Part 12

A Division subsequently advanced to Passy to join that which had taken La Muette.

Such was the suddenness with which the occupation of the Point du Jour had been effected that, as I have stated, the firing from the military batteries continued for a considerable time after the first of the troops were in it. It was not till 4 o'clock that the order to cease firing in that direction left the Head-Quarters. In the meantime, hundreds of people stood on the Avenue and Terrace of Meudon watching the cannonade, and believing that all the posts of the Insurgents were still occupied by the enemy. Even the officers and men in the batteries did not know why the order to cease firing had been sent round.

I have just returned, after having followed in the rear of General Vinoy's last column, going to take up positions in the neighbourhood of the Trocadero. I have wandered all over the Point du Jour, visited Auteuil, and have walked along by the bastions between the Gate of St. Cloud at the Point du Jour and the Gate of Auteuil. Having watched the other side of the Sevres Bridge, I was surprised on passing along the Sevres road to observe that, very little damage had been done to the houses at the end of it near the enceinte. One or two bore the marks of shells, but the fact is that nearly all had escaped, and what I saw at the enceinte and within it, shows that the artillery practice of the Versailles side had been exceedingly good throughout the bombardment. The people on the Sevres road had kept their shops open amid all the terrible firing. Only some two or three houses had been closed. They stood at a dangerous angle to the batteries at Meudon. On one of them was chalked "fermee pour cause du bombardement." Between the last of the houses and the ramparts, and at a distance of not more than 100 yards from the latter, were the newly-cut trenches which the troops had constructed. Good gabions protected them in front, and there was a plentiful supply of fascines lying all about. The doors of the Porte were no longer to be seen, except in little bits on the roadway. The drawbridge had succumbed bodily, and its place was supplied with some planks. The posthouse was in ruins, and the stone walls on either side between the gates and the parapet of the fortifications had been crumbled into rubbish; the glacis from the Point du Jour to Auteuil had been ploughed up in such a manner that not a yard of it was to be seen without a shell hole. To say that the parapet had been riddled would not be correct. It is smashed here and there, and at intervals everywhere, but in no place between the two Gates I am referring to is the earthwork inside the parapet laid bare, nor has a breach, properly so called, been anywhere made. The doors and gate walls of both gates are smashed through, but all along, despite serious disfigurement, the parapet is strong still.

To come back to the Point du Jour--that is as much a ruin as the town of St. Cloud. From the gate to the Railway Station there is not a single habitable house; not three have roofs, and not one has its windows and walls intact. Every lamppost has been scattered about the road in small pieces, and a stranger who had not heard of the bombardment might be pardoned for supposing that the streets had been macadamized with the fragments of shells. Strange to say, the staircase leading from the Booking Office of the Railway Station to the line over head is uninjured, or nearly so, and by its means I was enabled to ascend and walk through that Viaduct which I have been looking at from a distance as shells have been battering it for the last six weeks. It is much knocked about, and so is the bridge underneath it, which in a series of arches spans the river, but both will be serviceable still after some repair. Huge stones, displaced from their settings and broken into small pieces, lie scattered on the bridge and its approaches. From the Viaduct I could see an immense conflagration in the neighbourhood of the Champ de Mars, and a combat between the troops and the Insurgents was going on. In the Place de la Concorde and the Rue de Rivoli, all down to the Trocadero, reserves were in waiting with their chassepots stacked on each side of the road, but there was no fighting along the Quays. General Vinoy had established himself in his new Head-Quarters, and the 70,000 or 80,000 men already in the heart of the city are believed to be quite sufficient to dispose of the last desperadoes of the Commune. The sounds of battle we heard from more than one point, and yet every one spoke of the Insurrection as in its last agonies. Men and women once more held up their heads and snapped their fingers at Delescluze, Dombrowski, and the Commune, but there was sad evidence all around us of what this rebellion had done. There in the little cemetery behind the ramparts lay the unburied and mangled remains of 32 National Guards who had been killed at the batteries just above. The whole place was a picture of ruin and desolation. Passing out of the Point du Jour by the opining where the Porte de St. Cloud had stood, whole and entire, even after the Prussian bombardment, but where there is not a vestige of it bigger than a splinter now, I walked along the glacis in the direction of Auteuil. I was surprised to find that, at a distance of less than an eighth of a mile from the latter place, the military had fixed their gabions, sapped right up the glacis, and to within four or five yards of the fosse. The trenches had been cut across the Bois de Boulogne. Nothing, however, like enough of the parapet and the earthwork above had been thrown down to fill up the fosse. Indeed, no effort whatever had been made in the way of filling up, except at either side of the two Portes, so that an assault at any other than these points would have been a very difficult undertaking. On the glacis I saw the dead and decomposed body of a man not in uniform. He lay on his side, with one hand under his head and the other raised in the air. A gentleman who lives close by stated that the deceased, with two or three other men, had come out to fire stray shots at the soldiers in the trenches. As he lay there to-day I perceived that he had been pierced by several rifle balls. The gates at Auteuil have disappeared as completely as those at Point du Jour, and at the Railway Station behind the iron railway bridge over the road all the habitations are, so to speak, in a heap. The French term "debris" best describes what is left of Auteuil and its surroundings. Stone, mortar, iron bridge metal, lamp posts, trees, are smashed, pounded, and scattered. No one who visited Auteuil in happier times would recognize even the spot on which it stood. As specimens of successful bombardment the Point du Jour and the three barracks behind the enceinte that lie between them may be cited among the most complete that even modern artillery has succeeded in producing.

