of the International, it indicated that the first step was taken towards the reconstitution of society according to correct principles. The Commune, in the Socialist and revolutionary view, is the true political unit, the basis on which alone a just and legitimate structure of government can be raised. We find the following questions and answers in a little republican catechism,* published at Paris during the domination of the insurgents :"What is the Commune?" "The Commune is the union of the individuals inhabiting one and the same locality, and nominating a communal council by election." "How must the social body, on the basis of the Commune, complete the general political organisation?" "Either by the constitution of the department, which is a group of communes, of the province, which is a group of departments, and finally of the State-or otherwise, for every political organisation will be the most rational and the best, which shall protect and maintain the natural rights of the individual, while securing the harmony and safety of the social body."

The Commune held its first sitting at the Hôtel de Ville on the 29th March, which day, reverting to the exploded nomenclature of the first Revolution, it called the 8th Germinal of the year 79. In ancient Greece a democratic revolution in any city was usually signalised by three measures-the re-division of the land, the recall of the exiles, and the extinction of debts. The first measure exceeded the competence of the Commune, hemmed in as it was by Prussians on one side and Versaillists on the other; but to the second and third it made considerable advances. It opened the prisons, and restored liberty to its friends who, out of a noble disregard to the prejudices of proprietors, had become amenable to incarceration, while it filled them again with those guilty and obstinate citizens whom it suspected of "complicity" with the Versailles Government. Of three decrees passed at its first sitting, the first abolished the conscription, and declared that no armed force, other than the National Guard, could be raised in or introduced into Paris. The two other decrees emulated as far as was practicable the glorious Greek ideal of the extinction of debts; " the first remitted to all tenants three quarters' rent, the second suspended indefinitely the sale of all pledges left unredeemed in the hands of the pawnbroker.

Money was the most pressing want of the new Government; and it will ever remain a marvel that the Bank of France, containing realisable securities to the value of three milliards (£120,000,000 sterling), though placed during sixty-two days at the mercy of the most unscrupulous set of men that ever held the reins of power in modern times, emerged from the hazard comparatively scatheless. A few millions of francs, belonging chiefly to the city of Paris, were all that the Bank was compelled to disburse to the Commune during its term of power. The merit of this happy result is ascribed by the committee of the Assembly chiefly to the courage, energy, and presence of mind of the deputy-governor of

"Catechisme Populaire Républicaine." Paris, Lemerre, 1871. "Enquête Parlementaire," I., 116.

the Bank, aided by the moderation of the Communal delegate, M. Beslay, and the fidelity of the large staff of employés, more than 500 in number, who defended the establishment with arms in their hands, and not one amongst whom proved false to his trust.

The easy triumph of the insurrection on the 18th March, and the kind of sanction which the elections of the 26th imparted to it, seem to have turned the heads of the ringleaders. They believed that they had but to march out in force against Versailles in order to cause the vile, reactionary, rural, monarchical, priest-ridden Assembly to collapse, the troops fraternising with the people as before. On the 2nd April, a large body of National Guards marched out across the bridge of Neuilly to the Rond-point of Courbevoie, and occupied the barracks of that village. Vinoy moved forward the division Bruat and the brigade Daudel to drive them back. The first life sacrificed to the Moloch of civil war was that of a man universally respected and beloved in the army, Surgeon-General Pasquier, who, while riding to join General Vinoy's staff, missed his way, and falling in with a party of Federals,* was at once shot down. The troops behaved extremely well; they seemed anxious to show that they could now be depended upon. The barricades which had been constructed at the Rond-point were carried by assault; the barrack was occupied; and the Federals, routed and in great confusion, recrossed the bridge of Neuilly and fled towards Paris along the Avenue de la Grande Armée. Guns were brought up to the Rond-point, and opened fire with great effect on the fugitives, visible for a great distance on the straight line of avenue which connects that point and the Arc de Triomphe. But no sooner had a few shells fallen than the avenue was cleared as if by magic, the Federals taking refuge in the side streets. The Commune notified the engagement to the citizens of Paris in a picturesque and imaginative bulletin, which said that the "royalist conspirators had attacked with the Pontifical Zouaves and the Imperial police; that the Chouans of Charette and the Vendeans of Cathelineau, flanked by the gendarmes of Valentin (the prefect of police), had rained bullets and shells on the inoffensive village of Neuilly, and commenced a civil war."

