The Daily state journal. [volume] (Alexandria, Va.) 1868-1874, 1871-07-03
Incidents of the Capture Of Paris.

A dense smoke overhung the whole Rue
de Ia Paix quarter, and made ones way
uncertain, and if one yentured into certain
streets he was Immediately impressed into
the water bucket chain, and kept laboring
to help extinguish the fires all day. Every
one, young and old, who was commanded
to pass down to the fires had to obey. The
penalty was arrest and possible shooting
and ones progress was constant success
sion OF panics. Strangers were treated like
Parisians, and hustled when they grumbled.
The National Guards of order were fretting
and fuming about, as if anxious for a pre-
text to kill something; and it was unsafe
to reason with them. One man assured
me that five thousand insurgents had been
shot since the troops entered. imildly ex-
pressed doubts. He quarreled at once,
and endeavored to draw crowd around
me, but l left him post haste. To even
hint that a Communist was human being
was almost the signal for ones execution.
Toward evening the shells fell very rapid
ly in.the Place de POpera, and woman,
who was coming to the Place Vcndome as
prisoner, was struck down by shell from
the Chaumont battery. A horse was also
wounded near the Opera barricade, and
added his screams to the terror. The front
of the building in which the Washington is
located was half torn away. The Mosques
were riddled with bullets. In the Rues
Scribe and Auber, shells fell every few mo-
ments. The troops suffered considerably.
The incendiary panic became wilder every
moment, and as the lurid flames from the
ministry of finance lit up the Opera square,
one could see men and women brought down
tied and bleeding TO the square, where they
were instantly shot.
A number of Americans and French pco-
pie recounted to me the following incident,
which defy any one to read without cer-
tain emotion: On Thursday very bea,lti-
full young girl, taken in the act of scattering
inf1ammable matches against the houses,
was marched down the Rue de Ia Paix to
the Place Vendome to be shot. She seemed
quite beside herself, and answered quietly,
when asked what she was doing and what
she had in her apron, "Only some kindlings
to light my fire with I" Her beauty, and
marched to execution, did not enlist the
women in her favor; but as she turned and
faced the crowd with flashing eye, and as
her long back hair swayed in the breeze,
many strong man shed tears. The i'm
placable war of the poor against the
rich, carried now to the extremity
of despair, made this young girl
march as proudly to the shambles as though
her cause had won and Paris were free. A
few minutes after she had entered the
Place, the report of some muskets were
heard. The military school of the Champ
de Mars was made the favorite place for ex-
eeutlons. PRISONERS taken there rarely
came out. On Wednesday and Thursday
the professions were almost constant, and
as fast as the men and women entered the
doomed precinct the tramp of a firing pla-
toon and discharge of a number Of muskets
could be heard. The corpses We're heaped
up so that newcomers had to climb over
them in order to stand at the fatal wall.
One man cut pirouette as he marched
over his dead comrades, and gave the word
sire" himself. The bodies were dragged
afterward from the Champ de Mars to
trenches. .-A,ahor Of my Paris"