The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Volume 1Gwynn, Stephen Lucius
History
The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Volume 1
Gwynn, Stephen Lucius
Dilke, Charles Wentworth, Sir, 1843-1911; Great Britain -- Politics and government -- 19th century
'The next morning we left Paris early by the Vaugirard gate, for no
one could tell us where Flourens was engaged. We had followed the main
line of fighting; his death occurred upon the other line; but so great
was the confusion of these days that we knew nothing of it until the
5th. We thought that to make for Clamart would be the surest course to
bring us to the forefront of battle, and at 8 a.m. we were in Issy. We
then heard heavy firing, and came over the hill between Forts Issy and
Vanves, but there was a dense fog which deadened sound, and it was not
till we were well down the hillside that we heard the crunch of the
machine-guns, when we suddenly found ourselves under a heavy fire from
the other side. Seeing the railway embankment in front of us at the
bottom of the hill, we ran down and got under shelter near an arch at
the corner of a park wall, which may, perhaps, have been the cemetery.
Here we sat in safety while the bullets sang in swarms through the
trees over our heads, while the forts cannonaded the heights, and the
heights bombarded the forts, and while the federal regiments of the
National Guard tried in vain to carry once more the line of hills
which they had carried on the previous day, but had of their own
accord at night abandoned, having no commissariat. They used, in fact,
to go home to dinner. Indeed, many would in the morning take an
omnibus to the battlefield, and fight, and take the omnibus back home
again to dine and sleep--a system of warfare which played into the
hands of the experienced old soldiers--the police of Paris--all ex-
non-commissioned officers, and the equally well-trained Customs guards
and forest guards, by whom they were opposed. General Vinoy, who was
commanding, had, however, heavy work on this day, in which Duval, the
General of the Commune, met his death within a quarter of a mile of
the spot where we were hiding. With this day ended, indeed, the
offensive operations of the Federalists against Versailles, and began
the offensive operations of the regulars against Paris. After sitting
a long time in our corner we found ourselves starved, and ran up the
hill by the park wall, under a heavy fire, to Issy and then walked
into Paris. I have a bullet in my room which struck the wall between
us just as we reached shelter at the top. One of my curiosities of the
time is the official newspaper of April 4th, which was conducted, of
course, for the insurrection, but which played so well at being
official that it announced as good news the telegrams from Algeria
showing that the Arab insurrection was being put down, although the
Government which was putting down this insurrection was the very same
Government which was engaged in putting down the more formidable
insurrection in Paris, to which the journal temporarily belonged.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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