No. 418.] No. 130. Mr. Washburne to Mr. Fish. LEGATION OF THE UNITED STATES, Paris, April 14, 1871. (Received April 27.) SIR: I came in from Versailles late last night after having been there three days. Mr. Hoffman relieved me, and will remain there until I shall go out again. Upon my return here my impression is strengthened that the power of the insurgents is all the while increasing. In my No. 416 I stated it too strongly when I said the insurgents had no men outside the city except those in the forts. They have a large force in the direction of Neuilly and Courbevoie, and, indeed, they claim to have retaken Neuilly from the Versailles troops. Fighting is going on all the time. The city has more and more the appearance of a great camp. New barricades are being built, and cannon are being placed in new positions. The Versailles troops continue the bombardment of our quarter of the city, and the day before yesterday a shell exploded directly over the legation, and, falling, struck the lower portion of the building within twenty feet of where I am now writing. The Americans who are here are becoming more and more alarmed, and the legation is thronged by them from morning to night seeking passports and protection papers for their property. I fear I shall have to send my family away again, as a great many of the French people now consider a siege not improbable, and already the prices of living have advanced very much. It will be four weeks to-morrow since the insurrection broke out, and things have been going from bad to worse all the time. It is estimated that three hundred thousand people have left Paris in the last fortnight. All persons are either concealing or carrying away their capital. The sources of labor are dried up. There is neither trade, commerce, traffic, nor manufacture of any sort. All the gold and silver that has been found in the churches, and all the plate belonging to the government found in the different ministries, has been seized by the commune, to be converted into coin. The Catholic clergy continue to be hunted down. The priests are openly placarded as thieves, and the churches denounced as "haunts, where they have morally assassinated the masses, in dragging France under the heels of the scoundrels Bonaparte, Favre, and Trochu." A most remarkable decree is just published in the official organ of the commune. It is no less than an order to demolish the world-renowned column Vendôme, in the Place Vendôme. It is denounced as a monument of barbarism, and a symbol of brute force and false glory, a perma nent insult cast by the victors on the vanquished, and a perpetual attack on one of the great principles of the French republic: fraternity. Hence, the decree to raze it to the ground. A gentleman just in says that the firing from Mont Valerien has completely demolished the insurgent barricades at the Port Maillot, and to-day Mont Valérien is bombarding the Port de Ternes. The Arc de Triomphe has been struck twenty-seven times. The splendid hotel of the Turkish embassy, in the Place d'Etoile, has been very badly damaged by shells from Mont Valerien. The apartment of Mr. Pell, of New York, at No. 12 rue de Presbourg, has also been badly damaged. The building in which Mr. Hoffman has his apartment in avénue d'Eylau has been struck four times. I have, &c., E. B. WASHBURNE. No. 420.] No. 131. Mr. Washburne to Mr. Fish. LEGATION OF THE UNITED STATES, Paris, April 18, 1871. (Received May 4.) SIR: I have not been to Versailles since I came from there on Thursday last. Even if the state of my health had not prevented, I should have deemed it my duty to have remained here, as there is still a great deal to do in the way of protection to the persons and property of our countrymen as well as the Germans. The alarm among all classes of persons is daily increasing, and nearly every one is leaving, or preparing to leave, as soon as possible. There has been a great deal of difficulty within the last few days in regard to passports, the insurgent authorities having refused to recognize our passports unless issued or viséd on the very day on which it is presented. The applications for passports and for certificates of the ownership of the property of Americans, and which we call "protection papers," have been very numerous in the last few days. The state of things existing here at this time produces strange results. By a decree of the commune, all Frenchmen between the ages of nineteen and forty are liable to do military duty, and hence no Frenchman is permitted to go out of the gates of Paris. There are a great many people who belong to Alsace and Lorraine between those ages, and within the last week no less than four hundred and fifty have applied to me for laissez-passer as citizens of the Empire of Germany. On exhibiting to me satisfactory evidence that before the war they were citizens of Alsace and that portion of Lorraine incorporated into the German Empire by the late treaty, I have not hesitated to give each one a special laissez-passer. A case has been brought to my attention to-day of a Catholic priest, a native of Alsace, who has been arrested and cast into Mazas along with many of his order. I shall, to-morrow, make an officious application to the commune for his release as a German subject. Domiciliary visits, arrests, and perquisitions are becoming more and more numerous. All refractory national guards are seized and either cast into prison or put into the front rank in the attack. Two days ago a very respectable man