Rochefort, however, put aside this programme of Flourens; he took a gloomy view of the situation, but he still had confidence in Trochu, whom he declared to be the best of the French generals. Trochu, says Flourens, had practised upon Rochefort his Jesuitical tactics, and reduced him by flattery to a complete nullity. It appears, however, from the general's letter, read on Rochefort's trial, that these two persons had scarcely ever met.

Flourens, however, with Delescluze, Félix Pyat, and others, refused from the first to believe in Trochu and his plan. Trochu knew that Flourens was a dangerous enemy; nevertheless, since the latter, by virtue of that strange fascination which he always possessed over the people, had been elected Commandant of the 63rd Battalion of Belleville-in which 10,000 citizens came and enrolled themselves as soon as it was known Flourens was in command, and so gave his battalion the strength of a division-it was necessary to propitiate him and his followers in some way; the Governor of Paris then, unwilling to make him a colonel, created for him the title of Major of the Ramparts,' and recognised his election as chief of his battalion.

On the 5th of October Flourens gave signs of action by leading his ten thousand men to the Hôtel de Ville, to ask for chassepots, which they averred were lying idle in the Government stores; and on their being refused, Flourens gave in his resignation. He says that at that time he and his ten thousand men held the Government at their mercy, but that he felt that the dismissal of Trochu and his Council would be of no use. Paris was still infatuated about the General. Nevertheless, Flourens from this time only waited for a good opportunity to upset the Government.

The news of the fall of Metz, and of the negotiations of M. Thiers for the armistice seemed to Flourens the ripe moment for advancing on the Hôtel de Ville and raising the cry of the Commune, which had been agreed upon by the adversaries of the Government.

Flourens, however, monopolises too much of the initiative of this seditious movement. Delescluze, Félix Pyat, Blanqui, Ledru Rollin, and their colleagues belonged to an earlier revolutionary generation, that of the Revolution of 1848, and formed a distinct set from the younger revolutionists, such as Flourens, Rochefort, Millière, Lullier, Vermorel, Arthur Arnold, and others. The latter, indeed, regarded with some disdain mixed with jealousy their predecessors in the ways of disorder, as having too old-fashioned revolutionary views and

not being up to the time; while they accused them of giving themselves too great airs on the ground of their previous martyrdom of twenty years of exile. Between Félix Pyat and Vermorel especially there was a good deal of animosity; a sharp journalistic war was carried on between them, even at the time that they were both members of the Government of the Commune. Both however, the older and younger revolu tionary party, were divided into cliques;' and the party of the International, which was of the young generation, kept itself distinct from either, though it was intriguing in the dark, and, as we shall see, ended by getting the mastery over both.

6

Delescluze was born at Dreux, in 1811. He was a student of law at the University of Paris at the time of the Revolution of 1830. He began his revolutionary career by becoming a member of political societies formed for the purpose of upsetting the government of Louis-Philippe. He was arrested in 1834 for complicity with the insurrection of 1834, known as the Journées d'Avril, and from that time his life is a series of convictions, fines, imprisonments, and transportations for political offences. He had had experience of pretty nearly all the prisons of France and its colonies. At length an amnesty was published, in which he was included, and he returned to Paris from Cayenne, and in 1868 started a new paper, the Réveil. His revolutionary articles soon got him again into trouble; in one year he suffered three convictions. The amnesty of the 15th of August, 1869, set him once more free to become in the present year the most implacable spirit of the Commune. The Revolution with Delescluze also was a kind of religion. Apart from this, we believe his private character was estimable; even his adversaries spoke of him with a kind of respect, for he had a certain amount of talent and undeniable strength of will. He was a grim, austere, ascetic man, who sacrificed everything in life to the pursuit of the political ideal which he had framed out of revolutionary traditions. Proudhon, who saw through their hollowness, told him in early life coarsely that he belonged to the race of the bla gueurs, and though the accusation is not perhaps true, he did more harm than if it were. It is some proof of the respect paid to his character, that M. Thiers (who thought he could buy everybody) despatched a special ambassador into Paris to detach him from the Commune; but the fanatic remained obstinately firm to his revolutionary mission; and when he could see no further glimpse of hope, and could delude himself no more with expectation of a rising in the provinceswhen the troops of Versailles were already in possession of

Paris, he went with his stick in his hand and his broad-brimmed hat on his head, and took his stand on a barricade, where he was shot, dying before the worst atrocities of the Commune were perpetrated, though he prepared the way for their commission.

