THE BURIAL OF A GREAT ANNIVERSARY
Such was the first day. Let us look at it steadfastly. It deserves it.
It is the anniversary of Austerlitz; the Nephew commemorates the Uncle.
Austerlitz is the most brilliant battle of history; the Nephew set
himself this problem--how to commit a baseness equal to this
magnificence. He succeeded.
This first day, which will be followed by others, is already complete.
Everything is there. It is the most terrible attempt at a thrust
backwards that has ever been essayed. Never has such a crumbling of
civilization been seen. All that formed the edifice is now in ruin; the
soil is strewn with the fragments. In one night the inviolability of the
Law, the Right of the Citizen, the Dignity of the Judge, and the Honor
of the Soldier have disappeared. Terrible substitutions have taken
place; there was the oath, there is pergury; there was the flag, there
is a rag; there was the Army, there is a band of brigands; there was
Justice, there is treason; there was a code of laws, there is the sabre;
there was a Government, there is a crew of swindlers; there was France,
there is a den of thieves. This called itself Society Saved.
It is the rescue of the traveller by the highwayman.
France was passing by, Bonaparte cried, "Stand and deliver!"
The hypocrisy which has preceded the Crime, equals in deformity the
impudence which has followed it. The nation was trustful and calm. There
was a sudden and cynical shock. History has recorded nothing equal to the
Second of December. Here there was no glory, nothing but meanness. No
deceptive picture. He could have declared himself honest; He declares
himself infamous; nothing more simple. This day, almost unintelligible in
its success, has proved that Politics possess their obscene side. Louis
Bonaparte has shown himself unmasked.
Yesterday President of the Republic, to-day a scavenger. He has sworn,
he still swears: but the tone has changed. The oath has become an
imprecation. Yesterday he called himself a maiden, to-day he becomes a
brazen woman, and laughs at his dupes. Picture to yourself Joan of Arc
confessing herself to be Messalina. Such is the Second of December.
Women are mixed up in this treason. It is an outrage which savors both
of the boudoir and of the galleys. There wafts across the fetidness of
blood an undefined scent of patchouli. The accomplices of this act of
brigandage are most agreeable men--Romieu, Morny. Getting into debt
leads one to commit crimes.
Europe was astounded. It was a thunder bolt from a thief. It must be
acknowledged that thunder can fall into bad hands, Palmerston, that
traitor, approved of it. Old Metternich, a dreamer in his villa at
Rennweg, shook his head. As to Soult, the man of Austerlitz after
Napoleon, he did what he ought to do, on the very day of the Crime he
died, Alas! and Austerlitz also.
THE SECOND DAY--THE STRUGGLE.
CHAPTER I.
THEY COME TO ARREST ME
In order to reach the Rue Caumartin from the Rue Popincourt, all Paris
has to be crossed. We found a great apparent calm everywhere. It was one
o'clock in the morning when we reached M. de la R----'s house. The
_fiacre_ stopped near a grated door, which M. de la R---- opened with a
latch-key; on the right, under the archway, a staircase ascended to the
first floor of a solitary detached building which M. de la R----
inhabited, and into which he led me.
We entered a little drawing-room very richly furnished, lighted with a
night-lamp, and separated from the bedroom by a tapestry curtain
two-thirds drown. M. de la R---- went into the bedroom, and a few minutes
afterwards came back again, accompanied by a charming woman, pale and
fair, in a dressing-gown, her hair down, handsome, fresh, bewildered,
gentle nevertheless, and looking at me with that alarm which in a young
face confers an additional grace. Madame de la R---- had just been
awakened by her husband. She remained a moment on the threshold of her
chamber, smiling, half asleep, greatly astonished, somewhat frightened,
looking by turns at her husband and at me, never having dreamed perhaps
what civil war really meant, and seeing it enter abruptly into her rooms
in the middle of the night under this disquieting form of an unknown
person who asks for a refuge.
I made Madame de la R---- a thousand apologies, which she received with
perfect kindness, and the charming woman profited by the incident to go
and caress a pretty little girl of two years old who was sleeping at the
end of the room in her cot, and the child whom she kissed caused her to
forgive the refugee who had awakened her.
While chatting M. de la R---- lighted a capital fire in the grate, and
his wife, with a pillow and cushions, a hooded cloak belonging to him,
and a pelisse belonging to herself, improvised opposite the fire a bed
on a sofa, somewhat short, and which we lengthened by means of an
arm-chair.
During the deliberation in the Rue Popincourt, at which I had just
presided, Baudin had lent me his pencil to jot down some names. I still
had this pencil with me. I made use of it to write a letter to my wife,
which Madame de la R---- undertook to convey herself to Madame Victor
Hugo the next day. While emptying my pockets I found a box for the
"Italiens," which I offered to Madame de la R----. On that evening
(Tuesday, December 2d) they were to play _Hernani_.
I looked at that cot, these two handsome, happy young people, and at
myself, my disordered hair and clothes, my boots covered with mud,
gloomy thoughts in my mind, and I felt like an owl in a nest of
nightingales.
A few moments afterwards M. and Madame de la R---- had disappeared into
their bedroom, and the half-opened curtain was closed. I stretched
myself, fully dressed as I was, upon the sofa, and this gentle nest
disturbed by me subsided into its graceful silence.
One can sleep on the eve of a battle between two armies, but on the eve
of a battle between citizens there can be no sleep. I counted each hour
as it sounded from a neighboring church; throughout the night there
passed down the street, which was beneath the windows of the room where I
was lying, carriages which were fleeing from Paris. They succeeded each
other rapidly and hurriedly, one might have imagined it was the exit from
a ball. Not being able to sleep, I got up. I had slightly parted the
muslin curtains of a window, and I tried to look outside; the darkness
was complete. No stars, clouds were flying by with the turbulent violence
of a winter night. A melancholy wind howled. This wind of clouds
resembled the wind of events.
I watched the sleeping baby. I waited for dawn. It came. M. de la R----
had explained at my request in what manner I could go out without
disturbing any one. I kissed the child's forehead, and left the room. I
went downstairs, closing the doors behind me as gently as I could, so
not to wake Madame de la R----. I opened the iron door and went out into
the street. It was deserted, the shops were still shut, and a milkwoman,
with her donkey by her side, was quietly arranging her cans on the
pavement.
I have not seen M. de la R---- again. I learned since that he wrote to
me in my exile, and that his letter was intercepted. He has, I believe,
quitted France. May this touching page convey to him my kind
remembrances.
The Rue Caumartin leads into the Rue St. Lazare. I went towards it. It
was broad daylight. At every moment I was overtaken and passed by
_fiacres_ laden with trunks and packages, which were hastening towards
the Havre railway station. Passers-by began to appear. Some baggage
trains were mounting the Rue St. Lazare at the same time as myself.
Opposite No. 42, formerly inhabited by Mdlle. Mars, I saw a new bill
posted on the wall. I went up to it, I recognized the type of the
National Printing Office, and I read,
"COMPOSITION OF THE NEW MINISTRY.
"_Interior_ --M. de Morny.
"_War_ --The General of Division St. Arnaud.
"_Foreign Affairs_ --M. de Turgot.
"_Justice_ --M. Rouher.
"_Finance_ --M. Fould.
"_Marine_ --M. Ducos.
"_Public Works_ --M. Magne.
"_Public Instruction_ --M.H. Fortuol.
"_Commerce_ --M. Lefebre-Duruflé."
I tore down the bill, and threw it into the gutter! The soldiers of the
party who were leading the wagons watched me do it, and went their way.
In the Rue St. Georges, near a side-door, there was another bill. It was
the "Appeal to the People." Some persons were reading it. I tore it
down, notwithstanding the resistance of the porter, who appeared to me
to be entrusted with the duty of protecting it.
As I passed by the Place Bréda some _fiacres_ had already arrived there.
I took one. I was near home, the temptation was too great, I went there.
On seeing me cross the courtyard the porter looked at me with a
stupefied air. I rang the bell. My servant, Isidore, opened the door,
and exclaimed with a great cry, "Ah! it is you, sir! They came during
the night to arrest you." I went into my wife's room. She was in bed,
but not asleep, and she told me what had happened.
She had gone to bed at eleven o'clock. Towards half-past twelve, during
that species of drowsiness which resembles sleeplessness, she heard
men's voices. It seemed to her that Isidore was speaking to some one in
the antechamber. At first she did not take any notice, and tried to go
to sleep again, but the noise of voices continued. She sat up, and rang
the bell.
Isidore came in. She asked him,
"Is any one there?"
"Yes, madame."
"Who is it?"
"A man who wishes to speak to master."
"Your master is out."
"That is what I have told him, madame."
"Well, is not the gentleman going?"
"No, madame, he says that he urgently needs to speak to Monsieur Victor
Hugo, and that he will wait for him."
Isidore had stopped on the threshold of the bedroom. While he spoke a
fat, fresh-looking man in an overcoat, under which could be seen a black
coat, appeared at the door behind him.
Madame Victor Hugo noticed this man, who was silently listening.
"Is it you, sir, who wish to speak to Monsieur Victor Hugo?"
"Yes, madame."
"But what is it about? Is it regarding politics?"
The man did not answer.
"As to politics," continued my wife, "what is happening?"
"I believe, madame, that all is at an end."
"In what sense?"
"In the sense of the President."
My wife looked fixedly at the man, and said to him,--
"You have come to arrest my husband, sir."
"It is true, madame," answered the man, opening his overcoat, which
revealed the sash of a Commissary of Police.
He added after a pause, "I am a Commissary of Police, and I am the
bearer of a warrant to arrest M. Victor Hugo. I must institute a search
and look through the house."
"What is your name, sir?" asked Madame Victor Hugo.
"My name is Hivert."
"You know the terms of the Constitution?"
"Yes, madam."
"You know that the Representatives of the People are inviolable!"
"Yes, madame."
"Very well, sir," she said coldly, "you know that you are committing a
crime. Days like this have a to-morrow; proceed."
The Sieur Hivert attempted a few words of explanation, or we should
rather say justification; he muttered the word "conscience," he
stammered the word "honor." Madame Victor Hugo, who had been calm until
then, could not help interrupting him with some abruptness.
"Do your business, sir, and do not argue; you know that every official
who lays a hand on a Representative of the People commits an act of
treason. You know that in presence of the Representatives the President
is only an official like the others, the chief charged with carrying out
their orders. You dare to come to arrest a Representative in his own
home like a criminal! There is in truth a criminal here who ought to be
arrested--yourself!"
The Sieur Hivert looked sheepish and left the room, and through the
half-open door my wife could see, behind the well-fed, well-clothed,
and bald Commissary, seven or eight poor raw-boned devils, wearing dirty
coats which reached to their feet, and shocking old hats jammed down over
their eyes--wolves led by a dog. They examined the room, opened here and
there a few cupboards, and went away--with a sorrowful air--as Isidore
said to me.
The Commissary Hivert, above all, hung his head; he raised it, however,
for one moment. Isidore, indignant at seeing these men thus hunt for his
master in every corner, ventured to defy them. He opened a drawer and
said, "Look and see if he is not in here!" The Commissary of Police
darted a furious glance at him: "Lackey, take care!" The lackey was
himself.
These men having gone, it was noticed that several of my papers were
missing. Fragments of manuscripts had been stolen, amongst others one
dated July, 1848, and directed against the military dictatorship of
Cavaignac, and in which there were verses written respecting the
Censorship, the councils of war, and the suppression of the newspapers,
and in particular respecting the imprisonment of a great journalist--Emile
de Girardin:--
"... O honte, un lansquenet
Gauche, et parodiant César dont il hérite,
Gouverne les esprits du fond de sa guérite!"
These manuscripts are lost.
The police might come back at any moment, in fact they did come back a
few minutes after I had left. I kissed my wife; I would not wake my
daughter, who had just fallen asleep, and I went downstairs again. Some
affrighted neighbors were waiting for me in the courtyard. I cried out
to them laughingly, "Not caught yet!"
A quarter of an hour afterwards I reached No. 10, Rue des Moulins. It
was not then eight o'clock in the morning, and thinking that my
colleagues of the Committee of Insurrection had passed the night there,
I thought it might be useful to go and fetch them, so that we might
proceed all together to the Salle Roysin.
I found only Madame Landrin in the Rue des Moulins. It was thought that
the house was denounced and watched, and my colleagues had changed their
quarters to No. 7, Rue Villedo, the house of the ex-Constituent Leblond,
legal adviser to the Workmen's Association. Jules Favre had passed the
night there. Madame Landrin was breakfasting. She offered me a place by
her side, but time pressed. I carried off a morsel of bread, and left.