A great explosion, followed by a conflagration, occurred at half-past 12 at the Staff Quarters near the Esplanade of the Invalides.

Paris is now completely surrounded.

It is asserted that Dombrowski is hemmed in at Ouen.

The Insurgents have established a battery upon the terrace of the Garden of the Tuileries, the fire of which sweeps over the Champs Elysees; but this position has been turned by General Clinchamp, and there is reason to hope that the resistance will not be of long duration.

The Versailles troops have already captured from 8,000 to 10,000 prisoners.

Fighting has been going on all this morning, the cannonade and musketry fire being incessant.

There is a large fire in the neighbourhood of the St. Lazare Railway Station, and a dense cloud of smoke hangs over the heights of Montmartre. Not only have the Germans completely isolated Paris, but all communication between Versailles and St. Denis is also cut off. Trains arriving from the North no longer enter Paris, but stop at St. Denis.

It is rumoured that the Prussians occupy Fort Vincennes.

The strictest orders have been given to the German outposts to drive back all Insurgents, and the advanced corps have been doubled tonight to prevent any from breaking through the circle of investment north of Paris.

A wounded Insurgent General attempted to pass the Prussian outposts, but was forced to retrace his steps.

MAY THE 23d.

It may be desirable that I should add some particulars to the account I have already given of the way in which the troops moved from the enceinte to the different positions they occupied in Paris last night. The first column, proceeding between the railway and the Fortifications, made its way from Auteuil to La Muette; the second, starting from Auteuil, threw down a barricade which had been erected behind the railway arch, and, taking the Rue Raynouard and the Rue Franklin, proceeded by the high ground to the Trocadero. This march was not a rapid one, because at every step precautions had to be taken against snares that might have been laid by the Insurgents. The Artillerymen and the Engineers entered the houses on the terraces and examined the powder stores in the Rue Beethoven in order to ensure the column against an explosion. The third column, setting out from the Point du Jour, marched along the quays to the Bridge of Jena. At this point there was a junction of the three columns, and a line of occupation from Passy to the river side at that bridge was established. The fourth column crossed the river at the Point du Jour, and marched along the quay of Grenelle. Upon entering the Champs de Mars they found that the Insurgents were encamped in considerable force there. Skirmishers were thrown out, and, opening fire, they drove out the enemy without any serious difficulty, although the latter had a park of artillery. The Insurgents showed fight for some time, and a struggle was maintained on the right of the Champs de Mars, where the temporary wooden barracks have been erected. The Insurgents formed in a sort of hollow square at the four sides of the portion of the ground which for some time has been covered with artillery caissons, and responded to the attack upon them by a vigorous fire, but being opposed on two sides by an overwhelming force, they gave way, without any very great loss on either side. The tricolour was planted on the Pavilion d'Ecole.

