TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE REVOLT IN PARIS.
THIS movement in Paris is a Revolt, and not a Revolution, and like most revolts, appears likely to produce almost unmixed evil. Its history cannot be written yet, the corre- spondents, journalists, and speechmakers upon whose state- ments we must depend, being aimed frenzied with a creditable indignation and a discreditable fear ; but it is possible to gather with pains and patience some idea of the motives at work in the insurrection. When the Germans quitted Paris, the city was left in the hands of a mass of armed men called a National Guard, organized into 250 Battalions, but without any bond of cohesion except a common uniform, a common sense of angry humiliation, and a common distrust or dislike of every authority in the city or in France. The Moderate Battalions—for we must use party designations—levied in the richer quarters, were wild with the shame of their country's defeat, with fear of the future, and with the feeling that they had been wanting in the hour of trial ; the Red Batta- lions, workmen and roughs, were raging with suspicions of treason among the Generals and the Ministers, with desire for a Social Republic, and with that bitter hatred of the rich which Mr. Mallet so well described, and which never dies in France. Suspecting the Prussians, suspecting the Govern- ment, suspecting the Assembly, suspecting the troops, living in an atmosphere of suspicion, they resolved to retain their arms, their cannon, and their pay, and remain in permanent watch over " the Republic." They occupied Belleville, Montmartre, the Cite, and other points with their forces in regular military order, and though inactive, probably from an expectation that a Monarchy would be pro- claimed and give them the signal for resistance, they were in more or less avowed insurrection. As it chanced, their ex- asperation was deepened, and the energy of the Moderate Battalions crippled, by a series of blunders committed by all in power. The local government, then directed by M. Picard, instead of disarming the Red Battalions and stopping their pay, which would have forced them to work or starve, kept threatening to do both ; their menaces just sufficing to keep up irritation, especially among the wretches, neither workmen nor politicians, who are always trying to lose themselves in the Red ranks. M. Thiers, the Head of the Executive, it may be from preoccupation, it may be from distrust of the Assembly, it may be from the reluctance to shed blood which honourably dis- tinguishes the Orleanists, temporized with the movement, while appointing to the command of the Guard an officer, General de Paladines, who was supposed in Paris to be always shooting his men. And finally, the Assembly, instead of accepting frankly M. Thiers' advice to establish a strong Republic and return to Paris, betrayed in every debate its hatred of the Reds, silenced Garibaldi, hooted Victor Hugo, refused a hearing to Deleseluze, and by advocating a removal to Fontainebleau betrayed at once its fear and its dislike of Paris. This filled the cup to over- flowing. Even the wounded vanity of Paris could not deepen the fanaticism of the workmen ; but the Internationals " could and did appeal to the " insults offered to Paris, the elder sister of France," to break the opposition the Respect- ables might otherwise have commenced. Even the Respectables felt this appeal, and with more than Roman vanity declared they would as soon be governed by ouvriers as by paysans. Those Respectables, always cowardly in civil commotion till roused beyond endurance, were too angry with the Assembly and its agents to care to defend either, and gradually resumed their civilian life, leaving the Republic to take care of itself.
