Page:The Rise and Fall on the Paris Commune in 1871.djvu/44

 according to military usage, they fired one after the other. Each ball that struck him, some in the arms, others in the legs, caused a convulsive tremor of the body. The only words he uttered were "Lâches! lâches!" ("Cowards! cowards!"—a word of much stronger significance in the French than in the English language). At the end of the fourteenth shot he was still standing erect—still holding his hat in his hand, regarding his executioners with a look of horror. The fifteenth shot struck him under the right eye, when he fell to the ground.

General Lecomte was very pale. He stood erect—his arms crossed over his breast. He uttered a few words of expostulation, but fell almost instantly, pierced by a bullet behind the ear. It is said that both their corpses were then mutilated with bayonet thrusts.

There is a question whether General Lecomte had even a mock trial. Some say yes—others, no; but the fact that a lieutenant of the 269th battalion, who was present at these massacres, cried out, "To be shot without being heard! 'tis too horrible!" makes one incline to the latter report.

The two aides-de-camp of General Lecomte were about to undergo the same fate as their General, when they were saved by the intervention of a young man of seventeen, who cried out that what was taking place was horrible, and that no one knew the men who were ordering them to be put to death. He succeeded in saving the lives of the two young officers.

Towards four o'clock, the National Guards of Montmartre, who had collected since the forenoon, commenced a descent on Paris. About three battalions took the Rue des Martyrs, where the groups cried out, without much enthusiasm, "Vive Garibaldi!" "Vive la Republique!" The first body of these men marched very well, the second worse, and the third carried their weapons with a careless