Page:The Rise and Fall on the Paris Commune in 1871.djvu/195

 *ing violence. A new battery from Mont Valérien opened fire on the ramparts of Maillot and Ternes. The former received about a dozen projectiles, which enlarged considerably the breach in the left bastion. While shots were being continually exchanged between the outposts, laborers were engaged on the additional works of defence in Neuilly and Levallois. The barricades held by the soldiers, however, impeded seriously these counter approaches; and frequent attempts had been made on preceding days to drive the troops beyond the bridge. A still more serious attack was attempted in the afternoon. Ten battalions were engaged, and advanced, six from Les Ternes, and four from Clichy. For three-quarters of an hour the noise of the cannon and fusillade was intense along the whole line of the Seine from the Bois de Boulogne, where the sentinels of the two armies were shooting each other down at fifty paces distance, to the bridge of Clichy, where the insurgents had established a battery. The Communists attacked the barricade boldly; but each time the troops found that they were in danger they retreated into the houses, and then going along the passage made by openings in the walls, reformed two hundred yards in the rear, and with their mitrailleuses rendered the captured barrier untenable. The insurgents at length were, as usual, fatigued with this fruitless struggle, and retired to their former positions. Great concentrations of troops were made in the villages to the west of Paris; and the soldiers finding no longer quarters in the houses, were encamped in the streets and gardens. Further to the north a cannonade was carried on warmly by the iron-clad locomotive batteries on the right bank on the Château of Bécon, and the bastions at the Portes de Clichy and de St. Ouen on Gennevilliers. The Versailles troops, however, only replied from the guns at Bécon, which had for their aim the insurgent batteries at the