Page:Ernest Belfort Bax - A Short History of the Paris Commune (1895).djvu/30

 24 18th of March had shown the most favourable signs of sympathetic action with Paris. Lyons, Marseilles, St. Etienne, Narbonne, Toulouse, and other towns started Communes, some of them, notably Marseilles and Narbonne, with considerable chances of success. But they received no support or even communications from the head-centre of the movement. As a consequence, isolated materially and morally, they most of them came to grief in a few days. Marseilles and Narbonne held out the longest, but in a fortnight the whole Communistic movement in the provinces was dead. Thiers and his Versaillese, again wise in their generation, left no stone unturned to detach the provinces from all sympathy with Paris, and issued notices to all the prefects, maligning Paris and the Revolution, misrepresenting every fact and fabricating every lie.

Having succeeded in rooting out the Commune in the provinces Thiers proceeded to stop all goods trains for Paris and to cut off all the postal communications. Rampont, the postmaster received orders to violate the undertaking he had entered into with Thiesz, the postal delegate of the Committee, and to disorganise the postal service. The stupid Committee and Commune, hoping to the last that peace would be preserved, took no further steps for the eventuality of war. The Assembly on its side, proceeded steadily organising the isolation of Paris and consolidation of their army which was now strengthened by several regiments of released prisoners of war from Germany. By the end of March all the "moderate" members of the Commune had resigned with the exception of old Beslay. The international character of the movement was accentuated by the unanimous confirmation of the election of Frankel, the Austrian, in the 13th Arondissement. Meanwhile, the "respectable" population, the friends of "order" were migrating en masse to Versailles.