Page:The Rise and Fall on the Paris Commune in 1871.djvu/479

 *terior parapet was made of bags of paper to deaden the force of the shells. This obstacle was unapproachable in front; it was supported on the sides by barricades in all the streets running down towards the canal. The troops, however, advanced by the Bastille, attacking the secondary obstacles, such as the barricade of the Chemin-Vert, and succeeded in placing between two fires the great fortification at the bifurcation of the two avenues. The Federals were forced to abandon it, leaving the neighborhood in ruins. Clothes with large red stains; corpses black with powder; horses horribly mutilated, and broken arms and caissons, were lying everywhere upon the ground, which seemed perfectly saturated with blood.

During the entire afternoon shells fell like rain upon Belleville, the Buttes-Chaumont, and Père-Lachaise, enveloping the horizon in enormous clouds of smoke, and forced the musketry fire to descend gradually from the heights and take refuge in the lower quarter of Belleville, between the Chateau-d'Eau and the Buttes-Chaumont, where it continued to roll with diabolical rage.

The Buttes-Chaumont, bombarded for three days by the battery established at Montmartre, surrounded and strongly attacked on Friday night, was not definitively taken until Saturday evening. Numerous traces of projectiles in the neighborhood of the Buttes attest the efficacy of the artillery fire directed against them. A height situated at the extremity of the park of which the Federals had formed an advanced redoubt armed with cannon, was first taken by the troops; the assault was then given on the interior hillocks, which were carried after a violent combat The insurgents resisted to the very last moment, only a few shells remaining in their possession when the soldiers penetrated into their entrenchments, where they were surrounded and taken prisoners to the number of 7,000 or 8,000 men.