At No. 7, Rue Villedo, the maid-servant who opened the door to me
ushered me into a room where were Carnot, Michel de Bourges, Jules
Favre, and the master of the house, our former colleague, Constituent
Leblond.
"I have a carriage downstairs," I said to them; "the rendezvous is at
the Salle Roysin in the Faubourg St. Antoine; let us go."
This, however, was not their opinion. According to them the attempts
made on the previous evening in the Faubourg St. Antoine had revealed
this portion of the situation; they sufficed; it was useless to persist;
it was obvious that the working-class districts would not rise; we must
turn to the side of the tradesmen's districts, renounce our attempt to
rouse the extremities of the city, and agitate the centre. We were the
Committee of Resistance, the soul of the insurrection; if we were to go
to the Faubourg St. Antoine, which was occupied by a considerable force,
we should give ourselves up to Louis Bonaparte. They reminded me of what
I myself had said on the subject the previous evening in the Rue
Blanche. We must immediately organize the insurrection against the _coup
d'état_ and organize it in practicable districts, that is to say, in the
old labyrinths of the streets St. Denis and St. Martin; we must draw up
proclamations, prepare decrees, create some method of publicity; they
were waiting for important communications from Workmen's Associations
and Secret Societies. The great blow which I wished to strike by our
solemn meeting at the Salle Roysin would prove a failure; they thought
it their duty to remain where they were; and the Committee being few in
number, and the work to be done being enormous, they begged me not to
leave them.
They were men of great hearts and great courage who spoke to me; they
were evidently right; but for myself I could not fail to go to the
rendezvous which I myself had fixed. All the reasons which they had
given me were good, nevertheless I could have opposed some doubts, but
the discussion would have taken too much time, and the hour drew nigh.
I did not make any objections, and I went out of the room, making some
excuse. My hat was in the antechamber, my _fiacre_ was waiting for me,
and I drove off to the Faubourg St. Antoine.
The centre of Paris seemed to have retained its everyday appearance.
People came and went, bought and sold, chatted and laughed as usual. In
the Rue Montorgueil I heard a street organ. Only on nearing the Faubourg
St. Antoine the phenomenon which I had already noticed on the previous
evening became more and more apparent; solitude reigned, and a certain
dreary peacefulness.
We reached the Place de la Bastille.
My driver stopped.
"Go on," I said to him.
CHAPTER II.
FROM THE BASTILLE TO THE RUE DE COTTE
The Place de la Bastille was at the same time empty and filled. Three
regiments in battle array were there; not one passer-by.
Four harnessed batteries were drawn up at the foot of the column. Here
and there knots of officers talked together in a low voice,--sinister
men.
One of these groups, the principal, attracted my attention. That one
was silent, there was no talking. There were several men on horseback;
one in front of the others, in a general's uniform, with a hat
surmounted with black feathers, behind this man were two colonels, and
behind the colonels a party of _aides-de-camp_ and staff officers.
This lace-trimmed company remained immovable, and as though pointing
like a dog between the column and the entrance to the Faubourg. At a
short distance from this group, spread out, and occupying the whole of
the square, were the regiments drawn up and the cannon in their
batteries.
"My driver again stopped.
"Go on," I said; "drive into the Faubourg."
"But they will prevent us, sir."
"We shall see."
The truth was that they did not prevent us.
The driver continued on his way, but hesitatingly, and at a walking
pace. The appearance of a _fiacre_ in the square had caused some
surprise, and the inhabitants began to come out of their houses. Several
came up to my carriage.
We passed by a group of men with huge epaulets. These men, whose tactics
we understood later on, did not even appear to see us.
The emotion which I had felt on the previous day before a regiment of
cuirassiers again seized me. To see before me the assassins of the
country, at a few steps, standing upright, in the insolence of a
peaceful triumph, was beyond my strength: I could not contain myself. I
drew out my sash. I held it in my hand, and putting my arm and head out
of the window of the _fiacre_, and shaking the sash, I shouted,--
"Soldiers! Look at this sash. It is the symbol of Law, it is the
National Assembly visible. Where there this sash is there is Right.
Well, then, this is what Right commands you. You are being deceived. Go
back to your duty. It is a Representative of the People who is speaking
to you, and he who represents the People represents the army. Soldiers,
before becoming soldiers you have been peasants, you have been workmen,
you have been and you are still citizens. Citizens, listen to me when I
speak to you. The Law alone has the right to command you. Well, to-day
the law is violated. By whom? By you. Louis Bonaparte draws you into a
crime. Soldiers, you who are Honor, listen to me, for I am Duty.
Soldiers, Louis Bonaparte assassinates the Republic. Defend it. Louis
Bonaparte is a bandit; all his accomplices will follow him to the
galleys. They are there already. He who is worthy of the galleys is in
the galleys. To merit fetters is to wear them. Look at that man who is
at your head, and who dares to command you. You take him for a general,
he is a convict."
The soldiers seemed petrified.
Some one who was there (I thank his generous, devoted spirit) touched my
arm, and whispered in my ear, "You will get yourself shot."
But I did not heed, and I listened to nothing. I continued, still waving
my sash,--"You, who are there, dressed up like a general, it is you to
whom I speak, sir. You know who I am, I am a Representative of the
People, and I know who you are. I have told you you are a criminal.
Now, do you wish to know my name? This is it."
And I called out my name to him.
And I added,--
"Now tell me yours."
He did not answer.
I continued,--
"Very well, I do not want to know your name as a general, I shall know
your number as a galley slave."
The man in the general's uniform hung his head, the others were silent.
I could read all their looks, however, although they did not raise their
eyes. I saw them cast down, and I felt that they were furious. I had an
overwhelming contempt for them, and I passed on.
What was the name of this general? I did not know then, and I do not
know now.
One of the apologies for the _coup d'état_ in relating this incident,
and characterizing it as "an insensate and culpable provocation," states
that "the moderation shown by the military leaders on this occasion did
honor to General ----:" We leave to the author of this panegyric the
responsibility of that name and of this eulogium.
I entered the Rue de Faubourg St. Antoine.
My driver, who now knew my name, hesitated no longer, and whipped up his
horse. These Paris coachmen are a brave and intelligent race.
As I passed the first shops of the main street nine o'clock sounded from
the Church St. Paul.
"Good," I said to myself, "I am in time."
The Faubourg presented an extraordinary aspect. The entrance was
guarded, but not closed, by two companies of infantry. Two other
companies were drawn up in echelons farther on, at short distances,
occupying the street, but leaving a free passage. The shops, which were
open at the end of the Faubourg, were half closed a hundred yards
farther up. The inhabitants, amongst whom I noticed numerous workmen in
blouses, were talking together at their doors, and watching the
proceedings. I noticed at each step the placards of the _coup d'état_
untouched.
Beyond the fountain which stands at the corner of the Rue de
Charonne the shops were closed. Two lines of soldiers extended on
either side of the street of the Faubourg on the kerb of the pavement;
the soldiers were stationed at every five paces, with the butts of their
muskets resting on their hips, their chests drawn in, their right hand
on the trigger, ready to bring to the present, keeping silence in the
attitude of expectation. From that point a piece of cannon was stationed
at the mouth of each of the side streets which open out of the main road
of the Faubourg. Occasionally there was a mortar. To obtain a clear idea
of this military arrangement one must imagine two rosaries, extending
along the two sides of the Faubourg St. Antoine, of which the soldiers
should form the links and the cannon the beads.
Meanwhile my driver became uneasy. He turned round to me and said, "It
looks as though we should find barricades out there, sir; shall we turn
back?"
"Keep on," I replied.
He continued to drive straight on.
Suddenly it became impossible to do so. A company of infantry ranged
three deep occupied the whole of the street from one pavement to the
other. On the right there was a small street. I said to the driver,--
"Take that turning."
He turned to the right and then to the left. We turned into a labyrinth
of streets.
Suddenly I heard a shot.
The driver asked me,--
"Which way are we to go, sir?"
"In the direction in which you hear the shots."
We were in a narrow street; on my left I saw the inscription above a
door, "Grand Lavoir," and on my right a square with a central building,
which looked like a market. The square and the street were deserted. I
asked the driver,--
"What street are we in?"
"In the Rue de Cotte."
"Where is the Café Roysin?"
"Straight before us."
"Drive there."
He drove on, but slowly. There was another explosion, this time close by
us, the end of the street became filled with smoke; at the moment we
were passing No. 22, which has a side-door above which I
read, "Petit Lavoir."
Suddenly a voice called out to the driver, "Stop!"
The driver pulled up, and the window of the _fiacre_ being down, a hand
was stretched towards mine. I recognized Alexander Rey.
This daring man was pale.
"Go no further," said he; "all is at an end."
"What do you mean, all at an end?"
"Yes, they must have anticipated the time appointed; the barricade is
taken: I have just come from it. It is a few steps from here straight
before us."
And he added,--
"Baudin is killed."
The smoke rolled away from the end of the street.
"Look," said Alexander Rey to me.
I saw, a hundred steps before us, at the junction of the Rue de Cotte
and the Rue Ste. Marguerite, a low barricade which the soldiers were
pulling down. A corpse was being borne away.
It was Baudin.
CHAPTER III.
THE ST. ANTOINE BARRICADE
This is what had happened.
During that same night, and as early as four o'clock in the morning, De
Flotte was in the Faubourg St. Antoine. He was anxious, in case any
movement took place before daylight, that a Representative of the People
should be present, and he was one of those who, when the glorious
insurrection of Right should burst forth, wished to unearth the
paving-stones for the first barricade.
But nothing was stirring. De Flotte, alone in the midst of this deserted
and sleeping Faubourg, wandered from street to street throughout the
night.
Day breaks late in December. Before the first streaks of dawn De Flotte
was at the rendezvous opposite the Lenoir Market.
This spot was only weakly guarded. The only troops in the neighborhood
were the post itself of the Lenoir Market, and another post at a short
distance which occupied the guard-house at the corner of the Faubourg and
the Rue de Montreuil, close to the old Tree of Liberty planted in 1793 by
Santerre. Neither of these posts were commanded by officers.
De Flotte reconnoitred the position. He walked some time up and down the
pavement, and then seeing no one coming as yet, and fearing to excite
attention, he went away, and returned to the side-streets of the
Faubourg.
For his part Aubry (du Nord) got up at five o'clock. Having gone home in
the middle of the night, on his return from the Rue Popincourt, he had
only taken three hours' rest. His porter told him that some suspicious
persons had inquired for him during the evening of the 2d, and that they
had been to the house opposite, No. 12 of the same street, Rue Racine,
to arrest Huguenin. This determined Aubry to leave his house before
daylight.
He walked to the Faubourg St. Antoine. As he reached the place of
rendezvous he met Cournet and the others from the Rue Popincourt. They
were almost immediately joined by Malardier.
It was dawn. The Faubourg was solitary. They walked along wrapt in
thought and speaking in a low voice. Suddenly an impetuous and singular
procession passed them.
They looked round. It was a detachment of Lancers which surrounded
something which in the dim light they recognized to be a police-van. The
vehicle rolled noiselessly along the macadamized road.
They were debating what this could mean, when a second and similar group
appeared, then a third, and then a fourth. Ten police vans passed in
this manner, following each other very closely, and almost touching.
"Those are our colleagues!" exclaimed Aubry (du Nord).
In truth the last batch of the Representatives, prisoners of the Quai
d'Orsay, the batch destined for Vincennes, was passing through the
Faubourg. It was about seven o'clock in the morning. Some shops were
being opened and were lighted inside, and a few passers-by came out of
the houses.
Three carriages defiled one after the other, closed, guarded, dreary,
dumb; no voice came out, no cry, no whisper. They were carrying off in
the midst of swords, of sabres, and of lances, with the rapidity and
fury of the whirlwind, something which kept silence; and that something
which they were carrying off, and which maintained this sinister
silence, was the broken Tribune, the Sovereignty of the Assemblies, the
supreme initiative whence all civilization is derived; it was the word
which contains the future of the world, it was the speech of France!
A last carriage arrived, which by some chance had been delayed. It was
about two or three hundred yards behind the principal convoy, and was
only escorted by three Lancers. It was not a police-van, it was an
omnibus, the only one in the convoy. Behind the conductor, who was a
police agent, there could distinctly be seen the Representatives heaped
up in the interior. It seemed easy to rescue them.
