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holders of the positions thereabouts were being hard pushed. The cannonade and fusillade from the Seine all the way to the Neuilly gate, and probably beyond, continued to increase in warmth as we hastened down the Rue Mozart. The Versaillist batteries were in full roar; and it was not possible, had some guns still remained undismounted on the enceinte, to respond effectively to their steady and continuous fire of weighty metal. Some reinforcements were waiting for Dombrowski on the Quai d'Auteuil, partly sheltered by the houses of the landward side of the quay from the fire which was lacerating the whole vicinity. The tidings which greeted the little general were unpleasant when he rode into the Institution de Ste. Périne, which was occupied as a kind of local headquarters. It was the commandant of the 93d National Guard battalion who had come to the Château de la Muette to tell Dombrowski how his men had been driven from the gate of Billancourt in the afternoon. From what I could hurriedly gather, there had subsequently been a kind of rally. National guards had lined the battered parapet of the enceinte between the gates of Billancourt and Point du Jour and further northward to and beyond the gate of St. Cloud. For some time they had clung to the positions with considerable tenacity under a terrible fire, but had been forced back with serious loss, mainly by the close and steady shooting of the Versaillist artillery of the breaching-batteries about Boulogne and those in the more distant Brimborion. The gate of St. Cloud, as well as that of Point du Jour, had followed the Billancourt gate into the hands of Versaillists, who, having occupied the enceinte in force and the adjacent houses inside, had pushed strong detachments forward to make reconnaissances up the rues Les Marois and Billancourt, one of which bodies at least had penetrated as far as the railway viaduct, but had been driven back.

Dombrowski smiled as this news was communicated to him, and I thought of his "second line of defense," and of his assurance that "the situation was not compromised." By this time it was nearly nine o'clock, and it seemed to me that the Versaillists must have got cannon upon or inside the enceinte, the fire came so straight, so hot, and so heavy into and about the Institution de Ste. Périne. Dombrowski and his staff were very active and daring, and the heart of the men seemed good. There was some cheering at the order to advance, and the troops, consisting chiefly of franc-tireurs and men wearing a zouave dress, so far as I could see in the gloom, moved out from behind the viaduct into the Rue de la Municipalité (that was its name then, but I think it is now called the Rue Michel). A couple of guns-only field

guns, I believe-opened fire on the Ceinture railway to the left of the Rue de la Municipalité, and under their cover the infantrymen debouched with a short-lived rush. Almost immediately, however, utter disorganization ensued, the result of a hot and close rifle-fire which seemingly came chiefly from over a wall which I was told inclosed the Cimetière des Pauvres. The Federals broke right and left. One forlorn hope I saw spring forward and go at the corner of the cemetery wall in the angle formed by a little cross-street, under the passionate leadership of a young staff-officer whom I had noticed in the Château de la Muette at dinner-time. There was a few moments' brisk cross-fire, then the Federal spurt died away, and the fugitives came running back, but without their gallant leader. Some affirmed that Dombrowski himself took part in this rash, futile effort, but the locality was too warm for me to be able to speak definitely on this point. Meanwhile there seemed to be almost hand-to-hand fighting going on all along the exterior of the viaduct. I could hear the incessant whistle and patter of the bullets, and the yells and curses of the Federals, not a few of whom owed the courage they displayed to alcoholic influences. Every now and then there was a shout and a short rush, then a volley which arrested the rush, and then a stampede back under cover. Soon after ten it was obvious that the fight was nearly out of the Communists. Dombrowski I had long since lost sight of. One officer told me that he had been killed close to the churchyard wall; another, that his horse had been shot under him, and that he had last seen the daring little fellow fighting with his sword against a Versaillist marine, who was lunging at him with his bayonet. After the Commune was stamped out, accusations of treachery to the cause he was professing to serve were made against Dombrowski. All I can say is, that so far as I saw him, he bore himself as a true man and a gallant soldier; and seeing that he lost his life in the struggle, it seems the reverse of likely that he had sold himself to the Versaillists.

Then came a sudden panic, and I was glad to make good my retreat behind the "second line of defense," which was not easily recognizable as a line of defense at all, and concerning which I suspected that Dombrowski must. have been gasconading. Once behind the railway, the Federal troops held their ground for some time with a show of stiffness. Occasional outbursts of fire indicated the attacks made by detached parties of Versaillists; but those flashes of strife gradually died away, and about eleven o'clock the quietness had become so marked that I thought the work was over for the night, and that Dombrowski's anticipations had been at least partly realized. The pause

