X.] TME CHANGES SIXCE THE REVOLUTIOiV. 215 their captive armies should be sent home from Germany. Within Paris the old commune of the city was supposed to rule, the word Cot/uiiujiist, meaning a person who thinks that wealth and lands should be in common, having only an accidental resemblance to the word Commune, or MunicipaHty. The rule of the Commune revived some of the old revolutionary ideas of 1793. Churches were closed, priests imprisoned, nuns turned out of convents, sisters of charity driven from their works. So strong was the hatred to the name of Buonaparte that the great column in the Place Vendoiiie, cast from the cannon of the elder Buonaparte's victories, was thrown down. Cleme)it Thomas and another general who had incurred dislike by trying to discipline the National Guard during the former siege, were seized and shot. And when Com- munist soldiers who had been taken prisoners by the troops of Versailles were shot in cold blood, the Com- munists seized on Archbishop Darboy and about two hundred other persons, and declared that they should be hostages. Mac Mahon and his army had, m the mean time, been released, and laid siege to the miserable city, its twelfth siege, and its saddest. The Communists forced hundreds of reluctant men to use arms in their cause, and when they found their cause hopeless, their rage knew no bounds. They shot the archbishop and about fifty more of the hostages ; and in their madness they set fire to the city, and the flames of the Tuileries and Hotel de Ville lighted the troops on their way to exact a terrible reckoning. Women were even said to throw petroleum into empty houses and public buildings. Both sides were almost frenzied with r^ge as the soldiers fought their way in, and the Communists made their desperate stand in the burial-ground of Pere la Chaise. They were cut down, and a horrible slaughter was made of men and women alike. Large bodies of troops were marched to Versailles, many shot at once, others tried and then shot, or sentenced to imprisonment, or transportation to New Caledonia. 16. The Third Republic, 1872. — M. Thiers now did his best to build up the ruins of the state. Louis Napo- leon Buonaparte had gone to England soon after his release, but with broken health, so that he soon died, and his son was not old enough to come forward. The second son of the Duke of Orleans had actually fought in the army of the Loire, under the name of his ancestor