Cournet appealed to the passers-by; "Citizens," he cried, "these are
your Representatives, who are being carried off! You have just seen
them pass in the vans of convicts! Bonaparte arrests them contrary to
every law. Let us rescue them! To arms!"
A knot formed of men in blouses and of workmen going to work. A shout
came from the knot, "Long live the Republic!" and some men rushed
towards the vehicle. The carriage and the Lancers broke into a gallop.
"To arms!" repeated Cournet.
"To arms!" repeated the men of the people.
There was a moment of impulse. Who knows what might have happened? It
would have been a singular accident if the first barricade against the
_coup d'état_ had been made with this omnibus, which, after having aided
in the crime, would this have aided in the punishment. But at the moment
when the people threw themselves on the vehicle they saw several of the
Representative-prisoners which it contained sign to them with both hands
to refrain. "Eh!" said a workman, "they do not wish it!"
A second repeated, "They do not wish for liberty!"
Another added, "They did not wish us to have it, they do not wish it for
themselves."
All was said, and the omnibus was allowed to pass on. A moment
afterwards the rear-guard of the escort came up and passed by at a sharp
trots and the group which surrounded Aubry (du Nord), Malardier, and
Cournet dispersed.
The Café Roysin had just opened. It may be remembered that the large
hall of this _café_ had served for the meeting of a famous club in 1848.
It was there, it may also be remembered, that the rendezvous had been
settled.
The Café Roysin is entered by a passage opening out upon the street, a
lobby of some yards in length is next crossed, and then comes a large
hall, with high windows, and looking-glasses on the walls, containing in
the centre several billiard-tables, some small marble-topped tables,
chairs, and velvet-covered benches. It was this hall, badly arranged,
however, for a meeting where we could have deliberated, which had been
the hall of the Roysin Club. Cournet, Aubry, and Malardier installed
themselves there. On entering they did not disguise who they were; they
were welcomed, and shown an exit through the garden in case of
necessity.
De Flotte had just joined them.
Eight o'clock was striking when the Representatives began to arrive.
Bruckner, Maigne, and Brillier first, and then successively Charamaule,
Cassal, Dulac, Bourzat, Madier de Montjau, and Baudin. Bourzat, on
account of the mud, as was his custom, wore wooden shoes. Whoever
thought Bourzat a peasant would be mistaken. He rather resembled a
Benedictine monk. Bourzat, with his southern imagination, his quick
intelligence, keen, lettered, refined, possesses an encyclopedia in his
head, and wooden shoes on his feet. Why not? He is Mind and People. The
ex-Constituent Bastide came in with Madier de Montjau. Baudin shook the
hands of all with warmth, but he did not speak. He was pensive. "What is
the matter with you, Baudin?" asked Aubry (du Nord). "Are you mournful?"
"I?" said Baudin, raising his head, "I have never been more happy."
Did he feel himself already chosen? When we are so near death, all
radiant with glory, which smiles upon us through the gloom, perhaps we
are conscious of it.
A certain number of men, strangers to the Assembly, all as determined as
the Representatives themselves, accompanied them and surrounded them.
Cournet was the leader. Amongst them there were workmen, but no blouses.
In order not to alarm the middle classes the workmen had been
requested, notably those employed by Derosne and Cail, to come in coats.
Baudin had with him a copy of the Proclamation which I had dictated to
him on the previous day. Cournet unfolded it and read it. "Let us at
once post it up in the Faubourg," said he. "The People must know that
Louis Bonaparte is outlawed." A lithographic workman who was there
offered to print it without delay. All the Representatives present
signed it, and they added my name to their signatures. Aubry (du Nord)
headed it with these words, "National Assembly." The workman carried off
the Proclamation, and kept his word. Some hours afterwards Aubry (du
Nord), and later on a friend of Cournet's named Gay, met him in the
Faubourg du Temple paste-pot in hand, posting the Proclamation at every
street corner, even next to the Maupas placard, which threatened the
penalty of death to any one who should be found posting an appeal to
arms. Groups read the two bills at the same time. We may mention an
incident which ought to be noted, a sergeant of the line, in uniform, in
red trousers, accompanied him and protected him. He was doubtless a
soldier who had lately left the service.
The time fixed on the preceding evening for the general rendezvous was
from nine to ten in the morning. This hour had been chosen so that there
should be time to give notice to all the members of the Left; it was
expedient to wait until the Representatives should arrive, so that the
group should the more resemble an Assembly, and that its manifestation
should have more authority on the Faubourg.
Several of the Representatives who had already arrived had no sash of
office. Some were made hastily in a neighboring house with strips of
red, white, and blue calico, and were brought to them. Baudin and De
Flotte were amongst those who girded on these improvised sashes.
Meanwhile it was not yet nine o'clock, when impatience already began to
be manifested around them.[9]
Many shared this glorious impatience.
Baudin wished to wait.
"Do not anticipate the hour," said he; "let us allow our colleagues time
to arrive."
But they murmured round Baudin, "No, begin, give the signal, go outside.
The Faubourg only waits to see your sashes to rise. You are few in
number, but they know that your friends will rejoin you. That is
sufficient. Begin."
The result proved that this undue haste could only produce a failure.
Meanwhile they considered that the first example which the
Representatives of the People ought to set was personal courage. The
spark must not be allowed to die out. To march the first, to march at
the head, such was their duty. The semblance of any hesitation would
have been in truth more disastrous than any degree of rashness.
Schoelcher is of an heroic nature, he has the grand impatience of
danger.
"Let us go," he cried; "our friends will join us, let us go outside."
They had no arms.
"Let us disarm the post which is over there," said Schoelcher.
They left the Salle Roysin in order, two by two, arm in arm. Fifteen or
twenty men of the people escorted them. They went before them, crying,
"Long live the Republic! To arms!"
Some children preceded and followed them, shouting, "Long live the
Mountain!"
The entrances of the closed shops were half opened. A few men appeared
at the doors, a few women showed themselves at the windows. Knots of
workmen going to their work watched them pass. They cried, "Long live
our Representatives! Long live the Republic!"
Sympathy was everywhere, but insurrection nowhere. The procession
gathered few adherents on the way.
A man who was leading a saddled horse joined them. They did not know
this man, nor whence this horse came. It seemed as if the man offered
his services to any one who wished to fly. Representative Dulac ordered
this man to be off.
In this manner they reached the guard-house of the Rue de Montrenil. At
their approach the sentry gave the alarm, and the soldiers came out of
the guard-house in disorder.
Schoelcher, calm, impassive, in ruffles and a white tie, clothed, as
usual, in black, buttoned to the neck in his tight frock coat, with the
intrepid and brotherly air of a Quaker, walked straight up to them.
"Comrades," he said to them, "we are the Representatives of the People,
and come in the name of the people to demand your arms for the defence
of the Constitution and of the Laws!"
The post allowed itself to be disarmed. The sergeant alone made any show
of resistance, but they said to him, "You are alone," and he yielded.
The Representatives distributed the guns and the cartridges to the
resolute band which surrounded them.
Some soldiers exclaimed, "Why do you take away our muskets! We would
fight for you and with you!"
The Representatives consulted whether they should accept this offer.
Schoelcher was inclined to do so. But one of them remarked that some
Mobile Guards had made the same overtures to the insurgents of June, and
had turned against the Insurrection the arms which the Insurrection had
left them.
The muskets therefore were not restored.
The disarming having been accomplished, the muskets were counted; there
were fifteen of them.
"We are a hundred and fifty," said Cournet, "we have not enough
muskets."
"Well, then," said Schoelcher, "where is there a post?"
"At the Lenoir Market."
"Let us disarm it."
With Schoelcher at their head and escorted by fifteen armed men the
Representatives proceeded to the Lenoir Market. The post of the Lenoir
Market allowed themselves to be disarmed even more willingly than the
post in the Rue de Montreuil. The soldiers turned themselves round so
that the cartridges might be taken from their pouches.
The muskets were immediately loaded.
"Now," exclaimed De Flotte, "we have thirty guns, let us look for a
street corner, and raise a barricade."
There were at that time about two hundred combatants.
They went up the Rue de Montreuil.
After some fifty steps Schoelcher said, "Where are we going? We are
turning our backs on the Bastille. We are turning our backs upon the
conflict."
They returned towards the Faubourg.
They shouted, "To arms!" They Where answered by "Long live our
Representatives!" But only a few young men joined them. It was evident
that the breeze of insurrection was not blowing.
"Never mind," said De Flotte, "let us begin the battle. Let us achieve
the glory of being the first killed."
As they reached the point where the Streets Ste. Marguerite and de Cotte
open out and divide the Faubourg, a peasant's cart laden with dung
entered the Rue Ste. Marguerite.
"Here," exclaimed De Flotte.
They stopped the dung-cart, and overturned it in the middle of the
Faubourg St. Antoine.
A milkwoman came up.
They overturned the milk-cart.
A baker was passing in his bread-cart. He saw what was being done,
attempted to escape, and urged his horse to a gallop. Two or three
street Arabs--those children of Paris brave as lions and agile as
cats--sped after the baker, ran past his horse, which was still
galloping, stopped it, and brought back the cart to the barricade which
had been begun.
They overturned the bread-cart.
An omnibus came up on the road from the Bastille.
"Very well!" said the conductor, "I see what is going on."
He descended with a good grace, and told his passengers to get
down, while the coachman unharnessed his horses and went away shaking
his cloak.
They overturned the omnibus.
The four vehicles placed end to end barely barred the street of the
Faubourg, which in this part is very wide. While putting them in line
the men of the barricade said,--
"Let us not injure the carts more than we can help."
This formed an indifferent barricade, very low, too short, and which
left the pavements free on either side.
At this moment a staff officer passed by followed by an orderly, saw the
barricade, and fled at a gallop.
Schoelcher calmly inspected the overturned vehicles. When he reached the
peasant's cart, which made a higher heap than the others, he said, "that
is the only good one."
The barricade grew larger. They threw a few empty baskets upon it, which
made it thicker and larger without strengthening it.
They were still working when a child came up to them shouting, "The
soldiers!"
In truth two companies arrived from the Bastille, at the double, through
the Faubourg, told off in squads at short distances apart, and barring
the whole of the street.
The doors and the windows were hastily closed.
During this time, at a corner of the barricade, Bastide, impassive, was
gravely telling a story to Madier de Montjau. "Madier," said he, "nearly
two hundred years ago the Prince de Condé, ready to give battle in this
very Faubourg St. Antoine, where we now are, asked an officer who was
accompanying him, 'Have you ever seen a battle lost?'--'No, sire.'
'Well, then, you will see one now.'--Madier, I tell you to-day,--you
will speedily see a barricade taken."
In the meanwhile those who were armed had assumed their places for the
conflict behind the barricade.
The critical moment drew nigh.
"Citizens," cried Schoelcher, "do not fire a shot. When the Army and the
Faubourgs fight, the blood of the People is shed on both sides. Let us
speak to the soldiers first."
He mounted on one of the baskets which heightened the barricade. The
other Representatives arranged themselves near him on the omnibus.
Malardier and Dulac were on his right. Dulac said to him, "You scarcely
know me, Citizen Schoelcher, but I love you. Let me have the charge of
remaining by your side. I only belong to the second rank in the
Assembly, but I want to be in the first rank of the battle."
At this moment some men in blouses, those whom the Second of December
had enlisted, appeared at the corner of the Rue Ste. Marguerite, close
to the barricade, and shouted, "Down with the 'Twenty-five francs!'"
Baudin who had already selected his post for the combat, and who was
standing on the barricade, looked fixedly at these men, and said to
them,--
"You shall see how one can die for 'twenty-five francs!'"
There was a noise in the street. Some few doors which had remained half
opened were closed. The two attacking columns had arrived in sight of
the barricade. Further on could be seen confusedly other lines of
bayonets. They were those which had barred my passage.
Schoelcher, raising his arm with authority, signed to the captain, who
commanded the first squad, to halt.
The captain made a negative sign with his sword. The whole of the Second
of December was in these two gestures. The Law said, "Halt!" The Sabre
answered, "No!"
The two companies continued to advance, but slowly, and keeping at the
same distance from each other.
Schoelcher came down from the barricade into the street. De Flotte,
Dulac, Malardier, Brillier, Maigne, and Bruckner followed him.
Then was seen a grand spectacle.
Seven Representatives of the People, armed only with their sashes, that
is to say, majestically clothed with Law and Right, advanced in the
street beyond the barricade, and marched straight to the soldiers, who
awaited them with their guns pointed at them.
