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make terms for the withdrawal of his men, and a convention with Dorian and Jules Favre for the election of the Commune on the morrow. Dorian, whose name figured on all the lists, was the minister of public works of the Government of the 4th of September, and was extremely popular during the first siege, though we have heard nothing of him since its close.

General Trochu, with his Government, now threw himself upon Paris for a plébiscite; and the result was an overwhelming vote of confidence in his favour, the majority being about 340,000, and the minority 54,000. After this defeat, the Communal party made no fresh attempt to overturn the Government by action until the 22nd of January. The Government, on the strength of their vote of confidence, arrested a considerable number of the conspirators of the 31st of October. Flourens managed to escape arrest for the time, but was subsequently imprisoned in Mazas, from whence he was released by the insurrectionists on the 22nd of January. Millière and Blanqui managed to avoid arrest altogether. At the same time the Government, in order to make some concession to the cry for municipal government, decreed that each arrondissement should elect its maire; the maire of all Paris, however, was named by the Government. The most democratic quarters of Paris revenged themselves for their defeat in the plébiscite by electing the greater part of those concerned in the émeute of the 31st of October.

The history of the Commune cannot be understood without realising the frightful ordeal through which the whole population passed from the 31st of October to the end of Januaryduring three long months. Never in the history of the world were two millions of people subjected to such prolonged sufferings; and, to add to their miseries, the winter of 1870-71 was one of exceptional intensity. A three months' famine for this immense population was in itself a sufficient calamity, but the intensity of frost and the lack of fuel aggravated the agonies of the unhappy city to an incredible degree.

Into these melancholy details of the siege and its incidents we have no space to enter; we must content ourselves with stating that by the middle of January the Government of National Defence was utterly discredited with all parties. All the generous illusions entertained by the Parisians, in spite of the intense agonies of four long months, had vanished. All classes of the population felt that they had been played with and deceived, subjected to frightful suffering, and to a deathrate of three or four thousand a week beyond the average mortality, for a siege which was a mere comedy; and on all sides

the Government was censured and derided for its incapacity and inaction.

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Then took place the émeute of the 22nd of January. Accounts differ as to who fired the first shot in this affair, in which lives. were lost. Flourens declares that the Bretons without provocation fired from the windows of the Hôtel de Ville on an unarmed crowd, after which some National Guards seized their muskets and replied. A good many were killed and wounded on the side of the people, who attempted to raise a barricade, which was taken in the rear by Vinoy, who dispersed the assemblage. In consequence of this émeute, Félix Pyat, Flourens, and Blanqui were condemned by court-martial to death by default; the Combat and the Réveil were suppressed, and Delescluze was imprisoned at Vincennes. This skirmish was too insignificant to excite much attention in the then desperate condition of Paris. Nothing but news of disaster arrived from the provinces. Chanzy had suffered a complete defeat; Faidherbe too was routed, and Bourbaki was on the point of being surrounded. Five days after this émeute, Paris was apprised by the Journal Officiel that negotiations were being entered into for a capitulation; on the morrow, the 28th, the people were informed of the terms of the capitulation.

The prostration of energy and spirit which ensued among the Parisians immediately after the surrender was terrible; there was a general weariness of everything, of disgust at all news from without, and of life itself. It was, says Sarcey, something like resignation to death after a long and painful illness. An immense crowd rushed to the préfecture of police to get passports, to leave the scene of such misery and fruitless agony; 25,000 were asked for on the first day. On the 8th of January the new National Assembly was elected, and 750 deputies were sent by the country to assemble at Bordeaux and to ratify the peace.

It was hardly possible that an Assembly could be elected under more unfortunate conditions, so far as respects the Government of France. At the very time at which the elections were made, Paris was still almost as separated from the provinces as during the siege. The Prussians allowed no letters to pass but those that were unsealed, and the difficulty of communication was still great. After four months' separation, it was an additional misfortune that Paris and the provinces should not

Whether this was true or not, the partisans of the Commune always declared this to be the case, and it was the plea upon which Chaudey, as we shall see, was arrested and executed.

have means of coming to an understanding. In their common disaster, the provinces were angry with Paris, and Paris was angry with the provinces. The consequence was that the votes of Paris and the votes of the great cities as sympathising with Paris were votes of counter-protestation. One point there was indeed common to the votes of both-both made their votes at the same time a protest against the Empire. Moreover, the general reasoning in the provinces was that since the Republic had been unable to save France, therefore it was a bad form of government. The provinces thus sought for its candidates among men who were anti-republican and anti-imperialist, and their choice was necessarily limited to those who were untainted with Napoleonism, and who had not even sat on the benches of the Bonapartist opposition in the Corps Législatif. Such men could only be found among the royalist party, and these woul be old in years and perfectly untried in affairs. Paris, on the other hand, and the great towns, voted for a list of extreme Republicans. All France, it may be said, was surprised at the composition of the Right of the Assembly. Flourens's character of them is instructive, as showing in what light the new deputies of the Right were regarded at the very outset by the Republicans.

