Insurgents’ barricade on Rue Lafayette during the Paris Commune, March 1871.
CHAPTER 11 – THE PARIS COMMUNE
08:16 (Paris Time)
Thursday, February 23, 1871 ‘A’
Hôtel de Brinvilliers, 12 Rue Charles V, Le Marais
Paris, France
‘’Please, Pierre, stop arguing and just go!’’ insisted Jeanne anxiously. ‘’I need you and Suzan to escort the children to London for their safety.’’
‘’But you?’’ objected Pierre Laplante, officially her uncle and employee but being in reality the father of Jeanne/Nancy ‘B’. ‘’It won’t do any good for you to stay here in Paris. You already had to evacuate your foundation employees and your Red Cross staff out of Paris.’’
‘’You know that I wil be needed here more than ever in the days and weeks to come, Pierre. However, I won’t be able to help around Paris if I have to worry about the children. Go to my residence in Belgrave Square and wait for me there with the kids.’’
Not letting her father argue further, Jeanne looked up at Luc Rémillard, her coach driver, who sat up in the driver’s seat of the big coach, alongside Michel d’Angelo, her stable boy.
‘’DRIVE OFF, LUC! GET THEM SAFELY TO LONDON!’’
‘’I WILL, MADAME!’’ shouted back the graying ex-legionnaire before urging on his two horses, making the coach roll. Jeanne, near tears, waved a last goodbye to her children inside the coach, fifteen year-old William and Louis and Anne, both ten years old now. Her children waved back, along with Suzan Laplante, Nancy’s mother. Jeanne’s personal assistant, Li Mai, gently patted her shoulder as they watched the coach drive away.
‘’They will be alright, Jeanne. You did the right thing by sending them to London.’’
Jeanne gave a despondent look to her faithful assistant. Li Mai was by now a mature but still beautiful Chinese woman of 38 and, apart from having being her personal assistant, hostess and secret lover for over 23 years, was as well an official Red Cross worker and nurse. Jeanne was herself officially 41 years old but was still as vigorous and fit as ever. Both had however lost weight in the last months, due to the siege of Paris imposed by the Prussian Army, siege that had caused widespread famine in the city during the last five months.
‘’I hope that they make it safely through the Prussian lines, Mai. You should have gone with them, though.’’
‘’You know that I will never abandon you, Jeanne, and neither would your other employees.’’ firmly replied the tiny Chinese woman. Jeanne looked at the group formed by her eight other residence’s employees, now all in their forties or fifties, who stood with their spouses in the courtyard of the mansion. She had to swallow hard the ball stuck in her throat before she could speak to them.
‘’Thank you all for staying with me, my friends. God knows that I would have preferred to see you safe and out of Paris by now.’’
‘’You already took care of sending to safety our own children and grand-children, madame.’’ replied soberly François Picard, her butler. ‘’You did plenty for us in the last 24 years and it is only just that you could count on us in these hard times. Just tell us what you need to be done.’’
Jeanne was silent for a moment, gathering her thoughts. The war declared so imprudently against Prussia by Emperor Napoleon The Third, thanks to a calculated insult by Prussian Chancellor Otto Von Bismarck, had turned quickly into an utter disaster for France. After a number of bloody and very costly battles for both sides, battles in which Jeanne and her Red Cross volunteers had done their best to alleviate the suffering of both French and Prussian soldiers, the Prussian Army had laid siege to Paris last September, while Emperor Napoleon had been forced to abdicate and was now being held in Prussia.
‘’While an armistice has been officially signed last month, I expect more bloodshed to come in the next months. You all know as well as me how inflamed the popular sentiment of the people of Paris is concerning the defeatist attitude of the new government of Adolphe Thiers. That popular ire could very well overflow and cause more fighting. The only thing I will ask of you is not to listen to the hotheads in the city and to not take arms against either the Prussians or the troops of the new government. You know that I am no coward when it comes to war but I can recognize a lost cause when I see one : there would be no sense for any of you to get killed now for nothing. What we will concentrate on instead is to help the little people of Paris through the next few months, by treating the wounded and sick and sheltering the children who have nowhere else to go. There will be more privations and hardship to come, along with much tears, but I will urge you to act with peace and compassion, not with hate or violence. The first order of the day will be to restock our supplies of food and medicine, now that the armistice has loosened the Prussian siege around Paris. Mai will direct the buying of food, while I will take care of finding more medicine. Rosette and Constance, you will prepare our two upper rooms in the Southeast Wing as shelters for young refugees. Let’s get to work, my friends!’’
