IN PARIS AFTER THE FIGHT.
Timm A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT.] CV TVs have received this letter too late to insert in the usual place, but are unwilling to delay it till next week.—En. Spectator.] Paris, May 31. Fr was just nine in the morning on Saturday, the 27th of May, that I entered Paris by the Porte de Clichy. Columns of heavy smoke, the gloomy signs of steady conflagration, with the recur- ring puffs of white fume from some engines of destruction, had been visible ever since I left St. Denis out in the direction of the Montmartre height. It was evident that the work of slaughter was not yet come to an end ; that I should not find Paris already relieved from the grim work of desperate civil war. I have had the fortune to be in Paris on several occasions of insurrection and of revolution, occasions when men's minds bad cause to be seriously on the strain ; but never have I witnessed the deep lines of intense anxiety, of heart-stricken consternation, so impressed on the countenance of this city. It was not this sign, or that particular sign of conflict, this smashed gun on a demolished barricade, or that battered house all gutted, but it was the whole thing together, the hush of voices, the absence of people, the atmosphere of smoke, the smell of charred wood impregnating the air,, and over the whole the incessant boom of artillery, the sound of the work of death going on, which made a scene of deso- lation such as I, at least, never had looked upon. I will not go into a detailed description of the different ruins in Paris, for by this time there must have been more than enough of such ; but will just mention the first sight which brought home to my mind the extent of havoc done, especially as it was on a scene familiar to English travellers. When, after much devious driving, I got into the Faubourg St. Honore, I found myself, in the very short space between the English Embassy and the Rue Royale, face to face with two barricades, which for a day and a half had been desperately defended. On either side the houses were not merely riddled, but in parts shot to pieces, while behind dense smoke curled over from the Rue Royale, the whole block of houses in which running upon the left to the Madeleine are burnt to the ground, and on the ruins of which the pumps were still play- ing. I walked along the Boulevards. It is the literal truth that on that Saturday forenoon there were only three shops open (one was the Cafe Tortoni) up to the corner of the Rue Lafitte, and that I did not meet fifty people on the way. It was as if Paris were a city of the dead, and what added to the mourn- ful scene was the dull, heavy boom of the guns from Montmartre, sounding like the ring of the funeral-knell. Just by the Rue Lafitte stood a small group peering up the street, listening anxiously to the recurring sound from the heights, but these three or four human beings were the only sem- blance of human society I set eyes on that morning in the streets of busy, social Paris. At this time the insurrection had been driven within the lines of its natural stronghold,—the region comprising the heights of Belleville, the Faubourg du Temple, and the Quartier St. Antoine, and a des- perate struggle was going on for the mastery of these posi- tions. In the afternoon, in company with a friend, who was pro- vided with military passes, I got up quite to the end 'of the Rue Lafayette, to a point where we could look upon Belleville, while sheltered from the shells which the military kept sending over on head. I do not profess to have much experience of actual war- fare ; but as my companion, who has seen war in its grimmest shape, and on its grandest scale, admitted that the firing was as hot as any be had ever been under, I suppose that I may claim to have witnessed pretty hot work. I confess to have wished myself several times in a less exciting neighbourhood, as the shells kept bursting close by, and interesting as it was —terribly interesting— to see the rain of iron and fire that was hailing down on Belle- ville, and being returned with like desperate energy by its defenders, I cannot deny having not been slow to assent, when my companion appeared satisfied with his inspection, and proposed going away. We turned back to go down towards the Chateau d'Eau on the Boulevard St. Martin, through streets won by the soldiery in a quarter sym- pathizing with the insurgents. Few, very few, were the indivi- duals afoot, and their countenances glowered with an unmistak- able scowl. Indeed, short work was being made. By the wall of a house lay the dead body of a man just shot as a sympathizer. And yet it was easy to see how feelings went. " Ce sont des fideraux I" muttered to me viciously a man in correction of' my having spoken of insurgents. When we got to the Chateau d'Eau a tremendous engagement was going on against the huge fort-like barrack well-known to all who are acquainted with Paris, which was being held by the insur- gents. Artillery was playing vehemently, and cautiously we retired along the deserted Boulevard. All that evening the roar of cannon continued. To its lugubrious sound I dined in loneliness, with its sound in my ears I went to sleep, to hear it still booming when I awoke. I went out early to yesterday's scene, the Chateau d'Eau; there was the same solitude, the same absence of all usual life, the same hush of all sound but the crash of shell and round-shot, and incessant volleys, and some greater mass- ing of troops. The insurrection was indeed on its last legs, but it was dying With a ferocious fury. At the same point, in these same buildings, and on the classical insurrec- tionary ground of the Faubourg du Temple, a terrific struggle, the struggle of desperation, was going on with a violence which, I apprehend, exceeded even the violence of June, 1848. After staying some time and watching as well as prudence would allow this intense combat, I betook myself away. About half-past twelve I was struck by the cessation of cannon din. The insurrection at last had succumbed. The great wild beast which had kept Paris trembling for a week, at last had stretched out all-fours and died, worn with exhaustion. I hastened back in the direction of the closing scene, that battered and shelled Chateau d'Eau, but before reaching it I met a sight which never will fade from my recollection. It consisted of a string of prisoners, about five thousand in number. Taken redhanded, the men who had fought to the last—the Vieille Garde of the Insurrection. At the head of the column were some fifteen hundred Linesmen who had fraternized ; they all carried their kepis in hand, and wore, for what reason I do not know, their uniforms