Page:The Rise and Fall on the Paris Commune in 1871.djvu/328

 boy, and presented to a lignard amidst the applause of the crowd.

The fighting in the neighborhood was believed to be ended. The inhabitants were professedly anti-Communists, but, unfortunately, the quarter had been occupied two days previously by three battalions from Belleville, charged with executing the famous ordres formels, or the chase after refractory National Guards.

These battalions erected three barricades, one in the Faubourg St. Honoré, at the corner of the Rue d'Anjou, and two in the Rue de Suresnes; one at the corner of the Rue d'Anjou, and the other at the corner of the Rue Boissy-d'Anglas; behind which they were now entrenched.

The soldiers, masters of the Elysée and the Rue des Saussaies, immediately opened their fire. Sharp-shooters mounted on the roof of the Elysée, and reported to the spectators below the success of their shots.

Several officers, standing at the gates of the Palace, borrowed arms from their men, giving them an example of address and self-possession—courage they did not lack. The attack was not at first pushed very rapidly, as the time for the movements in the Rue Royale and Place de la Concorde had not arrived; but at about five o'clock in the afternoon two detachments of infantry entered a house in the Rue Aguesseau, separated from the Mairie by a slight partition, forced the wall, and thus gained possession of the building, where they took numerous prisoners. These were all decorated with the armlet of the Geneva Convention, which they had probably stolen from the ambulance next door. At the same time the two barricades in the Rue d'Anjou were taken. Meanwhile, in the Boulevard Haussmann the troops had carried the Caserne Pépinière, and advanced on the Gare St. Lazare; while General Ladmirault, advancing from the Park Monceau