Paris (France) -- History -- Commune, 1871 -- Fiction
The next day he did not go down. The advance continued, but progress was
slow. On the following morning Paris was horrified by the news published
in the papers at Versailles that statements of prisoners left no doubt
that the Archbishop of Paris and many other priests, in all a hundred
persons, had been massacred in cold blood, the methods of the first
revolution being closely followed, and the prisoners made to walk out
one by one from the gate of the prison, and being shot down as they
issued out. Another statement of a scarcely less appalling nature was
that the female fiends of the Commune not only continued their work of
destruction by fire, but were poisoning the troops. Several instances of
this occurred. In one case ten men were poisoned by one of these furies,
who came out as they passed, and expressing joy at the defeat of the
Commune, offered them wine. They drank it unsuspectingly, and within an
hour were all dead. Orders, were consequently issued that no soldier
should on any account accept drink or food of any kind offered them by
women.
"This horrible massacre of the Archbishop and the other prisoners is
next door to madness," Cuthbert said, as he read the account at
breakfast. "The Communists could have no personal feeling of hostility
against their victims, indeed, the Archbishop was, I know, most popular.
Upon the other hand it seals the fate of thousands. The fury excited by
such a deed will be so great that the troops will refuse to give quarter
and the prisoners taken will have to suffer to the utmost for the crime
committed by perhaps a handful of desperate wretches. The omnibuses
began to run yesterday from Sevres, and I propose, Mary, that we go over
to Versailles to-day and get out of sound of the firing. They say there
are fully 20,000 prisoners there."
"I don't want to see the prisoners," Mary said, with a shudder. "I
should like to go to Versailles, but let us keep away from horrors."
And so for a day they left the sound of battle behind, wandered together
through the Park at Versailles, and carefully abstained from all
allusion to the public events of the past six months. The next day
Cuthbert returned to Paris and made his way down to the Place de la
Bastille, where, for the sum of half a Napoleon, he obtained permission
to ascend to the upper window of a house. The scene here was terrible.
On the side on which he was standing a great drapery establishment,
known as the Bon Marche, embracing a dozen houses, was in flames. In the
square itself three batteries of artillery belonging to Ladmirault's
Division, were sending their shell up the various streets debouching on
the place.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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