Commune of the 10th of August, 1793, which headed the revolution, and said to themselves that there were perhaps some amongst the present insurgents who, like the former, would rise up to deliver them from the Prussians.  For these agitators have some appearance of truth on their side:  “You are weak and timorous,” they cry to those in power; “you seem awaiting a defeat rather than expecting a victory.  Give place to the energetic, obscure though they may be; for the men of the great Commune, of our first glorious revolution, they also were for the greater part unknown.  We have confidence in the army of Paris, and we will break the iron circle of invasion.”

Though the Communists have since then shown bravery, and sometimes heroism, in their struggle against the Versailles troops, we are very doubtful, now that we have seen their chiefs in action, whether the efforts they talked of would have been crowned with success.  Their object was power, and, having nothing to risk and all to gain, they would have forthwith disposed of public property in order to procure themselves enjoyment and honours.  The few right-minded men who at first committed themselves, proved this by the fact of their giving in their resignation a few days after the Commune had established itself.

Tranquillity had returned.  In the morning of the 25th, guards patrolled the Place de la Bastille, the Place du Chateau d’Eau, the Boulevard Magenta, and the outer boulevards.  Paris started as if she had been aroused from some fearful dream, and the waking thought of the enemy at her gates stirred up all her energies once more.

The Communists had been defeated for the second time; but they were soon to take a terrible revenge.

The vow made by the Governor of Paris had been repeated by the majority of the Parisians, and all parties seemed to have rallied round him under the same device:  vanquish or die.  After the forts, the barricades, and as a last resource, the burning of the city.  Who knows?  Perhaps the fanatics of resistance had already made out the plan of destruction which served later for the Commune.  It has been proved that nothing in this work of ruin was impromptu.

The news of the convention of the 28th of January, the preliminary of the capitulation of Paris, was thus very badly received, and M. Gambetta, by exhorting the people, in his celebrated circular of the 31st of January, to resist to the death, sowed the seeds of civil war:—­

    “CITIZENS,—­

    “The enemy has just inflicted upon France the most cruel insult that
    she has yet had to endure in this accursed war, the too-heavy
    punishment of the errors and weaknesses of a great people.