The Mount Holly news. [volume] (Mount Holly, Burlington Co., N.J.) 1891-1942, 1917-01-16

with them as they did so. There was
only one person besides the captain
and his men, an old woman, who min
istered to the wounded girl A surgeon
accompanied the soldiers, and he was
called in to set and bandage the bro
ken limb.
Had the damage done by the COM
mune ended with its loss of control
perhaps the wholesale slaughter of its
votaries which followed would not
nave taken place. When its leaders
found that they were beaten, adopting
the motto of rule or ruin, since they
could not rule they resolved to ruin.
They murdered the archbishop of Paris
and other distinguished persons whom
they held as hostages. Not content
with this, they undertook to destroy
the city. Paris was then full Of beau
tiful buildings. Many of these were
destroyed, including the most interest
ing, historically considered, the palace
of the Tuileries, the ancient abode Of
the kings of France.
1t was these acts of vandalism that
led the government to get rid, SO far as
possible, of so dangerous portion of
the population of Paris. The captured
communists were marched out to the
yards of the prisons in which they
were confined, stood up with their
faces to the walls and shot down by
scores. Doubtless many of these be-
lieyed that they were dying In sacred
cause.
Captain LIE Moyne could he have
foreseen these horrors would undoubt-
eddy have continued to save his pris-
oner from the universal sacrifice,
though he had but little time, and
Elise Fourchet was not in a condition
to avail herself of a permitted flight,
The only thing the captain could do
for her was to leave her with the wo-
man who was caring for her. He
marched his men away, but the ma
tional troops were pouring into the
city, and when Mile. Fourchet was
found wounded and confessed that she
had received bullet while defending
a barricade she was removed to a
prison.
If the communists received a trial
they were tried in large numbers to-
gether. When Elise Fourchet was
brought before a judge for one Of these
wholesale sentences, noticing she was
of different class from most of the
others, he asked her why she had en-
gagged in such nefarious work.
II fought to build, not to destroy"
was her reply. II did not know that
we were led by bad men. One of our
leaders, Cluseret, fought with the
Union armies in the late war between
the states of North America, and I sup
posed that a man who had risked his
life In the cause Of civil liberty must
be representing the same cause In
France"
The judge was touched by this ap-
peal and remanded the prisoner to
prison for further evidence. But the
Parisians soon tired of the wholesale
slaughter of the communists, and Mile.
Fourchet was never again brought to
trial. In time, when all danger of a
recurrence of the outbreak had passed,
the prison doors of all communists
who had not been executed were
thrown open. and among those who
walked out free was Elise Fourchet.
She ever afterward had a horror of
the men who had led so many innocent
persons into crime Not all of them
were punished unless by their own
consciences. A few escaped. others per-
ished in the havoc they had made,
while others were banished from.
France Probably no body of men ever
set in motion a revolution that involv-
ed so much ruin, not only Of historic
treasures, but of persons they de-
ceived. AS Paris is France, their chief
devastation was in that city. Just be-
fore its capture bands of men and wo-
men-such men and women as follow
ed Louis XVI. to the guillotine seventy
years before-went from one historic
edifee to another, applying petroleum
and to petroleum the torch When the
ruin was completed Paris was a very
different city from what it had been
before. How that art treasure, the
Louvre, escaped will always remain a
wonder. While Elise Fourchet was
long remembered as one of the heroines
Of the commune, she never afterward
affiliated with communists And as
for the commune leaders, she detested
them.