government of Versailles. One does not meet him in person, in truth, at the League of the Rights of Paris, which sits in permanence and which directs its efforts toward an accord that would put an end to the struggle and to the fires, but one meets there his everyday friends, Gouhier, Grélier, who have for Moreau the liveliest admiration. Nothing prevents thinking that Moreau was the soul of these supreme proceedings. (2)

Moreau is, on Wednesday, at the mairie of the eleventh arrondissement, place de la Roquette, where the members of the Commune have transported themselves, after the Hôtel de Ville was delivered to the flames. It is there, toward two o’clock, that a tragic scene unfolds. Moreau arrives at the place de la Roquette at the very moment when Beaufort has just been arrested. (3) Charles de Beaufort,

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(1) Mes Cahiers rouges, VII, page 60. (2) See Histoire de la Ligue Républicaine des Droits de Paris, by André Lefèvre (Paris, Charpentier, 1881), pages 24 and following. The names of the members of the Central Committee who place themselves in contact with the League are not published in this book. But the manuscript procès-verbal of the sessions of the League during the May Week, which I possess, mentions these names. Gouhier and Grélier, friends of Moreau. (3) Mes Cahiers rouges, II, pages 187 and following.

his cousin. He sees him come out of the shop on the rue Sedaine, where Beaufort has just appeared before a court-martial presided over by colonel Goïs. Delescluze is there, mounted on a bench, seeking to calm the furies. Moreau rushes toward him. “Save him. He is innocent. I swear it.” But Beaufort is already on the way to death. “It is you who are killing him,” Delescluze bitterly says to Moreau. “It is your intrigues against the Commune that are the cause of his death.” Moreau, sobbing, covers his face with his hands. The fusillade warns him that Charles de Beaufort, his kin, the friend of his youth, is no more. He flees, desperate.

Where does he go? (1) He has gone back into the fourth arrondissement, occupied since the day before by the troops. He does not hide. One would say he has, one last time, made the sacrifice of an existence which henceforth weighs upon him. Where are they, his fine dreams of the siege, when, a guard in the 187th battalion, proud of his “chocolate” greatcoat, he was discovering that there was in him “the stuff of a general and of a tribune”? Tribune he has been. General, at the least civil commissioner at War. All the great words he has uttered, in the days of triumph, return to his memory. And his fine proclamation of the 19th of March, the day of the great victory, when he said to the people: “My master, you have made yourself free. Obscure a few days ago, we are going to go back, obscure, into the ranks, and show

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(1) Maxime Du Camp (See Convulsions, IV, page 110), who was very well informed about Édouard Moreau, says that he was arrested on May 26, around Wednesday the 28th, but Thursday the 27th, when Moreau returned to the fourth arrondissement. He was arrested as soon as he set foot in his home, 10 rue de Rivoli, around noon.

the governors that one may descend, head high, the steps of his Hôtel de Ville, with the certainty of finding at the bottom the clasp of your loyal and robust hand.” (1) The Hôtel de Ville! There it is, blazing like a gigantic furnace, casting up to the sky clouds of black smoke cut by long red streaks…

la cour martiale

10 rue de Rivoli. The house of the Paradis des Dames. It is there that Moreau lived all through the Siege, with yesterday’s dead man, his cousin de Beaufort, at his aunt’s, madame de Bauvière. Why should he not enter? It does not even occur to him that he has certainly been reported. From the taking possession of the quarter, they must have come. His address is known. He crosses the threshold. He is not alone. A devoted person, she to whom the letters reproduced here are addressed, accompanies him. They go up, stay only an instant, enough however to remember, to talk of yesterday’s murder. They come back down. In the days of triumph. They return to memory. And his fine proclamation of the 19th of March, the day of the great victory, tall, slender, elegant in his uniform of staff captain… Where is he? Where has his corpse been thrown?… They go down, enter the concierge’s lodge to exchange the keys of the apartment… The soldiers… A sergeant and a dozen men… “M. Édouard Moreau? Where do you live? Let us go up… I arrest you.”

A rapid search. The two prisoners, Édouard

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(1) See the Officiel of March 20, 1871. Moreau, whom his colleagues of the Central Committee had delegated to the Officiel, drafted entirely this fine manifesto, as well as several of the other posters that followed.

Moreau and the person who accompanies him — head toward the Hôtel de Ville, enveloped in smoke and flames. Moreau is silent. The Lobau barracks. The crowd massed in front of the door. Clamors. One does not enter the barracks. One takes the quay, and arrives at the Châtelet. Soldiers everywhere. Everywhere a howling crowd. A large hall, in the theater. Before a table, four officers. Hardly do the two prisoners wait a few minutes. They are interrogated. “You are monsieur Édouard Moreau, of the Commune? — No, of the Central Committee. — It is the same thing.” Then to the person: “What is your name, madame, and yours, between judges. —” “Another daughter of Eve! Come, pass on.” That is all. The two of them are pushed toward the stage. Moreau lights a cigarette, without saying a word. An officer, a colonel, approaches. He addresses himself to the person who keeps close to Moreau: “What are you doing here? Come, leave.” And, pushing her abruptly: “Leave. — But, colonel, I am with monsieur, who has just passed before the judges… Monsieur has a wife, a child… He wishes to tell me his last wishes. I must stay…” But no. The colonel commands harshly: “Leave.”

la caserne Lobau

— I do not know how — this witness to Édouard Moreau’s last hour was telling me — I am still on the square, at the foot of the theater’s façade. Around me, people cried “to death!”, shaking their fists at the prisoners, penned, like wild beasts, in

the covered gallery of the first floor. In the vestibule of the ground floor, officers chat and laugh. I raise my eyes. Monsieur Moreau is leaning at the balcony. He has certainly recognized me for some moments past, for, as soon as I perceive him, I note that he has his eyes fixed upon me. He makes me a sign… I keep watching him. A jostling throws me back. Through the crowd, a file of men being led away, surrounded by soldiers. ”— Where are they going? I ask of a woman near me. — To Lobau. They are going to shoot them there, as soon as they are there.” I no longer see monsieur Moreau… I remained there a long time… Would I not see him a last time, when he should pass, in the file of the condemned… I waited… Nothing… I felt myself fainting… I ran toward the door of the Lobau barracks… I heard only the dreadful fusillade… I know nothing more… No one knew anything more… For months, I told myself that, perhaps, he had been able to escape from this hell… that he was hidden somewhere… that he had returned to London… that he was perhaps embracing, at the very moment when I was thinking of it, that child whom he cherished above all else… I wrote everywhere. To M. Bonvalet, the mayor of the third arrondissement, who answered me much… I was made to hope for a long time… But all hope had to be abandoned… Where was he laid, after the dreadful death?… Oh! the horrible destiny…

AUTRES DRAMES

I — LE DÉCRET DES OTAGES

rédigé par Protot

September 28, 1911. At the Bibliothèque Nationale. How the decree on hostages, published in the Officiel of April 6, 1871, was drafted and adopted by the Commune. Protot and I are talking of it. The manuscript procès-verbaux of the sessions of the Commune, deposited at the Library of the City of Paris, give only a very summary account — non-existent rather — of what took place at the session of April 5. The procès-verbaux became approximately accurate only when the Commune had decided (April 13) to publish the account of its sessions in the Officiel. When the Commune met in secret committee, which happened fairly often, no account was made. It is therefore not to be wondered at that we have been so badly informed up to now on the incidents that led to the vote of the famous decree.