10:48 (Paris Time)
Wednesday, March 1, 1871 ‘A’
Avenue des Champs-Élysées, Paris
Despite having known all along that this would happen, Jeanne still felt intense bitterness as she stood with a few other Parisians on the sidewalks of the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, watching Prussian troops parading down the avenue, complete with military band. Most of Paris was closed for business today, while the streets were nearly empty, all in protest at what was seen in the city as a cowardly surrender to the Prussians and the abandonment of the Parisians by the new government and parliament, which was composed mostly of monarchists opposed to the socialist views of most of the Parisian population. This and further moves to come in the next weeks by the government of Adolphe Thiers were bound to bring the popular sentiment to the boiling point. Sighing with frustration, Jeanne turned her back to the Prussian soldiers and walked away, hoping to find open an apothecary that would be open today, so that she could stock up on some critical medications and medicinal herbs.
06 :30 (Paris Time)
Saturday, March 18, 1871 ‘A’
Hôtel de Brinvilliers, 12 Rue Charles V
Paris
Li Mai woke up with a startle in her bed : three loud detonations had just reverberated through Paris. The city had been relatively quiet in the last few days and the Prussian soldiers had withdrawn outside of Paris two weeks ago, so those detonations, which sounded like cannon shots, could well announce more trouble. Jumping out of bed and going to one of the dormer windows of her room in the attic level of Jeanne’s residence, she looked outside, trying to see some smoke or anything else unusual. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, Mai put on a robe and went out in the attic’s hallway, using the nearby staircase to go down to the upper floor. She was about to get to Jeanne’s bedroom door and knock on it when Jeanne got out, still in a night gown covered by a robe.
‘’Jeanne, did you hear those cannon shots?’’
Jeanne nodded, her face showing concern.
‘’Yes, I did and they probably mean more trouble and bloodshed to come. Since we are up now, we might as well start taking care of preparing breakfast for our young tenants.’’
Mai nodded her head and accompanied her down to the kitchen, on street level. They were presently sheltering the 37 young tenants of a girls orphanage sponsored by Jeanne. Their previous residence had been heavily damaged by fire following street riots last month and Jeanne had taken no time to relocate the girls, aged from two to twelve, in her townhouse. Thankfully, her residence had no lack of spare rooms, especially since the children of her own servants and employees were now all grown up and had moved out years ago. In a way, caring for all those little girls had done a lot to take their minds off the bloody events of the recent past.
The children had been fed breakfast and were now attending two separate classes given by Jeanne and Mai when rifle shots were heard in the distance in mid morning. Despite that, Jeanne continued with her lesson in mathematics to the older girls as if nothing had happened, not wanting to worry her young pupils. When time came for lunch, she brought her group to the big, luxurious dining room and put them in the care of Leila Benchetrit, her assistant cook, then went down the grand staircase of the residence. She was putting on a cape and a hat in the vestibule when Mai shouted to her from up the staircase.
‘’Jeanne, where are you going?’’
‘’I’m going to see how things are going in town, Mai. Don’t worry about me : I will be back by supper time.’’
Not giving time to Mai to protest, Jeanne then went out in the tunnel of the main gate and walked out at a quick step. She went up to the Rue Saint Antoine and turned left on it, heading towards the city hall. She was hoping to find people who would have seen or heard about the events of the morning. In that she was not disappointed, as she saw in the popular market near the city hall a woman giving a fiery speech to an assembled crowd from the top of a barrel. Activating first the micro camera hidden in her hat, Jeanne then approached the crowd, posting herself in the back ranks and listening on to the speaker, a thin woman in her early forties. Jeanne actually recognized her quickly, as Louise Michel would become well known in history as a passionate socialist, hardcore anarchist and ardent feminist.