The other Representatives who had remained at the barricade made their
last preparations for resistance. The combatants maintained an intrepid
bearing. The Naval Lieutenant Cournet towered above them all with his
tall stature. Baudin, still standing on the overturned omnibus, leaned
half over the barricade.
On seeing the Representatives approach, the soldiers and their officers
were for the moment bewildered. Meanwhile the captain signed to the
Representatives to stop.
They stopped, and Schoelcher said in an impressive voice,--
"Soldiers! we are the Representatives of the Sovereign People, we are
your Representatives, we are the Elect of Universal Suffrage. In the
name of the Constitution, in the name of Universal Suffrage, in the name
of the Republic, we, who are the National Assembly, we, who are the Law,
order you to join us, we summon you to obey. We ourselves are your
leaders. The Army belongs to the People, and the Representatives of the
People are the Chiefs of the Army. Soldiers! Louis Bonaparte violates
the Constitution, we have outlawed him. Obey us."
The officer who was in command, a captain named Petit, did not allow him
to finish.
"Gentlemen," he said, "I have my orders. I belong to the People. I am a
Republican as you are, but I am only an instrument."
"You know the Constitution?" said Schoelcher.
"I only know my instructions."
"There is an instruction above all other instructions," continued
Schoelcher, "obligatory upon the Soldier as upon the Citizen--the Law."
He turned again towards the soldiers to harangue them, but the captain
cried out to him,--
"Not another word! You shall not go on! If you add one word, I shall
give the order to fire."
"What does that matter to us?" said Schoelcher.
At this moment an officer arrived on horseback. It was the major of the
regiment. He whispered for a moment to the captain.
"Gentlemen! Representatives!" continued the captain, waving his sword,
"withdraw, or I shall fire."
"Fire!" shouted De Flotte.
The Representatives--strange and heroic copy of Fontenoy--took off their
hats, and faced the muskets.
Schoelcher alone kept his hat on his head, and waited with his arms
crossed.
"Fix bayonets," said the captain. And turning towards the squads,
"Charge!"
"Vive la République!" cried out the Representatives.
The
bayonets were lowered, the companies moved forward, the soldiers came on
at the double upon the motionless Representatives.
It was a terrible and superb moment.
The seven Representatives saw the bayonets at their breasts without a
word, without a gesture, without one step backwards. But the hesitation
which was not in their soul was in the heart of the soldiers.
The soldiers felt distinctly that this was a double stain upon their
uniform--the outrage upon the Representatives of the People--which was
treason, and the slaughter of unarmed men, which was cowardice. Now
treason and cowardice are two epaulets to which a general sometimes
becomes reconciled, the soldier--never.
When the bayonets were so close to the Representatives that they touched
their breasts, they turned aside of their own accord, and the soldier's
by an unanimous movement passed between the Representatives without
doing them any harm. Schoelcher alone had his coat pierced in two
places, and in his opinion this was awkwardness instead of intention.
One of the soldiers who faced him wished to push him away from the
captain, and touched him with his bayonet. The point encountered the
book of the addresses of the Representatives, which Schoelcher had in
his pocket, and only pierced his clothing.
A soldier said to De Flotte, "Citizen, we do not wish to hurt you."
Nevertheless a soldier came up to Bruckner and pointed his gun at him.
"Well," said Bruckner, "fire."
The soldier, touched, lowered his arm, and shook Bruckner's hand.
It was singular that, notwithstanding the order given by the officers,
the two companies successively came up to the Representatives, charged
with the bayonet, and turned aside. Instructions may order, but instinct
prevails; instructions may be crime, but instinct is honor. Major P----
said afterwards, "They had told us that we should have to deal with
brigands, we had to deal with heroes."
Meanwhile those on the barricade were growing uneasy, and seeing their
colleagues surrounded, and wishing to succor them, they fired a musket
shot. This unfortunate shot killed a soldier between De Flotte and
Schoelcher.
The officer who commanded the second attacking squad passed close to
Schoelcher as the poor soldier fell. Schoelcher pointed out the fallen
man to the officer, and said to him, "Lieutenant, look!"
The officer answered by a gesture of despair,--
"What would you have us do?"
The two companies replied to the shot by a general volley, and rushed to
the assault of the barricade, leaving behind them the seven
Representatives astounded at being still alive.
The barricade replied by a volley, but it could not hold out. It was
carried.
Baudin was killed.
He had remained standing in his position on the omnibus. Three balls
reached him. One struck him in the right eye and penetrated into the
brain. He fell. He never regained consciousness. Half-an-hour afterwards
he was dead. His body was taken to the Ste. Marguerite Hospital.
Bourzat, who was close to Baudin, with Aubry (du Nord), had his coat
pierced by a ball.
We must again remark a curious incident,--the soldiers made no prisoner
on this barricade. Those who defended it dispersed through the streets
of the Faubourg, or took refuge in the neighboring houses. Representative
Maigne, pushed by some affrighted women behind a door, was shut in with
one of the soldiers who had just taken the barricade. A moment afterwards
the soldier and the Representative went out together. The Representatives
could freely leave this first field of battle.
At this solemn moment of the struggle a last glimmer of Justice and of
Right still flickered, and military honesty recoiled with a sort of
dread anxiety before the outrage upon which they were entering. There is
the intoxication of good, and there is an intoxication of evil: this
intoxication later on drowned the conscience of the Army.
The French Army is not made to commit crimes. When the struggle became
prolonged, and ferocious orders of the day had to be executed, the
soldiers must have been maddened. They obeyed not coldly, which would
have been monstrous, but with anger, and this History will invoke as
their excuse; and with many, perhaps, despair was at the root of their
anger.
The fallen soldier had remained on the ground. It was Schoelcher who
raised him. A few women, weeping, but brave, came out of a house. Some
soldiers came up. They carried him, Schoelcher holding his head, first
to a fruiterer's shop, then to the Ste. Marguerite Hospital, where they
had already taken Baudin.
He was a conscript. The ball had entered his side. Through his gray
overcoat buttoned to the collar, could be seen a hole stained with
blood. His head had sunk on his shoulder, his pale countenance,
encircled by the chinstrap of his shako, had no longer any expression,
the blood oozed out of his mouth. He seemed barely eighteen years old.
Already a soldier and still a boy. He was dead.
This poor soldier was the first victim of the _coup d'état_. Baudin was
the second.
Before being a Republican Baudin had been a tutor. He came from that
intelligent and brave race of schoolmasters ever persecuted, who have
fallen from the Guizot Law into the Falloux Law, and from the Falloux
Law into the Dupanloup Law. The crime of the schoolmaster is to hold a
book open; that suffices, the Church condemns him. There is now, in
France, in each village, a lighted torch--the schoolmaster--and a mouth
which blows upon it--the curé. The schoolmasters of France, who knew how
to die of hunger for Truth and for Science, were worthy that one of
their race should be killed for Liberty.
The first time that I saw Baudin was at the Assembly on January 13,
1850. I wished to speak against the Law of Instruction. I had not put my
name down; Baudin's name stood second. He offered me his turn. I
accepted, and I was able to speak two days afterwards, on the 15th.
Baudin was one of the targets of Sieur Dupin, for calls to order and
official annoyances. He shared this honor with the Representatives Miot
and Valentin.
Baudin ascended the Tribune several times. His mode of speaking,
outwardly hesitating, was energetic in the main. He sat on the crest of
the Mountain. He had a firm spirit and timid manners. Thence there was in
his constitution an indescribable embarrassment, mingled with decision.
He was a man of middle height. His face ruddy and full, his broad chest,
his wide shoulders announced the robust man, the laborer-schoolmaster,
the peasant-thinker. In this he resembled Bourzat. Baudin leaned his head
on his shoulder, listened with intelligence, and spoke with a gentle and
grave voice. He had the melancholy air and the bitter smile of the
doomed.
On the evening of the Second of December I had asked him, "How old are
you?" He had answered me, "Not quite thirty-three years."
"And you?" said he.
"Forty-nine."
And he replied,--
"To-day we are of the same age."
He thought in truth of that to-morrow which awaited us, and in which was
hidden that "perhaps" which is the great leveller.
The first shots had been fired, a Representative had fallen, and the
people did not rise! What bandage had they on their eyes, what weight
had they on their hearts? Alas! the gloom which Louis Bonaparte had
known how to cast over his crime, far from lifting, grew denser. For the
first time in the sixty years, that the Providential era of Revolutions
had been open, Paris, the city of intelligence, seemed not to
understand!
On leaving the barricade of the Rue Ste. Marguerite, De Flotte went to
the Faubourg St. Marceau, Madier de Montjau went to Belleville,
Charamaule and Maigne proceeded to the Boulevards. Schoelcher, Dulac,
Malardier, and Brillier again went up the Faubourg St. Antoine by the
side streets which the soldiers had not yet occupied. They shouted,
"Vive la République!" They harangued the people on the doorsteps: "Is it
the Empire that you want?" exclaimed Schoelcher. They even went as far
as to sing the "Marseillaise." People took off their hats as they passed
and shouted "Long live the Representatives!" But that was all.
They were thirsty and weary. In the Rue de Reuilly a man came out of a
door with a bottle in his hand, and offered them drink.
Sartin joined them on the way. In the Rue de Charonne they entered the
meeting-place of the Association of Cabinet Makers, hoping to find there
the committee of the association in session. There was no
one there. But nothing discouraged them.
As they reached the Place de la Bastille, Dulac said to Schoelcher, "I
will ask permission to leave you for an hour or two, for this reason: I
am alone in Paris with my little daughter, who is seven years old. For
the past week she has had scarlet fever. Yesterday, when the _coup
d'état_ burst forth, she was at death's door. I have no one but this
child in the world. I left her this morning to come with you, and she
said to me, 'Papa, where are you going?' As I am not killed, I will go
and see if she is not dead."
Two hours afterwards the child was still living, and we were holding a
permanent sitting at No. 15, Rue Richelieu, Jules Favre, Carnot, Michel
de Bourges, and myself, when Dulac entered, and said to us, "I have come
to place myself at your disposal."
[9] "There was also a misunderstanding respecting the appointed time.
Some made a mistake, and thought it was nine o'clock. The first arrivals
impatiently awaited their colleagues. They were, as we have said, some
twelve or fifteen in number at half-past eight. 'Time is being lost,'
exclaimed one of them who had hardly entered; 'let us gird on our sashes;
let us show the Representatives to the People, let us join it in raising
barricades.' We shall perhaps save the country, at all events we shall
save the honor of our party. 'Come, let us to the barricades!' This
advice was immediately and unanimously acclaimed: one alone, Citizen
Baudin, interposed the forcible objection, 'we are not sufficiently
numerous to adopt such a resolution.' But he spiritedly joined in the
general enthusiasm, and with a calm conscience, after having reserved
the principle, he was not the last to gird on his sash."--SCHOELCHER,
_Histoire des Crimes du 2d Decembre_, pp. 130-131.
CHAPTER IV.
THE WORKMEN'S SOCIETIES ASK US FOR THE ORDER TO FIGHT
In presence of the fact of the barricade of the Faubourg St. Antoine so
heroically constructed by the Representatives, so sadly neglected by the
populace, the last illusions, even mine, should have been dispersed.
Baudin killed, the Faubourg cold. Such things spoke aloud. It was a
supreme, manifest, absolute demonstration of that fact, the inaction of
the people, to which I could not resign myself--a deplorable inaction,
if they understood, a self-treason, if they did not understand, a fatal
neutrality in every case, a calamity of which all the responsibility, we
repeat, recoiled not upon the people but upon those who in June, 1848,
after having promised them amnesty, had refused it, and who had unhinged
the great soul of the people of Paris by breaking faith with them. What
the Constituent Assembly had sown the Legislative Assembly harvested.
We, innocent of the fault, had to submit to the consequence.
The spark which we had seen flash for an instant through the
crowd--Michel de Bourges from the height of Bonvalet's balcony, myself
from the Boulevard du Temple--this spark seemed extinguished. Maigne
firstly, then Brillier, then Bruckner, later on Charmaule, Madier de
Montjau, Bastide, and Dulac came to report to us what had passed at the
barricade of St. Antoine, the motives which had decided the
Representatives present not to await the hour appointed for the
rendezvous, and Baudin's death. The report which I made myself of what I
had seen, and which Cassal and Alexander Rey completed by adding new
circumstances, enabled us to ascertain the situation. The Committee could
no longer hesitate: I myself renounced the hopes which I had based upon a
grand manifestation, upon a powerful reply to the _coup d'état_, upon a
sort of pitched battle waged by the guardians of the Republic against the
banditti of the Elysée. The Faubourgs failed us; we possessed the
lever--Right, but the mass to be raised, the People, we did not possess.
