Page:The Rise and Fall on the Paris Commune in 1871.djvu/412

 distinct combats on the right and left banks, where they accumulated uselessly at certain preferred points.

As regarded the action, however, the most perilous portion of their task was yet to be achieved by the troops. They were approaching the traditional ground of the insurrection, where the remembrance of former popular combats still heated the ardor of the insurgents, where narrow and winding streets succeed each other rapidly, still existing in great numbers beyond the Faubourg Poissonière, the Rue Montorgueil, and the Rue St. Denis, notwithstanding the large avenues which have been made through these populous quarters to the Place de la Bastille.

They were penetrating, in fact, upon the theatre of the terrible days of June, 1848, which at that time seemed to those who witnessed them the end of all attempts at insurrection in Paris, but whose scenes, reproduced with even more violence in the last days of the insurrection of 1871, have seemed but slight episodes in this horrible street battle.

The object of the army had been fully determined when it began its march on the morning of the 24th. On the right bank, their course has been already described; their advance on the Hotel de Ville, in order to gain the Bastille by the Rue Saint Antoine; the taking of the Central Market and the Rue Turbigo, opening the way to the Chateau d'Eau. In the centre, the march of General Douay's corps along the old boulevards also approaching the Chateau d'Eau, and in the north, the occupation of the Rue Lafayette as far as the Northern Railway Station and the Boulevard Magenta, in order to second either the attack on the Chateau d'Eau and the Bastille or that of La Villette and the Buttes Chaumont.

On the left bank it was necessary to gain possession of the Pantheon before pushing on towards the Gobelins,