living near the legation was torn from his family, sent to the front, and the next day slain in battle. The invasion of houses is no longer confined to those of official persons, or of persons particularly obnoxious on account of their relations to the empire. Many private resi dences have already been pillaged, and among them those of the Périere Brothers, and Charles Lafitte, the bankers. The house adjoining my own residence in the avenue de l'Impératrice was pillaged on Saturday night last, and even the personal effects of the concièrge were carried off. My own house was probably spared the same fate by my personal occupation of it. The invasion and violation of the Belgian legation on Sunday last, by a battalion of the national guards, is a fact of peculiar gravity. While the official organ of the commune denounces this act, and says that an investigation will be immediately ordered, and the accused parties sent before a council of war, the trouble is that the commune wields no sufficient authority to punish any outrage or suppress any violence. There is no knowing what legation will be next invaded. The first indication for confiscation of private property on a magnificent scale appears in a decree of the commune this morning. It is a practical seizure of the work-shops of Paris, which are to be turned over to the various co-operative working societies. The farce is to be gone through with of a jury of arbitration to fix upon the amount of indemnity to be paid to the owners of property. Of course, such owners are not represented on the jury, and have no voice whatever in the matter. The commune has adopted a measure fraught with very serious consequences to all property-holders in Paris, and of course involving. the interests of all Americans who are unfortunrte enough to hold property here at this time. It is the levying of a new tax to go into the coffers of the commune. When the time comes around, if it ever do come, for the collection of this tax, there will be but few if any Americans here to determine for themselves what they will do in the premises. I shall tell all that the tax is without the semblance of legal authority, and advise them not to pay it. What will be the result in all this business, if the insurrection shall not be speedily put down, it is impossible to tell. There is no improvement in the situation since the date of my last dispatch. I can as yet see nothing that leads me to believe that the insurrection is to be speedily put down. All the talk that has been made that some arrangement was to be arrived at between M. Thiers and the commune amounts to nothing. All the concessions which it was signified would be made to the insurgents have been spit upon. It is one month to-day since this insurrection broke out, and here we are daily going from bad to worse. Day after day passes and nothing is done. MacMahon accomplishes no more than Vinoy. Paris continues to be left at the mercy of the commune, and now a siege is threatened, which, considering the actual situation, can only be contemplated with horror. The military situation is not much changed. At Asnieres yesterday the insurgents were badly beaten, but with that exception the fighting for the last few days has amounted to but little, although there has been a great deal of powder and ball wasted. Direct communication with London by the Northern Railroad is still open, and I hope to be able to forward this dispatch to London to-night. I have, &c., No. 132. E. B. WASHBURNE. No. 422.] Mr. Washburne to Mr. Fish. [Extract.] LEGATION OF THE UNITED STATES, Paris, April 20, 1871. (Received May 4.) SIR: In the way in which things go on in Paris, I am afraid that in writing about them so frequently I may be in danger of repeating myself. No one could have supposed when this insurrection broke out, on the 18th ultimo, that nearly five weeks would have rolled around without any prospect of its immediate suppression. I am certain that I never believed that it would fall to my lot to live, with my family, in a city of two millions of people in a state of insurrection for such a length of time as the present one has already lasted. I should be too happy if I could advise you that I could see any prospect of a termination of the terrible state of things existing here. Nothing comes to us from Versailles that can be relied on, to show that effective measures are soon to be taken to expel the insurgents from power and to re-establish the authority of the government in Paris. To be sure we hear rumors of attack and * assault in great and overpowering force, and then other rumors of a siege; but day after day passes away without particular results further than heating still hotter the blood and inflaming still further the existing hatreds and animosities. Men in the assembly and out of the assembly are becoming impatient, yet can effect nothing. There is a great deal of fighting going on, always in the same places-that is, in the direction of Asniéres, Neuilly, and Courbevoie. The same shelling of the city continues, and beneficial results are always wanting to the attacking forces. So far as we may be able to judge, and this thing has continued for nearly three weeks, but little has been accomplished, for the government troops have not yet reached the walls of the city. An attack in force may, however, take place at any day, of which you may be advised before this dispatch shall reach you. An election took place here on Sunday last to fill vacancies in the commune, and although