ENGLISH MAIL NEWS

Grey River Argus, Volume XI, Issue 939, 31 July 1871, Page 2

ENGLISH MAIL NEWS

FALL OF THE COMMUNE,

PARIS ON FIRE

[extracts from the times' special correspondence.] At dark on May 24, I climbed upon the top of the Hotel Chatham, and a sight, such, I trust, as I never may see again, met my view — the south-west of Paris was a sheet of flame, and I began to fear that the menaces which we had scoffed at as idle threats were about to become a terrible reality. From Auteiiil to Montrouge the heavens were lit up by a series of conflagrations, which died away in sulphurous smoke only to burst forth, again with a loud report, and spread still further westward. We are at a loss to conceive what could be on fire. Passy seemed smoulder- [ ing slowly, the real blaze being more in the direction of Luxembourg. It shot up in showers of sparks, revealing a dark mass of dome that loomed black against the sky. This we took to be the Pantheon, and rejoiced in the fact that the river lay between us and the advancing tide of flame. The smoke spread slowly but surely, and some one announced that the Pantheon had caught fire. We saw light shining through the roof, and presently an immense jet of flame shot straight up into the sky, revealing a form which was at once recognised as the central pavilion of the Tuilleries. A cry of horror burst from the lips of the people who had assembled on the roof, at the discovery of the terrible truth, and we gazed fascinated as the flames licked rapidly the mass of buildings, shooting up from time to time in long forked tongues, accompanied by heavy white clouds of naphtha-smelling smoke. Although at so great a distance from the scene of operations, wo could hear the roar and clatter of shivering slates and rafters, while we were so well lit up in our position on the roof that bullets began to whistle in our direction, probably from the linesmen on the Opera House, who took us for members of the Commune celebrating our hideous victory. Shells whizzed past us, rattling down in neighboring streets, and we began to feel our situation precarious. By this time the great pavilion was a mere skeleton of golden light cut by curved ribs of black, and crowned by a square gallery. It reminded me somewhat of St. Peter's when illuminated, St. Peter's, of course, appearing as a toy in contrast. I continued to stare, scarce daring to believe my eyes, when suddenly there was a vivid light ; the pavilion had sunk in with a crash, and a stream of sparks flew straight into the heavens, literally mixing with the stars. Steadily the fires advanced, with a certainty that indicated the presence of petrolium in large quantities, and we were forced to admit at last that the great collection of the Louvre was to be sacrificed. Fortunately the pictures of the Italian school are hidden away; but who shall replace the antique statues — the Venus of Milo and the Polyhymnia — that are destined to be destroyed by the diabolical spite of the madmen who have been a terror to us for so long 1 The sight arid the reflections which it engendered were so awful as to blind us to the presence of other conflagrations that were springing up along the line. A huge red bar, like a giant furnace, indicated that a large portion of the Quartier St. Germain was being destroyed, while a light in the Palais RoyaJL and "another in the Luxembourg suggested the idea that all Paris was indeed to be destroyed, and that at any moment our own quarter might be sent into the air through the agency of powder or petroleum in the sewers which run under the principal thoroughfares. Sick at heart I lay down, to be awakened shortly after by violent detonations. . . . . And so evening wore into night, and night became morning. Ah ! this morning ! Its pale flush of aurora-bloom was darkest, most sombre night for the once proud, now stricken and humiliated city. When the sun rose, what saw he 1 Not a fair fight— on that within the last year Sol has looked down more than once. But black clouds flouted his rays— clouds that rose from the Paladium of France. Great God ! that men should be so mad as to strive to make universal ruin because their puny race of factiousness is run ! The flames from the Palace of the Tn ileries, kindled by damnable petroleum, insulted the soft rays of the morning, and cast lurid rays on the grimy recreant Frenchmen who skulked from their dastardly incendiarism to pot at countrymen from behind a barricade. How the place burned ! The flames revelled in the historical palace, whipped up by the rich furniture, burst out the plate-glass windows, brought down the fantastic roof. It was in the Prince Imperial's wing, facing the Tuileries Gardens, where the demon of fire first had its dismal sway. By eight o'clock the whole of this wing was nearly burnt out. As I reached the end of the Rue Dauphine, the red belches of flames were bursting out from the corner of