Page:The Rise and Fall on the Paris Commune in 1871.djvu/253



and that of France. The gates once opened, the cannon will cease to be heard; order, plenty, peace, will reappear within your walls; the Germans will evacuate our territory, and the traces of our misfortunes will rapidly disappear. But if you do not act, the Government will be obliged to adopt for your deliverance the most energetic means, the most prompt, and the most certain. It is bound to do so for your sakes, and especially for the sake of France, because the cessation of productive labor, which is ruining you, has extended to it, and it has a right to save itself if you know not how to save yourselves. Parisians! think over these things quietly. In a very few days we shall be in Paris. France desires to put an end to this Civil War. She will, she ought, and she can do so. She is marching to deliver you; and you can aid and save yourselves by rendering an assault useless, and by resuming from to-day your place among your fellow-citizens and brothers.

""

It was on Sunday, the 7th of May, that this document was given to the public. The following day, at ten o'clock in the morning, the great battery of Montretout opened its fire on the bastions between 63 and 72. This battery, which will remain celebrated in the history of the siege of Paris in 1871, was not installed, as most of the other batteries were, behind epaulements of former date. As the Prussians had nothing constructed in this vicinity, it was all entirely new, and had occupied but six days in its formation, viz., from April 29th to May 4th. M. Thiers came every day to watch the progress of the work, which was being executed by 600 ouvriers and carpenters, under the direction of M. Hunebelle, well known in Paris for his intelligence and patriotism. In this short space of time 150,000 cubic feet of earth had been moved, the