PARIS
UNDER THE COMMUNE:
OR,
THE SEVENTY-THREE DAYS OF THE
SECOND SIEGE
WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS, SKETCHES TAKEN ON THE SPOT, ANDPORTRAITS (FROM THE ORIGINAL PHOTOGRAPHS).
BY JOHN LEIGHTON, F.S.A.,
&C.
LONDON:
1871.
Socialism, or the Red Republic, is all one; for it would tear down thetricolour and set up the red flag. It would make penny pieces out of the ColumnVendôme. It would knock down the statue of Napoleon and raise up that of Maratin its stead. It would suppress the Académie, the École Polytechnique, and theLegion of Honour. To the grand device Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, itwould add “Ou la mort.” It would bring about a general bankruptcy.It would ruin the rich without enriching the poor. It would destroy labour,which gives to each one his bread. It would abolish property and family. Itwould march about with the heads of the proscribed on pikes, fill the prisonswith the suspected, and empty them by massacres. It would convert France intothe country of gloom. It would strangle liberty, stifle the arts, silencethought, and deny God. It would bring into action these two fatal machines, oneof which never works without the other—the assignat press and theguillotine. In a word, it would do in cold blood what the men of 1793 did infever, and after the grand horrors which our fathers saw, we should have thehorrible in all that was low and small.
(VICTOR HUGO, 1848.)
PREFACE.
Early in June of the present year I was making notes andsketches, without the least idea of what I should do with them. Iwas at the Mont-Parnasse Station of the Western Railway, awaitinga train from Paris to St. Cloud. Our fellow passengers, as wediscovered afterwards, were principally prisoners for Versailles;the guards, soldiers; and the line, for two miles at least,appeared desolation and ruin.
The façade of the station, a very large one, was pockmarked all over by Federalbullets, whilst cannon balls had cut holes through the stone wall as if it hadbeen cheese, and gone down the line, towards Cherbourg or Brest! The restaurantbelow was nearly annihilated, the counters, tables, and chairs being reduced toa confused heap. But there was a book-stall and on that book-stall reposed alittle work, entitled the “Bataille des Sept Jours,” a brochurewhich a friend bought and gave to me, saying, “Voilà la texte de voscroquis,” From seven days my ideas naturally wandered toseventy-three—the duration of the reign of the Commune—and thenagain to two hundred and twenty days—that included the Commune of 1871and its antecedents. Hence this volume, which I liken to a French château, towhich I have added a second storey and wings.
And now that the house is finished, I must render my obligations to M. Mendèsand numerous French friends, for their kind assistance and valuable aid,including my confrères of “The Graphic,” who have allowed meto enliven the walls with pictures from their stores; and last, and not least,my best thanks are due to an English Peer, who