the Rne de Rivoli ; the rooms occupied by the King of Prussia and his suite on the visit to France the year of the Exhibition. There is a furious burst of flame pouring out of the window where Bismarck used to sit and smoke. Crash ! Ts it an explosion or a fall of flooring that causes this burst of black smoke and red sparks in our faces ? God knows what hell-de-vices may be within that burning pile ; it were well surely to give it a wide berth. And so eastward to the Place de Palais Royal, which is still unsafe by reason of shot and shell from the neighborhood of the Hotel de Ville. And there is the great archway by which troops were wont to enter into the Place dv Carrousel — is the fire there yet ? Just there, and no more. Could the archway be cut, the Louvre, with its artistic riches might still be spared. But there are none to help. The troops are lounging supine in the Rues, intent — and who shall blame weary, powder-grimed . men ?— on bread and wine. And so the devastator leaps from chimney to chimney, from window to window. He is over the archway, now, and I would not give two hours' purchase for all the riches pf the Louvre. In the name of modern vandalism, what means that burst of smoke and jet of fire '? Alas, for art ! The Louvre is .on fire independently. And so is the Palais Royal and the Hotel de Ville, where the Rump .of the Commune are cowering amidst their incendiarism ; and the Ministry of Finance and many other public and private buildings besides, of which more anon. No wonder that Courbet, soidisant Minister of Arts, should have sent far and wide, among friends foreign and native, to find a place wherein to hide his head. Minister of Fine Arts ! Fine art,

truly, to burn the Louvre and its treasures. Are the dark ages descending upon us again ? The ages of the Goths and Visigoths, of the Vandals and the Huns? The acts of last night were worse than suicide. The injury of suicide is local and personal ; the injury done % the burning of the Louvre is universal and world-wide. I turn from the spectacle Bad and sick, to be sickened yet further by another! spectacle. The Versaillist troops collected! about the foot of the Rue St. Honore,j were enjoying the fine game of Commrinistj hunting. The Parisians of civil life arei caitiffs to the last drop of their thin, sour,; white blood. But yesterday they hadj cried, Vive la Commune ! and submitted; to be governed by this said Commune.: To-day they rubbed their hands with livid/ currish joy to have it in their power to denounce a Communist and reveal his hiding-place. Very eager at this wort are the dear creatures of women They! know the rat-holes into which the poor! devils have got, and they guide to themi with a fiendish glee which is a phase of i the many-sided sex.^Foifa / the braves of; France returned to a triumph after a : shameful captivity ! They have found him, the miserable ! .Yes, they drag Mm out from one of the purlieus which Haussmann had not time to sweep away, and a guard of six of them hem him round as they march him into the Rue St. Honore. A tall, pale, hat less man, with something not ignoble in his carriage. His lower lip is trembling, but his brow is firm, and: the eye of him has some pride and defiance in it. They yell— the crowd— "Shoot him, shoot him !"— the demon womeimust clamored of course. An arm goes into the air ; there are on it the ; stripes of a non-commissioned officer, and there is a stick in the fist. The stick falls , on the head of the pale man in black. Ha ! the infection has caught ; men club their rifles aud bring them down on that head, or club them into splinters in their ; lust for murder. He ia down ;' he is up again ; he is down again ; the thud of the gun stocks on him sounding just as the sound when a man beats a cushion with a stick. A certain British impulse, stronger than consideration for self, prompts me to . runjforward. But it is useless. They are firing into the flaccid carcase now, throng- ; ing about it like blowflies on a piece of meat. His brains spurt on my boot, and i plush into the gutter, whither the carrion : is bodily chucked, presently to be trodden on and rolled on by the feet of multitudes ; and wheels of gun-carriages. Woman- : kind, then, is not quite dead in that band of Bedlamites who had clamored, "Shoot ; him." Here is one inhystericß ; another, ; with wan, scarred face, draws out of the press an embryo Bedlamite, her offspring, and, let us hope, goes home. But surely all manhood is dead in the soldiery of i France to do a deed like this. An officer — one with a, bull throat and the eyes of Algiers— stood by and looked on at the sport, sucking a cigar meanwhile. Particeps cvimhiis surely was he, if there is such a word as disciple in the French ranks ; if there is not, and I question whether there be, he might have been : pitied if he had not smiled his smug-faced approval. The merry game goes on. Denouncing