‘’…we, the women of Paris, went to the support of our national guardsmen and stopped the government troops from taking away the cannons parked in Montmartre, the same cannons we the people of Paris paid for so that we could fight those damn Prussians. And what did those government troops do then? They shot at us, that’s what! We shot back and captured their general! Many of his soldiers then saw how wrong their orders were and joined us, refusing to further shoot on the people. Adolphe Thiers and his gutless government are responsible for this outrage and should feel the wrath of us Parisians. I say : let’s throw him out of Paris or, better, pass judgment on him and make him pay for his crimes against the people. We, the Commune of Paris, have to take control of our good city and put down this criminal government.’’
The crowd cheered at those words, visibly outraged by the actions of the government troops. As Louise Michel continued her incendiary speech and as Jeanne kept listening and secretly filming her, a woman near her who wore old, used clothes, started eyeing with suspicion her fine coat and hat and her expensive pair of earrings. The woman finally shouted out loud while pointing Jeanne with an accusing finger.
‘’WHO ARE YOU, TO COME LISTENING TO US IN YOUR FINE BOURGEOIS CLOTHES? A SPY OF THE GOVERNMENT? LOOK AT HER, CITIZENS!’’
Jeanne suddenly found herself the center of attention of a less than friendly crowd, with men moving to cut her retreat off. Louise Michel, her attention now firmly on Jeanne, pointed her from the top of her barrel.
‘’BRING THAT WOMAN TO ME, SO THAT WE COULD SEE WHO SHE IS!’’
Knowing that trying to run away would only complicate things, and with many men around her carrying knives and even pistols, Jeanne did not resist when men pushed her towards Louise Michel, forcing her to stop in front of the anarchist leader. The latter, who wore both a pistol and a knife at her belt and carried a Chassepot rifle across her back, jumped down from her barrel and eyed Jeanne up and down with visible antipathy.
‘’What fine clothes you have, madame, when most of the people of Paris are down to rags. Who are you?’’
Despite being rightly worried, Jeanne kept an appearance of assurance and calm as she answered in a firm, strong voice.
‘’My name is Lady Jeanne Smythe-d’Orléans. I…’’
Her name seemingly stung Louise Michel, who cut her off in an indignant tone.
‘’A d’Orléans and an aristocrat? And what the hell were you doing here? Spying on us for the monarchist government?’’
‘’I am no spy and I have no sympathy towards Adolphe Thiers and his government, miss. I am the Paris representative of the French Red Cross society and I make my business of caring for the wounded and the sick in war, irrespective of the side they are on.’’
Louise Michel gave a derisive look at her fine dress and cape before looking her in the eyes.
‘’And you pretend to treat wounded men while wearing such fine clothes, Lady Jeanne?’’
‘’Not right now, but I treated plenty of wounded and sick men on the battlefields of Weissenberg, Wörth and Sedan. Presently, I am sheltering the girls of an orphanage in my residence. I simply came out to find out if anything could threaten those girls.’’
The mention of the orphan girls seemed to somewhat calm down the firebrand.
‘’A fine story, madame…if it is true. LET’S GO TO HER RESIDENCE AND SEE IF SHE IS TELLING THE TRUTH!’’
On a sign from Louise Michel, two big men armed with knives stepped forward and grabbed each one of Jeanne’s arms. Michel then smiled ferociously to her.
‘’Show us the way, Lady Jeanne!’’
‘’There is no point in holding me like this : my residence on Charles V is well known and my neighbors will vouch for my sympathy towards the little people of Paris.’’
‘’We will see! Let her go, men, but keep a close eye on her while she guides us.’’
Closely escorted by Louise Michel and four men and followed by a crowd of at least a hundred people, Jeanne had no choice but to retrace her steps, turning on Charles V twenty minutes later. As they approached the main gate of her residence, Jeanne turned to face Louise Michel and spoke firmly to her.
‘’I am ready to let you and a few men follow me inside, so that you could see that I am who I say I am, but I will not allow this crowd in and let it loot or burn it down, like what happened already to too many places in Paris.’’
‘’And how will you stop us from all going in, if we wanted to?’’ asked sarcastically the female anarchist. Jeanne drilled her in the eyes, her voice cold.
‘’You will have to kill me first. If you do that, then you will have all the people of this district turning on you. As I said, my charitable works are well known here.’’