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was deceptive. The Versaillists must have been simply holding their hands for a time to make the blow heavier when it should fall. No doubt they had their combinations to mature elsewhere. No doubt they were pouring in force into the area between the enceinte and the Ceinture railway. They were quiet for a purpose while they were doing this-lining the enceinte and packing the thoroughfares with artillery. We could hear in our rear in the distance the générale being beaten in the streets of Paris. A staff-officer, who spoke English like a native, came to me and told me how he mistrusted the pause, and feared that the supreme hour had come at last. It was near midnight when a strong fire of cannon and musketry opened on the viaduct. At the same moment there came on the wind the noise of heavy firing from the north. I heard some one shout: "We are surrounded! The Versaillists are pouring in by the gates of Auteuil, Passy, and La Muette!" This was enough. A mad panic set in. The cry rose of "Sauve qui peut!" mingled with the other shouts of "Nous sommes trahis!" Arms were thrown down, accoutrements were stripped off, and every one bolted at the top of his speed, many officers leading the débâcle. I came on one party-a little detachment of franc-tireurs-standing fast behind the projection of a house, and, calling out that all the chiefs had run away, left

them. Whether this was the case as regards the higher commands, I could not tell. I do not believe Dombrowski was the man to run, nor any of his staff. But certainly none of them were to be seen. There was a cry, too, that there was an inroad from the south; and so men surged, and struggled, and blasphemed confusedly up the quay in wild confusion, shot and shell chasing them as they went. In the extremity of panic mingled with rage, men blazed off their pieces indiscriminately, and struck at one another with the clubbed butts. Then battalions or detachments were met coming up, upon which surged the tide of fugitives, imparting to them their panic, and carrying them away in the rush.

There was an interval of distracted turmoil during which, in the darkness and in my comparative ignorance of that part of Paris, I had no idea for a time whither I was being carried in the throng of fugitives. The road was wide, and I was able to discern that it was bounded on the right by the Seine; by after reference to the map, I found that the thoroughfare we had been traversing was the Quai de Passy. After a while I struck out of the turmoil up a silent street on the left, and for a time wandered about in utter ignorance of my whereabouts. I can hardly tell how it came about that in the first flicker of the dawn I found myself on the Place du Roi de Rome (now, I be

lieve, called the Place du Trocadéro). There was a dense fog, which circumscribed my sphere of vision, and I knew only that I was standing on sward in an utter solitude. A few steps brought me into the rear of a battery facing westward, from which all the guns had been carried off except one which had been dismounted, evidently by a hostile shell, and lay among the shattered fragments of its carriage. Close by, no doubt killed by the explosion of the same shell which had wrecked the gun, were two or three dead Communists. As it became lighter, and the fog was slowly dispersing, the slopes of the Trocadéro disclosed themselves on my left, and I realized that I must be standing in the Trocadéro battery of which I had heard Dombrowski speak on the previous afternoon. Looking westward along the Avenue de l'Empéreur (now the Avenue Henri Martin), I saw a battery of artillery advancing up it at a walk, with detachments of sailors abreast of it on each sidewalk. I had not to ask myself whether these troops, advancing with a deliberation so equa

ble, could belong to the beaten and panicstricken army of the Commune. No; that could not be. They were, for sure, Versaillist troops coming to take possession of the Trocadéro. Indeed, had there been no other evidence, their method of announcing themselves by half a dozen chassepot bullets fired at the lone man standing by the battery was conclusive. I took the hint to quit, and started off abruptly in the direction of the Champs Elysées. I came out on the beautiful avenue by the Rue des Chaillots, about midway between the Arc de Triomphe and the Rond Point; and lo! round the noble pile which commemorates French valor stood in close order several battalions of soldiers in red breeches. Thus far then, at all events, had penetrated the Versaillist invasion of Paris in the young hours of the 22d. The French regulars were packed in the Place de l'Étoile as densely as were the Bavarians on the day of the German entry three months before. No cannon-fire was directed on them from the great Federal barricade at the Place

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1. Marie Menan, condemned to death for murder and incendiarism; 2. Marguet, life imprisonment for robbery and incendiarism; 3. Louise Bonenfant, cantinière and pointeuse in the artillery of the fédérés, life imprisonment; 4. Marie Grivot, orator of the Club, life imprisonment; 5. Augustine Prevost, cantinière of the fédérés, life imprisonment; 6. Angèline, cantinière, life imprisonment for robbery and incendiarism.

further. They had a field-battery in action a little way below the Arc, which swept the Champs Elysées very thoroughly. I saw several shells explode about the Place de la Concorde, and was very glad when I had run the gantlet safely and reached the further side of the great avenue. I was making toward the Parc Monceaux, when a person I met told me that Versaillist troops, marching from the Arc along the Avenue de la Reine Hortense (now the Avenue Hoche), had come upon the Communists throwing up a barricade, and had saved them the trouble of completing it by taking it from them at the point of the bayonet. Here I very nearly got shut in, for as we talked there was a shout, and, looking eastward, I saw that a strong force of Versaillists, with artillery at their head, were marching along the Avenue Friedland toward the Boulevard Haussmann. I was just in time to dodge across their front,