There was nothing more to hope for, as those two great orators, Michel de
Bourges and Jules Favre, with their keen political perception, had
declared from the first, save a slow long struggle, avoiding decisive
engagements, changing quarters, keeping Paris on the alert, saying to
each, It is not at an end; leaving time for the departments to prepare
their resistance, wearying the troops out, and in which struggle the
Parisian people, who do not long smell powder with impunity, would
perhaps ultimately take fire. Barricades raised everywhere, barely
defended, re-made immediately, disappearing and multiplying themselves at
the same time, such was the strategy indicated by the situation. The
Committee adopted it, and sent orders in every direction to this effect.
At that moment we were sitting at No. 15, Rue Richelieu, at the house of
our colleague Grévy, who had been arrested in the Tenth Arrondissement on
the preceding day, who was at Mazas. His brother had offered us his house
for our deliberations. The Representatives, our natural emissaries,
flocked around us, and scattered themselves throughout Paris, with our
instructions to organize resistance at every point. They were the arms
and the Committee was the soul. A certain number of ex-Constituents,
intrepid men, Garnier-Pagès, Marie, Martin (de Strasbourg), Senart,
formerly President of the Constituent Assembly, Bastide, Laissac,
Landrin, had joined the Representatives on the preceding day. They
established, therefore, in all the districts where it was possible
Committees of Permanence in connection with us, the Central Committee,
and composed either of Representatives or of faithful citizens. For our
watchword we chose "Baudin."
Towards noon the centre of Paris began to grow agitated.
Our appeal to arms was first seen placarded on the Place de la Bourse
and the Rue Montmartre. Groups pressed round to read it, and battled
with the police, who endeavored to tear down the bills. Other
lithographic placards contained in two parallel columns the decree of
deposition drawn up by the Right at the Mairie of the Tenth
Arrondissement, and the decree of outlawry voted by the Left. There were
distributed, printed on gray paper in large type, the judgment of the
High Court of Justice, declaring Louis Bonaparte attainted with the
Crime of High Treason, and signed "Hardouin" (President), "Delapalme,"
"Moreau" (of the Seine), "Cauchy," "Bataille" (Judges). This last name
was thus mis-spelt by mistake, it should read "Pataille."
At that moment people generally believed, and we ourselves believed, in
this judgment, which, as we have seen, was not the genuine judgment.
At the same time they posted in the populous quarters, at the corner of
every street, two Proclamations. The first ran thus:--
"TO THE PEOPLE.
"ARTICLE III.[10]
"The Constitution is confided to the keeping and to the patriotism of
French citizens. Louis NAPOLEON is outlawed.
"The State of Siege is abolished.
"Universal suffrage is re-established.
"LONG LIVE THE REPUBLIC.
"To ARMS!
"For the United Mountain.
"The Delegate, VICTOR HUGO."
The second ran thus:--
"INHABITANTS OF PARIS.
"The National Guards and the People of the Departments are marching on
Paris to aid you in seizing the TRAITOR, Louis Napoléon BONAPARTE.
"For the Representatives of the People,
"VICTOR HUGO, President.
"SCHOELCHER, Secretary."
This last placard, printed on little squares of paper, was distributed
abroad, says an historian of the _coup d'état_, by thousands of copies.
For their part the criminals installed in the Government offices replied
by threats: the great white placards, that is to say, the official
bills, were largely multiplied. On one could be read:--
"WE, PREFECT OF THE POLICE,
"Decree as follows:--
"ARTICLE I. All meetings are rigorously prohibited. They will be
immediately dispersed by force.
"ARTICLE II. All seditious shouts, all reading in public, all posting
of political documents not emanating from a regularly constituted
authority, are equally prohibited.
"ARTICLE III. The agents of the Public Police will enforce the execution
of the present decree.
"Given at the Prefecture of Police, December 3, 1851.
"DE MAUPAS, Prefect of Police.
"Seen and approved,
"DE MORNY, Minister of the Interior."
On another could be read,--
"THE MINISTER OF WAR,
"By virtue of the Law on the State of Siege,
"Decrees:--
"Every person taken constructing or defending a barricade, or carrying
arms, WILL BE SHOT.
"General of Division,
"Minister of war,
"DE SAINT-ARNAUD."
We reproduce this Proclamation exactly, even to the punctuation. The
words "Will be shot" were in capital letters in the placards signed "De
Saint-Arnaud."
The Boulevards were thronged with an excited crowd. The agitation
increasing in the centre reached three Arrondissements, the 6th, 7th,
and the 12th. The district of the schools began to disorderly. The
Students of Law and of Medicine cheered De Flotte on the Place de
Panthéon. Madier de Montjau, ardent and eloquent, went through and
aroused Belleville. The troops, growing more numerous every moment,
took possession of all the strategical points of Paris.
At one o'clock, a young man was brought to us by the legal adviser of
the Workmen's Societies, the ex-Constituent Leblond, at whose house the
Committee had deliberated that morning. We were sitting in permanence,
Carnot, Jules Favre, Michel de Bourges, and myself. This young man, who
had an earnest mode of speaking and an intelligent countenance, was
named King. He had been sent to us by the Committee of the Workmen's
Society, from whom he was delegated. "The Workmen's Societies," he said
to us, "place themselves at the disposal of the Committee of Legal
Insurrection appointed by the Left. They can throw into the struggle
five or six thousand resolute men. They will manufacture powder; as for
guns, they will be found." The Workmen's Society requested from us an
order to fight signed by us. Jules Favre took a pen and wrote,--"The
undersigned Representatives authorize Citizen King and his friends to
defend with them, and with arms in their hands, Universal Suffrage, the
Republic, the Laws." He dated it, and we all four signed it. "That is
enough," said the delegate to us, "you will hear of us."
Two hours afterwards it was reported to us that the conflict had begun.
They were fighting in the Rue Aumaire.
[10] A typographical error--it should read "Article LXVIII." On the
subject of this placard the author of this book received the following
letter. It does honor to those who wrote it:--
"CITIZEN VICTOR HUGO,--We know that you have made an appeal to arms. We
have not been able to obtain it. We replace it by these bills which we
sign with your name. You will not disown us. When France is in danger
your name belongs to all; your name is a Public Power.
"FELIX BONY.
"DABAT."
CHAPTER V.
BAUDINS'S CORPSE
With regard to the Faubourg St. Antoine, we had, as I said, lost nearly
all hope, but the men of the _coup d'état_ had not lost all uneasiness.
Since the attempts at rising and the barricades of the morning a rigorous
supervision had been organized. Any one who entered the Faubourg ran the
risk of being examined, followed, and upon the slightest suspicion,
arrested. The supervision was nevertheless sometimes at fault. About two
o'clock a short man, with an earnest and attentive air, crossed the
Faubourg. A _sergent de ville_ and a police agent in plain clothes barred
his passage. "Who are you?" "You seem a passenger." "Where are you going?"
"Over there, close by, to Bartholomé's, the overseer of the sugar
manufactory.--" They search him. He himself opened his pocket-book; the
police agents turned out the pockets of his waistcoat and unbuttoned
his shirt over his breast; finally the _sergent de ville_ said gruffly,
"Yet I seem to have seen you here before this morning. Be off!" It was
the Representative Gindrier. If they had not stopped at the pockets of
his waistcoat--and if they had searched his great-coat, they would have
found his sash there--Gindrier would have been shot.
Not to allow themselves to be arrested, to keep their freedom for the
combat--such was the watchword of the members of the Left. That is why
we had our sashes upon us, but not outwardly visible.
Gindrier had had no food that day; he thought he would go home, and
returned to the new district of the Havre Railway Station, where he
resided. In the Rue de Calais, which is a lonely street running from Rue
Blanche to the Rue de Clichy, a _fiacre_ passed him. Gindrier heard his
name called out. He turned round and saw two persons in a _fiacre_,
relations of Baudin, and a man whom he did not know. One of the
relations of Baudin, Madame L----, said to him, "Baudin is
wounded!" She added, "They have taken him to the St. Antoine Hospital.
We are going to fetch him. Come with us." Gindrier got into the
_fiacre_. The stranger, however, was an emissary of the Commissary of
Police of the Rue Ste. Marguerite St. Antoine. He had been charged by
the commissary of Police to go to Baudin's house, No, 88, Rue de Clichy,
to inform the family. Having only found the women at home he had
confined himself to telling them that Representative Baudin was wounded.
He offered to accompany them, and went with them in the _fiacre_. They
had uttered the name of Gindrier before him. This might have been
imprudent. They spoke to him; he declared that he would not betray the
Representative, and it was settled that before the Commissary of Police
Gindrier should assume to be a relation, and be called Baudin.
The poor women still hoped. Perhaps the wound was serious, but Baudin
was young, and had a good constitution. "They will save him," said they.
Gindrier was silent. At the office of the Commissary of Police the truth
was revealed.--"How is he?" asked Madame L---- on entering. "Why?" said
the Commissary, "he is dead." "What do you mean? Dead!" "Yes; killed on
the spot."
This was a painful moment. The despair of these two women who had been
so abruptly struck to the heart burst forth in sobs. "Ah, infamous
Bonaparte!" cried Madame L----. "He has killed Baudin. Well, then, I will
kill him. I will be the Charlotte Corday of this Marat."
Gindrier claimed the body of Baudin. The Commissary of Police only
consented to restore it to the family on exacting a promise that they
would bury it at once, and without any ostentation, and that they would
not exhibit it to the people. "You understand," he said, "that the sight
of a Representative killed and bleeding might raise Paris." The _coup
d'état_ made corpses, but did not wish that they should be utilized.
On these conditions the Commissary of Police gave Gindrier two men and a
safe conduct to fetch the body of Baudin from the hospital where he had
been carried.
Meanwhile Baudin's brother, a young man of four-and-twenty, a medical
student, came up. This young man has since been arrested and imprisoned.
His crime is his brother. Let us continue. They proceeded to the
hospital. At the sight of the safe conduct the director ushered Gindrier
and young Baudin into the parlor. There were three pallets there covered
with white sheets, under which could be traced the motionless forms of
three human bodies. The one which occupied the centre bed was Baudin. On
his right lay the young soldier killed a minute before him by the side of
Schoelcher, and on the left an old woman who had been struck down by a
spent ball in the Rue de Cotte, and whom the executioners of the _coup
d'état_ had gathered up later on; in the first moment one cannot find out
all one's riches.
The three corpses were naked under their winding sheets.
They had left to Baudin alone his shirt and his flannel vest. They had
found on him seven francs, his gold watch and chain, his Representative's
medal, and a gold pencil-case which he had used in the Rue de Popincourt,
after having passed me the other pencil, which I still preserve. Gindrier
and young Baudin, bare-headed, approached the centre bed. They raised the
shroud, and Baudin's dead face became visible. He was calm, and seemed
asleep. No feature appeared contracted. A livid tint began to mottle his
face.
They drew up an official report. It is customary. It is not sufficient
to kill people. An official report must also be drawn up. Young Baudin
had to sign it, upon which, on the demand of the Commissary of Police,
they "made over" to him the body of his brother. During these
signatures, Gindrier in the courtyard of the hospital, attempted if not
to console, at least to calm the two despairing women.
Suddenly a man who had entered the courtyard, and who had attentively
watched him for some moments, came abruptly up to him,--
"What are you doing there?"
"What is that to you?" said Gindrier.
"You have come to fetch Baudin's body?"
"Yes."
"Is this your carriage?"
"Yes."
"Get in at once, and pull down the blinds."
"What do you mean?"
"You are the Representative Gindrier. I know you. You were this morning
on the barricade. If any other than myself should see you, you are
lost."
Gindrier followed his advice and got into the _fiacre_. While getting in
he asked the man:
"Do you belong to the Police?"
The man did not answer. A moment after he came and said in a low voice,
near the door of the _fiacre_ in which Gindrier was enclosed,--
"Yes, I eat the bread, but I do not do the work."
The two men sent by the Commissary of Police took Baudin on his wooden
bed and carried him to the _fiacre_. They placed him at the bottom of
the _fiacre_ with his face covered, and enveloped from head to foot in a
shroud. A workman who was there lent his cloak, which was thrown over
the corpse in order not to attract the notice of passers-by. Madame L----
took her place by the side of the body, Gindrier opposite, young Baudin
next to Gindrier. A _fiacre_ followed, in which were the other relative
of Baudin and a medical student named Dutèche. They set off. During the
journey the head of the corpse, shaken by the carriage, rolled from
shoulder to shoulder; the blood began to flow from the wound and
appeared in large red patches through the white sheet. Gindrier with
his arms stretched out and his hand placed on its breast, prevented it
from falling forwards; Madame L---- held it up by the side.