His comrade, Félix Pyat, has more claim than Delescluze to be classed under Proudhon's category. Pyat has been accused, and with reason, and Vermorel omitted not to taunt him with the fact (while he was a member of the Committee of Public Safety), of having passed his life in stirring up revolutionary fires, and then skulking off to leave his friends to bear the danger and consequences of the conflagration. He was born at Vierzon, in the department of the Cher, the son of a lawyer of strong legitimist principles. He distinguished himself in his university career; but began his revolutionary antics at the age of nineteen, when he drank at a public banquet a toast to the Convention, and replaced a bust of Charles X. in the room by that of Lafayette. He was admitted an avocat in 1831; but soon quitted the bar, and became a dramaturge and a writer in journals. Some of the theatrical productions of his early life had an immense popularity -especially the Deux Serruriers and the Chiffonnier de Paris; but even his theatrical pieces were chiefly remarkable for their artificial diction, search after extravagant effects, and political and social allusions. After the Revolution of 1848 he was elected deputy of the Cher, and became remarkable for some violent speeches in the Assembly, and for one especially on the right of labour.' Although not an accomplice in the insurrection of June, he signed with Ledru Rollin a proclamation, calling upon the people to make another appeal to arms, in July 1849, and then fled from France to avoid the consequences of prosecution. He inhabited Switzerland, Belgium, England, by turns. He signed the famous Jersey letter of remonstrance to the Queen, on the occasion of her visit to the Emperor Napoleon; and was tried by a jury in England, in 1858, as an accomplice in Bernard's plot against the Emperor's life, but acquitted. After the amnesty of 1869 he returned to France, and wrote in the Rappel articles for which he was condemned, in January 1870, to seventeen months' imprisonment; but he escaped again to England, where he took an active part in another conspiracy of Flourens for taking away the life of Napoleon III.; and while the young men whom he had seduced into joining his plot were being tried at Bourges, Félix Pyat was safe in this country. He returned to Paris, however, before its investment, and started the Combat, a paper whose title was ultimately changed to that of the Vengeur, in

which he carried on incessant war against the Government of Defence, and plotted its overthrow. He was elected a member of the Commune, and appointed, maliciously, one of the Committee of Public Safety-in order, for once, that he might be in the front of danger. It was not long, however, before he wanted to resign; but a body of citizen men and citizen ladies having informed him in two addresses that they considered it his duty to remain, Pyat affected to comply. He slunk away, however, as soon as the Versailles troops entered Paris, and has, with his old luck, apparently escaped; there have been numerous reports that he had been captured, now in the guise of a Chiffonnier, and now in that of a charcoalburner, in one of the canal boats on the Canal Saint Martin. But he is probably in his old haunts in Leicester Square.

Such were the two chief professors of revolution, who were each in turn plotting against the Government of the 4th of September since the commencement of the siege. It must be remembered that the Government of Defence had, before the investment, already fixed the municipal elections of the capital for the 28th of September, and the general elections of France for the 2nd of October; but the completion of the investment prevented this plan from being carried out, and Jules Favre went to have his interview with Count Bismarck at Ferrières.

The news that the Minister of Foreign Affairs, after having uttered the well-known phrase, not a stone of our fortresses, not an inch of our territory,' had gone to make offers of concession to the Prussian Chancellor, threw the excitable people of Paris into frenzy. The clubs, whose extravagant and wild discussions during the siege present a curious subject for the study of French character, seized upon the opportunity to let loose their most rabid rhetoric; and Delescluze, in the Réveil, put forth his programme, which contains a good deal in common with the programme of the Commune. It is to be noted that in this first draft of the Commune proposed by Delescluze the provincial elections were to be postponed, which is a proof that the federal system was a later invention; and that the first notion of the party was to get possession of Paris, to keep it by means of the war, and to carry on the old system of dictating to the provinces from Paris.

Just as the negotiations of Jules Favre with Count Bismarck, at the end of September, occasioned the first serious call for the Commune, so the negotiations of M. Thiers, at Versailles, at the end of the following month, and the sur render of Metz, were the cause of the still more serious mani

festation for the Commune on the 31st of October. It was Ledru Rollin this time, in a public meeting on the 28th October, who started anew the cry of the Commune:-'I call to 'mind,' he said, that it was the great Commune who saved 'from the invader the sacred soil of our country. Lyons has also established it. Will you remain behind Lyons—you, Parisians, who have always marched at the head of the Revolution? Will you not do as Lyons has done? You will'you will! You are decided to use your right-to give yourselves the Commune. You will name the Commune of Paris.' This speech of Ledru Rollin excited immense enthusiasm in the audience. The cry, La Commune! La Commune! was taken up by all Paris; Félix Pyat in the Combat; Delescluze in the Réveil; Blanqui in the Patrie en danger; the sons of Victor Hugo, Vacquerie, and Paul Meurice in the Rappel ; · Ulbach and his friends in the Cloche, harped upon it without end. While the men of action, Flourens, Lullier, Sapia, and Megy, incessantly repeated to the battalions of Belleville, Let us sweep away the traitors, and establish the Commune.'

6

At length the maires of Paris, aware of the hostile feeling that was rising in their several quarters, formed a deputation and advised the Government to grant the municipal elections. A numerous crowd had collected in front of the Hôtel de Ville, with cries of No armistice!' Vive la République!' 'Resistance to the death!' Jules Favre, according to Flourens -Etienne Arago, according to another account-declared in the name of the Government that the Commune should be established. A multitude of little papers were thrown out of the windows, on which was written, Immediate election of the Commune of Paris, under direction of Dorian and Schoelcher.' Rochefort came to the windows, and assured the crowd of the truth of the news; and then took a piece of paper and wrote out his resignation. In fact, he was convinced now that the Government already had capitulation in view. During all the morning the affair did not go further than a manifestation; in the afternoon it was changed into an émeute, and this by the arrival of Flourens on the scene with four hundred of his most devoted adherents of the battalion of Belleville. The chief gates of the Hôtel de Ville were opened, according to Flourens, by a boy getting through one of the windows and undrawing the inner bolt, after which a mob of five or six thousand National Guards entered the Hôtel de Ville, and the Government were prisoners. The Hôtel de Ville was, as is well known, soon recaptured by Trochu's party by a stratagem and without bloodshed. But even after the rescue, Flourens managed to