Page:The Rise and Fall on the Paris Commune in 1871.djvu/165

 and the bridge of Asnières, where the insurgents had accumulated extensive works of defence.

A large number of guns had been sent from Paris during the previous day, but they were still lying on the road to Asnières. The insurgent officers appeared not to know what to do with them, and had heaped them up on the banks of the Seine. Six 12-pounders were lying behind a barricade, and numerous others were scattered on the railway embankment. Several iron-clad locomotives were also lying on the line hard by, on one of which a serious accident had just occurred. The gun, a breach-loader, worked by five artillerymen, being overcharged, blew out the movable plug, killing two of the men, and wounding the three others.

The regular troops had iron-clad locomotive batteries on its side also, but they were still kept in reserve.

Numerous accidents were occurring daily near Porte Maillot, at the Ternes and Arc de Triomphe, which were the quarters most exposed to the shots from Neuilly and Rond Point. At No. 11 Rue Bayen a shell entered a room where a woman was seated at table with two children; the mother was killed, and the others wounded. Another fractured both legs of a man who was walking by the side of a cart. A gentleman was crossing the Avenue de l'Impératrice on horseback, and a shell cut off both the horses' forelegs, throwing the man on his face without injuring him in the least.

On the 18th of April, the Republican League published the following address:

"M. Thiers' statements to our delegates afforded us guarantees neither for the maintenance of the Republic nor the establishment of Communal liberty, in fact for none of the things we demanded. That which we predicted has come true—civil war which it depended upon