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By Root 1972 0

whirling round him. It was a growing epidemic, chronic befuddlement, a legacy from the first siege aggravated by the second; a population without bread but with spirits and wine in barrelfuls had steeped itself in drink and now went crazy on the smallest drop. On 21 May, a Sunday, for the first time in his life Maurice went home drunk in the evening to the rue des Orties where he still sometimes slept. He had once again spent the day at Neuilly, fighting and drinking with the comrades in the hope of overcoming his immense, overwhelming fatigue. Then, with his head in a whirl and quite exhausted, he had come back and flung himself on to the bed in his little room, having got there by instinct, for he could never remember how he reached it. It was not until the next day, when the sun was well up, that the sound of bells, drums and bugles woke him. On the previous day the Versailles forces had found a gate unguarded at the Point-du-Jour and had entered Paris unopposed.

As soon as he went down into the street after dressing at full speed and slinging his rifle over his shoulder, a group of agitated comrades he met at the local town hall told him the events of the previous evening and night, but in such a muddled way that it was hard to grasp at first. For ten days the fort at Issy and the heavy battery at Montretout, supplemented by the Mont-Valérien, had been hammering away at the fortifications, and the Saint-Cloud gate had become untenable; the assault was to take place on the following day when, at about five o’clock, a passer-by, noticing that nobody was left guarding the gate, had simply beckoned to the sentries posted at the Versailles army trenches not fifty metres away. Without any delay two companies of the 37th infantry had come in, and behind them the whole 4th corps, commanded by General Douay. All through the night the troops had flowed in like a steady stream. By seven the Vergé division was making its way down to the Pont de Grenelle and pushing on as far as the Trocadéro. By nine General Clinchant took Passy and La Muette. By three in the morning the 1st corps was encamped in the Bois de Boulogne and at about the same time the Bruat division was crossing the Seine to capture the Sèvres gate and facilitate the entry of the 2nd corps, commanded by General de Cissey, which was to occupy the whole Grenelle district an hour later. Thus by the morning of the 22nd the Versailles troops were masters of the Trocadéro and La Muette on the right bank and of Grenelle on the left bank, to the astonishment, fury and dismay of the Commune, already crying treason and desperate at the realization of inevitable defeat. This was Maurice’s first thought when he understood – the end had come and there was nothing left but to fight to the death. But alarm bells were ringing and drums beating ever louder, women and even children were working on the barricades, the streets were filling with excited battalions hastily got together and rushing to their combat positions. By noon hope was again springing up in the breasts of the fanatical soldiers of the Commune, who were resolved to go in and win when they realized that the Versailles forces had scarcely moved. This army that they had feared to see in the Tuileries within two hours was now operating with extraordinary prudence, having learned from its defeats and now overdoing the tactics it had learned from the Prussians at such a bitter cost. At the Hôtel de Ville the Committee of Public Safety and Delescluze, the war delegate, were organizing and directing the defence. It was said that they had turned down with scorn a final conciliatory move. This put fire into people’s hearts, once again the triumph of Paris became certain, and everywhere the resistance was to be as fierce as the attack was to be implacable, owing to the hatred, fed on lies and atrocities, which burned in the hearts of both armies. That day Maurice spent in the neighbourhood of the Champ de Mars and the Invalides, slowly falling back from street to street, firing all the time. He had not been able to find his own