great efforts had been made to induce people to vote, there was a very general and significant abstention. Cluseret was a candidate in one of the arrondissements, and, out of 21,360 votes inscribed, he obtained only 1,968 votes; and yet the commune, in contempt of a law that has always been respected, which declares that no candidate be elected without receiving one-eighth of all the votes inscribed, has declared his election good. The suppression of the journals still continues. The official journal of the commune of yesterday morning announced that the following papers were suppressed: Le Bien Public, La Cloche, Le Soir, L'Avenier National. Two of these papers, however, have appeared to-day, in spite of the order of suppression, Le Bien Public and L'Avenier National. It seems useless for me to speak of the condition of Paris at the present moment. Fortune, business, public and private credit, industry, labor, financial enterprise, are all buried in one common grave. It is everywhere devastation,desolation, ruin. The physiognomy of the city becomes more and more sad. All the upper part of the Champs Elysées, and all of that portion of the city surrounding the Arc of Triumph, continues to be deserted, in fear of the shells. In coming from my residence to the legation it seems like a city of the dead; not a carriage, and hardly a human being, in the streets. Immense barricades are still going up at the Place de la Concorde. The great manufactories and work-shops are closed. Those vast stores, where are to be found the wonders and marvels of Parisian industry, are no longer open. The cafés now close at ten o'clock in the evening; the gas is extinguished; and Paris, without its brilliantly-lighted cafés, with their thronging multitudes, is Paris no longer. A dispatch-bag arrived from London this morning, bringing Washington dates to the 7th, and New York papers to the 8th instant. As I propose leaving for Versailles to-morrow morning I shall not have the honor of writing you further to go by the dispatch-bag which leaves for London to-morrow night. I have, &c., E. B. WASHBURNE. 1 No. 423.] No. 133. Mr. Washburne to Mr. Fish. [Extract.] LEGATION OF THE UNITED STATES, Paris, April 23, 1871. (Received May 10.) SIR: You are aware that Monseigneur Darboy, the archbishop of Paris, was seized some time since, by order of the commune, and thrust into prison to be held as a hostage. Such treatment of that most devout and excellent man could have but created a great sensation, particularly in the Catholic world. On Thursday night last I received a letter from Monseigneur Chigi, archbishop of Myre and nuncio apostolic of St. Liége, and also a communication from Mr. Louoner, chanoine of the diocese of Paris; Mr. Lagard, the vicar general of Paris; and Messrs. Bourset and Allain, chanoines and members of the Metropolitan Chapter of the church of Paris, all making a strong appeal to me, in the name of the right of nations, humanity, and sympathy, to interpose my good offices in behalf of the imprisoned archbishop. I have thought that I should have been only conforming to what I believed to be the policy of our Government, and carrying out what I conceived to be your wishes under the circumstances, by complying with the request of the gentlemen who have addressed me. I, therefore, early this morning put my self in communication with General Cluseret, who seems, at the present time, to be the directing man in affairs here. I told him that I applied to him not in my diplomatic capacity, but simply in the interest of good feeling and humanity, to see if it were not possible to have the archbishop relieved from arrest and confinement. He answered that it was not a matter within his jurisdiction, and however much he would like to see the archbishop released, he thought, in consideration of the state of affairs, it would be impossible. He said that he was not arrested for crime, but simply to be held as a hostage, as many others had been. Under the existing circumstances he thought it would be useless to take any steps in that direction. I, myself, thought the commune would not dare in the present excited state of public feeling in Paris to release the archbishop. I told General Cluseret, however, that I must see him to ascertain his real situation, the condition of his health, and whether he was in want of anything. He said there would be no objection to that, and he immediately went with me, in person, to see the prefecture of police; and upon his application I received from the prefect a permission to visit the archbishop freely at any time. In company with my private secretary, Mr. McKean, I then went to the Mazas prison, where I was admitted without difficulty, and being ushered into one of the vacant cells the archbishop was very soon brought in. I must say that I was deeply touched at the appearance of this venerable man. With his slender person, his form somewhat bent, his long beard, for he has not been shaved apparently since his confinement, his face haggard with illhealth, all could not have failed to have moved the most indifferent. I told him I had taken great pleasure, at the instance of his friends, in intervening on his behalf, and while I could not promise myself the satisfaction of seeing him released, I was very glad to be able to visit him to ascertain his wants, and to assuage the cruel position in which he found himself. He thanked me most heartily and cordially for the disposition I had manifested toward him. I was charmed by his cheer |