Surprised by her aplomb, Louise Michel stared at Jeanne for a moment, then reluctantly nodded her head.
‘’Very well! I wouldn’t want anyway to scare your little orphans. Jean, Marcel, you come with me inside. The rest will stay out in front of the residence. Pierre, if you hear any shot from inside, then take the place and burn it down.’’
‘’Understood, Louise!’’
By then, Jeanne could see the worried face of Li Mai, watching her and the surrounding crowd from a window of the upper floor. Making a reassuring gesture to her first, Jeanne then took out her house keys from one pocket of her cape and unlocked the pedestrian door of the main gate, pushing it open and inviting in Louise Michel and her two bodyguards. Then stepping inside herself, she left the door opened : closing and locking it would only raise the suspicions of the already agitated crowd, while it would not resist very long against such a large group of people. Jeanne next faced Louise Michel.
‘’You are now in the Hôtel de Brinvilliers, my personal residence and the headquarters of the Paris Red Cross and of the d’Orléans Social Foundation, a charitable organization I own and lead.’’
‘’The d’Orléans Foundation, you said?’’ Said the one named Marcel. ‘’My sister got educated at a school sponsored by your foundation that took in children too poor to pay for schooling.’’
Louise Michel, a teacher before she became an activist, softened up noticeably on hearing that and looked at Jeanne, who was still calm and composed.
‘’It seems that you indeed have a good reputation, Lady Jeanne. Lead on!’’
Entering the vestibule housing the grand staircase, Jeanne led her three followers up the stairs, only to bump in a concerned Li Mai waiting on the upper floor level.
‘’Jeanne, is everything alright? Why is that crowd waiting outside?’’
‘’Don’t worry, Mai : I am only showing to these people that we are simply engaged in charitable work.’’
On her part, Louise Michel eyed Mai with obvious curiosity and surprise.
‘’An Oriental woman? That is not very common in Paris.’’
‘’Li Mai is my personal assistant and also a Red Cross volunteer nurse. She is an orphan that I found and saved on the side of the Seine, when she was a teenager. I will now show you our little tenants. Where are the girls right now, Mai?’’
‘’Playing in the ballroom, Jeanne.’’
‘’Then, come with us to the ballroom, Mai.’’
Louise Michel, unlike her two bodyguards, did not remark out loud about how luxurious and comfortable the residence was as their group followed Jeanne and Mai through the reception lounge, then the dining room, where Rosette Sans-Souçis and Constance Demers were busy cleaning up the covers from the girls’ lunch. The Haitian maid froze on seeing the armed men following Jeanne.
‘’Is everything alright, Jeanne?’’
Louise Michel raised an ear at that : for a maid to call her aristocrat employer by her first name was unheard of. She thus watched carefully the attitude and body language of the two servants as Jeanne reassured the black maid.
‘’Don’t worry, Rosette : these people are simply visiting briefly the residence.’’
The two maids still followed with worried eyes the group as it entered the vast ballroom. There, in the twelve by ten meter room, they found dozens of young girls playing with toys or looking at illustrated books. That sight seemed to finally convince Louise Michel, who smiled on seeing the children and then faced Jeanne.
‘’You told me the truth, Lady Jeanne. I will thus tell my comrades to leave you in peace.’’
‘’I thank you for your comprehension, miss. Let me guide you back to the main entrance.’’
Retracing their steps, Jeanne led her three visitors to the main gate, where she closed and locked the pedestrian door behind them before looking at Mai and letting out a sigh of relief.
‘’Hell, that was a close call! That crowd could have easily burned down this place or could have hung or shot me as a suspected government spy.’’
‘’So, what is going on in Paris today, Jeanne?’’
‘’Government troops tried to grab the cannons of the National Guard kept in Montmartre, but were repelled. This could announce a lot of bad news for the weeks to come.’’
