Page:The Rise and Fall on the Paris Commune in 1871.djvu/415

 After a last attack with the bayonet, the insurgents were entirely routed, and fled towards the Gobelins and the Barrière d'Italie. The Pantheon was taken. It was time; without the rapidity of the action, which had thrown trouble and disorder among the Federals, this monument would have been broken to fragments by a horrible explosion. The order had been given to blow up the Pantheon; barrels of powder, and vats filled with petroleum, placed in the cellars, only awaited the electric spark.

There, as in many other places, time had failed the insurgents, and prevented them from giving free course to their terrible designs.

These designs were not due, as one would like to believe, to the sudden inspiration of madmen, drunk with whiskey, powder and despair. No! It is certain, unhappily for the honor of human nature, that these projects of destruction, dictated by a true sentiment of social hatred, formed a part of the plan of resistance of the Commune and the Central Committee, and were, above all, entertained by the members of the Committee of Public Safety.

The burning of so many public monuments, of so much private property, is a sufficient proof of this design; and yet all these conflagrations were, thanks to the promptitude of the military operations, but partial incidents in a general system conceived for the ruin of Paris.

Discoveries have been made in most of the quarters of quantities of powder and petroleum placed in the sewers, in the depths of cellars, in the different stories of houses, in the interior of public edifices, placed in such a manner as to blow up or set on fire entire streets.

Finally, written orders have been found on the different chiefs of the insurrection, denoting how carefully the horrible combination had been carried out.

Those ordering the formation of four companies under