Page:The Rise and Fall on the Paris Commune in 1871.djvu/163

 but in vain, as they were again driven from Colombes across the river.

The Chief of the Executive Power has had a singular fortune. He attacked the fortifications of Paris which he constructed, and ordered an assault on the Chateau of Bécon, where he passed the whole of the summer of 1835 consecrated to peaceful studies.

"M. Thiers issued to the provincial authorities the following proclamation, in answer to complaints of procrastination made by country journals:

"We persist in our system of temporization for two reasons, which we can avow; first of all, to collect forces so imposing that resistance will be impossible, and therefore not sanguinary; and secondly, to leave misled men the time to return to reason.

"They have been told that the Government desires to destroy the Republic—a statement absolutely false; the sole occupation of the Executive being to put an end to the civil war, to re-establish order, credit, labor, and effect the evacuation of the territory by the fulfilment of the obligations contracted with Prussia.

"Those misguided men have been told that we wish to shoot them all; another falsehood, as the Government pardons all who lay down their arms, as it has done with the 2,000 prisoners it supports at Belle-Isle without exacting any service from them.

"Finally, they have been told that, deprived of the subsidy which enabled them to live, they will be forced to die of hunger—an assertion as untrue as all the rest; for the Government has promised them to continue their pay for some weeks yet, in order to provide them with the means of awaiting the resumption of work which is certain to arrive as soon as order is re-established and submission to the law obtained."