Page:Ernest Belfort Bax - A Short History of the Paris Commune (1895).djvu/65

 Rh but one woman with a child in her arms refused to kneel, shouting to her companions, "Show these wretches that you know how to die upright!"

On the south side of the Seine the forces of the Commune made a rather better show. A Polish exile named Wroblewski who knew something of military matters extemporised a rough system of defences which served to keep the enemy at bay for a while over a considerable area. Wroblewski's ultimate idea was to concentrate the whole defence on this left bank under cover of the forts, the gun boats of the Seine and the Pantheon, and he proposed this plan to Delescluze. But it was impossible to rally matters in accordance with any tactical scheme extending beyond the material immediately at hand and the exigencies of the moment, so complete was the disintegration of the defence. Lisbonne, the member of the Commune, commanded a body of Federals in the Pantheon quarter. He achieved wonders with small means, defending the approaches to the Luxembourg for two whole days. The Committee of Public Safety issued a placard calling upon the Versaillese soldiery to refuse to fire on their brothers of Paris. The "Central Committee" did the same. But it was of no avail. By the Tuesday night scarcely the half of Paris remained to the Commune. The Versaillese, no longer apprehensive of snares, were pushing boldly forward in every direction.

In the course of the evening Raoul Rigault, maddened by the horrors he saw perpetrated on all sides by the friends of "order," but acting on his own responsibility alone, went to St. Pelagìe and ordered Gustave Chaudey, accused of having instigated the firing from the Hotel de Ville in January, to be taken out into the prison yard and shot, together with three gendarmes. They had all been taken as hostages,