A useless appeal, which the cowardice of the Left knew how to elude. Louis Blanc, in his Tartuffe style, exclaimed, "O civil war! hideous struggle! The cannon thunder! People are killing each other and dying; and those in the Assembly who would willingly give their life to see this sanguinary problem pacifically resolved are condemned to the torture of not being able to make an act, utter a cry, speak a word." Since the birth of the French Assemblies so ignominious a Left had never been seen. The spectacle of the prisoners smitten, reviled, spat upon, was unable to draw a protest from these wretched Parisian deputies. One only, Tolain, asked for an explanation on the assassination at the Belle-Epine. Louis Blanc, Schoelcher, Greppo, Adam, Langlois, Brisson, &c., the Gérontes and the Scapins, sanctimoniously contemplated their bombarded electors, and, fully aware of the facile forgetfulness of Paris, dreamt of their future re-election.
Their calumnies succeeded in stifling the action but not the anguish of the provinces. With heart and soul the workmen of France were with Paris. The employés at the railway stations harangued the soldiers on their passage, adjuring them to raise the butt-ends of their guns; the official placards were torn during the night; the large centres sent their addresses by the hundred; all the Republican papers demanded peace, sought for some method of conciliation between Paris and Versailles.
Paris and Versailles! The agitation becoming chronic, M. Thiers launched forth Dufaure, the Chapelier of the modern bourgeoisie, one of the most odious executors of its dirty work. He enjoined his procureurs to prosecute all the writers countenancing the Commune, "that dictatorship usurped by foreigners and ticket-of-leave men, which signalises its reign by burglary, breaking open private houses in the dead of night and by force of arms," and to lay hands upon "the conciliators who entreat the Assembly to hold out its noble hand to the blood-stained hand of its enemies." Versailles thus hoped to strike terror at the moment of the municipal elections, which took place on the 30th April.
They were everywhere Republican. These provinces, which had risen against Paris in June, 1848, and in the elections of 1849, did not send a hundred volunteers in 1871, and would only fight the Assembly. At Thiers (Puy-de-Dôme) the people occupied the Hôtel-de-Ville, hoisted the red flag, and seized the telegraphs. There occurred disturbances at Souppe, Nemours, Château-Landau, in the arrondissement of Fontainebleau. At Dordives (Loiret) the Communards planted a poplar surmounted by the red flag in front of the mairie. At Montargis they raised the red flag, placarded the appeal of the Commune to the rural districts, and forced a solicitor who had tried to tear down the placard to ask pardon on his knees. At Coulommiers (Seine-et-Marne) a demonstration took place to the cries of "Vive la République! Vive la Commune!"