On the night of April 4 to 5, the Commune held two sessions. The first, that of the 4th, which ended toward eleven-thirty or midnight. The second, which opened at one in the morning. It was in the first of these two sessions that, for the first time, the decree on hostages was mentioned. This decree was drafted in the interval between the two sessions. It was read to the Commune, which adopted it, in the second session, that of the 5th. The decree was drafted by Protot.

— On Tuesday evening, April 4 — Protot, who was then delegate to Justice, told me — we had been in session for half an hour — it was about ten o’clock — when Chardon entered. He was in the uniform of a colonel. Member of the Commune (for the thirteenth arrondissement), Chardon had accompanied the federated battalions that had attempted to reach Versailles by way of the plateau of Châtillon. Extraordinarily moved, his eyes filled with tears, Chardon announced that Duval had been shot, that morning, by the order of general Vinoy. The details of the execution of Duval and of two officers of his staff, at Petit Bicêtre, had been brought to Chardon by a prisoner, escaped one knows not how. Cries of anger and vengeance broke out. Everyone was on their feet… “We must kill them all, it was said. Reprisals, shoot them, we too.” The most violent propositions are uttered. Rigault wants the archbishop, arrested the day before, Mgr Darboy, to be shot, and the priests and Jesuits arrested at the same time as him. “We must open the prisons to the people, someone cries to him, and bring the common detainees out to them. While our friends were taking their meal, I transcribed the decree, as it appeared the next day in the Officiel. The manuscript was without a single erasure. We made our way back to the Hôtel de Ville. As soon as I entered the session, I handed my project of decree to the president. It was about

massacre. We cannot violate the law of nations. We must act legally.” The hall is trembling. “Rastoul cries to me: “Then, if they continue to kill us, we shall continue to do nothing but legality.” I answer him: “One can be terrible to one’s enemies while remaining just and humane… Besides, there are not in our prisons enemies of the Commune, there are people denounced, who may be innocent… What we can do is take a legal resolution, draft, discuss, and adopt, if we approve it, a proposition that establishes a mode of reprisals, while remaining within the limits of law.”

My colleagues listened to me almost without interruption. Some frankly approve me. “Protot has found the true solution,” says Avrial. Delescluze leaves his place, comes to me, gives me the accolade. “We must, says Delescluze, charge citizen Protot, our delegate to Justice, the most competent among us in matters of law, with drafting a project of decree, which he will submit to us at the next session. In order to finish without delay, I propose to close this session and to fix the next at one in the morning. Citizen Protot will have the time to draft his project. We rely entirely on him…” The session is raised in the midst of extreme agitation…

On the place de l’Hôtel-de-Ville, I am rejoined by friends who were waiting for the end of the session. Bricon, Fontaine, Dessesquelle. (1) I quickly bring them up to date. The four of us head toward the Halles, to refresh ourselves. On the way, I was thinking of my decree. When we entered the Père Tranquille restaurant, the wording was entirely in my brain. While our friends took their meal, I transcribed the decree, as it appeared the next day in the Officiel. The manuscript was without a single erasure. We made our way back to the Hôtel de Ville. As soon as I entered the session, I handed my project of decree to the president. It was about

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(1) Bricon, Dessesquelle, attached to the delegation of Justice. Fontaine, who was to be appointed (April 29) director of Domains.

two o’clock in the morning. The president read it to the assembly, very numerous, very calm. The project was adopted unanimously. The procès-verbaux of the Commune, which are at Carnavalet, are in error when they say the project was proposed by Delescluze. They will know another error in saying that Chardon read a letter announcing the death of Duval. Chardon spoke. He read no letter. He spoke, all in tears, and it was a poignant spectacle, this colossus, in the uniform of a colonel, the red sash across the broad torso, weeping like a child, while, through his sobs, he was telling us of the death of one of the most heroic soldiers of our revolution.

Such is how the decree on hostages was drafted and voted. Versailles was held in respect until the middle of May by the threat of the lex talionis. It did not resume its assassinations until the treason of the minority of the Commune opened the gates of Paris to it. At the session of May 17, Urbain, pushed by Montaut, agent of Versailles, demanded the execution of ten hostages within twenty-four hours. I combated the Urbain proposition and had it rejected. Rigault calmed down when I had pointed out to him that we did not have a single prisoner of M. Thiers’s that he was eager to save…

les procès-verbaux

Here now is the extract from the manuscript procès-verbaux of the Commune, session of April 5:

Citizen Chardon reads a letter, to announce that citizen Duval, general of the Commune, has been shot by the Versaillais. Citizen Delescluze deposits on the bureau the following proposition: Citizen Delescluze having demanded urgency, the Commune adopts without discussion the decree unanimously.

Barely ten lines, that is all the procès-verbaux say of the two important sessions of the night of April 4 to 5.

Not a word about Protot, who drafted the decree.

It is understandable that Lissagaray, in his Histoire de la Commune de 1871, Dentu edition, page 199, wrote: “On the 5th, Delescluze deposited a project, and unanimously, it was decreed that every person accused of complicity with Versailles, etc…” Lissagaray consulted the procès-verbaux, which led him into error.

II — LA MORT DE DELESCLUZE

I have recounted (Cahier VII, pages 97 and following) how Delescluze, on the afternoon of Thursday, May 25, was arrested, at the porte de Vincennes, by the federates, who took him, between guards, bayonets on their rifles, to a tavern of the place de la Nation. Back at the mairie of the eleventh arrondissement, Delescluze, crushed with grief, at the news that he was to have himself killed at the barricade of the Château-d’Eau.

After reading our account, citizen Louis Pindy, former member of the Commune, elected by the third arrondissement, military governor of the Hôtel de Ville, today federal sworn-assayer at La Chaux-de-Fonds (Switzerland), has addressed to the Cahiers de la Quinzaine the very interesting letter following, a precious document to which we are happy to give a place here:

La Chaux-de-Fonds, June 7, 1910. Monsieur the Director of the Cahiers de la Quinzaine, Paris.

Monsieur,

I have just read the seventh Cahier rouge of citizen Maxime Vuillaume, and as I am not entirely

in agreement with the version that he holds from Arnold, regarding the facts that preceded, and perhaps even the death of Delescluze, I wish to bring you, leaving you the liberty to publish it if you judge it useful, the testimony, as succinct as can be, of an actor, in any case a witness, to these facts.

Fifteen to twenty members of the Commune were gathered in the room serving as Delescluze’s office, when I entered with Theisz, who had come to fetch me. Before entering, he pointed out to me a gentleman whom he told me to be the secretary of Washburne.

The discussion among our colleagues had been rather long; it was ending, at the moment of my arrival, with the resolution of appointing delegates who, under the protection of the United States, should go to the commander of the 4th Prussian army corps, who was beyond Vincennes, and ask him to intervene with the Government of Versailles to obtain the cessation of the massacres in Paris.

For our part, we promised to cease fire, and we committed ourselves to surrender without other conditions to the mercy of the Versaillais.

Puerile hope, childish if you will, and certes, our confidence in the success of this démarche was quite limited, but we could do no more than offer ourselves to try to save a greater number of victims.