They had told the coachman to drive slowly; the journey lasted more than
an hour.
When they reached No. 88, Rue de Clichy, the bringing out of the body
attracted a curious crowd before the door. The neighbors flocked
thither. Baudin's brother, assisted by Gindrier and Dutèche, carried up
the corpse to the fourth floor, where Baudin resided. It was a new
house, and he had only lived there a few months.
They carried him into his room, which was in order, and just as he had
left it on the morning of the 2d. The bed, on which he had not slept the
preceding night, had not been disturbed. A book which he had been
reading had remained on the table, open at the page where he had left
off. They unrolled the shroud, and Gindrier cut off his shirt and his
flannel vest with a pair of scissors. They washed the body. The ball had
entered through the corner of the arch of the right eye, and had gone out
at the back of the head. The wound of the eye had not bled. A sort of
swelling had formed there; the blood had flowed copiously through the
hole at the back of the head. They put clean linen on him, and clean
sheets on the bed, and laid him down with his head on the pillow, and
his face uncovered. The women were weeping in the next room.
Gindrier had already rendered the same service to the ex-Constituent
James Demontry. In 1850 James Demontry died in exile at Cologne.
Gindrier started for Cologne, went to the cemetery, and had James
Demontry exhumed. He had the heart extracted, embalmed it, and enclosed
it in a silver vase, which he took to Paris. The party of the Mountain
delegated him, with Chollet and Joigneux, to convey this heart to Dijon,
Demontry's native place, and to give him a solemn funeral. This funeral
was prohibited by an order of Louis Bonaparte, then President of the
Republic. The burial of brave and faithful men was unpleasing to Louis
Bonaparte--not so their death.
When Baudin had been laid out on the bed, the women came in, and all
this family, seated round the corpse, wept. Gindrier, whom other duties
called elsewhere, went downstairs with Dutèche. A crowd had formed
before the door.
A man in a blouse, with his hat on his head, mounted on a kerbstone, was
speechifying and glorifying the _coup d'état_. Universal Suffrage
re-established, the Law of the 31st May abolished, the "Twenty-five
francs" suppressed; Louis Bonaparte has done well, etc.--Gindrier,
standing on the threshold of the door, raised his voice: "Citizens!
above lies Baudin, a Representative of the People, killed while
defending the People; Baudin the Representative of you all, mark that
well! You are before his house; he is there bleeding on his bed, and
here is a man who dares in this place to applaud his assassin! Citizens!
shall I tell you the name of this man? He is called the Police! Shame
and infamy to traitors and to cowards! Respect to the corpse of him who
has died for you!"
And pushing aside the crowd, Gindrier took the man who had
been speaking by the collar, and knocking his hat on to the ground with
the back of his hand, he cried, "Hats off!"
CHAPTER VI.
THE DECREES OF THE REPRESENTATIVES WHO REMAINED FREE
The text of the judgment which was believed to have been dawn up by the
High Court of Justice had been brought to us by the ex-Constituent
Martin (of Strasbourg), a lawyer at the Court of Cassation. At the same
time we learned what was happening in the Rue Aumaire. The battle was
beginning, it was important to sustain it, and to feed it; it was
important ever to place the legal resistance by the side of the armed
resistance. The members who had met together on the preceding day at the
Mairie of the Tenth Arrondissement had decreed the deposition of Louis
Bonaparte; but this decree, drawn up by a meeting almost exclusively
composed of the unpopular members of the majority, might have no effect
on the masses; it was necessary that the Left should take it up, should
adopt it, should imprint upon it a more energetic and more revolutionary
accent, and also take possession of the judgment of the High Court,
which was believed to be genuine, to lend assistance to this judgment,
and put it into execution.
In our appeal to arms we had outlawed Louis Bonaparte. The decree of
deposition taken up and counter-signed by us added weight to this
outlawry, and completed the revolutionary act by the legal act.
The Committee of Resistance called together the Republican
Representatives.
The apartments of M. Grévy, where we had been sitting, being too small,
we appointed for our meeting-place No. 10. Rue des Moulins, although
warned that the police had already made a raid upon this house. But we
had no choice; in time of Revolution prudence is impossible, and it is
speedily seen that it is useless. Confidence, always confidence; such is
the law of those grand actions which at times determine great events.
The perpetual improvisation of means, of policy, of expedients, of
resources, nothing step by step, everything on the impulse of the moment,
the ground never sounded, all risks taken as a whole, the good with the
bad, everything chanced on all sides at the same time, the hour, the
place, the opportunity, friends, family, liberty, fortune, life,--such
is the revolutionary conflict.
Towards three o'clock about sixty Representatives were meeting at No.
10, Rue des Moulins, in the large drawing-room, out of which opened a
little room where the Committee of Resistance was in session.
It was a gloomy December day, and darkness seemed already to have almost
set in. The publisher Hetzel, who might also be called the poet Hetzel,
is of a noble mind and of great courage. He has, as is known, shown
unusual political qualities as Secretary-General of the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs under Bastide; he came to offer himself to us, as the
brave and patriotic Hingray had already done in the morning. Hetzel knew
that we needed a printing-office above everything; we had not the
faculty of speech, and Louis Bonaparte spoke alone. Hetzel had found a
printer who had said to him, "_Force me, put a pistol to my throat, and
I will print whatever you wish_." It was only a question, therefore, of
getting a few friends together, of seizing this printing-office by main
force, of barricading it, and, if necessary, of sustaining a siege,
while our Proclamations and our decrees were being printed. Hetzel
offered this to us. One incident of his arrival at our meeting-place
deserves to be noted. As he drew near the doorway he saw in the twilight
of this dreary December day a man standing motionless at a short
distance, and who seemed to be lying in wait. He went up to this man,
and recognized M. Yon, the former Commissary of Police of the Assembly.
"What are you doing there?" said Hetzel abruptly. "Are you there to
arrest us? In that case, here is what I have got for you," and he took
out two pistols from his pocket.
M. Yon answered smiling,--
"I am in truth watching, not against you, but for you; I am guarding
you."
M. Yon, aware of our meeting at Landrin's house and fearing that we
should be arrested, was, of his own accord, acting as police for us.
Hetzel had already revealed his scheme to Representative Labrousse, who
was to accompany him and give him the moral support of the Assembly in
his perilous expedition. A first rendezvous which had been agreed upon
between them at the Café Cardinal having failed, Labrousse had left with
the owner of the _café_ for Hetzel a note couched in these terms:--
"Madame Elizabeth awaits M. Hetzel at No. 10, Rue des Moulins."
In accordance with this note Hetzel had come.
We accepted Hetzel's offer, and it was agreed that at nightfall
Representative Versigny, who performed the duties of Secretary to the
Committee, should take him our decrees, our Proclamation, such items of
news as may have reached us, and all that we should judge proper to
publish. It was settled that Hetzel should await Versigny on the
pavement at the end of the Rue de Richelieu which runs alongside the
Café Cardinal.
Meanwhile Jules Favre, Michel de Bourges and myself had drawn up a final
decree, which was to combine the deposition voted by the Right with the
outlawry voted by us. We came back into the large room to read it to the
assembled Representatives, and for them to sign it.
At this moment the door opened, and Emile de Girardin appeared. We had
not seen him since the previous evening.
Emile de Girardin--after dispersing from around him that mist which
envelopes every combatant in party warfare, and which at a distance
changes or obscures the appearance of a man--Emile de Girardin is an
extraordinary thinker, an accurate writer, energetic, logical, skilful,
hearty; a journalist in whom, as in all great journalists, can be seen
the statesman. We owe to Emile de Girardin this great work of progress,
the cheap Press. Emile de Girardin has this great gift, a clearheaded
stubbornness. Emile de Girardin is a public watchman; his journal is his
sentry-box; he waits, he watches, he spies out, he enlightens, he lies
in wait, he cries "Who goes there?" at the slightest alarm, he fires
volleys with his pen. He is ready for every form of combat, a sentinel
to-day, a General to-morrow. Like all earnest minds he understands, he
sees, he recognizes, he handles, so to speak, the great and magnificent
identity embraced under these three words, "Revolution, Progress,
Liberty;" he wishes for the Revolution, but above all through Progress;
he wishes for progress, but solely through Liberty. One can, and
according to our opinion sometimes rightly, differ from him as to the
road to be taken, as to the attitude to be assumed, and the position to
be maintained, but no one can deny his courage, which he has proved in
every form, nor reject his object, which is the moral and physical
amelioration of the lot of all. Emile de Girardin is more Democratic
than Republican, more Socialist than Democratic; on the day when these
three ideas, Democracy, Republicanism, Socialism, that is to say, the
principle, the form, and the application, are balanced in his mind the
oscillations which still exist in him will cease. He has already Power,
he will have Stability.
In the course of this sitting, as we shall see, I did not always agree
with Emile de Girardin. All the more reason that I should record here
how greatly I appreciate the mind formed of light and of courage. Emile
de Girardin, whatever his failings may be, is one of those men who do
honor to the Press of to-day; he unites in the highest degree the
dexterity of the combatant with the serenity of the thinker.
I went up to him, and I asked him,--
"Have you any workmen of the _Presse_ still remaining?"
He answered me,--
"Our presses are under seal, and guarded by the _Gendarmerie Mobile_,
but I have five or six willing workmen, they can produce a few placards
with the brush."
"Well then," said I, "print our decrees and our Proclamation." "I will
print anything," answered he, "as long as it is not an appeal to arms."
He added, addressing himself to me, "I know your Proclamation. It is a
war-cry, I cannot print that."
They remonstrated at this. He then declared that he for his part made
Proclamations, but in a different sense from ours. That according to him
Louis Bonaparte should not be combated by force of arms, but by creating
a vacuum. By an armed conflict he would be the conqueror, by a vacuum he
would be conquered. He urged us to aid him in isolating the "deposed of
the Second December." "Let us bring about a vacuum around him!" cried
Emile de Girardin, "let us proclaim an universal strike. Let the merchant
cease to sell, let the consumer cease from buying, let the workman cease
from working, let the butcher cease from killing, let the baker cease
from baking, let everything keep holiday, even to the National Printing
Office, so that Louis Bonaparte may not find a compositor to compose the
_Moniteur_, not a pressman to machine it, not a bill-sticker to placard
it! Isolation, solitude, a void space round this man! Let the nation
withdraw from him. Every power from which the nation withdraws falls like
a tree from which the roots are divided. Louis Bonaparte abandoned by all
in his crime will vanish away. By simply folding our arms as we stand
around him he will fall. On the other hand, fire on him and you will
consolidate him. The army is intoxicated, the people are dazed and do not
interfere, the middle classes are afraid of the President, of the people,
of you, of every one! No victory is possible. You will go straight before
you, like brave men, you risk your heads, very good; you will carry with
you two or three thousand daring men, whose blood mingled with yours,
already flows. It is heroic, I grant you. It is not politic. As for me,
I will not print an appeal to arms, and I reject the combat. Let us
organize an universal strike."
This point of view was haughty and superb, but unfortunately I felt it
to be unattainable. Two aspects of the truth seized Girardin, the
logical side and the practical side. Here, in my opinion, the practical
side was wanting.
Michel de Bourges answered him. Michel de Bourges with his sound logic
and quick reasoning put his finger on what was for us the immediate
question; the crime of Louis Bonaparte, the necessity to rise up erect
before this crime. It was rather a conversation than a debate, but
Michel de Bourges and Jules Favre, who spoke next, raised it to the
highest eloquence. Jules Favre, worthy to understand the powerful mind
of Girardin would willingly have adopted this idea, if it had seemed
practicable, of the universal strike, of the void around the man; he
found it great, but impossible. A nation does not pull up short. Even
when struck to the heart, it still moves on. Social movement, which is
the animal life of society, survives all political movement. Whatever
Emile de Girardin might hope, there would always be a butcher who would
kill, a baker who would bake, men must eat! "To make universal labor
fold its arms is a chimera!" said Jules Favre, "a dream! The People
fight for three days, for four days, for a week; society will not wait
indefinitely." As to the situation, it was doubtless terrible, it was
doubtless tragical, and blood flowed, but who had brought about this
situation? Louis Bonaparte. For ourselves we would accept it, such as it
was, and nothing more.
