Page:Ernest Belfort Bax - A Short History of the Paris Commune (1895).djvu/48

 42 The "chief of the executive," of course, hardly listened to the envoys, and declined to further discuss the question of peace with anyone. They might have known before that such would have been their reception. The little smug bourgeois fiend was already scenting the proletarian blood he so longed to shed. This last formal challenge having been made and rejected, the Freemasons definitely took their stand as combatants for the Commune.

Milliére, who had worked hard to organise the provincials in Paris ever since the early part of April, induced the "Republican Alliance of the Departments," consisting of provincials residing in Paris, to give a formal adhesion to the Commune, 15,000 men accompanying Milliére to the Hôtel de Ville, after having voted an address to the departments. This was on the 30th of April. The same afternoon news arrived of the evacuation by the Federals of the fort of Issy, which had been the result of a surprise. A few remained behind, however, one of them a lad at the entrance, with gunpowder and a train, prepared to blow himself up rather than surrender the fort. As soon as the news was known reinforcements were sent, and the Versailles driven from the park surrounding the fort and the fort itself was reoccupied. This affair, notwithstanding that it had no immediate military consequences, turned a sudden light on to the way the defence was being conducted, and led to the arrest of Cluseret in the evening. It also led indirectly to the carrying out of a project mooted some days before, of the creation of a "Commitee of Public Safety." Here we see the old revolutionary tradition asserting itself. It was formally expressed by that old votary of the revolutionary tradition, Félix Pyat, who gave as a reason for it that a "Committee of Public Safety" belonged to the period which first produced the "Republic" and the "Commune." This adoration of