From the Arc de Triomphe there was no fighting down the Champs Elysees, but there was a struggle at the Palais de l'Industrie before the troops obtained possession of that building. Under the orders of certain members of the Commune, the Insurgents resisted with a musketry fire.

Montmartre kept firing in the direction of the Trocadero throughout the day. Its fire did not kill or wound many men, but it retarded the advance of the troops towards the heart of the city.

The fire which I mentioned yesterday as having been seen by me from the Viaduct of the Point du Jour was caused by the blowing up of the riding school of the Ecole d'Etat Major, which was filled with cartridges.

Dombrowski has not been taken. He escaped from La Muette when the troops entered, leaving behind him the silver service which was in the room where he had been about to sit down to dinner.

Assy, was taken on the Quai de Billy.

Montmartre has been carried after a rather sharp struggle. The tricolour now waves over the Buttes.

For some hours I witnessed the fighting to day. I found that early this morning all the important positions of Montmartre had been taken by the two Corps d'Armee of Generals Douai and Ladmirault. The latter General had occupied the station of St. Ouen and the Place of Clichy, and he had advanced to Montmartre by an external movement, keeping for some distance outside the ramparts. At the same time General Douai made a direct movement from inside the city by the Parc de Monceaux. In this manner Montmartre had been almost entirely surrounded. There was a hard contest, but the troops succeeded in entering the Buttes. A large number of the Insurgents were killed in the action, and about 4,000 were made prisoners. The number of cannon and mitrailleuses taken was very considerable, amounting to some hundreds. Belleville is still in the hands of the Insurgents, as are also the Hotel de Ville and the Tuileries. The Red flag was floating on them at half-past 5 o'clock. Severe fighting was going on across the Place de la Concorde between the Insurgents occupying the mansion of the Ministry of Marine, at the corner of the Rue Royale, and the troops on the other side of the river in the Palace of the Corps Legislatif. A gunboat which the Insurgents had under the Pont Royal, close to the Tuileries, was firing constantly. The Insurgents in the Rue de Rivoli and the garden of the Tuileries were using mitrailleuses and rifles, and the troops along the Boulevard at the edge of the Place des Invalides, close to the river, were attacking them with four-pounder guns. Fort Vanves was firing on the Insurgent positions in the neighbourhood of Montrouge and the Faubourg St. Germain, and the Federalists were shelling Vanves from Forts Montrouge and Bicetre. There was musketry skirmishing at various points in the Faubourg St. Germain. The Insurgents occupy houses, from which they keep up a rapid fire to impede the march of General Cissey's troops. Among the prisoners taken to-day many have been recognized as old Reds who were actively engaged in the insurrection of June, 1848. A movement has been ordered which will result in completely shutting in the Insurgents within a circle formed by the whole Army of Paris. The Madeleine is in the hands of the military. Several fires have broken out in the city. Colonel Piquemalle, Chief of the Staff of General Verge, was killed to-day.

The following circular despatch was yesterday forwarded to the Prefects of the several Departments.

"The tricolour flag waves over the Buttes-Montmartre and the Northern Railway station. These decisive points were carried by the troops of Generals Ladmirault and Clinchant, who captured between 2,000 and 3,000 prisoners. General Douai has taken the Church of the Trinity, and is marching upon the Mairie in the Rue Drouot.

"Generals Cissey and Vinoy are advancing towards the Hotel-de-Ville and the Tuileries.

MAY 24th.

"The Generals, desiring to treat the city with lenity, withheld any attack upon public monuments in which the insurgents had taken up positions. This morning they carried the Place de la Concorde. The Ministry of Finances, the Hotel of the Conseil d'Etat, the Palace of the Legion of Honour, and the Palace of the Tuileries were burnt by the insurgents. When the troops gained possession of the Tuileries, it was but a mass of smouldering ashes. The Louvre will be saved. The Hotel de Ville is in flames. I am convinced that the insurrection will be completely conquered by this evening at the latest. No one could have prevented the crime of these wicked wretches. They have made use of petroleum for their incendiary purposes, and have sent petroleum bombs against the soldiers. What remedy can be applied? The best of the Generals of the army have shown an amount of talent and valour which has excited the admiration of foreigners.