Mr. Washburne to Mr. Fish
Sir: The crisis seems to be really approaching. You will have seen the announcement of the capture of the fort of Issy by the Versailles troops, and the report this evening is that the fort of Vanves has also fallen. The government, having apparently completed the preparations, is now attacking Paris With great fury. The new and powerful battery of seventy-two guns of the heaviest caliber at Montretout has been firing for the past few days on the enceinte, and particularly on the gate of Versailles. Large numbers of the government troops have crossed the Seine at Sevres, and, through the village of Boulogne-sur-Seine, advanced into the Bois de Boulogne. It is said that they were yesterday establishing breaching-batteries at a point not more than two or three hundred yards from the ramparts. When a breach shall be made in that direction, there will be little difficulty in coming inside of the walls and taking possession of Passy—in fact, of all that portion of the city in the neighborhood of the Arc of Triumph. The insurrectionary force are said to have been withdrawn from these positions, and the resistance that will be made by the insurgents will be in other parts of the city. I thought a week ago that the opposition would be greater than I am now satisfied it will be. The continued hammering away of the government troops, the surprise and capture of the redoubt Moulin Sacquet, the taking of Fort Issy, and the inevitable fall of the fort of Vanves, have created great demoralization in the city. Yesterday was a day of panic. The announcement of the capture of Fort Issy, and the extraordinary letter of Rossel, the delegate at the war department, giving his resignation, (a copy which I send herewith as a sort of historic document,) created a great commotion. The desperate wrangles in the commune, and the quarrel between that august body and the central committee, which were all well known to the public, added to the general excitement.
[Page 340]The members of the committee of public safety, as it was first organized, not having met public expectations, were suddenly discharged, and five other men of the most desperate character in the commune (one of them being a murderer) were appointed. Rossel, like his predecessors, Assi, Bergeret, and Cluseret, was arrested, and ordered to be sent to a military tribunal. It seems that he was put in charge for safe custody into the hands of one of the members of the commune, and it appears to-day that both the prisoner and his keeper have run away. Deleschuze, a notorious agitator, has been appointed to the war department in the place of Rossel, and if the Versailles troops do not come in, he may run a week before he finds a hospitable shelter within the walls of Mazas. Signs of demoralization and discouragement are everywhere visible. The national guard is being weakened every day, not only by its losses in actual combat and in prisoners, but by vast numbers of desertions. Almost every man who has the chance to do so with any degree of safety to himself is slipping out of the service, and instead of an army of sixty or eighty thousand, as claimed a week ago, I do not believe one-half that number can be counted on to-day. A good many think that, in the present feeling of discouragement, the government troops could enter and retake Paris without any serious resistance; but others, of an equal number, look upon a desperate contest and the shedding of a great deal of blood as inevitable. The worse things grow, the more desperate the commune becomes. One of its last acts is a decree for the immediate demolition of the house of Mr. Thiers. Pillage, under the name of “perquisitions,” is the order of the day. All the churches are either closed or converted into club-houses. That immense edifice, the old and historic church of St. Eustache, has been the favorite place of resort for the revolutionary and turbulent population of the central part of the city. All the convents have been shut up and all the priests and a large number of the Sisters of Charity have been imprisoned. All of the valuables belonging to the churches and to the convents have been stolen and carried off. The archbishop is still in prison, and his situation is becoming daily more and more dangerous. I am interesting myself officiously in endeavoring to have him exchanged for Blanqui, who is under sentence of death for contumacy for his part in the attempted insurrection of the 31st of October last. The commune has once agreed to make the exchange, which Mr. Thiers declined, but the archbishop, who I saw in prison yesterday, thinks he may now agree to it, in view of the increasing dangers to which he is exposed.
In addition to the letter of Rossel, I send you a copy of the proclamation of Mr. Thiers to the people of Paris, and also, as a curiosity, I send you some numbers of the insurrectionary journals published in the city. Of the papers I have been in the habit of sending you, all have been suppressed except the Siecle. Applications for laissez-passers for the Alsatians and German Lorrainers continue to be made in great numbers. We have given two hundred and forty-three to-day, making the whole number three thousand four hundred and seventy four, and “the cry is, still they come.”
May 12, 1871.—Nothing new to-day of any importance. While the fighting continues very fiercely all around, we see no evidence of the Versailles troops coming into the city. The insurrectionary Journal Officiel of this morning contains a furious address to the people of Paris from the committee of public safety, charging treason and corruption in the ranks, the first fruit of which was the abandonment of Fort Issy. It says that the threads of the dark conspiracy have been discovered, and that the largest portion of the guilty have been arrested. It further [Page 341] says that while the crime of these men is frightful, their chastisement will be exemplary; that a court-martial is sitting in permanence, and that justice will be done. It is very probable that Cluseret is embraced among the “guilty.”
The same journal contains a decree of the commune, suppressing six additional papers, making twenty-one in all that have been discontinued by the insurrectionary authority.
I have, &c.,