Page:The Rise and Fall on the Paris Commune in 1871.djvu/57



"The Central Committee of the National Guard, seeing there is urgent necessity for immediately constituting the communal administration of the city of Paris, decrees—

"1. The elections of the Communal Council shall take place Wednesday, March 22.

"2. The vote shall be taken by ballot and by arrondissement, a councillor being named for twenty thousand inhabitants, or fraction in excess of ten thousand.

"3d. The voting shall take place from eight in the morning to six in the evening, the examination being made immediately after.

"4th. The municipalities of the twenty arrondissements are charged as concerns each with the execution of the present decree. An ulterior notice will indicate the number of councillors to be elected."

Signed as before.

Several other important decrees were published on the same day, abolishing military tribunals in the army, granting full amnesty for all political crimes and offences. Nearly all crimes were construed to be political ones, and directors of prisons were instructed to set at liberty all persons detained on political grounds.

The members of the Central Committee met on Monday morning, March 20th; the tricolor flag had been hauled down, and the red hoisted in its place. The Place de la Mairie de Paris was filled with National Guards, who discussed the state of affairs in front of their piled arms. All the shops were shut at that part of the Rue Rivoli. Barricades were raised with paving stones in the Avenue Victoria, Rue de Rivoli, on the quay, Place Lobau, and all the environs. After the National Guard had taken possession of the Prefecture of Police, they established pickets on the Place Dauphine, and numerous detach