Vaillant’s and Vermorel’s words were causing the delegation to lose its bearings, as Vuillaume writes, after Arnold; but, at the moment of leaving, Delescluze asked to be replaced as delegate at War, and he proposed to me to accept this function; I energetically declined, advancing that others were better qualified than I to shoulder such a responsibility.

Some answered me with a coarse formula, and finally Delescluze signed my appointment, approved, or at least not opposed, by my colleagues present.

Not having been at the porte de Vincennes, I leave, to those

who have spoken of it, the responsibility for what they say; but here is how things happened at the moment when Delescluze, profoundly crushed by the outrage he had just suffered, bowed sadly his poor white head, repeating with bitterness: “They treated me as a coward!”

As I insisted, in order to have details on the motives advanced by the National Guards of the porte de Vincennes to explain their observation, Delescluze said to me textually: “They asked me for a pass from us…” — From me? But on what grounds? — Because I told them that you were replacing me at War…”

At the same time, and I am astonished that Arnold did not remember it, he himself was repeating to other members, my colleagues, who were inquiring: “They demanded an order from Pindy.”

Then, profoundly impressed by the spectacle of the grief of our venerable dean, and exasperated against the criminal stupidity of those who had put him in this state, I cried: “I am going to accompany you, Delescluze, and, since they want an order in my name, I shall sign it, if need be, with the point of my sabre… (boastful perhaps, but I was 30 years old, and had hot blood in my veins). Appoint Parent (1) in my place; I am going to take measures to have you given passage.”

I therefore went out, and, calling Malroux, (2) I ordered him to form an escort of 30 cavalrymen. Several of them were sleeping next to their horses, on the sidewalk, in front of the mairie.

Everything leads me to believe that it was in these moments that Delescluze wrote his farewell letter to his sister.

When I came back, he rose, with a resigned air, handed over his power to Parent, and, at the door of the mairie, climbed into the fiacre where Washburne’s secretary was waiting for him.

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(1) Parent was my chief of staff at the Hôtel de Ville (note from Pindy). (2) Malroux (lieutenant-colonel), director of cavalry at War (May 16).

The cavalrymen, placed in two ranks, were about to surround the carriage; I was on horseback, ready to give the signal of departure, when Arnold, yes, Arnold, looking flustered, notified me that my presence upstairs was required by Parent, as urgent. As I refused to believe in the necessity of postponing our departure, he made Delescluze judge of it, who said to me, getting out of the carriage: “Yes, stay, we have nothing to do over there, I am not going either.” He extended his hand to me, as well as to Arnold, and turned the corner of the mairie and the boulevard Voltaire.

I did not suspect that he was going to seek death.

A few minutes later, Theisz and Vermorel, each armed with a rifle, having perceived me, came to ask me why I was not on the road to Vincennes. I quickly answered them that Delescluze had renounced the affair and that he had left me in front of the mairie.

They set out in search of him, saw him die, and Vermorel was brought back wounded.

If, as I hope, I succeed in publishing my Souvenirs, they will contain more details bearing on the facts hereabove, and on others that occurred in this same night. My desire, in writing to you, has been only to bring a little light on the last moments of our dear martyr Delescluze.

Receive, Monsieur the Director, the earnest salutations of an old Communard. Louis PINDY, sworn assayer.

Pindy’s letter brings a curious contribution to the history of the last days of the Commune, in particular to that of the démarche attempted to enter into relations with the commander of the 4th German army corps. Pindy does not say the name of the “gentleman whom Theisz showed him, and whom the latter told him was Washburne’s secretary.” This intermediary of the last hour

was he, as I supposed, (1) M. Mac-Kean, who was one of the secretaries of the American ambassador? It would be difficult to affirm it. M. Washburne had several secretaries. Lefrançais, in his Souvenirs d’un Révolutionnaire (page 560), says: “M. Arthur Reeves, secretary of the ambassador of the United States, offered to our colleague Arnold his mediation with the Germans, with a view to obtaining that they should interpose themselves between the Commune and Versailles.” I have already said that Arnold, questioned by me, was unable to remember the name of the intermediary.

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(1) Mes Cahiers rouges, IV, page 40, and VII, page 101.

III — LE MUR

January 14, 1911. An appointment has been made, rue du Repos, at Monsieur F.’s, who was, for many long years, at the head of one of the large firms for construction of funerary monuments. Monsieur F. was there in 1871. He was a witness. He saw buried, at the foot of the Wall, the shot of Sunday. The 147 informed, put to arms up there, on the famous mound. A very kind correspondent, whose letter I found among all those that were addressed to me, after the publication of the Cahiers rouges, has been good enough to introduce me to Monsieur F. The three of us climb the rough slope that leads to the Wall. On the way, Monsieur F., a vigorous old man, whose rapid legs we have trouble keeping up with, names for us the famous tombs, those he built or repaired, in his long existence as master marble-worker. Here we are on the height, where the wholly new tombs press together. This part of the necropolis was deserted in 1871. From place to place opened there gaping holes, openings of abandoned quarries. On the east side, behind the mound that faces the Wall,

great pits had been dug for the dead of the combats of the Siege. Pits lined within with tar, an epidemic of smallpox raging, in December and January, on the population… The Wall. The three of us descend into the trench whose bottom it forms, like the stone curtain of the tragic stage.

Yes, Monsieur F. tells us They are there… There where I strike — the old man was striking with his foot on the hardened earth — two meters of depth… It is there that they have been interred. And, as for the dead of Buzenval, the corpses have been drenched with tar… It was Monday morning that they came to fetch me at my home, rue du Repos, where I lived already, in the same house as today… I was chatting with a friend when the employee from the Conservation arrived… He told me that they were going to put into the ground men shot the day before. I was preparing to go out, when my friend expressed the desire to accompany me. He followed me. We climb up, both of us… “But… my side…” You know, said I, for that, one must have a solid heart.” The dead. There are heaps of them on the mound. Naked, stretched on their backs, arms in a cross. All bare feet. Others folded up, recurved. Large heaps, faces on the soil. Chests all red. And the eyes… the eyes… open… I turn around. The friend was moving away. I see him clinging, swaying, to a cannon, halted there. He is drunk…

Soldiers came there, on May 22, recounted that, the day before, the dead had been searched. On one of them, a letter had been found. A sheet, they showed us. A few young lines. The soldier hands me the sheet, and I read. I have not forgotten… “My dear wife, the unhappy man had written, I write to you from the prison of Mazas. I did not want to serve the Commune, but I was forced. We tried to

escape by the porte de Romainville. The Prussians stopped us, and they handed us over to the gendarmes, who led us to Mazas…” By the address, I saw that the man shot was a schoolmaster, I no longer remember of what department. Marne, Seine-et-Marne?

A few incidents of the previous day’s fusillade, which were recounted to me that day… First, they were all shot on the mound. Not at the Wall. At that time, the road that you see, which runs along the boundary wall at little distance, did not exist. The mound, pitted with shafts and galleries, prolonged itself, in gentle slope, up to the Wall. The trench was much deeper. It is they who filled it in, with the earth that was brought to cover them. The pit dug, they descended them into it one by one, from the height where they had been shot (1) and where they had been lying since the day before… I counted 145 of them. National Guards, people in military greatcoats, a few bourgeois. Yet another thing that was told to me. While they were shooting them, one of them began to run. A quarry hole opened before him. He threw himself into it; into the well one of them pursues him, catches him up at the moment he disappears, lowers his weapon, and fires… Then he draws out the dead man… I saw the corpse, at the mouth of the hole…

Monsieur F. had fallen silent. I put a question to him.