Nothing daunted by their defeat, the Communal authorities resolved to make a serious attempt the following day (April 3) to reach Versailles. Their army was divided into two columns. The right column, under Flourens, numbering about 30,000 men, marched over the bridge of Neuilly, re-occupied Courbevoie (from which Vinoy had withdrawn the troops on the previous evening), and directed its march towards Rueil, along the north flank of Mont Valérien. The Federals seem to have been misled by erroneous information into the belief that the garrison would not fire upon them. They were soon undeceived. The column had passed the Rond-point of Bergeret, and

So the partisans of the Commune began to be called about this time, because one main object of the insurgents was to transforma France into a federation of Communes.

Paris so far as the Commune could effect it, the churches being either closed or employed for some secular purpose, and the clergy arrested or dispersed. Calumnies of the most horrible nature were officially propagated in relation to monks and nuns; we need but refer to the story of the convent of Picpus, and the pretended discovery of sixteen dead bodies in the crypt of the church of St. Laurent. The expulsion or arrest of the Christian brothers and the teaching sisters who perform so large a part of the elementary instruction in France having

assassinated on the 25th June, 1848, while holding a parley with the insurgent ouvriers.

The fanaticism of the Commune did not impel it to make war upon religion only; with equal frenzy it raged against Art, if the ideas and objects which it commemorated were distasteful in its eyes. With amazement the citizens read the following announcement, placarded everywhere on the 12th April:-"The Commune of Paris, considering that the imperial column of the Place Vendôme is a monument of barbarism and tyranny, a symbol

left the schools vacant, the Commune eagerly seized the opportunity of introducing the favourite system of extreme Liberals-secular and compulsory education. Raoul Rigault, Procureur of the Commune and a member of the Committee of Public Safety, announced in the Official Journal that "the Brothers and Sisters of the Christian schools had abandoned their post (!), and the occasion was fitting to inaugurate definitively a system of lay, gratuitous, and obligatory instruction." A decree of the 28th April ordered the Bréa Chapel to be pulled down, because it was "a standing insult to the vanquished of June." The Bréa Chapel was erected in memory of the general of that name, who was

The Picpus story is so designated by the Parliamentary Commis

sion; but it ought to be mentioned that the Times correspondent, who

visited the convent at the time, seems to have formed a different

opinion.

of brute force and false glory, an affirmation of Chanvinism, a negation of international law, a standing insult from the victors to the vanquished, a perpetual offence against one of the three great principles of the French Republic-fraternity-decrees: the column of the Place Vendôme shall be pulled down." Granted that in these premisses there is a good deal of truth, yet what a conclusion to jump to! We might as well. because the names of the days of the week are a monument of Paganism, proceed at once to change them, ot because the monarchy and the House of Lords remind us of feudalism and arbitrary power in days gone by, revolutionise our constitution. If books and theatres, cafés and journals, ceased to instil the love of "false glory" into the minds of Frenchmen, that graceful column, with the hatted figure on the top, would certainly not corrupt them. Between the issue of the decree and

its execution there was a delay of more than a month, the Commune being in doubt as to the best means of accomplishing its purpose. At last, the base of the column, just above the pedestal, having been undermined, and ropes fastened round it, everything was ready for the demolition on the 16th May. The members of the Commune came to see the sight, as children run to witness the fall of a tree. The first attempt failed, through the breaking of a block; but another rope was brought; the purchases were hauled taut; and the Napoleon column, yielding to the pressure, and breaking into several pieces in the air, fell, without causing any damage, on the bed of sand and faggots which had been prepared for it. A Versailles despatch laconically announced that, according to a telegram received from Mont Valérien, "the top of the Vendôme Column had disappeared from the horizon." But this official calmness did not prevent a concentrated fury from taking possession of the breasts of the soldiers when they heard of this deliberate insult offered to the profession of arms, and to the memory of their gallant fathers. The Commune had taken no account of the virtues of endurance, courage, and fidelity which adorn the character of the victorious soldier; yet it was these, quite as much as vainglory and ambition, of which the column was a lasting monument; and of this Marshal MacMahon, in his order of the day on the occurrence, took care to remind the troops. "The Commune," he said, "hopes thus to efface the memory of the military virtues of which the column was the glorious symbol. Soldiers! if the recollections which the column commemorated are no longer graven upon brass, they will remain in our hearts. Inspired by them, we know how to give France another proof of bravery, devotion, and patriotism."