inside out. As a body they carried themselves not badly, and showed less fatigue than the following detachments, which constituted the most remarkable assemblage of types I ever set eyes upon, men of all ages, from the grey-haired veteran Republican to the lad of twelve. Moat looked terribly. exhausted, but very many begrimed with powder and palpitating with the flush of intense excitement, men with flashing black eyes and wildly bristling hair, looked the very demons of a devilish enthusiasm. One fellow especially was remarkable. He tried to escape, and had to be lifted on to a trooper's horse, on which he still tried to resist, when with his head spasmodically erect, streaming black hair, and his arms convulsively stretched out, and the whole wiry frame stiffened in resistance, he looked exactly like the iinpenitent thief in the paintings of old German masters. But in that long line of doomed human beings—eighty were shot straight off at the end of the Champs Elysees — there were also boys and not a few women, and these last, I must say, of a singularly repulsive type, notably one brazen-face slut, who seemed absolutely indifferent to all shame. This was not the only convoy of prisoners, male and female, I saw that afternoon by a long way, but I will not in- dulge in repetition in a letter which I fear must anyhow be too long. What, however, I must mention,—for in my opinion it is eminently characteristic of the Parisian population,—is the instantaneous transformation of the aspect of the Boule- vard. Whereas half an hour before you could count the persons abroad, the look of the Boulevard became that of a holiday outing. literally, a throng well dressed and gay, the same gadding, gossiping, lounging, do-nothing, frivolous crowd which is the normal filling up of Sunday-afternoon scenes in Paris, filled the Boulevard, gazed at the marks of shot, and gathered in chatter around corpses. The shops were not open, for the excellent reason that the owners, as a rule, had betaken themselves out of the reach of the Communal conscription, but with this exception all was changed at once from sable mourning to the glaring gaudiness of the most thoughtless merriment. And yet Paris has surely little cause for lightheartedness at present, and most assuredly, however disposed for gaiety, is in no humour that can be called kindly.
The insurrection was not soft-hearted, but, forsooth, those who have put it down are not showing themselves a whit more merciful. It is a delicate subject to criticize the action of men who have to deal with the punishment of so savage an insurrection, and I will not do more than give you facts Jean rely upon. In the first place, it must be distinctly affirmed that the spirit manifested by the insurgents was of intense ferocity. I hesitated to believe the story about a system of incendiarism with petroleum ; but I have had evidence of its correctness which I cannot reject. It is also a singular feature how vehemently the women bore them- selves. I have it from eye-witnesses of indisputable veracity, and who had the opportunity of seeing in either case the whole combat, that on the barricades in the Faubourg St. Honore and at the entry of the Rue Royale, women fought desperately. It is also a fact that, subsequently to the defeat of the insurrection, officers and soldiers have been continually shot from windows. You may, therefore, take for positive truth the statements of incendiary doings and murderous attacks; and nothing is, of course, more calculated to exasperate and to impel to ferocious vengeance. But still there remains the fact, with all the consequences flowing therefrom, that at the present moment Paris is not merely under a military government, but under one which, deferring to the public opinion of the hour, ad- ministers summary punishment wholesale with little or no judicial investigation. I do not speak lightly, I can assure you. I speak of that which I have been loathe to credit and deplore grievously. It is not merely that there are three, if not four standing courts-martial in Paris alone, that dispatch a couple of hundred men a day—the number is no exaggeration, on my solemn word,—but there is also this far more horrible fact, that every officer assumes the authority on the spot to have any prisoner shot down who may prove restive, or any citizen who may seem to him a revolutionary. I have myself seen such executions in the street, and I speak of matters for which I can give chapter and verse—if your space would allow me to go into that detail—without which the evidence cannot be conclusively brought out. Now what inspires me with alarm is the demoralizing effect such proceedings cannot fail to have on the temper of a newly formed army, which is being blooded first in civil war, and then in a prolonged course of such sanguinary executions, under circumstances which must make the soldier think he is himself a judge who has at his mercy a civilian's life. It is not so much sentence by a court-martial as execution at the beck of a soldier that is so horrible. When General Gallifet brought his convoy of prisoners as far as the Avenue de L'Impera- trice, he there and then, at his own choice, singled out eighty, whom he had instantly shot.
Such proceedings, repeated day after day, as they have been— yesterday morning 150 were shot in a batch at La Roquette—are
as bad as anything that happened after the 2nd of December, and what is deplorable, the prevailing opinion of the day approves of them. Here lies the grave political importance of this feeling. I do not like to speak with confidence from Paris as to the particu- lar course things are going to take—as to whether a temporary Republic or an immediate monarchy, and under what dynasty, is to be the upshot—but I am prepared to assert that there is in the- ascendant a formidable tide of double Reaction, political and. clerical. • If I am not mistaken, the latter will be very pronounced, and probably give the distinctive hue to the coming political phase in this country. The atrocious murder of the Archbishop and of the other priests is, of all things, the one most calculated to foment the already very considerable Catholic propensities in France, while the vacancy created in the great Paris See at once removes the one influential Gallican Prelate, and enables the Pope to elevate at this critical moment an Ultramontane nominee. But I will not pursue speculations which I feel I am not able from Paris to carry on with adequate means for inquiry. The imme- diate destiny of France lies with the Assembly at Versailles, and that body might quite as well be studied from London as from. Paris.
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