— Then, the one hundred and forty-seven — or one hundred and forty-five — are all there at the foot of the Wall… A conservator, M. Leprestre, had told me, twelve years or so ago, that he too had had dead buried. But that these dead, he had had them carried to the pits dug behind the mound. (2)

— That may be, replied Monsieur F. There was buried

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(1) See Monde Illustré of June 27, 1871, a small engraving representing the lowering of the corpses about to be interred in 1871. (2) Mes Cahiers rouges, VII, 106.

here, during those days of the Commune, much of the world. The corpses gathered in the quarter. Those who were shot at the Roquette… Yes, they have been buried, and many, in the common pits. (1) But the 145, they are there. There where I am.

And, with his cane, monsieur F. struck again on the ground.

— I saw the Wall a little while after the Commune, said in his turn monsieur G., the correspondent who had introduced me to the old contractor. On the mound, inscriptions. One of them: Charles, mort pour la Commune!

Boulevard de Ménilmontant. We have left the necropolis.

— Here, the old man tells us, it was a horrible spectacle… All along this wall, the enclosure wall of the cemetery, they had been shooting… And, all along, for two days, they walked on human brains… the corpses had been picked up. But these dreadful witnesses had been left… On Tuesday, I met general Levassor, whom I had known for a few years… “One could not stop the soldier, the general told me. He was firing on everyone. On the first passer-by as on the insurgent.” And it is the whole of what I know about the Père-Lachaise. All that I saw, and which, at my seventy-five years sounded, I remember as if it were yesterday…

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(1) On November 2, 1871 (Day of the Dead), the crowd stopped at the Père-Lachaise, before the six hundred — said to have been buried 188 federates, shot at this place — and a little further on, near the Wall, before a pit that contains 700 to 800 of these unfortunates (Liberté of November 3, 1871).

IV — LE GRAVEUR CUCINOTTA

1910. We are talking, with a friend, Henri Saffrey, of the courts-martial, other than the great slaughterhouses — Lobau, the Luxembourg, the Parc Monceau… These courts-martial, less famous, where however terrible scenes were seen. Everywhere they were fighting, the tribunals of blood installed themselves. At the Roquette, at the École Militaire, at the boulevard des Fourneaux, at the collège Rollin, at the collège Chaptal, at the Collège de France, at the Affaires Étrangères, in the mairies. There is no edifice whose walls were not scored by the bullets of the executioners… And we reckon, Saffrey and I, as we have already done many times, the number of those shot. From everywhere, dead have come out… Where are they? Shall we ever know the number?

— Chaptal, says Saffrey. My father often told before me a sinister story. Someone who was taken to Chaptal, and of whom no one ever had news again.

The engraver Cucinotta. (1) One of his friends. My father then lived on the rue de Rome. An engraver himself, he knew Cucinotta. He was one of those who made every démarche to find him again. The engraver did not reappear. They could never find his trace again. And it had to be resolved to believe that the unfortunate man had perished, an innocent victim, of the abominable court-martial.

Saro Cucinotta, of Neapolitan origin, had been, for about ten years, settled in Paris, when the war broke out. He had his studio at 67 rue de Rome, very close to the collège Chaptal, still under construction, and to the boulevard des Batignolles. A talented engraver, Cucinotta had given, to l’Artiste, to the publisher Cadart, very fine works. La Femme couchée, after Jules Lefebvre. La Femme au Poignard, Mademoiselle Pheyné, after Maréchal. Portraits: Arsène Houssaye, Théophile Gautier, Henri Regnault, etc. Several of his engravings were not published until after his disappearance. They will be found again by leafing through l’Artiste.

The war having come, Cucinotta, who had made France his chosen fatherland, had himself enrolled in the International Society for Aid to the Wounded. Throughout the siege, he did his duty in the combats below Paris, at Champigny, at Buzenval. At the peace, he took up the burin again, caring little for the Commune.

On Tuesday, May 23, in the morning, Cucinotta was at home, seated before his plate begun, when the army of Versailles occupied the boulevard des Batignolles. A barricade closed the entry of the rue de Rome. It was still resisting. Among the combatants, a federate, concierge or inhabitant of the house occupied by the engraver. The federate has just been wounded. He lies behind the barricade. His wife, warned, trembling at the thought of seeing the unfortunate man finished off when the troops shall have made the last combatants flee, hurries up to warn the engraver. Perhaps there is still time

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(1) Arsène Houssaye published, in l’Artiste of December 1871, an account of the death of Cucinotta.

to lift the wounded man, to put him under shelter. Could not Cucinotta succor the unfortunate, as he succored the wounded of the Siege?…

The engraver does not hesitate for an instant. He puts on his left arm the white armband with red cross of the Siege, which must — he believes so at least — assure him immunity, takes his ambulance-man’s cap, and goes down. He is seen running toward the barricade… He reaches it at the very moment when the Versaillais are scaling the paving-stones… The troop bursts into the rue de Rome… From that moment, no one ever again heard mention of Cucinotta. All that has been known by a witness is that the soldiers had thrown themselves upon the artist. He had been seen struggling. He had been taken to the collège Chaptal. Then, nothing. Never anything… Cucinotta did not come out of the collège Chaptal, where they were shooting as soon as the boulevard was occupied. Or, if he did come out, it was to be taken to some other place, from which he did not come out either… To the Parc Monceau… It was there that the overflow of Chaptal was poured out. Killed at Chaptal, killed at Monceau, Cucinotta never reappeared…

Cucinotta’s friends, the engraver Alfred Talé, the publisher Cadart, made a thousand démarches. The ambassador of Italy opened an inquiry. The testimonies gathered stop at the instant when the unfortunate artist is arrested, while he tries to lift the wounded man. Cucinotta was something of a hot-tempered man, although of an extreme gentleness of character. In his moments of vehemence, the Neapolitan speech, mingled with a few words of French, would return to his lips. Foreigners, Poles or Italians, were, you know, you who are present, marked as partisans of the Commune. Cucinotta was lifting the wounded federate… That was enough… Seized, he was pushed, with others, toward the tribunal — what tribunal! — and toward the wall of death.

Chaptal… Saffrey was saying still — there happened there frightful things. You see from here the railing, very close, which runs along the railway of the West. They piled up the corpses there and threw them over the railing onto the

tracks. Below, the corpses were picked up, piled on open wagons, and transported out of Paris, where they were interred in immense pits. Those who were not tipped over the railing, they buried in the surroundings. A number of those shot at Chaptal were buried in the property that M. Riant, who was a municipal councillor, then possessed at the bottom of the rue de Rome. On the site of this property has been built a lycée for young girls, the lycée Racine…

LES DEUX INDEX

INDEX ALPHABÉTIQUE GÉNÉRAL DES NOTICES BIOGRAPHIQUES INDIVIDUELLES

The underlined name is that of a member of the Commune.

Cassé (Germain). — 84. Proust (Antonin). — 77. Castagnary. — 86. Slom (André). — 23. Dereure. — 53. Tibaldi. — 66. Monteil (Edgar). — 26.