Emile de Girardin, steadfast, logical, absolute in his idea, persisted.
Some might be shaken. Arguments, which were so abundant in this vigorous
and inexhaustible mind, crowded upon him. As for me, I saw Duty before
me like a torch.
I interrupted him. I cried out, "It is too late to deliberate what we
are to do. We have not got to do it. It is done. The gauntlet of the
_coup d'état_ is thrown down, the Left takes it up. The matter is as
simple as this. The outrage of the Second December is an infamous,
insolent, unprecedented defiance to Democracy, to Civilization, to
Liberty, to the People, to France. I repeat that we have taken up this
gauntlet, we are the Law, but the living Law which at need can arm
itself and fight. A gun in our hands is a protest. I do not know whether
we shall conquer, but it is our duty to protest. To protest first in
Parliament; when Parliament is closed, to protest in the street; when
the street is closed, to protest in exile; when exile is fulfilled, to
protest in the tomb. Such is our part, our office, our mission. The
authority of the Representatives is elastic; the People bestow it,
events extend it."
While we were deliberating, our colleague, Napoleon Bonaparte, son
of the ex-King of Westphalia, came in. He listened. He spoke. He
energetically blamed, in a tone of sincere and generous indignation, his
cousin's crime, but he declared that in his opinion a written protest
would suffice. A protest of the Representatives, a protest of the
Council of State, a protest of the Magistracy, a protest of the Press,
that this protest would be unanimous and would enlighten France, but
that no other form of resistance would obtain unanimity. That as for
himself, having always considered the Constitution worthless, having
contended against it from the first in the Constituent Assembly, he
would not defend it at the last, that he assuredly would not give one
drop of blood for it. That the Constitution was dead, but that the
Republic was living, and that we must save, not the Constitution, a
corpse, but the Republic, the principle!
Remonstrances burst forth. Bancel, young, glowing, eloquent, impetuous,
overflowing with self-confidence, cried out that we ought not to look at
the shortcomings of the Constitution, but at the enormity of the crime
which had been committed, the flagrant treason, the violated oath; he
declared that we might have voted against the Constitution in the
Constituent Assembly, and yet defend it to-day in the presence of an
usurper; that this was logical, and that many amongst us were in this
position. He cited me as an example. Victor Hugo, said he, is a proof of
this. He concluded thus: "You have been present at the construction of a
vessel, you have considered it badly built, you have given advice which
has not been listened to. Nevertheless, you have been obliged to embark
on board this vessel, your children and your brothers are there with
you, your mother is on board. A pirate ranges up, axe in one hand, to
scuttle the vessel, a torch in the other to fire it. The crew are
resolved to defend themselves and run to arms. Would you say to this
crew, 'For my part I consider this vessel badly built, and I will let it
be destroyed'?"
"In such a case," added Edgar Quinet, "whoever is not on the side of the
vessel is on the side of the pirates."
They shouted on all sides, "The decree! Read the decree!"
I was standing leaning against the fire place. Napoleon Bonaparte came
up to me, and whispered in my ear,--
"You are undertaking," said he, "a battle which is lost beforehand."
I answered him, "I do not look at success, I look at duty."
He replied, "You are a politician, consequently you ought to look
forward to success. I repeat, before you go any further, that the battle
is lost beforehand."
I resumed, "If we enter upon the conflict the battle is lost. You say
so, I believe it; but if we do not enter upon it, honor is lost. I would
rather lose the battle than honor."
He remained silent for a moment, then he took my hand.
"Be it so," continued he, "but listen to me. You run, you yourself
personally, great dancer. Of all the men in the Assembly you are the one
whom the President hates the most. You have from the height of the
Tribune nicknamed him, 'Napoleon the Little.' You understand that will
never be forgotten. Besides, it was you who dictated the appeal to arms,
and that is known. If you are taken, you are lost. You will be shot on
the spot, or at least transported. Have you a safe place where you can
sleep to-night?"
I had not as yet thought of this. "In truth, no," answered I.
He continued, "Well, then, come to my house. There is perhaps only one
house in Paris where you would be in safety. That is mine. They will not
come to look for you there. Come, day or night, at what hour you please,
I will await you, and I will open the door to you myself. I live at No.
5, Rue d'Alger."
I thanked him. It was a noble and cordial offer. I was touched by it. I
did not make use of it, but I have not forgotten it.
They cried out anew, "Read the decree! Sit down! sit down!"
There was a round table before the fire place; a lamp, pens,
blotting-books, and paper were brought there; the members of the
Committee sat down at this table, the Representatives took their places
around them on sofas, on arm-chairs, and on all the chairs which could
be found in the adjoining rooms. Some looked about for Napoleon
Bonaparte. He had withdrawn.
A member requested that in the first place the meeting should declare
itself to be the National Assembly, and constitute itself by immediately
appointing a President and Secretaries. I remarked that there was no
need to declare ourselves the Assembly, that we were the Assembly by
right as well as in fact, and the whole Assembly, our absent colleagues
being detained by force; that the National Assembly, although mutilated
by the _coup d'état_, ought to preserve its entity and remain constituted
afterwards in the same manner as before; that to appoint another
President and another staff of Secretaries would be to give Louis
Bonaparte an advantage over us, and to acknowledge in some manner the
Dissolution; that we ought to do nothing of the sort; that our decrees
should be published, not with the signature of a President, whoever he
might be, but with the signature of all the members of the Left who had
not been arrested, that they would thus carry with them full authority
over the People, and full effect. They relinquished the idea of appointing
a President. Noël Parfait proposed that our decrees and our resolutions
should be drawn up, not with the formula: "The National Assembly
decrees," etc.; but with the formula: "The Representatives of the People
remaining at liberty decree," etc. In this manner we should preserve all
the authority attached to the office of the Representatives of the People
without associating the arrested Representatives with the responsibility
of our actions. This formula had the additional advantage of separating
us from the Right. The people knew that the only Representatives
remaining free were the members of the Left. They adopted Noël Parfait's
advice.
I read aloud the decree of deposition. It was couched in these words:--
"DECLARATION.
"The Representatives of the people remaining at liberty, by virtue of
Article 68 of the Constitution, which runs as follows:--
"'Article 68.--Every measure by which the President of the Republic
dissolves the Assembly, prorogues it, or obstructs the exercise of
its authority, is a crime of High Treason.
"'By this action alone the President is deposed from his office; the
citizens are bound to refuse him obedience; the executive power
passes by right to the National Assembly; the judges of the High
Court of Justice should meet together immediately under penalty of
treason, and convoke the juries in a place which they shall appoint
to proceed to the judgment of the President and his accomplices.'
"Decree:--
"ARTICLE I.--Louis Bonaparte is deposed from his office of President
of the Republic.
"ARTICLE II.--All citizens and public officials are bound to refuse
him obedience under penalty of complicity.
"ARTICLE III.--The judgment drawn up on December 2d by the High Court
of Justice, and which declares Louis Bonaparte attainted with the
Crime of High Treason, shall be published and executed. Consequently
the civil and military authorities are summoned under penalty of
Treason to lend their active assistance to the execution of the said
judgment.
"Given at Paris, in permanent session, December 3d, 1851."
The decree having been read, and voted unanimously, we signed it, and
the Representatives crowded round the table to add their signatures to
ours. Sain remarked that this signing took time, that in addition we
numbered barely more than sixty, a large number of the members of the
Left being at work in the streets in insurrection. He asked if the
Committee, who had full powers from the whole of the Left, had any
objection to attach to the decree the names of all the Republican
Representatives remaining at liberty, the absent as well as those
present. We answered that the decree signed by all would assuredly
better answer its purpose. Besides, it was the counsel which I had
already given. Bancel had in his pocket on old number of the _Moniteur_
containing the result of a division.
They cut out a list of the names of the members of the Left, the names
of those who were arrested were erased, and the list was added to the
decree.[11]
The name of Emile de Girardin upon this list caught my eye. He was still
present.
"Do you sign this decree?" I asked him.
"Unhesitatingly."
"In that case will you consent to print it?"
"Immediately."
He continued,--
"Having no longer any presses, as I have told you, I can only print it
as a handbill, and with the brush. It takes a long time, but by eight
o'clock this evening you shall have five hundred copies."
"And," continued I, "you persist in refusing to print the appeal to
arms?"
"I do persist."
A second copy was made of the decree, which Emile de Girardin took away
with him. The deliberation was resumed. At each moment Representatives
came in and brought items of news: Amiens in insurrection--Rheims and
Rouen in motion, and marching on Paris--General Canrobert resisting the
_coup d'état_--General Castellane hesitating--the Minister of the United
States demanding his passports. We placed little faith in these rumors,
and facts proved that we were right.
Meanwhile Jules Favre had drawn up the following decree, which he
proposed, and which was immediately adopted:--
"DECREE.
"FRENCH REPUBLIC.
"Liberty,--Equality,--Fraternity.
"The undersigned Representatives remaining at liberty, assembled in
Permanent Session,--
"Considering the arrest of the majority of our colleagues, and the
urgency of the moment:
"Considering that for the accomplishment of his crime Louis Bonaparte
has not contented himself with multiplying the most formidable means of
destruction against the lives and property of the citizens of Paris,
that he has trampled under foot every law, that he has annihilated all
the guarantees of civilized nations:
"Considering that these criminal madnesses only serve to augment the
violent denunciation of every conscience and to hasten the hour of
national vengeance, but that it is important to proclaim the Right:
"Decree:
"ARTICLE I.--The State of Siege is raised in all Departments where it
has been established, the ordinary laws resume their authority.
"ARTICLE II.--It is enjoined upon all military leaders under penalty
of Treason immediately to lay down the extraordinary powers which
have been conferred upon them.
"ARTICLE III.--Officials and agents of the public force are charged
under penalty of treason to put this present decree into execution.
"Given in Permanent Session, 3d December, 1851."
Madier de Montjau and De Flotte entered. They came from outside. They
had been in all the districts where the conflict was proceeding, they
had seen with their own eyes the hesitation of a part of the population
in the presence of these words, "The Law of the 31st May is abolished,
Universal Suffrage is re-established." The placards of Louis Bonaparte
were manifestly working mischief. It was necessary to oppose effort to
effort, and to neglect nothing which could open the eyes of the people.
I dictated the following Proclamation:-
"PROCLAMATION.
"People! you are being deceived.
"Louis Bonaparte says that he has re-established you in your rights,
and that he restores to you Universal Suffrage.
"Louis Bonaparte has lied.
"Read his placards. He grants you--what infamous mockery!--the right
of conferring on him, on him _alone_, the Constituent power; that is
to say, the Supreme power, which belongs to you. He grants you the
right to appoint him Dictator _for ten years_. In other words, he
grants you the right of abdicating and of crowning him. A right which
even you do not possess, O People! for one generation cannot dispose
of the sovereignty of the generation which shall follow it.
"Yes, he grants to you, Sovereign, the right of giving yourself a
master, and that master himself.
"Hypocrisy and treason!
"People! we unmask the hypocrite. It is for you to punish the traitor!
"The Committee of Resistance:
"Jules Favre, De Flotte, Carnot, Madier de Montjau, Mathieu (de la
Drôme), Michel de Bourges, Victor Hugo."
Baudin had fallen heroically. It was necessary to let the People know of
his death, and to honor his memory. The decree below was voted on the
proposition of Michel de Bourges:--
"DECREE.
"The Representatives of the People remaining at liberty considering
that the Representative Baudin has died on the barricade of the
Faubourg St. Antoine for the Republic and for the laws, and that he
has deserved well of his country, decree:
"That the honors of the Panthéon are adjudged to Representative Baudin.
"Given in Permanent Session, 3d December, 1851."
After honor to the dead and the needs of the conflict it was
necessary in my opinion to enunciate immediately and dictatorially
some great popular benefit. I proposed the abolition of the _octroi_
duties and of the duty on liquors. This objection was raised, "No
caresses to the people! After victory, we will see. In the meantime
let them fight! If they do not fight, if they do not rise, if they do
not understand that it is for them, for their rights that we the
Representatives, that we risk our heads at this moment--if they leave
us alone at the breach, in the presence of the _coup d'état_--it is
because they are not worthy of Liberty!"
Bancel remarked that the abolition of the _octroi_ duties and the duty
on liquors were not caresses to the People, but succor to the poor, a
great economical and reparatory measure, a satisfaction to the public
demand--a satisfaction which the Right had always obstinately refused,
and that the Left, master of the situation, ought hasten to accord. They
voted, with the reservation that it should not be published until after
victory, the two decrees in one; in this form:--
"DECREE.
