The Elk County advocate. [volume] (Ridgway, Pa.) 1868-1883, 1874-06-18
SCENES OF A SIEGE.
Incidents of the Paris Civil War rs told
.- by Rochefort. .tehr' =

| by Rochefort. .tehF' a
Rochefort, in his first letters after his
escape from Caledonia, tells the follow
ing terrible story of incidents in Paris
during the civil war there
During eight days sinister sound
filled the Labau barracks, wrote the
immortal author of "L'Annee Terri
ble." Hundreds of prisoners were taken
in chains and placed before the mitrail-
leuses and blown to pieces. At the
Buttes Chaumont the ignoble Gallifet
caused the National Guards to dig i'm
mense graves, at the sides of which he
grouped entire battalions, whom he
fired on till they fell in these impro-
vised tombs. One of our companions
of captivity in the casemates of Fort
Boyard was brave republican, who had
been but badly slaughtered, and waited
for the advent of night to crawl out
from among the caddures with which
he was surrounded and to gain place
of retreat, from which he was not taken
till several months afterwards.
Behind the prison walls of La Ro-
quette the butchery had been such that
burial had become impossible and the
good health of the neighborhood was
much interfered with. The officers in
charge of the execution had found, as
they thought, the solution of the matter
by bringing into requisition a large
number of wagons, into which they
pitched the dead as they were handed
out. Probably to give an interest to the
proceedings they compelled the National
Guards to put into carriages the bodies
of their dead brothers in arms, and
each time that prisoner had finished
his sinister task, that the tumbril was
full and that he was preparing to de-
scend from it, a shot from q gun
stretched him next to his companions,
grave the dead and their gravedigger.
These recitals seem imprinted with ex-
aggeration. Well, 1 affirm they are
still very far from the reality. We can
only mention some episodes, and it is
the multiplicity of like events which
augment their horror.
saw every day for one year, walking
in the courtJ ard of the citadel of st.
Martinde Re, ayoung man whose name
and profession could never learn. He
was walkingconstantly, his eyes wide
open and fixed on something horrible,
absolutely silent and forgetting the
meals which his comrades served him,
and which he took mechanically and
without leaving his frightful contem-
plation. This unfortunate was one of
the rare prisoners who, taken to throw
the dead into the carts, had escaped by
q miracle, or rather by the fatigue of
the assassins, from the end which
awaited him.
Another, as q consequence Of this
lugubrious work, had not fallen into
insanity like the other, but in the midst
OF the unimportant conversation he
would become pale all at once and
would precipitately and several times
pass his hands all along his body, as if
to make the blood run off, which he
thought was perpetually dropping on
his clothes.
have known, and my companions in
the escape have known like myself, at
Fort Boyard, condemned man, who,
wounded in the leg by hand grenade
at the beginning OF the fight, had been
shot in his bed in the Hospital of st.
Sulpice, where he had entered. The
ball had gone through him, completely
through, and had even broken one OF
the bars of the bed. He had neverthe.
less resisted this new assault, ard we
found him in the midst of us nearly re.
covered, this victim of the fury the
most hideous that ever soiled a civil wa,
I know him, I could name him but
this dead alive is actually in Caledonia
in the power of those who, after having
shot him a first and a second time
would make no scruple about shooting
him a third time, which would probably
be the last.