rally round the Government against the rebels. Out of 300,000 National Guards only 300 responded to this summons to rally round little Thiers against themselves. The glorious workingmen's revolution of the 18th of March took undisputed sway of Paris without striking a blow. The Central Committee was its provisional government. Europe seemed, for a moment, to doubt whether the recent sensational performances of state and war had any reality in them, or whether they were the dreams of a long bygone past.
From the 18th of March to the entrance of the Versailles troops into Paris, the proletarian revolution remained so free from the acts of violence in which the revolutions, and still more the counter-revolutions, of the "better classes" abound, that no facts were left to its opponents to cry out about but the execution of Generals Lecomte and Clement Thomas, and the affair of the Place Vendôme.
One of the Bonapartist officers engaged in the nocturnal attempt against Montmartre, General Lecomte, had four times ordered the 81st line regiment to fire at an unarmed gathering in the Place Pigale, and on their refusal fiercely insulted them. Instead of shooting women and children, his own men shot him. The inveterate habits acquired by the soldiery under the training of the enemies of the working class are, of course, not likely to change the very moment these soldiers change sides. The same men executed Clement Thomas.
"General" Clement Thomas, a malcontent ex-quartermaster-sergeant, had, in the latter days of Louis Philippe's reign, enlisted at the office of the Republican newspaper Le National, there to serve in the double capacity of responsible man-of-straw (gérant responsable) and of duelling bully to that very combative journal. After the