"The Representatives remaining at liberty decree:
"The _Octroi_ Duties are abolished throughout the extent of the
territory of the Republic.
"Given in permanent Session, 3d December, 1851."
Versigny, with a copy of the Proclamations and of the Decree, left in
search of Hetzel. Labrousse also left with the same object. They settled
to meet at eight o'clock in the evening at the house of the former
member of the Provisional Government Marie, Rue Neuve des Petits Champs.
As the members of the Committee and the Representatives withdrew I was
told that some one had asked to speak to me. I went into a sort of
little room attached to the large meeting-room, and I found there a man
in a blouse, with an intelligent and sympathetic air. This man had a
roll of paper in his hand.
"Citizen Victor Hugo," said he to me, "you have no printing office. Here
are the means which will enable you to dispense with one."
He unfolded on the mantel-piece the roll which he had in his hand. It
was a species of blotting-book made of very thin blue paper, and which
seemed to be slightly oiled. Between each leaf of blue paper there was a
sheet of white paper. He took out of his pocket a sort of blunt bodkin,
saying, "The first thing to hand will serve your purpose, a nail or a
match," and he traced with his bodkin on the first leaf of the book the
word "Republic." Then turning over the leaves, he said, "Look at this."
The word "Republic" was reproduced upon the fifteen or twenty white
leaves which the book contained.
He added, "This paper is usually used to trace the designs of
manufactured fabrics. I thought that it might be useful at a moment like
this. I have at home a hundred books like this on which I can make a
hundred copies of what you want--a Proclamation, for instance--in the
same space of time that it takes to write four or five. Write something,
whatever you may think useful at the present moment, and to-morrow
morning five hundred copies shall be posted throughout Paris."
I had none of the documents with me which we had just drawn up. Versigny
had gone away with the copies. I took a sheet of paper, and, leaning on
the corner of the chimney-piece, I wrote the following Proclamation:--
"TO THE ARMY.
"Soldiers!
"A man has just broken the Constitution. He tears up the oath which
he has sworn to the people; he suppresses the law, stifles Right,
stains Paris with blood, chokes France, betrays the Republic!
"Soldiers, this man involves you in his crime.
"There are two things holy; the flag which represents military honor
and the law which represents the National Right. Soldiers, the
greatest of outrages is the flag raised against the Law! Follow no
longer the wretched man who misleads you. Of such a crime French
soldiers should be the avengers, not the accomplices.
"This man says he is named Bonaparte. He lies, for Bonaparte is a
word which means glory. This man says that he is named Napoléon. He
lies, for Napoléon is a word which means genius. As for him, he is
obscure and insignificant. Give this wretch up to the law. Soldiers,
he is a false Napoléon. A true Napoléon would once more give you a
Marengo; he will once more give you a Transnonain.
"Look towards the true function of the French army; to protect the
country, to propagate the Revolution, to free the people, to sustain
the nationalities, to emancipate the Continent, to break chains
everywhere, to protect Right everywhere, this is your part amongst
the armies of Europe. You are worthy of great battle-fields.
"Soldiers, the French Army is the advanced guard of humanity.
"Become yourselves again, reflect; acknowledge your faults; rise up!
Think of your Generals arrested, taken by the collar by galley
sergeants and thrown handcuffed into robbers' cells! The malefactor,
who is at the Elysée, thinks that the Army of France is a band of
mercenaries; that if they are paid and intoxicated they will obey.
He sets you an infamous task, he causes you to strangle, in this
nineteenth century, and in Paris itself, Liberty, Progress, and
Civilization. He makes you--you, the children of France--destroy all
that France has so gloriously and laboriously built up during the
three centuries of light and in sixty years of Revolution! Soldiers!
you are the 'Grand Army!' respect the 'Grand Nation!'
"We, citizens; we, Representatives of the People and of yourselves;
we, your friends, your brothers; we, who are Law and Right; we, who
rise up before you, holding out our arms to you, and whom you strike
blindly with your swords--do you know what drives us to despair? It
is not to see our blood which flows; it is to see your honor which
vanishes.
"Soldiers! one step more in the outrage, one day more with Louis
Bonaparte, and you are lost before universal conscience. The men who
command you are outlaws. They are not generals--they are criminals.
The garb of the galley slave awaits them; see it already on their
shoulders. Soldiers! there is yet time--Stop! Come back to the
country! Come back to the Republic! If you continue, do you know
what History will say of you? It will say, They have trampled under
the feet of their horses and crushed beneath the wheels of their
cannon all the laws of their country; they, French soldiers, they
have dishonored the anniversary of Austerlitz, and by their fault,
by their crime, the name of Napoléon sprinkles as much shame to-day
upon France as in other times it has showered glory!
"French soldiers! cease to render assistance to crime!"
My colleagues of the Committee having left, I could not consult them--time
pressed--I signed:
"For the Representatives of the People remaining at liberty, the
Representative member of the Committee of Resistance,
"VICTOR HUGO."
The man in the blouse took away the Proclamation saying, "You will see
it again to-morrow morning." He kept his word. I found it the nest day
placarded in the Rue Rambuteau, at the corner of the Rue de l'Homme-Armé
and the Chapelle-Saint-Denis. To those who were not in the secret of the
process it seemed to be written by hand in blue ink.
I thought of going home. When I reached the Rue de la Tour d'Auvergne,
opposite my door, it happened curiously and by some chance to be half
open. I pushed it, and entered. I crossed the courtyard, and went
upstairs without meeting any one.
My wife and my daughter were in the drawing-room round the fire with
Madame Paul Meurice. I entered noiselessly; they were conversing in a
low tone. They were talking of Pierre Dupont, the popular song-writer,
who had come to me to ask for arms. Isidore, who had been a soldier, had
some pistols by him, and had lent three to Pierre Dupont for the
conflict.
Suddenly these ladies turned their heads and saw me close to them. My
daughter screamed. "Oh, go away," cried my wife, throwing her arms round
my neck, "you are lost if you remain here a moment. You will be arrested
here!" Madame Paul Meurice added, "They are looking for you. The police
were here a quarter of an hour ago." I could not succeed in reassuring
them. They gave me a packet of letters offering me places of refuge for
the night, some of them signed with names unknown to me. After some
moments, seeing them more and more frightened, I went away. My wife said
to me, "What you are doing, you are doing for justice. Go, continue!" I
embraced my wife and my daughter; five months have elapsed at the time
when I am writing these lines. When I went into exile they remained near
my son Victor in prison; I have not seen them since that day.
I left as I had entered. In the porter's lodge there were only two or
three little children seated round a lamp, laughing and looking at
pictures in a book.
[11] This list, which belongs to History, having served as the base of
the proscription list, will be found complete in the sequel to this book
to be published hereafter.
CHAPTER VII.
THE ARCHBISHOP
On this gloomy and tragical day an idea struck one of the people.
He was a workman belonging to the honest but almost imperceptible
minority of Catholic Democrats. The double exaltation of his mind,
revolutionary on one side, mystical on the other, caused him to be
somewhat distrusted by the people, even by his comrades and his friends.
Sufficiently devout to be called a Jesuit by the Socialists,
sufficiently Republican to be called a Red by the Reactionists, he
formed an exception in the workshops of the Faubourg. Now, what is
needed in these supreme crises to seize and govern the masses are men
of exceptional genius, not men of exceptional opinion. There is no
revolutionary originality. In order to be something, in the time of
regeneration and in the days of social combat, one must bathe fully in
those powerful homogeneous mediums which are called parties. Great
currents of men follow great currents of ideas, and the true
revolutionary leader is he who knows how best to drive the former in
accordance with the latter.
Now the Gospel is in accordance with the Revolution, but Catholicism is
not. This is due to the fact that in the main the Papacy is not in
accordance with the Gospel. One can easily understand a Christian
Republican, one cannot understand a Catholic Democrat. It is a
combination of two opposites. It is a mind in which the negative bars
the way to the affirmative. It is a neuter.
Now in time revolution, whoever is neuter of is impotent. Nevertheless,
during the first hours of resistance against the _coup d'état_ the
democratic Catholic workman, whose noble effort we are here relating,
threw himself so resolutely into the cause of Justice and of Truth, that
in a few moments he transformed distrust into confidence, and was hailed
by the people. He showed such gallantry at the rising of the barricade
of the Rue Aumaire that with an unanimous voice they appointed him their
leader. At the moment of the attack he defended it as he had built it,
with ardor. That was a sad but glorious battle-field; most of his
companions were killed, and he escaped only by a miracle.
However, he succeeded in returning home, saying to himself bitterly,
"All is lost."
It seemed evident to him that the great masses of the people would not
rise. Thenceforward it appeared impossible to conquer the _coup d'état_
by a revolution; it could be only combated by legality. What had been
the risk at the beginning became the hope at the end, for he believed
the end to be fatal, and at hand. In his opinion it was necessary, as
the people were defaulters, to try now to arouse the middle classes. Let
one legion of National Guards go out in arms, and the Elysée was lost.
For this a decisive blow must be struck--the heart of the middle classes
must be reached--the "bourgeois" must be inspired by a grand spectacle
which should not be a terrifying spectacle.
It was then that this thought came to this workman, "Write to the
Archbishop of Paris."
The workman took a pen, and from his humble garret he wrote to the
Archbishop of Paris an enthusiastic and earnest letter in which he, a
man of the people and a believer, said this to his Bishop; we give the
substance of his letter:--
"This is a solemn hour, Civil War sets by the ears the Army and People,
blood is being shed. When blood flows the Bishop goes forth. M. Sibour
should follow in the path of M. Affre. The example is great, the
opportunity is still greater.
"Let the Archbishop of Paris, followed by all his clergy, the Pontifical
cross before him, his mitre on his head, go forth in procession through
the streets. Let him summon to him the National Assembly and the High
Court, the Legislators in their sashes, the Judges in their scarlet
robes; let him summon to him the citizens, let him summon to him the
soldiers, let him go straight to the Elysée. Let him raise his hand in
the name of Justice against the man who is violating the laws, and in
the name of Jesus against the man who is shedding blood. Simply with
his raised hand he will crush the _coup d'état_.
"And he will place his statue by the side of M. Affre, and it will be
said that twice two Archbishops of Paris have trampled Civil War beneath
their feet."
"The Church is holy, but the Country is sacred. There are times when the
Church should succor the Country."
The letter being finished, he signed it with his workman's signature.
But now a difficulty arose; how should it be conveyed to its destination?
Take it himself!
But would he, a mere workman in a blouse, be allowed to penetrate to the
Archbishop!
And then, in order to reach the Archiepiscopal Palace, he would have to
cross those very quarters in insurrection, and where, perhaps, the
resistance was still active. He would have to pass through streets
obstructed by troops, he would be arrested and searched; his hands smelt
of powder, he would be shot; and the letter would not reach its
destination.
What was to be done?
At the moment when he had almost despaired of a solution, the name of
Arnauld de l'Ariége came to his mind.
Arnauld de l'Ariége was a Representative after his own heart. Arnauld de
l'Ariége was a noble character. He was a Catholic Democrat like the
workman. At the Assembly he raised aloft, but he bore nearly alone, that
banner so little followed which aspires to ally the Democracy with the
Church. Arnauld de l'Ariége, young, handsome, eloquent, enthusiastic,
gentle, and firm, combined the attributes of the Tribune with the faith
of the knight. His open nature, without wishing to detach itself from
Rome, worshipped Liberty. He had two principles, but he had not two
faces. On the whole the democratic spirit preponderated in him. He said
to me one day, "I give my hand to Victor Hugo. I do not give it to
Montalembert."
The workman knew him. He had often written to him, and had sometimes
seen him.
Arnauld de l'Ariége lived in a district which had remained almost free.
The workman went there without delay.
Like the rest of us, as has been seen, Arnauld de l'Ariége had taken
part in the conflict. Like most of the Representatives of the Left, he
had not returned home since the morning of the 2d. Nevertheless, on the
second day, he thought of his young wife whom he had left without
knowing if he should see her again, of his baby of six months old which
she was suckling, and which he had not kissed for so many hours, of that
beloved hearth, of which at certain moments one feels an absolute need
to obtain a fleeting glimpse, he could no longer resist; arrest, Mazas,
the cell, the hulks, the firing party, all vanished, the idea of danger
was obliterated, he went home.
It was precisely at that moment that the workman arrived there.
Arnauld de l'Ariége received him, read his letter, and approved of it.
Arnauld de l'Ariége knew the Archbishop of Paris personally.