The

Before proceeding with the narrative of the siege, we will group together a few more significant facts and notices which tend to throw light on the inner spirit and tendency of the Communal Government. Revolution of 1848 brought the idea of co-operation prominently to the front; and various experiments in co-operative association were at that time honestly tried, and were attended with results more or less encouraging. But it was reserved for the Commune to initiate that form of co-operation which, in order to get a good start, robs the capitalist of his plant and buildings, and appropriates them to the purposes of a regenerated industry. By a decree of the 17th April, a commission was appointed, charged with the duty of preparing a list of workshops and factories which had been abandoned by the proprietors. These establishments were to be made over to co-operative societies, which were to be declared the proprietors of them, in consideration of pecuniary indemnities to be fixed by a jury of arbitration. "This," observes the Parliamentary Commission," was spoliation erected into a social system, the partition of property and the expropriation of industries for the benefit of those who had not created the requisite resources, nor had incurred the risks to which every industrial enterrise is liable."

Never was more vigorous language of self-laudation used on one side, or of reprobation on the other. In a "Declaration to the French People," published on the 19th April, the Commune endeavoured to put forward an attractive and coherent theory of their position and claims. "Paris," they said, "only demands the recognition and consolidation of the Republic, the absolute autonomy of the Commune extended to every locality in France, the permanent intervention of the citizens in municipal affairs by the free defence of their interests, the organisation of urban defence and of the National Guard. Paris. . . . does not seek to destroy the unity of France; but it is by the voluntary association of all local initiatives, all individual energies, that she wishes henceforward to found political unity. The communal revolution, commenced by the popular initiative of the 18th March, inaugurates a new era of experimental, positive, and scientific politics; it is the end of the governmental and clerical world, of militarism, functionarism, exploitation, stock-jobbing, monopolies, and privileges." They invite all France to aid them in the combat which they are waging, significantly adding that this contest can only be ended in one of two wayseither by the triumph of the communal idea, or by the ruin of Paris.

On the other side the Keeper of the Seals, in a circular addressed to all the procureurs-generaux, or public prosecutors, in the departments, urging them to vigorous action against the partisans of the Commune, said:— "These men are not the enemies of this or that government, but of human society; as such you must not hesitate to prosecute them. And do not allow yourself to be arrested in your course when, in a language more moderate in outward seeming without being less dangerous, they present themselves as the apostles of a conciliation in which they do not believe themselves, placing on the same level the Assembly sprung from universal suffrage, and the pretended Commune of Paris. Such language is not less guilty because it is more hypocritical; it weakens the sense of right and wrong, it habituates men to class under the same category the legal order of things and the insurrection, the power created by the will of France, and the dictatorship which has won its place by crime and keeps it by terror."

The conduct of the Paris Freemasons with reference to the Commune was fantastic, yet withal instructive. We are accustomed to associate Freemasonry in England with ideas of much good-fellowship, much finery, a little charity, and nothing more, and perhaps we are right. But since the time when Weisshaupt and the Illuminati, about the middle of last century, used the machinery of the Masonic lodges to propagate the revolutionary doctrines which were soon to convulse and rend society from its foundations, Freemasonry has always been watched with somewhat of suspicion by the settled Governments of the Continent. The conduct of the Paris lodges on the occasion we are about to describe showed that this suspicion was well founded. A deputation waited on the Commune, on the 26th April, to declare that Freemasonry had resolved to plant its