At length the storm burst. M. Thiers issued on Friday, the 17th, a menacing proclamation, telling the Red Battalions that they must surrender their cannon or he would take them, and ordered General Vinoy to attack. General Vinoy, an old and good soldier, but with no hold over the people, had under his command some 40,000 men, half of them linesmen—who had been garrisoned in Paris before Sedan, and had been penetrated by its magnetic charm—half of them a scratch lot, relics of Faidherbe's and Chanzy's armies, with no officers whom they knew, and with memories of incessant defeat. They obeyed orders, however, and with the gendarmerie marched on the artillery parks, and according to the best accounts occupied them, the Red Battalions retreating or mixing with the Line. Then, however, their fidelity gave way. Tempted, as they had been all during the siege, by the leaders of the workmen, burning with that hatred of their pincers which for years seems to have been the eve of all French military life, surrounded by the women they live- with beseeching them not to fire, and cowed by that tradition of revolution which floats in the air of Paris, they gave up all discipline, fraternized with the Reds, and, we fear, gave vent to their malignity towards the officers. General
Vinoy, fearing the contagion, drew his remaining troops out of Paris ; the Ministers fled to Versailles ; the only men among the Reds with a trace of political earnestness, the workmen, seized the Government by occupying the Minis- tries and the Hotel de Ville, and government of any
kind ceased in Paris. Assi, the agent of the International Workmen's Association, and a man of great energy and some- ability, was, with his friends of the Central Committee, pro- bably in earnest, really meant the Republic of 1793, and in his utter ignorance imagined that France would either follow- Paris or allow it to declare itself a free city like Hamburg, with a separate and sovereign municipality of its own. This, is the latest idea revealed in all the proclamations of the. Committee, in its official utterances through the Journal Oificiel, which it has seized, and in its demand for the indepen- dent Commune. The Committee, composed mainly of hag- gard-looking, half-fed workmen, denies perhaps truly, any wish for blood ; but it had loosed the wild beast, and did not even' dare to scold it when it bit. A French crowd, particularly when swollen by mutinous soldiers, who fight with their necks in a rope, is always bloodthirsty. The first day- of insurrection was marked by two atrocious acts of assassination, the deliberate murders by musketry of General Lecompte, who was trying to do his duty, and of General Clement Thomas, a consistent Republican ; the two., following days by murders of the police agents of the Empire ; and Wednesday by a massacre of unarmed respectables, march- ing down the Rue de la Paix in peaceful demonstration that. Paris did not sanction the acts of the Committee. It is stated. that the massacre was preceded by a scuffle, but it is almost beyond doubt that the Red Battalions drawn across the Place- Vendome gave way to the pressure of the crowd, and that the mutinous soldiery in the second rank fearing "treachery," that is, punishment from the law, fired, in order to commit the whole party to resistance a outrance. The Committee feebly apolo- gized for the murders, while disclaiming them; the "Generals',. who are taking the control of their body," with the Franco- American Cluseret, a man apparently hardly sane, but with• gleams of ability—vide his Lyons project for the reconstruction- of the Army—at their head, defend the slaughter as inevit- able, and Gambetta's most energetic soldier, General Cremer, the "handsome boy" who won Nuits, has, we regret to see, accepted, a command at the hands of the Committee and holds the. Paris forts. The Moderate battalions, roused by the massa- cres, have sprung to arms ; but they have no leader, unless Admiral Saisset, who is nominally their commander-in-chief,_ should succeed in introducing discipline ; the Red Battalions are made energetic by their very crimes, and up to Friday night there was no sign of anything but increasing anarchy,. the latest incident having been the surrender of Vincennes by the demoralized soldiery. The aimless, purposeless, senseless, revolt is still triumphant.
Meanwhile, what is the legitimate Government doing at Versailles ? It is acting sensibly, but weakly. M. Thiers has cut off the communication with' the provinces, has encamped' the troops who retreated from Paris round Versailles, and is summoning troops from a distance, more especially Charette, the Papal Zouave to whom Gambetta gave a general's com- mission, and who is probably the bravest man in France, with his Bretons, who do not speak French ; and pro- fesses full confidence in his own ability to restore order, a confidence just or silly, according to the degree in which he can reinspire the troops with a sense of military honour. For the rest, he temporizes and waits, loses his control over the Assembly, and asks that the Com- munal Council be conceded to Paris,—a just concession, perhaps,. when order has been restored, but madness now. He suffers M.. Jules Fevre to read letters from Count Bismarck threatening: to destroy Paris unless order is restored, and to follow the read- ing by a hint that such menaces are only intended to terrify ; and allows the Assembly to justify the worst fears of the Paris- ians by omitting " Vive la Republique " from its decrees... He may be wise ; but he is weak, and but for a piece of undeserved fortune he migLt yet be compelled to the crown- ing humiliation of calling in foreign aid to hold down the capital of his country. If Lyons beats his agents, all is lost ; but Lyons is held by one of Gambetta's nominees, who, not being at heart a Monarchist and in seeming a Republican,.
has the courage of his opinions, and in a short stern order of the day offers to anarchists the alternatives of order or summary execution. M. Valentin's decision may, or may not, save France, but it is becoming only too clear that she needs a man to make the Republic march, and that the man must not be an Orleanist civilian of seventy-four. If Gambetta were but well and in Versailles !
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