TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE PRESENT STAGE OF THE REVOLT.
THE Revolt is still master in Paris, and has throughout the week been straying still further from the ideas both of Order and of Utopia. The public has as yet no means of knowing what occurred on Saturday and Sunday within the Red councils, for the Commune sits in secret and the Com- mittee is not composed of talkers ; but from the few facts that are patent, we incline to believe that M. Thiers—whose policy we will try by and by to explain—offered the Commune terms so large that the leaders became afraid of the defection of their followers. Assi and the International preached modera- tion, and were suppressed by Assi's arrest on a charge of malversation ; but the true Jacobin set, the men who desire a Red Republic based on the suppression both of privileges and of fortunes, but who desire to place all taxation on the rich rather than to remodel society, resolved upon action, and ordered an advance upon Versailles. The order was obeyed by about 100,000 National Guards, who marched out in three huge columns, under Henry, Gustave Flourens, and Bergeret, down the Chatillon, Meudon, and Sevres roads, to capture Versailles, disperse the Assembly, and enable the residuum of Red Members to decree the Demo- cratic Republic. Bergeret took the route past Valerien, and appears to have been full of hope, believing that the commandant of the great fort had been gained and that the troops would fraternize. The commandant, however, had either changed his mind or had been changed, and he opened a somewhat slow fire, which struck a double panic into the Red Battalions. In the first place, they were afraid of the shells, and in the second, with the incurable suspiciousness of Parisians, they believed they had been sold. Thousands fled, but a body, probably of picked men, under Bergeret himself, pressed forward, undaunted by the fire, and reached Sevres, where, as we understand most contradictory and absurd accounts, they were brought to a stand by the Ver- sailles troops, who instead of fraternizing, opened fire. Gustave Flourens, moving by a more southerly route, reached Meudon, and was there stopped and himself killed ; while Henry, on the direct southern road, occupied Chatillon till Wednesday, when he was driven out and himself taken prisoner by a charge of the Bretons. Neither at Sevres, Meudon, nor Chatillon, however, did the Versailles troops gain anything like a complete victory. They remained faithful to the Government of the Assembly, they kept up an intermittent attack throughout the three days, and they shot without mercy all revolted linesmen ; but they did not press forwards to Paris, they did not ap- parently follow any aggressive plan, and they certainly did not inflict any defeat sufficient to induce the Commune to yield. Amidst the hailstorm of telegrams, circulars from M. Thiers, and decrees from the Commune, nothing is yet quite clear; but the balance of probability is that the Red Battalions, though unable from want of skill in their officers to advance, were able to hold their own against troops who were either not very willing or not very vigorously directed. At all events, up to Thursday night the three " battles " of which Sevres, Meudon, and Chatillon were the centres may be described as " drawn," protracted skirmishes in which neither side has reaped any decisive result. The bloodshed has pro- bably been great, but it is not concentrated, and the silly, though justifiable policy of shooting all mutineers has pre- vented any surrenders, while the Commune is protected by its possession of artillery so powerful that the latest detailed telegram in the Times is written in a tone of unfeigned alarm lest the Versailles Government should be overpowered.
The cause of weakness again is not certain, but we believe it to be the indecision of M. Thiers. That statesman is, before all things, an intriguer, and be does not wish by crushing Paris to make either the Army or the Assembly absolute. He is afraid that if Paris were reduced to submission by the sword, power would either pass to the Army, which might prove Bonapartist, or to the Assembly, which would undoubtedly proclaim some dictator of the Bourbon stock. He therefore contents himself with defeating attack, with repudiating pro- scription in a very dignified speech, and with issuing circulars to the rural prefects all very sanguine in tone. He expects that Paris will at last offer acceptable terms which he may impose on the Assembly, and forgets that the Army, weary of indecision, may proclaim some dictator of its own ; that the Assembly, utterly weary of him, may by an emotional vote destroy the foundation of his authority ; and that he has no right as representative of the legitimate Government of France to leave her capital a prey to insurgents who deny her authority. These insurgents, maddened with the strife, are rapidly proceeding to acts which if continued will render Paris uninhabitable. They have already declared that they will avenge the execution of their own soldiers not by shoot- ing prisoners taken in uniform—which, if cruel, would be intelligible—but by shooting private persons whom they have seized as hostages, including the Archbishop of Paris and several prominent clergy. They have already seized the Church property, sequestrated the town houses of the chiefs of the regular Government, ordered a lev4 en masse, and raised requisitions on the Banks, the Insurance offices, and the wealthier shopkeepers. They allow their more "advanced" mem- bers to scream for "the Terror " and guillotine, and they them- selves threaten if attacked to "let the wild beast loose " and make a general attack upon the friends of order. Clearly the Re- spectables, badly as they may behave—and it should be remem- bered that this generation of them has been carefully taught to rely on Government, and not upon themselves—are entitled. to protection, and this protection M. Thiers does not yield,. though in delaying it he forfeits his own moral claim to the obedience of the country.
It is impossible in such a horrible imbroglio, such a wild dance of energetic madmen and weak defenders of order, such a hopeless confusion of duties, opinions, and persons, to see even an inch ahead ; but there is one tremendous possibility in the distance of which men do not care to speak, but which should not be forgotten. The German Army is still in France. It would seem to Englishmen Prince Bismarck's interest not to interfere in internal French affairs ; but if the Treaty is broken. he has a right to continue the war, and he may march the- German Army once more upon Paris, this time with the intention of appointing a German Viceroy to reign until the• terms of the Treaty have been fulfilled. Such a policy would, involve an infinity of new and unknown dangers, not the least of them being a sudden explosion in the South of France,. with the object of seceding from the North ; but the German chiefs have hitherto not shrunk from acts of supreme audacity,. and so terrible is the alarm excited by Paris, so irresolute is. the Assembly, so anarchical is the condition of French opinion, and so out of heart is Europe, that there is no cer- tainty that such a policy would be strenuously resisted. How,. with such a possibility in the air, the French Assembly can, go on its course without even trying to find a man equal to the situation, without doing anything beyond the business of the day, is to be explained only on the despairing theory, Qum. Deus vult perdere pries dementat. Fortunately, human beings are shortsighted, but this week we cannot see a ray of light for France.
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