Page:The Rise and Fall on the Paris Commune in 1871.djvu/25

 the revolution of the 18th March, which you now accuse, and the burning of Paris, for which you are responsible.

To defend Paris, you confined yourself to proclaiming fictitious successes. You did not utilize those terrible but vigorous elements which you have unchained, and which lately held the soldiers of France in check during two months; and, however they were the same men, misled since by democratic folly, amongst whom you could have excited the patriotic passion, they were the same national guards, cannons, muskets, forts, ramparts, barricades, all those forces which remained paralyzed in your weak hands, and which might have been sublime against the foreigner.

"Know this fact, that the Napoleons would have been patriotic enough to have blessed your triumph and their fall, if you had freed France, but history will say that having promised to save the country, you destroyed it.

"In the interval, you went to Ferrières to shed tears! and I really pity you. You pronounced there the dangerous words which are not those of a statesman: 'Not a stone of our fortresses, nor an inch of our territory.' Your conscience ought to feel oppressed by them. For the honor of a French Minister, you should have had the modesty to place some other name than your own at the foot of the act recording the grievous sacrifices rendered indispensable by often-repeated faults.

"At Versailles the conqueror proposed the disarming of the National Guard or of the army, and you chose that of the soldiers, because you feared Bonapartist tendencies among the troops; at the same time that you never paid the slightest attention to the elements of disorder in an irritated crowd, dissatisfied with itself, badly led, humiliated, and unfortunate, all of which causes were destined to lead to that terrible explosion of the Commune.

"You sold France to the representative of the enemy,