Page:The Rise and Fall on the Paris Commune in 1871.djvu/204

 intrenched around the railway station. A vast barricade armed with several cannon protected the building which commanded the line; smaller defences were raised on each side of the embankment; the walls were pierced for musketry, and all the openings were filled up with mattresses or bags of earth. The centre of combat was, however, at the station. The affair ended without any perceptible results on either side.

The most severe fighting to the west of Paris was on the Boulevard du Château. Three successive combats took place there at six in the morning, and at three and five in the afternoon, but without any positive advantage to either side, only entailing a useless sacrifice of life. The number of victims in these incessant encounters was difficult to ascertain, as the gates were closed so that no fugitives should spread the alarm to the city; the killed and wounded were only removed at night, and the battalions which returned from the villages outside were confined to the barracks, and not allowed to mention what had taken place. The bastions at the gates of Clichy and St. Ouen, continued their fire on Gennevilliers with the object of impeding the movement of the troops. An iron-clad locomotive battery on the railway was also firing at the Château de Bécon.

A barricade was erected on the Boulevard Malesherbes to support the Porte d'Asnières in case of attack. During the whole of the 28th Mont Valérien kept up a fire on the Porte Maillot, sending shells at the rate of two a minute.

Citizen Bergeret, who had been released from prison, was appointed a member of the War Committee as a deputy to Citizen Delescluze.

As General Cluseret's power approached its zenith, so did his orders and proclamations increase. By one he divided the insurgent forces into two chief commands—one extending from St. Ouen to the Point-du-Jour, under