becomes fashionable; and denouncing is followed in the French natural sequence by braining. Faugh ! let us get away from the truculent cowards and the bloody gutters, and the yelling women and the Algerian-eyed officers. Here is the Place Vendome, held, as I learn on credible authority, by twenty-five Communists arid a woman against all that Versailles found it in his heart to do for hours. In the shattered Central Palace Versaillist sentries are stalking about the ruins of the crlumn. They have accumulated, too, some forces in the rat-trap. There is one corpse in the gutter, buffeted and besmirched— the corpse, as I learn, of the Communist Captain of a barricade, who held it for half an hour single-handed against the braves of France; and then shot himself. The braves have, seemingly, made sure of him by shooting him and the clay, which was once a man, over and over again. And in the Place is another corpse, that of the Hecate, who fought on the Rue de la Paix barricade. with such persistence and fury. They might have shot her ; yes, when a woman takes to war, she forgets her immunities ; but they might at least have pulled her scanty rags over the bare limbs that outrage decency, if the word be not an exotic in Paris. And now, here is the Rue Royale, burning right royally. Alas ! for the lovers of a draught of pure English beer, the English beer house is a chaotic ruin, diversified with jets of fire. The same applies to the whole side, of the Rue between the Place de la Madeleine and the Rue dv Faubourg St. Honore. The other side of the way is nearly as bad, and the fire has been down the Rue St. Honore, up the Faubourg, and working its swift, hot will in the Rue Boissy. In all the Rne Faubourg St. Honore the gutters are full of blood. There is a barricade at every street corner. There will be an item in the estimates next year for the smash in the British Embassy, which is very severe. The ball-room is not now quite in a state to take the chalk. The garden walls are pierced, for via them the Versaillists worked their strategic • progress rou nd the barricades, . respecting much the wholeness of their skins. And now about the chained wild-cats in the Hotel de Ville ? Their backs aretd the wall and they are fighting now, not for life, but that they may do as much evil as they can before their hour comes—as come it will before the Hand of my watch makes many more revolutions. The Versaillists do not dare to rush at the barricades around the Hotel de Ville ; they are at once afraid of their skins and explosions. But they are mining, circumventing, burrowing, and they will be inside the cordon soon. Meanwhile the holders, of the Hotel de Ville are ponring out death and destruction over Paris in miscellaneous wildness. Now it is a shell in the Champs Elysees ; now one in the already shattered Boulevard Haussman ; now one somewhere about the Avenue Reine Hortense. And although they are cut off from the Garde dii Nord arid La ChapelJe, the Reds still cling to a barri.T cade in the Rue Lafayette, near the square Moritholon. And for these the way of retreat is open backwards into Belleville. Canny folks these Versaillists ! The Prussians would, no doubt, let them into Belleville from the rear, as they let them into La Chapelle, but Belloville, front or rear, is not pleasant unto the discreet hearts of the Versaillists. So there may be fighting about, [there for days yet, till the last Red is exterminated. It is between the devil and the deep sea with the people in the Hotel de Ville. One enemy

with weapons in his hand is outsiJSj; another, fire, and the fire kindledAby themselves, is inside. Will they roaP, or seek death on the bayonet point ? The barricade fighting has by no means been so awfuLa thing jul we have been, led to expect, for windows have not been used to any great extent to fire from, /and a high wall of sandbags is ample protection for a dozen men. On my return homewards I met many parties of prisoners being conducted to prison — a great many of them well-dressed men, with silverheaded walking-sticks . and patent leather boots. There was one group defiling down the Rue de la Paix that was of peculiar interest, calling down even a greater number of curses and hisses than usualfy /accompanies their progress. . It consisted of some twenty or. thirty girls, well dressed and pretty, shop women of a sewing machine establishment, who were accused of having inveigled a company of soldiers within their doors, and, after dallying with them, like Judiths of having poisoned them all in wine . The young ladies tripped along, surrounded by a cordon of guards,, smiling" on the crowd that was execrating them, and marching gaily to the Place Vendome, where they probably were shot. The women of Paris have appeared late lipon the scene, but their appearance was inevitable. Many have been killed on barricades, some in open etreet combats, but their special work has been the organization of the system of fires, which has unfortunately answered but too well. Three hundred women dressed in National Guard uniform have been taken down the Seine in boats, and it is said that many of the sham sailors who ' defended the Hue Royale so bravely were women in disguise. Near the Pare Monceau a melancholy episode occurred. A husband and wife were seized and ordered to march forward toward the Place Vendome, a distance of a mile and a- half. They were both of them invalids, and unable to walk so far. The woman sat dbwn on the curbstone and declined ft>- move a step, in spite of her husband's entreaties thatrshe would try. She persisted in her refusal, and they both knelt down together,.