Page:Ernest Belfort Bax - A Short History of the Paris Commune (1895).djvu/24

 18 latter refused to abdicate until a Commune had been elected, and forthwith issued a proclamation that the elections would be held on the following Wednesday, the 22nd. It was only too obvious that a surrender to the deputies and mayors meant a complete knuckling down to Thiers and his Assembly.

The next thing for the Committee to do was to reorganise the public services, purposely thrown into as much disorder as possible by their late occupants prior to their flight. The Government hoped thereby to render It impossible for their successors to carry on the administration of the great metropolis. The newcomers, however, set bravely to work, and overcame all obstacles of this kind. But meanwhile the Committee, not realising that they were about to enter on a life-and-death struggle, had committed a military blunder which practically sealed the fate of the Revolution. Between Paris and Versailles, on a hill a little to the right, lies the largest and most strategically important of the forts—Mont Valérien. This had been abandoned on an order from Thiers, made during his flight—he, with a civilian's lack of knowledge of fortification, believing it not to be worth holding. As a matter of fact, it was the military key to the whole position. For thirty-six hours it remained empty; but the Committee, instead of at once placing a strong garrison there, regarded it as a matter of subsidiary importance, and contented themselves with some vague and lying assurances (as the event proved) of its having been occupied, together with the other forts, given by a portentous, half-crazed officer named Lullier, who, by his swagger, had imposed upon them and acquired thereby the temporary command. The military staff at Versailles, wiser in their generation, had meanwhile forced an order for its reoccupation from Thiers, and the morning of the 20th found