The result was that we had a chamber, the counterpart of that of the Restoration; a chamber of ghosts, of people who were thought to be dead long ago, and who appeared to be quite untouched, to be still alive. Marquises and abbés, who had without doubt sat in the StatesGeneral of 1789 on the benches of the nobility and clergy; a collection of bald heads, deaf ears, and eyes which blinked at any ray of sunlight. This Assembly ought to have had a gravedigger for doorkeeper. For such owls the cry of "Vive la République ! was an intolerable outrage

This resuscitated party acquired the name of the Rurals. The Assembly, by a vote of 546 votes against 107, ratified the preliminaries of peace on the 1st of March.

Next to the cession of Alsace and Lorraine, the points of the negotiations which most excited the Parisians were the entry of the Prussians into Paris and the surrender of the city. In the Place Wagram, situated in the quarter of Paris which it was agreed the Prussians should occupy, there remained a large park of fine bronze cannon, which were the product ef a patriotic subscription of the National Guard; other park existed at the Barrière d'Italie and at the Fort Montrouge, ar no effort was made to bring them in; they had been in fact entirely overlooked by the Government; and if the Prussians had entered and found them where they were, they would as as

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suredly have taken possession of them as they did of the ammunition and stores of Mont Valérien, which also had been disregarded. Various battalions of the National Guard, finding the cannon thus overlooked, undertook to bring them into the interior of the city, and put them out of the reach of the Prussians.

But the negligence of the Government authorities in the matter of the cannon was but a small part of the unfortunate combination of circumstances which left Paris to its own disorder. During the time that they were besieged by the Prussians, the Parisian population had disappointed the cynical hopes of Bismarck; but no sooner was the terrible girdle of steel and fire withdrawn from around them, than they began at once to realise the previsions of the Chancellor. Some such state of things might, indeed, have been expected by anyone with the faintest knowledge of human nature. Up to the time of the conclusion of the siege nearly the whole of that immense population had been animated by an heroic sense of duty and patriotism, which had enabled them to support the horrors of their situation; and, moreover, they had a Government in the midst of them, professedly Republican, around which they could rally. But with the capitulation patriotic enthusiasm was turned at once into disgust and nausea; even the best portion of the Parisians regarded their position with loathing and abhorrence; a large number at once left the city; among such as remained, the best disposed of the inhabitants continued sunk in absolute lethargy till they were aroused to take some interest in affairs by the new set of dangers which were springing up around them; and, to make things worse, the city was, since the gathering together of the Assembly of Bordeaux, left without any Government at all.

Indeed the continuance of the Assembly at Bordeaux for one hour longer than was absolutely necessary was a national misfortune; for misconceptions could not fail to arise on both sides. when the distance which divided them was so great. One such misconception, which had a most prejudicial effect on the deliberations of the Assembly, was produced by a false report which was spread at Bordeaux on the 4th and 5th of March, of an insurrection in Paris which was said to have placed the greater part of the capital in the hands of the revolted National Guards. This was absolutely believed at Bordeaux for two days, and increased the repugnance with which the greater part of the Right regarded the translation of the seat of the Assembly to Paris. Indeed, it was only by his very remark

able speech on the 10th of March, which was a veritable tour de force, that M. Thiers could induce the Assembly to consent to remove from Bordeaux to Versailles. The Committee which had been appointed to report on the most desirable place for the seat of the Assembly had declared for Fontainebleau. M. Thiers, it was well known, was desirous of removal to Paris itself, but he knew that it was useless to propose such a scheme to the Assembly.

The conduct, indeed, of the majority of the Assembly was uniformly of a character to produce in Paris extreme political irritation. A number of Parisian deputies declared that they found it impossible to sit in such a Chamber. The very allusion to the fact that France was at that time living under a Republican form of Government, threw the whole Right into convulsions; and it was not only the democratic press of Paris, but the whole body of Journalism, which cried aloud at their conduct as foolish, wild, and impolitic. Moreover, by the laws which they had hurried through the Chambers without due consideration respecting the rent-question in Paris, and the payment of overdue commercial bills, and which manifestly did not meet the exigencies of the situation, and which, indeed, they had to remake, they had discontented the whole commercial world of the capital.

As for the capital itself, it was rescued from the state of lethargic abandonment into which it fell after the capitulation, by the entry of the Prussians on the 1st of March, and from that time up to the outbreak of the actual Revolution on the 18th, it remained simmering in a state of chaotic anarchy; to put an end to which the Government took no important steps whatever. Yet, in its outward appearance, in the early days of March, the city bore no sign of the wild spirit which was at work within. Although there was not a shadow of a policeman to be seen anywhere, the streets were crowded with people, and ladies and children walked everywhere unmolested, and there was no report of violence or crime. The shops were beginning to re-open with confidence; though in every street closed shutters in abundance announced a tale of ruin by the siege. There was a good deal of idleness in the streets in the absence of work, and quantities of processions were made to the Column of July in the Place de la Bastille. The column itself was covered with immortelles from the base to the summit; and a hardy sailor climbed up the figure of Liberty on the summit, and hung flags about every limb. This homage paid to the victims of the Revolution of 1830 was intended as a counter-protestation to the supposed machina

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