[162] It has been stated that a Polish officer of Dombrowski's staff, killed afterwards during the street fight, was the agent in this attempted treason. I have been unable, in spite of a minute search, to discover the least proof of this imputation.
[163] See a letter from Colonel Corbin, quoted in the _Histoire des Conspirations sous la Commune_, a work by A. J. Dalsème, arranged in the form of a novel, but containing some documents.
"C'est par le canon et par la politique que nous avons pris Paris."--_M. Thiers, Enquête sur le 18 Mars._
M. THIERS' POLICY WITH REGARD TO THE PROVINCES--THE EXTREME LEFT BETRAYS PARIS.
Who was the great conspirator against Paris? The Extreme Left.
On the 19th March, what remained to M. Thiers wherewith to govern France? He had neither an army, nor cannon, nor the large towns. These possessed arms, and their workmen were on the alert. If that small middle-class which makes the provinces endorse the revolutions of the metropolis had followed the movement, imitated their kindred of Paris, M. Thiers could not have opposed to them a single regiment. In order to subsist, retain the provinces, and induce them to provide the soldiers and the cannon that were to reduce Paris, what were the resources of the chief of the bourgeoisie? A word and a handful of men. The word was Republic; the men, the recognised chiefs of the Republican party.
Though the dull rurals barked at the mere name of the Republic, and refused to insert it in their proclamations, M. Thiers, more cunning, mouthed it lustily, and distorting the votes of the Assembly,[164] gave it out as the watchword to his underlings.[165] Since the first risings all the provincial officials had the same refrain: "We defend the Republic against the factions."[166]
This was certainly something; but the rural votes, the past of M. Thiers, clashed with these Republican protestations. The former heroes of the National Defence were no longer acceptable as securities even for the provinces. M. Thiers was well aware of it, and invoked the purest of the pure--the chevroned returned from exile. Their prestige was still intact in the eyes of the provincial democrats. M. Thiers met them in the lobbies, told them they held the fate of the Republic in their hands, flattered their senile vanity, and inveigled them so successfully, that, from the 23rd,[167] they served him as bottle-holders. When the small middle-class republicans of the provinces beheld the profound Louis Blanc, the intelligent Schoelcher, and the most famous grumblers of the radical vanguard fly to Versailles, and insult the Central Committee, and, on the other hand, received neither programme nor able emissaries from Paris, they turned away, and let the flame enkindled by the workmen die out.