Versaillists. Occupying in strong force, and with numerous artillery, certain central points, from each of which radiated several straight thoroughfares in different directions, their design was to cut Paris up into sections, isolating the sections one from another by sweeping with fire the bounding streets. From this position, at the Pépinière, for instance, they had complete command of the Boulevard Haussmann down to its foot at the Rue Taitbout, and of the Boulevard Malesherbes down to the Madeleine, thus securing access to the great boulevards and to the Rue Royale, by descending which could be taken in reverse the Communist barricade at its foot, facing the Place de la Concorde. Desirous of seeing anything that might be passing in other parts of the city, I made my way by devious paths in the direction of the Palais-Royal. Shells seemed to be bursting all over Paris. They

were time-fuse shells; and I could see many of them explode in white puffs high in air. Several fell on and about the Bourse as I was passing it, and the boulevards and their vicinity were silent and deserted save for small detachments of national guards hurrying backward and forward. It was difficult to tell whether the Communists meant to stand or fall back, but certainly everywhere barricades were being hastily thrown up. All these I evaded until I reached the Place du Palais-Royal. Here two barricades were being constructed, one across the throat of the Rue St. Honoré, the other across the Rue de Rivoli between the Louvre and the hotel of the same name. For the latter material was chiefly furnished by a great number of mattresses of Sommier-Tucker manufacture, which were being hurriedly pitched out of the windows of the warehouse, and by mattresses from the barracks of the Place du Carrousel. The Rue St. Honoré barricade was formed of furniture, omnibuses, and cabs, and in the construction of it I was compelled to assist. I had been placidly standing in front of the Palais-Royal when a soldier approached me, and ordered me to lend a hand. I declined, and turned to walk away, whereupon he brought his bayonet down to the charge in close proximity to my person. That was an argument which, in the circumstances, I could not resist, and I accompanied him to where a red-sashed member of the Committee of the Commune was strutting to and fro superintending the operations. To him I addressed strong remonstrances, explaining that I was a neutral, and exhibiting to him the pass I had received from the War Department the day before. He bluntly refused to recognize the pass, and offered me the alternative of being shot or going to work. I was fain to accept the latter. Even if you are forced to do a thing, it is pleasant to try to do it in a satisfactory manner; and observing that an embrasure had been neglected in the construction of the barricade, notwithstanding that there was a gun in its rear, I devoted my energies to remedying this defect. The committeeman was good enough to express such approbation of this amendment that when the embrasure was completed he allowed me to go away. Looking up the Rue Rivoli, I noticed that the Communists had erected a great battery across its junction with the Place de la Concorde, armed with cannon which were in action, firing apparently up the Champs Elysées. Leaving the vicinity of the Palais-Royal, I went in the direction of the new opera-house. Reaching the boulevard, I discovered that the Versaillists must have gained the Madeleine, between which and their position at the Pépinière Barracks no obstacle intervened; for they had thrown

up across the Boulevard de la Madeleine a barricade of trees and casks. The Communists, on their side, had a barricade composed chiefly of provision-wagons across the boulevard at the head of the Rue de la Paix. For the moment no firing was going on, and as it was getting toward noon I determined to try to reach my hotel in the Cité d'Antin and to obtain some breakfast.

Leaving the boulevard by the Rue Taitbout, I found my progress hampered by a crowd of people as I approached the bottom of the Boulevard Haussmann. By a strenuous pushing and shoving I got to the front of this throng, to witness a curious spectacle. There was a crowd behind me. Opposite to me, on the further side of the Boulevard Haussmann, another crowd faced me. Between the two crowds was the broad boulevard, actually alive with the rifle-bullets sped by the Versaillists from their position about 1000 yards higher up. On the iron shutters of the shops closing it at the bottom-shops in the Rue Taitbout the bullets were pattering like hailstones, some dropping back flattened, others penetrating. This obstacle of rifle-fire it was which had massed the crowds on each side. Nor were the wayfarers thus given pause without reason, for in the space dividing the one crowd from the other lay not a few dead and wounded who had dared and suffered. My hunger overcame my prudence, and I ran across without damage except to a coat-tail, through which a bullet had passed, making a hole in my tobacco-pouch. A lad who followed me was not so fortunate; he got across indeed, but with a bullet-wound in the thigh.

Having ordered breakfast at my hotel in the Cité d'Antin, a recessed space close to the foot of the Rue de Lafayette, I ran to the junction of that street with the Boulevard Haussmann just in time to witness a fierce fight for the barricade across the latter about the intersection of the Rue Tronchet. The Communists stood their ground resolutely, although falling fast under the overwhelming. fire, until a battalion of Versaillist marines made a rush and carried the barricade. It was with all the old French élan that they leaped on and over the obstacle and lunged with their sword-bayonets at the few defenders who would not give ground. Those who had not waited for the end fell back toward me, dodging behind lamp-posts and in doorways, and firing wildly as they retreated. They were pursued by a brisk fusillade from the captured barricade, which was fatal to a large proportion of them. Two lads standing near me were shot down. A bullet struck the lamppost which constituted my shelter, and fell flattened on the asphalt. A woman ran out

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