"
Heaven is very beautiful, the kingdom of Heaven gives courage...
".
Friday, May 26, 1871. While the city was dying in the bloody battles between the Versailles troops of Adolphe Thiers and the Communard rebels who had secessionized after the French defeat against Prussian Germany, hundreds of hostages, including many priests await the martyrdom which is slow in coming.
“
My God, I never dared to ask for the pardon of such a death… But in Paris!
Poor France
”, writes from his jail Father Polycarpe Tuffier, beatified by the Church this Saturday, in one of his last letters.
Under the eyes of the invader, the army of Versailles gradually regained possession of the whole of the city, starting with the western districts.
The revolutionaries of the Commune are entrenched on the heights of Belleville.
The last days have been bloody.
The repression of the Versaillese is ruthless, and the summary executions of the communards multiply, responding to the severity of the troops of Adolphe Thiers.
The Archbishop of Paris was summarily executed with two other priests two days before.
"
There was among the remaining Communards a desire for revenge against their enemies, especially the priests,
" says historian Robert Tombs, specialist in the Commune at Cambridge, and this in a context of great disorder where the authority central has disappeared, giving way to some of the most violent elements of the Commune.
But this now infamous week isn't over yet.
The Commune has not yet committed the worst of its crimes.
To read alsoGuillaume Perrault: "Flaubert, Michelet and Renan facing the war of 1870"
The Versaillese have won almost all the neighborhoods but the Federated, extremists and driven by a mystical revolutionary politics, are fighting fiercely and barricading themselves in the last bastions.
At the beginning of the afternoon, they came to fetch fifty hostages from the prison of La Roquette, on the orders of the Commune.
Among them, gendarmes and priests including Father Planchat of the Congregation of Religious of Saint Vincent de Paul, imprisoned for 39 days, and four other priests of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, including Father Tuffier.
“
Should I take my hat?
asks one of them.
The hostages, however, have no illusions about the fate that awaits them, and for which they have been preparing for several weeks.
way of the cross
In the street, a hateful crowd welcomes them "
with insults and cries of death
", specifies Father Jacques Benoist, priest and historian, who closely follows the beatification file.
"
Father Planchat walked with his eyes lowered, deeply recollected, no doubt thinking only of offering the sacrifice of his life to God
," says a witness, quoted by Maurice Maignen
,
the priest's first biographer.
All along this Stations of the Cross, the crowd becomes denser, threatening or curious.
The procession stops rue Haxo, in the 19th arrondissement.
The officers parade, the crowd vociferates, the court-martial is lacking.
“
There were no more guards for the hostages, there were only executioners
“, another resident reports to Maurice Maignen.
It seems then that a great confusion reigns.
Some Communard leaders try in vain to stop the bloody cycle.
But the crowd is unleashed.
“
A man, mounted on a cart, harangued the crowd, a red flag in his hand,
reports for its part the diocese of Paris which relates the last moments of the victims.
'Citizens,' he said, 'the devotion of the population deserves a reward.
Here are hostages that we are bringing you to pay you for your long sacrifices'
”.
The crowd redoubled their cries: “
To death!
To death !
".
"
It is necessary that we the ministers of a crucified God, we participate in the cross of our Divine Master
", wrote before his death Father Tuffier, who doubtless did not believe that he was living so closely the journey of Christ whose crowd cried out for him to be crucified.
The details set forth in the trial of 1872, which accounts for this general disorder, are too numerous to be all reported.
Let us simply quote the biographer Maignen, who specifies that Father Planchat, forgetting himself, begged to spare the gendarmes, fathers for some, and offered to offer himself instead.
Mass lynching
Then, around 6 p.m., a shot is fired, and the massacre begins.
Many witnesses also recounted the facts during the canonical inquiry for a beatification opened 20 years later.
“
We were shooting them like rabbits
,” reports one of the executors, among others.
Father Tuffier, after having intervened between an assassin and a young victim, was shot three times in the body, then a fourth in the head.
A woman then tries to tear out his tongue.
The picture painted by the witnesses is hardly believable as the horror is unleashed.
Historian and priest Jacques Benoist next to what remains of the wall in front of which the Haxo Street massacre took place.
Mayeul Aldebert / Le Figaro
The killing lasted half an hour, with gunshots, revolvers, bayonet thrusts.
Executors load and unload continuously.
According to several testimonies, Father Planchat dies on his knees, praying until his last breath.
Each victim receives several bullets, which will be confirmed by the analyzes of the bodies of the priests now beatified.
"
There does not seem to have been an organized execution, but a form of mass lynching
", explains the historian and specialist in Robert Tombs.
The corpses remain exposed to applause first, then to insults, and finally to looting, until the next day when they are piled up in a common grave.
“
Neither God nor master
,” declared the idol of the communards and revolutionary socialist Blanqui.
If the fifty victims of the Haxo Street massacre were killed for political reasons, the priests and clerics were killed, more precisely, as “enemies of the people”.
And as the Church says today, “
in hatred of their faith
”.
More than 150 years have passed.
After several abortive steps for their beatification, Rome finally decided to set up as a model of heroism and faith five of the priests murdered on May 26.
The Church had not dared to take this step which could have seemed “
politically provocative
” until recently, believes Robert Tombs.
"But the Commune is no longer such a controversial episode as it was 50 years ago, and today is history."