Untitled

A SERIES OF INSURRECTIONS 33
to the effect that "The delegates of the people have not
believed it their duty to impose themselves on the Municipal
Council by violence and have retired when it went
into session, leaving it to the people to fully appreciate
the situation." (11) "At the moment," says Guillaume,
"when . . .
Mayor Henon, with an escort of national
bourgeois guards, reentered the Hotel de Ville, he
met Bakounin in the hall of the Pas-Pcrdus. The mayor
immediately ordered his companions to take him in custody
and to confine him at once in an underground hiding-place."
(12) The Municipal Councillors then opened
their session and pledged that no pursuit should be instituted
in view of the happenings of the day. They
voted to reestablish the former wage of the national
dock-yard workers, but declared themselves unable to
undertake the revolutionary measures proposed by the
Committee of Safety of France, as these were outside
their legal province.
In the meantime Bakounin was undergoing an experience
far from pleasant, if we are to judge from the
account which he gives in a letter written the following
day: "Some used me brutally in all sorts of ways,
jostling me about, pushing me, pinching me, twisting my
arms and hands. I must, however, admit that others
cried: 'Do not harm him.' In truth the bourgeoisie
showed itself what it is :
everywhere brutal and cowardly.
For you know that I was delivered by some
sharpshooters who put to flight three or four times
their number of these heroic shopkeepers armed with
I was delivered, but of all the objects which
their rifles.
had been stolen from me by these gentlemen I
was able
to find only my revolver. My memorandum book and
my purse, which contained 165 francs and some sous,
without doubt stayed in the hands of these gentlemen.