Mr. Washburne to Mr. Fish
Sir: I came in from Versailles late last night after having been there three days. Mr. Hoffman relieved me, and will remain there until I shall go out again. Upon my return here my impression is strengthened that the power of the insurgents is all the while increasing. In my No. 416 I stated it too strongly when I said the insurgents had no men outside the city except those in the forts. They have a large force in the direction of Neuilly and Courbevoie, and, indeed, they claim to have retaken Neuilly from the Versailles troops. Fighting is going on all the time. The city has more and more the appearance of a great camp. New barricades are being built, and cannon are being placed in new positions. The Versailles troops continue the bombardment of our quarter of the city, and the day before yesterday a shell exploded directly over the legation, and, falling, struck the lower portion of the building within twenty feet of where I am now writing. The Americans who are here are becoming more and more alarmed, and the legation is thronged by them from morning to night seeking passports and protection papers for their property. I fear I shall have to send my family away again, as a great many of the French people now consider a siege not improbable, and already the prices of living have advanced very much. It will be four weeks to-morrow since the insurrection broke out, and things have been going from bad to worse all the time. It is estimated that three hundred thousand people have left Paris in the last fortnight. All persons are either concealing or carrying away their capital. The sources of labor are dried up. There is neither trade, commerce, traffic, nor manufacture of any sort. All the gold and silver that has been found in the churches, and all the plate belonging to the government found in the different ministries, has been seized by the commune, to be converted into coin. The Catholic clergy continue to be hunted down. The priests are openly placarded as thieves, and the churches denounced as “haunts, where they have morally assassinated the masses, in dragging France under the heels of the scoundrels Bonaparte, Favre, and Trochu.”
A most remarkable decree is just published in the official organ of the commune. It is no less than an order to demolish the world-renowned column Vendôme, in the Place Vendôme. It is denounced as a monument of barbarism, and a symbol of brute force and false glory, a permanent insult cast by the victors on the vanquished, and a perpetual attack on one of the great principles of the French republic: fraternity. Hence, the decree to raze it to the ground. A gentleman just in says that the firing from Mont Valerien has completely demolished the insurgent barricades at the Port Maillot, and to-day Mont Valérien is bombarding the Port de Ternes. The Arc de Triomphe has been struck twenty-seven times. The splendid hotel of the Turkish embassy, in the Place d’Etoile, has been very badly damaged by shells from Mont Valerien. The apartment of Mr. Pell, of New York, at No. 12 rue de Presbourg, has also been badly damaged. The building in which Mr. Hoffman has his apartment in avenue d’Eylau has been struck four times.
I have, &c.,