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Updated: June 15, 2025
Martin theatre, and the hall of the College de France, were mostly frequented by moderate Republicans, and attempts were often made there to discuss the situation in a sensible manner. But folly, even insanity, reigned at many of the other clubs, where men like Felix Pyat, Auguste Blanqui, Charles Delescluze, Gustave Flourens, and the three Ms Megy, Mottu, and Milliere raved and ranted.
Delescluze has been appointed Delegate of War. Colonel Rossel was arrested yesterday and handed over to the custody of Citizen Gerardin. At 5 p.m. an announcement was made to the Commune that Rossel had left with Gerardin. The Commune accepted the offer of General Bergeret to re-arrest Rossel. Nevertheless, at 2 o'clock this morning this had not been effected.
In Belleville the elected mayor is a prisoner, and his two adjuncts, Flourens and Milliere, are in hiding. In the nineteenth arrondissement M. Delescluze, by far the most able of the Ultras, is mayor. Contrary to the wishes, consequently, of the voters of "oui," we are to have no armistice, and we probably shall have a commune. The Ultras are persecuted, but their programme is adopted.
At the weekly meeting of the Mayors M. Delescluze, the Mayor of the 19th arrondissement, proposed that Trochu and Le Flô should be called upon to resign, and that a supreme council should be established in which the "civil element should not be subordinated to the military element."
"Room for the people, for the bare-armed fighting men. The hour of the revolutionary war has struck." This was the placard posted throughout Paris on the 22nd, by order of the Communist chief, Delescluze. And again, "After the barricades, our houses; after our houses, our ruins." Preparations were made to burn down a part of Central Paris to delay the progress of the Versaillese.
This, too, was invaded, and for more than two hours I remained there. The spectacle was a curious one everybody was shouting, everybody was writing a list of a new Government and reading it aloud. In one corner a man incessantly blew a trumpet, in another a patriot beat a drum. At one end was a table, round which the mayors had been sitting, and from this vantage ground Felix Pyat and other virtuous citizens harangued, and, as I understood, proclaimed the Commune and themselves, for it was impossible to distinguish a word. The atmosphere was stifling, and at last I got out of a window on to the landing in the courtyard. Here citizens had established themselves everywhere. I had the pleasure to see the "venerable" Blanqui led up the steps by his admirers. This venerable man had, horresco referens, been pushed up in a corner, where certain citizens had kicked his venerable frame, and pulled his venerable white beard, before they had recognised who he was. By this time it appeared to be understood that a Government had been constituted, consisting of Blanqui, Ledru-Rollin, Delescluze, Louis Blanc, Flourens, and others. Flourens, whom I now perceived for the first time, went through a corridor, with some armed men, and I and others followed him. We got first into an antechamber, and then into a large room, where a great row was going on. I did not get farther than close to the door, and consequently could not well distinguish what was passing, but I saw Flourens standing on a table, and I heard that he was calling upon the members of the Government of National Defence, who were seated round it, to resign, and that Jules Favre was refusing to do so. After a scene of confusion, which lasted half an hour, I found myself, with those round me, pushed out of the room, and I heard that the old Government had been arrested, and that a consultation was to take place between it and the new one. Feeling hungry, I now went to the door of the Hôtel to get out, but I was told I could not do so without a permission from the citizen Blanqui. I observed that I was far too independent a citizen myself to ask any one for a permit to go where I liked, and, as I walked on, the citizen sentinel did not venture to stop me. As I passed before Trochu's headquarters at the Louvre I spoke to a captain of the Etat-Major, whom I knew, and whom I saw standing at the gate. When he heard that I had just come from the Hôtel de Ville, he anxiously asked me what was going on there, and whether I had seen Trochu. General Schmitz, he said, had received an order signed by the mayors of Paris to close the gates of the town, and not on any pretext to let any one in or out. At the Louvre he said all was in confusion, but he understood that Picard had escaped from the Hôtel de Ville, and was organizing a counter-movement at the Ministry of Finance. Having dined, I went off to the Place Vendôme, as the generale was beating. The National Guards of the quarter were hurrying there, and Mobile battalions were marching in the same direction. I found on my arrival that this had become the headquarters of the Government; that an officer who had come with an order to Picard to go to the Hôtel de Ville, signed by Blanqui, had been arrested. General Tamisier was still a prisoner with the Government. Soon news arrived that a battalion had got inside the Hôtel de Ville and had managed to smuggle Trochu out by a back door. Off I went to the Louvre. There Trochu, his uniform considerably deteriorated, was haranguing some battalions of the Mobiles, who were shouting "Vive Trochu!" Other battalions were marching down the Rue Rivoli to the Hôtel de Ville. I got into a cab and drove there. The Hôtel was lit up. On the "place" there were not many persons, but all round it, in the streets, were Mobiles and Bourgeois National Guards, about 20,000 in all. The Hôtel was guarded, I heard, by a Belleville battalion, but I could not get close in to interview them. This lasted until about two o'clock in the morning, when the battalions closed in, Trochu appeared with his staff, and in some way or other, for it was so dark, nothing could be seen, the new Government was ejected; M. Jules Favre and his colleagues were rescued. M. Delescluze, who was one of the persons there, thus describes what took place: "A declaration was signed by the new Government declaring that on the understanding that the Commune was to be elected the next day, and also the Provisional Government replaced by an elected one, the citizens designed at a public meeting to superintend these elections withdrew." This was communicated first to Dorian, who appears to have been half a prisoner, half a friend; then to the members of the old Government, who were in honourable arrest; then to Jules Ferry outside. A general sort of agreement appears then to have been made, that bygones should be bygones. The Revolutionists went off to bed, and matters returned to the point where they had been in the morning. Yesterday evening a decree was placarded, ordering the municipal elections to take place to-day, signed Etienne Arago; and to-day a counter-decree, signed Jules Favre, announces that this decree appeared when the Government was gardé
In consequence of pressure from Delescluze the Central Committee abandon the direction of the War Administration, and Moreau resigns his office of Civil Delegate. The furniture and pictures are being carted from M. Thiers' house, and sounds of hammering within suggest the commencement of its demolition.
Cluzeret had become suspected, then Dombrowski, and Rossel was about to share their fate. Delescluze, appointed Civil Delegate at War, could do nothing of his own volition, notwithstanding his great authority.
In 1868 his masterly defense of Delescluze, the radical editor, against the prosecution of the Imperial government, brought the brilliant but hitherto unknown young lawyer prominently before the public. He lost his case, but won fame. Gambetta had waited eighteen months for his first brief, and five times eighteen months for his first great case.
Charles Delescluze, the editor-in-chief of "La Revolution Democratique et Sociale," who could not forgive him for having preferred Raspail to Ledru-Rollin, the candidate of the Mountain, attacked him on the day after the election with a violence which overstepped all bounds. At first, Proudhon had the wisdom to refrain from answering him.
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