The next days and weeks proved Jeanne right in the eyes of her employees. The evening of that same day, Adolphe Thiers and his government, scared for its safety, fled Paris to go establish themselves in nearby Versailles. On March 28, the Council of the Commune established itself in the now deserted city hall and soon published a manifesto proclaiming the Commune and its socialist ideals and also vowed to resist the monarchist government of Adolphe Thiers as well as the Prussians. On May 10, the Treaty of Frankfurt was signed by the Adolphe Thiers government, ceding the Alsace and most of the Lorraine to Prussia and also promising to pay five billion francs in war reparations. The news of that treaty positively enraged the Parisians and the leaders of the Commune, who could however do little about it, the city being surrounded still by Prussian troops and by French government troops now dedicated to crushing the Parisian rebellion.
07:31 (Paris Time)
Sunday, May 21, 1871 ‘A’
Hôtel de Brinvilliers, 12 Rue Charles V
Paris
‘’What was that we just heard?’’ asked Charlotte Truffaut as she looked outside, crowding the windows of Jeanne’s private study with the other servants, Mai and Jeanne. The latter took on her to answer the question from her cook as they kept listening to the intense firefight that could be heard from the Southwest.
‘’That staccato was from a machine gun, a weapon that can fire hundreds of rounds per minute. It seems that the government troops have succeeded in breaking through the walls of the city around the Saint-Cloud Gate. This could very well turn into a very bloody day.’’
‘’Do you think that the National Guard will be able to repulse that attack, Jeanne?’’ Asked anxiously Marie Valentin, one of the maids. Jeanne shook slowly her head then.
‘’Not in the long run, Marie. It is too poorly equipped and trained and has limited ammunition supplies. As for the city militias, their actual military value is low, being undisciplined and poorly led. The fight will be hard and bloody, but I am afraid that the government will win this battle in the end.’’
‘’And…then?’’
‘’Then, you can expect only summary justice from the government for the people of Paris.’’ gloomily predicted Jeanne. ‘’I am not even sure that my Red Cross armband or flag would protect me if I went to the help of the wounded over there. My best hope is that my Red Cross volunteers who are now outside of Paris will be permitted to approach the battle lines from behind the advancing government troops. Even that will however leave the federated forces of Paris with little to no medical support.’’
What Jeanne didn’t say was that, as much as she would have wanted to help as a nurse now, she knew about the arbitrary executions and mass arrests which were going to happen in the next few days. She had now spent 25 years building up her charitable foundation, which was after all the primordial reason she was even here in the 19th Century. To get killed now would throw away all those years of work and could as well mean the end of the d’Orléans Social Foundation, with potentially serious repercussions on the history of the decades to come. In contrast, the few wounded that she could save now risked being simply executed by government troops once captured or, at best, being sent to jail or be deported. She also had five more reasons to be cautious: her children. On the other hand, if she stayed alive through this, then her foundation could do something to help the survivors. As bitter as this was for her, she was going to have to sit tight and play safe through this tragedy.
13 :09 (Paris Time)
Thursday, May 25, 1871 ‘A’
Hôtel de Brinvilliers
‘’KEEP YOUR HEADS DOWN!’’ shouted Jeanne to her male employees, preventing them from trying to look outside through the windows of her private study in order to observe the violent firefight happening on their street. The government forces had been advancing through Paris for more than four days now and had steadily pushed back the national guardsmen and militiamen of the federated forces despite their desperate resistance. Thousands had already died on both sides but the government troops were now fighting to take the Saint-Antoine District, where Jeanne’s residence was situated.
As the rifle fire slacked somewhat, Jeanne raised her head for a cautious look down the street. She was then able to see that the line of government soldiers advancing along Charles V Street had been able to break through the hastily erected militia barricade blocking the junction with Saint-Paul street and was now past her residence’s main entrance. The militiamen that had held the barricade were now lying around on the pavement or were fleeing, pursued by soldiers. She then saw at least one militiaman moving slightly as he lay besides the barricade. Something snapped inside Jeanne at that sight and she got up at a crouch to go open one of the cabinets of her study. Watched by her increasingly alarmed employees, she took out her first aid kit, a backpack full of bandages and her Red Cross armbands, slipping one around each of her forearms. Her gardener and handyman, Pierre Brunelle, finally protested to her as she was shouldering her backpack and first aid kit.
‘’You’re not going to go outside now, Jeanne? It is still dangerous out there.’’
‘’There is at least one man in need of help out there, Pierre. I just can’t sit and watch all this anymore without doing some