INDEX ALPHABÉTIQUE GÉNÉRAL DES NOMS PROPRES CITÉS

[General alphabetical index of proper names cited — preserved as in the French original, page numbers unchanged.]

A Arago. — 58. 85. Berthier. — 23. Arnold. — 172. 173. 174. 175. Bethmont. — 85. Arnould. — 43. 109. 110. 111. Billioray. — 110. Blanqui. — 37. 42. 56. 70. 80. 87. 115. B Bonvalet. — 138. Badinguet. — 17. Boudin. — 114. 130. Baralle. — 139. Boulanger. — 76. Barbès. — 68. Bousquet. — 68. 69. 70. 1. 79. Bauer. — 37. 65. Brandely. — 38. 55. Bauvière (Mme de). — 112. Bricon. — 165. 113. 114. 156. Bridanit. — 115. Beaufort (de). — 112. 113. 114. Bressaud. — 83. 84. 155. 156. Buisson. — 69. Benn. — 20. 21. 23. Bergeret. — 65. C Bernard. — 44. Cadart. — 186. 187. Callet. — 79.

Cambon (Paul). — 58. (and not Constant Martin. — 57. Jules) 61. 78. 80. 81. 82. 83. 85. Courbet (Ernest). — 85. (with restored 98. 94. 97. first name Ernest) 44. 45. 46. 47. Cassé (Germain). — 84. Courbet (Gustave). — 86. Castagnary. — 86. 100. Cournet. — 43. 92. Castellane (de). — 37. Cucinotta. — 183. 185. 186. 187. Cattelain. — 31. 33. Cavaignac. — 85. D Chalain. — 31. Da Costa (Charles). — 17. Chambarand. — 77. 80. Da Costa (Gaston). — 19. 31. 37. 97. Champy. — 38. 38. 43. 57. 58. 61. Dauverigne. — 68. 69. Charavay. — Delescluze. — 9. 109. 135. 155. Chardon. — 31. 38. 164. 166. 165. 166. 167. 169. 171. 172. 173. Charpentier. — 24. 174. 175. Charvet. — 54. 55. 58. Demay. — 65. 66. Chateignaux. — 79. Denis. — 113. 167. Chaudey (Gustave). — 13. 18. 19. Dereure. — 43. 53. 20. 21. 22. 23. 25. 26. 28. 27. Descaves (Lucien). — 75. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 41. Dessesquelle. — 165. 43. 45. 50. 52. 53. 55. 58. 59. Du Camp (Maxime). — 155. 61. 62. 63. 77. 78. 80. 82. 84. 85. Ducrot (general). — 78. 88. 130. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. Dumont. — 49. 51. 53. 55. 57. 65. 66. 94. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. Dupas. — 55. Chausseyret. — 51. 53. Duval (general). — 56. 63. 164. 166. Claretie. — 91. Duval (lieutenant-colonel). — 121. Clément (sub-clerk). — 23. Clément (J.-B.). — 17. Clément (Victor). — 60. E Clermont. — 31. 32. 35. 36. 97. 30. Eudes. — 60. 115. 173. 31. 99. 101. Cluseret. — 132. Combault. — 51. 53.

F H Feltesse. — 64. Henneron. — 31. 32. 33. 34. Ferré. — 34. 35. Hérisson. — 23. Ferry (Jules). — 15. 49. 53. 57. Hoemelle. — 69. 61. 69. 75. 77. 78. 80. 81. 82. 83. Houssaye (Arsène). — 186. 85. 88. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. Humbert. — 32. 41. 48. 49. 52. Flourens. — 41. 50. 55. 56. 65. 66. 55. 64. 65. 66. 70. 88. 91. 82. Fontaine. — 165. J François Favre. — 68. Jean Huss. — 146. Jourde. — 31. G Jouvard. — 69. 72. Gaillard (père). — 110. 111. Jules Favre. — 85. Gambetta. — 53. 76. Jules Simon. — 79. Gaudier. — 154. Gautier (Théophile). — 186. Genteliny. — 32. 38. 43. 57. 58. 61. L Gentil. — 23. La Cécilia. — 79. Giffault. — 31. Lachaud. — 37. Gill. — 17. Lagrange. — 91. Girault. — 23. 49. 64. 91. La Marionse (de). — 113. Glaser. — 50. Lavalette. — 35. 95. Goïs. — 155. Laverdays. — 67. Gouhier. — 109. 110. 111. 154. Lebœuf. — 116. 117. Goupil. — 31. Lechevalier. — 112. Gourlauen. — 88. 90. Lecocheur. — 86. Grélier. — 154. Lefebvre. — 186. Grousset. — 7. 79. Lefèvre. — 154. Guillaume (James). — 64. 66. 67. 69.

Lefrançais. — 165. 175. Méchin. — 16. 17. 18. Legge (de). — 44. 85. 85. 88. 89. Mégy. — 33. 90. 91. 96. 97. Melliet (Léo). — 38. 41. 50. 53. Leloup. — 100. 56. 65. Lepage. — 86. Monier. — 48. Leprestre. — 181. Montaut. — 166. Le Stimuf. — 88. 90. Monteil. — 30. 39. 99. 100. Levasseur. — 91. Montels. — 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 36. 38. Levassor. — 182. 54. 56. 64. 64. 88. 89. 90. 91. Levrand. — 31. 53. Moreau (Édouard). — 103. 105. Lissagaray. — 113. 167. 107. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114. 115. Longuet. — 19. 20. 76. 117. 119. 121. 122. 123. 124. 125. Louise Michel. — 72. 129. 132. 134. 137. 138. 139. 144. Lucipia. — 30. 145. 148. 149. 153. 154. 155. 156. Lullier. — 37. 157. 158. Moreau (Émile). — 55. 57.

M N Mac-Kean. — 175. Négrier (de). — 37. Madame Roland. — 18. Nief. — 54. Mahias. — 48. Noro. — 111. Malézieux. — 68. 71. 72. Malon. — 32. 51. 56. 63. 67. 68. 69. 70. P Malroux. — 173. Paget-Lupicin. — 76. Maréchal. — 186. Pain. — 7. Martelet. — 37. 38. Palikao. — 115. 116. Martine. — 32. 68. 51. 91. Parent. — 173. 174. Massenet. — 111. Pelletier. — 92. Mauduit (de). — 78. 88. 89. 90. Picard. — 52. 80. Maurice Joly. — 85. Pierre Denis. — 53. 75. — 77. 81. 82. 86. Pillot. — 41.

