Page:Ernest Belfort Bax - A Short History of the Paris Commune (1895).djvu/50

 44 Paris and took service under the Revolution. He neither knew nor cared anything for the cause, and frankly confessed, when interrogated by the Commune, that he did not understand what Socialism meant, but that he hated the Government which had signed away two French provinces to the "Prussians," and was willing to support any movement for its overthrow. In the teeth of Cluseret's incapacity and, as some thought, treachery, a young officer with a certain military reputation, and able to talk with an air of authority on the situation, seemed a godsend to the men of the Hôtel de Ville. Rossel wanted to carry things with a high hand in military martinet style, however, and from the first showed an utter lack of savoir faire in his dealings with the citizen-soldiery, the National Guard. In spite of his pretensions the improvement on the Cluseret regime was not obvious. Rossel gave orders one day and revoked them the next. He started on a system of barricades, connecting the three chief strategic positions within the city—Montmartre, the Trocadero, and the Pantheon—but never saw to its carrying out. The Versaillese had meanwhile opened new batteries, and the line of fire was slowly but steadily drawing closer round Paris. Matters were complicated by the Central Committee, the personnel of which had been almost entirely changed from what it was originally by trying to intermeddle and squabbling with the War Commission. Issy was in a few days reduced to a heap of ruins, and finally evacuated on the 9th of May. Rossel the same evening, with an indiscretion which had all the appearance of being intentional, had placarded all over Paris, as if it had been the news of a victory, the words, "The tri-colour floats over the fort of Issy abandoned by its garrison." He immediately after wrote a letter in which he endeavoured to clear his military reputation by abusing the organisation of the military services. These