Page:The Rise and Fall on the Paris Commune in 1871.djvu/480

 The investment of Père-Lachaise was conducted at the same time by the combined action of the troops under General Vinoy, who, from the Place du Trône, had gained the cemetery by the exterior boulevards and Charonne, and of the column which advanced along the Boulevard Richard-Lenoir.

The Père-Lachaise had been occupied for several days by the Federals; they had easily appreciated all the importance of this commanding position. Consequently, without respect for this place of eternal repose, without fear of calling the tumult and trouble of battle amidst these tombs—last testimonies of affection and regret, which contain the remains of so many men illustrious in politics, in letters, in the sciences, and in the arts—they had made of the cemetery a sort of entrenched camp, all the better defended as each of its narrow pathways, each of its funereal monuments, offered from step to step a refuge to the combatants. On the elevation surmounted by the well-known pyramid consecrated to the family of Beauséjour, the insurgents had installed a battery of large calibre, whose shells burst during three days over all the habitations of the right bank. In the beginning, the Père-Lachaise had received a garrison of from 7,000 to 8,000 National Guards, but as circumstances became more menacing, the ranks gradually thinned; the men profited by the night to make their escape, and on Saturday morning the cemetery contained only from 3,000 to 4,000 combatants.

In the evening, towards nine o'clock, the Federals were seized with a general panic at the alarming news of the capture of the barricades at the Chateau-d'Eau and the Boulevard Richard-Lenoir, and of the approach, more and more imminent, of the regular troops. The National Guards withdrew in great haste, scaling the walls of the cemetery, and commenced a retreat which greatly resembled a disordered flight. The chiefs, however, suc