Pilotell. — 18. 25. 32. 33. 34. Rossel. — 132. 133. 35. Roullier. — 31. 76. 76. Pindy. — 171. 173. 174. Rousse. — 97. Portalis. — 76. Préau de Vedel. — 90. 92. 95. S 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. Saffrey. — 185. 187. Protot. — 25. 33. 95. 97. 163. 165. Salvador. — 58. 166. 167. Sapia (Théodore). — 24. 35. 39. Proudhon. — 85. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 65. 65. Proust. — 76. 77. 78. 80. 53. 54. 57. 79. 97. Pyat. — 76. 86. Sapia (Mme). — 24. 36. 34. Savard. — 139. R Schubert. — 139. Ranvier. — 50. Seguin. — 65. Rastoul. — 165. Serey. — 54. 56. Reeves. — 175. Serizier. — 56. 63. 90. Régère (Henri). — 19. 20. Slom (André). — 21. 23. 24. 25. Régère (Th.). — 19. 20. 38. 27. 29. 31. 51. 95. 99. 100. 101. Regnard. — 31. Slomczynska (Olga). — 23. Regnault (Henri). — 186. Soumain. — 37. Replan. — 31. Riant. — 188. T Richard (Maurice). — 86. Talée. — 187. Rigault (Raoul). — 15. 19. 20. 21. Theisz. — 31. 172. 174. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 29. 30. 31. Thibart. — 79. 33. 34. 35. 37. 53. 95. 97. 99. 100. Thierry. — 139. 101. 165. 166. Thiers. — 166. Robinet. — 82. 93. Tibaldi. — Rochebrune. — 37. Rochefort. — 17. 21. 116.

Tolstoï. — 54. Vallès. — 52. 57. 63. 76. 86. 110. Tony-Révillon. — 43. 46. 57. 79. Varlin. — 69. 80. 89. Vermorel. — 17. 22. 80. 92. 172. Tridon. — 54. 76. 174. Trochu. — 42. 70. 87. Victor Noir. — 116. Villiaumé. — 31. U Villiaumé (the father, and not the Urbain. — 166. brother of the preceding). — 31. Vinoy. — 42. 63. 67. 77. 78. 92. 162. V Vuillaume. — 16. 171. 172. Vabre. — 43. 50. 51. 52. 88. 85. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 96. W Vaillant. — 57. 64. 110. 172. Washburne. — 172. 173. 174. 175. Wurth. — 31.

LA TABLE

TABLE OF THIS CAHIER

                                                      PAGES

BY THE SAME AUTHOR in the Cahiers de la Quinzaine… 5 MAXIME VUILLAUME. — my red notebooks 7 VIII. — two dramas 9

Gustave Chaudey 11

I. — SAINTE-PÉLAGIE 13 in the prison 15 the door 18 the prisoner 20 the interrogation 22 the chemin de ronde 26 “I did my duty” 26 André Slom 29 the arrest 31 Théodore Sapia 35

II. — THE HÔTEL DE VILLE 39 the 22nd of January 41 the two delegations 45 from Mazas to the place de Grève 48 captain Montels 53 Mazas and Belleville 54 the Bastille and the Hôtel de Ville 56 the delegation before Chaudey 58

I. — Captain Montels, who, on January 22, 1871, led the second delegation received at the Hôtel de Ville by Chaudey, half an hour before the fusillade. the fusillade 62 those of Belleville 64 the little drummer 67

III. — THE ORDER TO FIRE 73 Pierre Denis 75 “note on Chaudey” 77 the dispatches of Cambon 81 Chaudey, Vabre, de Legge 84 the order to open fire 88 mentality 90 Jules Ferry 91 before the Jury of accusation 94

II. — Disposition of the firing squad which, at the command of Raoul Rigault, shot Gustave Chaudey in the chemin de ronde of Sainte-Pélagie, on the night of May 22 to 23, 1871, after a manuscript sketch by Slom, secretary of Raoul Rigault, who was present at the execution 95

  the wall                                           98

ANNEX. — Observations written by André Slom. Observation on the engraving representing the execution of Chaudey 99 Disposition of the chemin de ronde and positions occupied by Chaudey and the firing squad 99 NOTES OF SLOM ON THE TEXT OF MONTEIL 100

Édouard Moreau 103

I. — THE SIEGE 105 III. — ÉDOUARD MOREAU DE BAUVIÈRE Member of the Central Committee of the 18th of March, director of the Intendance at the delegation to War. Shot on May 16, 1871, at the Lobau barracks. Unpublished photograph, communicated to the author, and reproduced for the first time 107 Geneva 109 meeting 112 toward Paris 115 arrest 118 Champigny 120 December 31, 1870 122 dreams 124 resistance 124

II. — THE COMMUNE 127 at the Hôtel de Ville 129 at Versailles 131 Central Committee 132

III. — THE MAN OF LETTERS 137 at the Théâtre Rossini 139

  IV. — "We are leaving for Versailles!"
  Facsimile of a note addressed by Édouard Moreau to a friend.
  The note is not dated, but it was certainly written on April 3, at the moment when the federated troops are to march on the Assembly.
  Below, the facsimile of the various signatures of Édouard Moreau                                              143

IV. — THE CHÂTELET 151 defeat 153 the court-martial 156 the Lobau barracks 157

other dramas 159

I. — THE DECREE ON HOSTAGES 161 drafted by Protot 163 the procès-verbaux 166

II. — THE DEATH OF DELESCLUZE 169

III. — THE WALL 177

IV. — THE ENGRAVER CUCINOTTA 183

the two indexes 191

INDEX general alphabetical of individual biographical notices 193

INDEX general alphabetical of proper names cited 195

the table 203

the nine summaries 211

We gave the bon à tirer after corrections for eighteen hundred copies of this eleventh cahier and for twenty-eight copies on whatman paper on Tuesday, February 13, 1912. The manager: CHARLES PÉGUY.

This cahier has been composed and printed by unionized workers.

JULIEN CRÉMIEU, printer, 13 and 15, rue Pierre-Dupont, SURESNES. — (180.)

LES NEUF SOMMAIRES

GENERAL SUMMARY OF THE EIGHT CAHIERS ROUGES

I. — a day at the court-martial of the Luxembourg. Preface by Lucien Descaves: I. — rout; red trousers; cursed paving-stones; the morrow of victory; searches; II. — Citizen!; between the two gendarmes; my watch; “Socialism”; I lend; the Provost; in two ranks; III. — before the tribunal; the Sabre; Interrogations; in the queue; those who wait; thoughts; IV. — gleam of hope; parleys; anguish; far from Hell; tenderness; refuge; V. — the slaughterhouse of the Luxembourg; wandering; denunciations; VI. — Little courts-martial; the Opéra; To the wall, the boots; the charnel-house of Charonne; the well of the Federates; the count of the dead.

II. — a bit of truth on the death of the hostages. — May 24 and 26, 1871. the history that lies.

THE ARCHBISHOP (Wednesday May 24); captain de Beaufort; first corpse; the canteen-woman Lachaise; Six shot, six hostages; We want the archbishop; And in particular the Archbishop; The Descent; Toward death; the fusillade; the ferocious hand; Before the Council of War; Poignant confrontation; the actors of the drama.

THE MAN OF MEXICO (Friday May 26); We go to fetch Jecker; the five at the Roquette; Interrogation; The ascent; The “wall” of Jecker;

THE RUE HAXO (Friday May 26); Preparations; I need fifty of them; Conversation in the prison; the four civil hostages; Largillière, Ruault and Greffe; As far as the mairie of Belleville; Rue de Paris; Rue Haxo; the wall; the massacre; the count of the dead; the one who is one too many; Before the judges; Saint-Omer; Émile Goïs; Today; Comparison.

