Page:Ernest Belfort Bax - A Short History of the Paris Commune (1895).djvu/59

 Rh committed suicide, and with this act of self-destruction sounded the death-knell of revolutionary Paris. The last hope lay in a strong, well-organised rally of all the forces at the disposal of the Commune within the city, with the construction of a system of barricades connecting the three chief strategic points, Montmartre, the Trocadèro, and the Pantheon. Instead of a concentrated effort, all was confusion at this critical moment. Everyone left the Hotel de Ville for his arrondissement. Energy was not lacking, but it showed itself when too late and was dissipated in isolated disorganised action. The Committeee of Public Safety fairly lost its head, not knowing which way to turn. Delescluze at the War Office remained calm, and quieted the Commune with the assurance that the street-fight would be favourable to the Parisians.

The chief of the general staff, Henri Prudhomme, then sent for the commander of the observatory on the Arc de Triomphe, who declared he could see nothing of the Versaillese, whereupon a placard was issued casting doubt on the fact of the entry. At 11 o'clock at night, however, a member of the Commune riding down one of the outer streets near the enceinte, the Rue Beethoven, found the lights out and his horse stumbling in pools of blood. Ominous black figures lay against the wall, which proved to be corpses of murdered National Guards. At midnight General Cissey with a body of men scaled the ramparts at another undefended point and entered without encountering any resistance. They then opened several gates from the inside, and by dawn the Versaillese army was streaming into the city at five distinct apertures. Paris woke to find the fifteenth arrondissement captured, Passy and the Trocadéro occupied by Versaillese, and Versaillese shells even falling in the centre of the city. There was a veriable suave qui peut from the outposts yet held. This is a