THE LATIN QUARTER AFTER VICTORY

EARLIER THAT MORNING,* MAXIME VUILLAUME'S ACCOUNT 

The 24th at night he takes shelter in a hotel near the Jardin des Plantes (east of the Latin Quarter). At dawn a comrade bursts in crying, " 'The Versaillais are here! We are surrounded! [...] One had to flee, flee anywhere, but fast." He manages to slip out of the hotel and heads toward the Latin Quarter. 

"Ploughed-up streets, houses hit by shells and bullets, sidewalks black or red, paving stones black for powder, red for blood, sidewalks strewn with a thousand things thrown out of windows, in the rush to to get rid of anything that might suggest to the police that one had anything to do with the Commune." 

• "From the little street along the Saint-Geneviève library comes an army detachment. About 50 prisoners are among them. Women follow."  

Students celebrate graduation on the next street.

• At place du Panthéon: "Standing in front of City Hall...

For a shooting on the steps of the edifice, please click and scroll down.

...are two officers, reading a poster by Delescluze,* calling the people to arms. I am close enough to the group to see it. I want to get nearer, to hear what they say. But I recoil in horror. In the corner in front of me are half a dozen corpses, one of which, fallen back upon itself, shows a head horribly open, bloody and empty." [...] 

* A Commune leader who died on the barricades

• "On the Pantheon steps, soldiers. In the square, more of them. In the center, a sailor who cries and sings while brandishing something aloft. It seems to me a woman's torn top... ." 

 

Vuillaume walks down the street (rue Soufflot)

• "On rue Saint-Jacques [...] is the cadaver of an old man with a white beard, still wearing his fédéré's vest. [...] His spread-out legs are red with blood..."

• "I go down the boulevard, bedecked with flags. Already at this early hour — 7 a.m. — the cafés are full of customers, officers and civilians, speaking loudly, their faces alight."

Shootings described on the preceding page

The boulevard Saint-Michel is on the right of Burger King

• Flags are everywhere. Already at this early hour — seven a.m. — the cafés are full of officers and civilians, who speak loudly with red faces."

"The street overflows with all kinds of military. On rue des Écoles, a crowd is gathered in front of an empty lot, where now is the new Sorbonne. Later I learned that shooting was going on there."

I pass a slow-moving van. The rear door is open. It is full of corpses. 

At the corner of rue Racine et rue de l'École de Médecine, the two barricades that protected the entry are shattered.

A machine gun has turned over, crushing a wounded white horse, u fond du fossé une mitrailleuse a roulé, écrasant un cheval blanc blessé, showing its bloodied spine. Under that ruin, the corpse of a giant fédéré. his face flattened under the gun carriage wheel." 

• "Blocking place Saint-Michel, next to the fountain, the barricade defended the 248th defended the night before. On the side, spread out, their faces bloody and muddy, are about 10 corpses. Between their lips frozen in death, bottles and pipes..." 

• "The sidewalks are strewn with leaves and branches, cut down by projectiles. Everywhere, pools of blood, abandoned uniforms, heaps of broken arms."

• "Courriers constantly succeed each other, galloping fast. A sailor passes on horseback, a gun over the saddle, hanging from his belt the kepi of a fédéré commander, with four stripes of silver."  

Police on horseback are crossing the bridge.

# # # 

The Saint-Michel fountain celebrates another repression, of June 1848... 

 

THE YEAR MCMXLIV (1944)

FROM AUGUST 19 TO 25 AFTER FIFTY MONTHS OF GERMAN OCCUPATION AT THE APPROACH OF THE LIBERATING ARM IES ROSE UP AGAINST OPPRESSION.  

...that is as forgotten.

*     *     *

Next,

The fate of a political painter