-.beg-ging the gendarmes who accompanied them to shoot them at once, if shot they were to be. Twenty revolvers were fired, but they still breathed, and it was only at the second discharge that they filially sank down dead. The. gendarmes then rode away, leaving the bodies as they, had fallen. The streets on the outer side of the river present'a more piteous spectacle than those of the Quartier Rivoli. The fine public buildings along the quays 'are still smoking, while the Rue du ßab 'and the greater portion of the Quartier St. Germain are a mere heap of ashes. Bodies lie in dozens along the river bank, where they will eyentally be buried, and more bodies occupy a space in f ront of the Bcfle Militaire, among guns and caissons and baggage wagons. , .■-■-•■ ; ; .••; The Government troops are vindictive, if not even brutal, in following up their victory. A trio of the Communist leaders was captured on Thursday night. : They were Jules Valles, Ferre and-Longuet. Valles was made prisoner after the others, in rear of the Theatre dv Chatelet; His comrades had been taken shortly before. Valles was dragged forward by tb,e Vjer--saillists, and one of their non-commissioned officers struck him, upon the neck with his sword. In his anger aud agony Valles struck back, and immediately an extemporary shooting party was drawn up, and fired -into the body ._ of the unfortunate rebel. But Valles had the bad taste riot to die off at once ; he writhed, and twisted, and groaned upon the ground until nearly all who »vere within sight and hearing had to avert their eyes and move away from the sight of his most horrible suffering. The Captain commanding the firing parly told me that " They let him suffer on purpose." His fellow -jeaptive, Ferre, whose doom was a but .deferred, cried out, " Oh 'Captain ! in the name of mercy, put him out of pain," and the appeal was so far successful that the captors then shot their prisoner dead. Lefrancais, Gambon, and Amouroux were shot in the Rue de laßlanque, against the wall of the Stamp Office. Raoul Rigault finished his days in the courtyard of the Ecdle Militaire. Courbet, the painter, who ordered the destruction of the Vendome Column, was found hiding in a cupboard, not quite large enough to conceal him, in the. Ministry of Finance, and attempting sbnie resistance was, according to some repofts/j shot on the spot. Maljotrnal, who has boasted ever since the fatal 22nd of March, when the Party of Order was fired upon in the Rue de la Paix, that he gave the order, has met the fate which he so richly merits. Dombrowski died in the bedroom of the Hotel de Ville,. formerly, occupied Mdlle. Haussmann. The day after his escape from La Muette he received three rifle shots while at a barricade in the Rue d'Ornano. He was transferred from therj) to the Hotel de Ville, where he died of his wounds. Delescluze was killed on Tuesday at the barricade of the Chateau d'Eau. His face was much disfigured by a portion of a burning wall which had* fallen on it. His identity is amply proved by papers found in his pocket. The insurgent General Bisson, who was captured^ was shot yesterday, as well as Tavernfef, a member of the Commune. MiHiere, i a" Deputy of the National Assembly, was arrested on Thursday :in the Place Luxembourg. He was thence led to the Place dv Patheon, and there shot. When the soldiers were raising their rifles to di&patch, him, he cried " Vive U Communel" " rival' ' HiimdnUeP' " Vive lePmtple?' There is a yellow, ghastly look in the atmosphere so charged, with the smoke of burning houses and public buildings that the sun shines feebly through it. The Tuileries is a mere shell. The smoke from the Ministry of Finance and the magnificent public buildings at the corner of the Rue Royal and Rue de Rivoli is still rising from their ruins, and to the celebrated bonnet-maker's, Madame Drouart, No. 3 Rue de Rivoli, well known to many •of your lady readers; a number of young ! women employed there took refuge in the ' cellars, and are now, stifled beneath a,pile. iof rubbish _20ft or 30ft high. Ttie Rne : | Royale, which I could only see a portion ! of, is like a Ninevitish mound of rubbish, land the fire is still extending. Turning I back by the Boulevard Haussmann, I : reached the Grand Opera, a/mass of bar- ! ricades, and too full of soldiers to ? belt pleasant resort*: especially as petroleum shells were falling on the Boulevard des Italiens. All those palaces which made Paris the wonder and admiration of modern time 3 are heaps of smouldering ruins— her finest boulevards shattered, her gardens laid' waste, her gutters' running with blood, and' an awful pall settling down heavily over her dying agonies as she completes, in. compliance