III. — when we made the “Père Duchêne.” — March-April-May 1871.

THE REPUBLIC OR DEATH! — I. — I meet Vermersch; Column at the head; — II. — The Republic or Death!; mother Gaittet; money; — III. — Is bougrement angry; — IV. — Death and Resurrection; OUR AFTERNOONS; — I. — in the Furnace; — II. — the Commune Proclaimed; The one who is not there; until death; — III. — The Cannon of the Père Duchêne; of Heroes; — IV. — Henriette the pretty canteen-woman; at Beaujon; Red funerals; A FEW FRIENDS; — I. — Félix Pyat; — II. — Rogeard; — III. — Rossel; — IV. — Raoul Rigault; — V. — Lunch at Protot’s; — VI. — our citizen priest; — VII. — Gaieties; THE BATTALION OF THE PÈRE DUCHÊNE; — I. — If we were to form a battalion; Brilliant uniform; it does, it does well; Rossel; Lunch at the barracks; — II. — Battle;

Received from citizen Vuillaume; As far as the Père-Lachaise; LAST DAYS; — I. — Dinner at Rachel’s; The Père Duchêne has lived; what had become of Vermersch; — II. — our friend Paget-Lupicin; — III. — our fortune; collectors, open your eye.

IV. — some of the Commune; those who go to death; RAOUL RIGAULT; — Boulevard Saint-Michel; at the d’Harcourt; Vision of horror; Legend and Truth; Testimony; Other Testimony; VERMOREL; — Boulevard Voltaire; a mother; DELESCLUZE; — a new Baudin; at Sainte-Élisabeth; the lead ring; the acacia; supreme resolution; another account; two friends of the Père Duchêne; AT THE HÔTEL-DIEU; — Penny cigars; at the Parvis; the glory of Paget; altars and lilacs; incendiary; AT THE JUSTICE; those of the quarter; AT HUBER’S; AT THE CADRANS; AT KRUBER’S; AT HOFFMANN’S; AT GLASER’S; — the Empire; the War; the Commune; those of exile; MY FRIEND THE COLONEL; — Geneva; OLD GAILLARD; — Geneva;

SUNDAY AT THE FRONTIER; — Geneva; PROTOT; — Geneva; BIRDS OF PASSAGE; — Lausanne; EUGÈNE VERMERSCH; — Altorf.

V. — through the revolted city; great days; THE ENTRY OF THE PRUSSIANS; — First of March 1871; Good day, little soldier!; Parisse!; Pig of a Prussian!; White cuirassiers; Vergiss mein nicht; THE 18TH OF MARCH; — To arms! to arms, to the Buttes Montmartre!; to Berlin the cannons; Crosse en l’air; the finest day of my life!; THE COLUMN; — Survivors of Austerlitz; Place Vendôme; Caesar crumbled; Victory and Reverse; four years later; those who fight; TO ARMS, CITIZENS!; — the night of April 3; Battalions filing past; in the lilacs; TYPES OF INSURGENTS; — the Hercules; Voltaire and Rousseau; THE COUVENT DES OISEAUX; FLIGHT INTO THE CATACOMBS; HEROIC RABBLE; — two testimonies; the fine brigands!; children of the Commune; here and there; THE COIN OF THE COMMUNE; — from the Mint to the Eleventh; the coin “with the Trident”; Relics; AT SAINT-LAURENT; AT THE CLUB SÉVERIN;

CAFÉ D’ORSAY; CONCERT AT THE TUILERIES; morning of battle; under the Odéon; a paving-stone, citizen; at Lapeyrouse’s; rue Gay-Lussac; the Panthéon is going to blow up!; the red street; Little chasseurs; Cluny; the shop of Roullier; Saint-Séverin.

VI. — in the wide; in full terror; in my prison; tremors; Those who denounce; They are going to search; keeper of the peace!; Flight; first peripeties; Imprudences; the rural guard; at the Mairie; Brave heart!; arrest; Troyes; the two gendarmes; Consternation; Passports; Forgotten!; Joyous adventure; my uncle the marshal; Welcome; the room with the Prussians; Apparition; Cunning commissioner; beyond the frontier; Departure; toward the Jura; Smuggler; at the Port; Geneva; Eugène Razoua; in peace.

VII. — last cahier; other hostages; THE MAN SHOT AT THE PONT-NEUF (Wednesday May 24) THE DOMINICANS (Thursday May 25); the letter of Léo Melliet; the Moulin-Saquet; we are betrayed!; Serizier; supreme protest; testimonies; Moreau the Dominican; Lucipia, the actors of the drama; other men; RAZOUA; lunch at Vaillant’s; at the café de Rohan; Geneva; escape; Sylvère d’Espelceta; poverty; death; JOURDE; two million in tobacco!; minister for real; very close to the fusillade; poverty; ONE OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE; Charles Gouhier; his papers; Édouard Moreau; Lullier and the Mont-Valérien; Picpus and Saint-Laurent; Oudet; RANG; THE PRIVATE CITIZEN; THE MAN OF GREEK FIRE; other facts; THE 18TH OF MARCH recounted by a gunner of Montmartre; WHY DID DELESCLUZE MARCH TO HIS DEATH? at the porte de Vincennes; a witness; the intermediary; I want to live no more!; THE WALL; DOMBROWSKI

THE “FLAMING FINANCES”; THE FALSE “LATRONCHE”; PROTOT AND ME ROUSSE; THE LAST DAY OF THE MINT; THE DEATH OF VERMERSCH; last word; MEDAL OF TREASON.

VIII. — two dramas; Gustave Chaudey; I. — SAINTE-PÉLAGIE; — in the prison; the door; the prisoner; the interrogation; the chemin de ronde; “I did my duty”; André Slom; the arrest; Théodore Sapia. II. — THE HÔTEL DE VILLE; — the 22nd of January; the two delegations; from Mazas to the place de Grève; captain Montels; Mazas and Belleville; the Bastille and the Hôtel de Ville; the delegation before Chaudey; the fusillade; those of Belleville; the little drummer; III. — THE ORDER TO FIRE; — Pierre Denis; “note on Chaudey”; the dispatches of Cambon; Chaudey, Vabre, de Legge; the order to open fire; mentality; Jules Ferry; before the Jury of accusation;

Édouard Moreau; I. — THE SIEGE; — Geneva; meeting; toward Paris; arrest; Champigny; December 31, 1870; dreams; resistance; II. — THE COMMUNE; — at the Hôtel de Ville; at Versailles; Central Committee; III. — THE MAN OF LETTERS; — at the Théâtre Rossini;

IV. — THE CHÂTELET; — defeat; the court-martial; the Lobau barracks; other dramas; I. — THE DECREE ON HOSTAGES; — drafted by Protot; the procès-verbaux; II. — THE DEATH OF DELESCLUZE; III. — THE WALL; IV. — THE ENGRAVER CUCINOTTA.

Several of these red cahiers being out of print, as one has seen at the head of the present cahier, and the others being very close to being exhausted, there has been reprinted at Ollendorff, in a stout volume of 444 pages, at three francs fifty, entitled Mes Cahiers Rouges au temps de la Commune, a very large part of the substance of the first seven red cahiers.

