Page:The Rise and Fall on the Paris Commune in 1871.djvu/30

 own hands, felt the regular government was not sufficiently strong to enforce their surrender, consequently refused to break up, and held their own on the heights of Montmartre and in the quarters of Belleville and Vilette, the first at the north, the other two quarters at the east of the city, the residence of the lowest classes of Paris and the hot-bed of insurrections; and the red flag, the symbol of the Commune, remained hoisted on the column of July in Place Bastille. The authorities tried to coax them to deliver up those cannon of which they had over four hundred pieces, with an endless stock of ammunition; but they would not be coaxed—they maintained that they were Paris, and that Paris was France, and that an ultra-social republic was the only government possible in the country.

The mutineers had thus organized a Republic within a Republic, setting the authority of the National Government at defiance. It was argued by many of the advisors of the government that by withholding the pay of thirty sous (thirty cents), on which the National Guard had been supported from the beginning of the siege, a bloodless victory might be obtained, as they were still receiving this pay from the government against which they were almost in open rebellion. Had this been stopped, many thought that the workman would be obliged to return to his ordinary avocations, from which the government allowance had weaned him, or be starved into submission; but the pay was not stopped, and 40,000 men, well armed and well fortified, remained at the call of a few reckless and desperate individuals, with 100,000 more ready to join them on their first success against the established authorities. The latter had not long to wait.

During the first few days of the armistice, a National Guard passed the French lines, and fired a revolver at a Prussian sentinel, who was mortally wounded. The National Guard, who was an officer, was immediately