Page:The Rise and Fall on the Paris Commune in 1871.djvu/364

 "En avant!" Officers and soldiers threw themselves on the insurgents who defended the barricade, and, after a frightful slaughter, carried the position.

The movement of attack was so precipitate, that the insurgents in the steeple began ringing the tocsin for aid; hardly had the last sound been heard, when the barricade was carried. The insurgents who had fired on the troops from above, were forced to descend, and instantly shot. In this action the army made four hundred prisoners. The dead and wounded were to be counted by hundreds.

The attack on the barricade of the Rue Brézin, carried at three o'clock in the afternoon, was as bloody as that on the barricade of the church. In one, as in the other, several dramatic things occurred.

At the barricade of the Rue Brézin, a soldier of the line, calling to an insurgent who was aiming at him to surrender, avoided the ball, and while on the point of returning the fire, recognized his father. Two artillerymen and a marine who pointed the pieces placed in battery on the barricade of the church, were recognized as deserters and killed beside their guns.

One of the most furious defenders of this barricade was a woman dressed in the uniform of a National Guard. She was killed during the action, and in clearing away the bodies her sex was discovered. A hair-dresser, who had fired from the interior of his house upon the troops, was shot before his own door.

At four o'clock the tri-colored flag floated from the Mairie of Montrouge, and the people received with acclamations the soldiers of France, whose presence in their midst filled them with joy. The 114th regiment was everywhere feasted by the inhabitants, who looked upon them as their deliverers. From this moment the insurrection in the 14th Arrondissement was ended.