Page:The Rise and Fall on the Paris Commune in 1871.djvu/54



of a Republic, acclaimed with all its consequences the only government that will forever close, the era of invasions and civil wars.

"The state of siege is raised. The population of the capital is convoked in its sections for its communal elections. The safety of the citizen is assured by the assistance of the National Guard."

At 10 o'clock in the morning the last of the regular soldiers had quitted the capital, and were on the way to Versailles. The Ministry of Finance had been abandoned in the morning by the soldiers who there kept guard, and was occupied about noon by the National Guard. The specie on hand, which amounted to two and a half millions of francs, had been removed in the night to Versailles.

About the same hour the Ministry of the Interior, Ministry of Marine and Prefecture of Police were all occupied by the insurgents, and the entire public service was in the power of the Central Committee, who drew up the following explanation which was posted on the walls and appeared in the official journal:

"If the Central Committee of the National Guard were a government, it might, out of respect for the dignity of its electors, disdain to justify itself; but as it does 'not pretend to take the place of those whom the popular breath has overthrown,' but, in its simple honesty, desires to remain exactly within the express limits of its powers, it remains a compound of individualities which have the right to defend themselves.

"A child of the Republic, whose motto is the great word 'Fraternity,' it pardons its detractors; but it wishes to convince honest men who have accepted the calumny through ignorance, it has not acted in secret, for the names of its members were on all its proclamations. If the individuals were obscure, they did not shun the