with " the inexorable logic of the facts." wh^fcttas*fot!ijred"hef " olifly religion, her owri*qiicide. ' TheT|apect of the Boulevards is the/ strangest sight imaginable. I followed them from the Porte St. Martin to the Rue de la Paix, Strewn over the streets were branches of trees, and. fragments of masonry that had been knocker! from the houses, bricks and mortar, torn proclamations, shreds of clothing half concealing blood stains, were new the interesting and leading features of that fashionable resort ; foot passengers were few and far between, the shops and cafes hermetically sealed, excepting where bullets had made air holes, and during my whole afternoon's promenade I only met three other carriages beside my. own. • The Place de l'Opera was a camping ground of artillery, the Place Vendome a confusion of barricades, guarded by sentries, and the Rue Royale a mass of debris. Looked at from the Madeleine, the desolation and ruin of that handsome street were lamentable to behold. The Place de la Concorde was a desert, and in the midst of it lay the statue of Lille with the head off. The last time I had looked on • hat face it was covered with crape, in mourning for the entry of the Prussians. Near the bridge were twenty-four corpses of insurgents, laid out in a row, waiting to be buried under the neighboring paving-stones. To the right the skeleton of the Tuileries reared its gaunt shell, the framework of the lofty wing next the Seine still standing ; but the whole of the roof of the central building was gone, and daylight visible through all the windows right into the Place de Carrousel. Gen. M'Mahon's head-quarters were at the Affaires Etrangeres which were intact. After a visit there, I ,'passed the Corps Legislatif, also uninjured, by fire, but much marked by shot and shell, and so along the Quais the whole of the way to the Mint, at which point General Vinoy has established his head-quarters. At the corner of the Rue de Bac the destruction was something appalling. The Rue de Bac is an : impassable mound of ruins, 15 or 20 feet high, completely across the street as for as I could see. The Legion d'Honneur, the Cours des Comptes, and Conseil d'Etat were still smoking, but there was nothing left of them but the blackened shells of their noble facades to show how handsome they had once been. At this point, in whichever direction one looked, the same awful devastation met the eye— to the left the smouldering Tuileries, to the right the long line of ruin where the fire had swept through the magnificent palaces on the Quai, and overhead again to-day a cloud of smoke, more black and abundant even than yesterday, incessantly rolling its dense volumes from behind Notre Dame, whose two towers were happily standing uninjured. The fire issued from the Grenier d'Abondance and other buildings in the neighborhood of the Jardin des Plantes. In another direction the Arsenal was also burning. On the opposite side of the river were the smoking ruins of the Theatre Chatelet and the Hotel de Ville. A large part of the Palais Royal is burned. [home news, junb I.] Last night the special correspondent of the Times telegraphed from Paris to the following effect : — "The search for insurgents from house to house is still going on ' vigorously. It is still very hard either to leave or even to enter Paris. Gourde, the Communist Minister of Finance, has been found. It is said by insurgents that Cluseret ought to be among the last batch jot prisoners taken at Fprt Vincennes. This being their last place of refuge, it is expected that many other ringleaders will Be discovered. "The Communist commander of that fort sent to the Bavarian General a list of his officers and men, requesting, for the former passes into Switzerland, for the latter passes into France. After various negotiations, the affair was left in tne hands of General Vinoy, and it was agreed that all the garrison of Vincennes, having never fired a shot, should be detained prisoners only temporarily, but that all fugitives' who had taken refuge there should be surrendered unconditionally. The garrison eagerly consented to the terms, and at once put their chiefs in prison; Orders were found on many of them, signed Ulysee Parent, for the burning of the Hotel de Ville, the Bourse, and other places. "The Luxembourg is to replace temporarily the Hotel de Ville, and the Staff has already moved 4 