Here is the summary of the volume:

MAXIME VUILLAUME. — Mes Cahiers Rouges au temps de la Commune; A Day at the Court-martial of the Luxembourg; A bit of truth on the death of the Hostages; The Archbishop (Wednesday May 24); The Man Shot at the Pont-Neuf (Wednesday May 24); The Dominicans (Thursday May 25); The Man of Mexico (Friday May 26); The Rue Haxo (Friday May 26); When we made the “Père Duchêne”; The Republic or Death; Our afternoons; A few friends; The Battalion of the Père Duchêne; Last Days;

Through the Revolted City; At Glaser’s; The Entry of the Prussians; The Column; At the Hôtel-Dieu; At the Justice; Protot and Me Rousse; Voltaire and Rousseau; At the Club Séverin; Café d’Orsay; Concert at the Tuileries; The Coin of the Commune; Why did Delescluze march to his death?; Morning of Battle; The Red Street; In the wide!; In full terror; First peripeties; Arrest; My uncle the Marshal; Beyond the Frontier; Geneva; Those of Exile; My friend the Colonel; old Gaillard; Sunday at the frontier; Protot; Birds of passage; Razoua; Eugène Vermersch; After; The Private citizen; Rang; Dombrowski; The Wall; At Brévannes.

This volume is on sale at the bookshop of the cahiers.

Footnotes

1. Mes Cahiers rouges. Cahier IV, page 28. ↩

2. L’Éclipse, issue of 29 May 1870. ↩

3. Da Costa, La Commune vécue. Volume II, page 104. ↩

4. It was clad in the same costume that I met Rigault, the next day, Wednesday. (Mes Cahiers rouges, IV, 23.) ↩

5. changes nothing in what B. tells us, who is here making an error. The Ode to the Republic had as its author Pierre de Vedel and not Chaudey. Pierre had submitted… ↩

6. Chaudey had lived in Switzerland after the coup d’État. See further on. ↩

7. Slom (André), painter and draughtsman, secretary of the prosecutor of the Commune. Died in December 1909. (Mes Cahiers rouges, IV, pages 26, 116 and following.) ↩

8. Clermont (Eugène), special commissary attached to the office of the prosecutor of the Commune. ↩

9. See Mes Cahiers rouges, I, 73. On the faith of a piece of information unfortunately inexact, I had thought myself able to find the traces of Madame Sapia, who, I was assured, had had to go, in 1880, having been named to a post, in the teaching of the ladies of assistance, in the city of Paris. The searches were vain. I regret it the more that a conversation with the widow of the commandant killed on the 22nd of January might perhaps have clarified or contributed to clarify the mystery in which the resolution taken by Rigault to have Chaudey shot is still wrapped. ↩

10. Chardon (J.-B.), member of the Commune, colonel commanding the Federal Legion of the Préfecture de Police. (Mes Cahiers rouges, IV, pages 99 and following.) ↩

11. See further on the sketch, made by Slom. ↩

12. Monteil (Edgar), journalist and man of letters. In 1871, editor at the Rappel, ordnance officer of General La Cécilia. Later, prefect of the Republic. Today, director of the Villejuif asylum. ↩

13. L’Exécution de Gustave Chaudey et de trois gendarmes, published by Edgar Monteil. A pamphlet, 26 pages, Paris, Charavay, 1885, printed in 150 copies. ↩

14. Mes Cahiers rouges, IV, pages 26 and following. ↩

15. One will find further on the complete text of Slom’s note. ↩

16. footnote, see source. ↩

17. These first words of Chaudey to Picard are to be retained. ↩

18. Chaudey is speaking here of the second delegation, composed of Monteils, Gentelin and Chaussy, with whom the conversation had, in Sieur Picard’s report, as will be seen further on, been very lively. The three delegates were hardly more than 20 years old. ↩

19. Here is the exact text: “Found at the home of the said Chaudey (Gustave) the sum of 825 francs, which we take away until further orders to the Préfecture de Police, plus a packet of letters.” (Siècle of 24 April 1871.) ↩

20. This sentence is to be noted. Rigault had therefore, already, in the afternoon of Tuesday 23 May, the well-fixed idea of going that evening to Sainte-Pélagie. He did not, however, tell Pilotell what he proposed to do there. ↩

21. The jury of accusation, which held its first session on 19 May, had as its mission only to decide whether or not proceedings should be instituted against all those of the Commune. It could pronounce no condemnation. The sessions of the jury of accusation were interrupted by the entry of the Versailles troops. ↩

22. In the afternoon of 8 October, a certain number of battalions of the national guard assembled on the place de l’Hôtel-de-Ville to demand the municipal elections. It was the first manifestation in favour of the Commune. ↩

23. See Gazette des Tribunaux of 11, 16, 20 and 23 October 1870. ↩

24. See Mes Cahiers rouges, IV, page 94. ↩

25. Tony Révillon, journalist, later deputy of Paris. ↩

26. Simon Dereure, elected deputy of the mayoralty of the eighteenth (Montmartre), later member of the Commune. ↩

27. Delescluze, Arnould, Cournet, journalists, later members of the Republican Alliance; Levraud, Blanquist, later chief of the 1st division at the Préfecture de Police. ↩

28. Bernard Salvador, second secretary of Jules Mahias. ↩

29. Jules Mahias, secretary-general of the Mayoralty of Paris. ↩

30. Hérisson, deputy at the Mayoralty of Paris. ↩

31. Émile Eudes, later member of the Commune. — Goupil (D.), member of the Commune. Resigned on 12 April. ↩

32. Goubault, of the International. Later, delegate to the general direction of Direct Contributions. ↩

33. Dumont (Ch.) had published, in November 1870, a sheet, l’Ami de Marat. One or two issues. ↩

34. From Switzerland, Montels went to Russia, where he was, for three years, under the name of Niel, tutor to the children of Tolstoy. ↩

35. Place de la Corderie-du-Temple, where the committees of the International (republican section of the Twenty arrondissements of Paris, delegation of the sections of the International of the clubs). It was also from this place that the Affiche Rouge was issued. ↩

36. Mes Cahiers rouges, VII, pages 34 and following. ↩

37. Lavalette, of the International. Member of the Central Committee of 18 March. ↩

38. Leverdays, member of the Committee of the Twenty arrondissements, author of Les Assemblées parlantes. ↩

39. The lively tone which the conversation at once took is explained, on Chaudey’s part, by the youth of the delegates. Montels, the oldest, was 26 years old; “I scarcely appeared 25 or 24,” he writes me. “And yet, I had 8 years of service and of campaign in the 2nd Zouaves, seen fire several times, taken part in the siege of Puebla and in the battle of San-Lorenzo.” ↩

40. Duval, who was to be shot on 4 April by the order of General Vinoy, led, with Sérizier, the famous 101st. ↩

41. Germain Casse, student, present at the first meetings of the Congress of Liège. Battalion chief during the Siege. Deputy of Guadeloupe and afterwards of Paris. — Demay, Felessus, Guillaume, named in this account, revolutionary militants of Belleville. ↩

42. Tibaldi, condemned in 1852 to deportation for plot against the life of the Emperor. Sent to Devil’s Island. On his return to Paris in 1870, he took part, during the Siege, in the revolutionary movement. Arrested after 31 October. ↩

43. On his return from exile, M. Paul Martine was named professor at the Lycée Condorcet, where he remained until his retirement in 1910. ↩

44. “He (Ferdinand Buisson) had been at the demonstration of 22 January, in the ranks of a battalion of the Batignolles, with Varin and Malon.” (L’Internationale, by James Guillaume, volume II, page 147.) ↩

45. Humbert is therefore right. Malon was not on the place de l’Hôtel-de-Ville on 10 January (see the preceding account of Humbert). ↩