there. Everything is going on qviietly enough in most parts of Paris, but in the Belleville quarter life is still unsafe. Not only are shots fired from windows, but occasionally insurgents fire off revolvers upon officers at a few yards' distance. Many fear that, notwithstanding the large numbers of the insurgents caught, and the terrible example made, enough have escaped to give further trouble, if not by open resistance, at least by arson and secret assassination. The severities, moreover, exercised by the military authorities have produced a pretty strong feeling of reaction against them, and in some of even the least revolutionary quarters the troops are scarcely popular, certainly not so popular as when they entered Paris. The insurgents find many sympathisers to hide them, and assist their escape from Paris. " The policy of England with reference to those who have escaped is watched with great anxiety. "Active measures are being taken to cleanse the streets and rid them of the dead bodies, some of which had been buried where they fell under the barricades, with a foot or two of soil over them. Passers-by are pressed into the service as burying parties, and the English Embassy has received complaints from Englishmen of haying been seized for this purpose. The smell of corpses in some places is offensively strong, and it is feared this hot weather following upon the heavy rain may breed a pestilence. " Traffic in the streets at night is getting easier, though the sajes have to be closed at eleven. The nnpopxilarity of the troops is no doubt in part due to the deeply-rooted Parisian dislike of military rule and the abolition of the National Guard — a measure wJiich, however necessary, under no circumstances is likely to be welcome; i ; ■ ' - <■ ■ - "A proclamation of Marshal MacMahon's, dated yesterday,; says that until further notice the city of Paris w to be divided into four commands. The first command, that of the East, will compriso the Uth, 12th, 19th, and 20th Arrondisaements, under General- Vinoy, whose head-quarters will be at Picpus Convent. The second command, that of the NorthWeat, will comprise the Bth, 9th, 10th, 16th, 17th, and 18th Arrondifisements

I under General L'Admirault, whose headI quarters will be at the Elysee. The third I command, that of the south, will cpm- ' prise the whole of the left, bank of* the river, and will be s under General Oissey, wb^se-head-quarters will be at the Petit Luxembourg; and the fourth command, thaif^f the centre, will comprise the Ist, 23rd, and 4th Arrondissements, and will be -Tiller General Douay, whose headqsßst < ers will be in the Place Vendome. *& AJlpowers of the civil authorities for the.- maintenance of order are transferred ttf^thß military. <c^ince yesterday, men, women and children are allowed free entrance into Par&bn the side of Charenton, but no one is yet fallowed to leave the city. iv'jt is stated that Felix Pyat has succeeded in escaping from Paris. '&&TI the body of Varlin, a member of the Commune shot at Montmartre, the sum' Of 400,000 f was found. Mathieii, another officer of the Commune, had in his possession when taken 1,500,000 f. { !<Four hundred insurgents were made prisoners in Fort Vincennes, among whom weire fifteen functionaries of the Commune. L^Omnibusses and cabs have resumed running to-day in the streets of Paris. "The Journal des Be"bats reappeared this morning, and the principal newspapers which had removed their establishnierits to Versailles during the civil war have returned to Paris. " The new journal, La Trkolore, in its impression of to-day, advocates the election of the Duke d'Aumale as President of the National Assembly. Its article upon this subject says : — " ' The Republic will necessarily remain the Government of France ; the country can only choose the chief of the Republic | from among the members of the Orleans family. Such a chief would be to Prussia a perpetual menace, arid to France the embodiment of a hope of one day reclaiming her ravished Pro /inces. The Princes of the House of Orleans, devoid of all personal ambition, would not, we are sure, accept at any time the task of liquidation created by the Empire and the Government of M. Gambetta and his associates. It is not upon an amputated form such as France is now that princes with swords such as theirs would wish to rest their throne.' "M. Kreulin, who was taken prisoner with the insurgents at Vincennes, has been shot. A similar fate has befallen M. Oscyn, a member of the Commune, who was taken prisoner by the Prussians, and by them handed over to the French authorities. "It is believed that the decree dissolving the National Guard of Paris will be extended to the whole of France. "A great number of the troops engaged in the last fighting here have returned to Versailles. "There are now at Versailles about 40,000 insurgent prisoners. Many of them will be sent to the seaport towns for trial." -