The 4th of September -- A comic, not a tragic revolution -- A
burlesque Harold and a burlesque Boadicea -- The news of Sedan
only known publicly on the 3rd of September -- Grief and
consternation, but no rage -- The latter feeling imported by the
bands of Delescluze, Blanqui, and Felix Pyat -- Blanqui, Pyat, &
Co. _versus_ Favre, Gambetta, & Co. -- The former want their
share of the spoil, and only get it some years afterwards --
Ramail goes to the Palais-Bourbon -- His report -- Paris spends
the night outdoors -- Thiers a second-rate Talleyrand -- His
journey to the different courts of Europe -- His interview with
Lord Granville -- The 4th of September -- The Imperial eagles
disappear -- The joyousness of the crowd -- The Place de la
Concorde -- The gardens of the Tuileries -- The crowds in the Rue
de Rivoli scarcely pay attention to the Tuileries -- The soldiers
fraternizing with the people, and proclaiming the republic from
the barracks' windows -- A serious procession -- Sampierro Gavini
gives his opinion -- The "heroic struggles" of an Empress, and
the crownless coronation of "le Roi Petaud" -- Ramail at the
Tuileries -- How M. Sardou saved the palace from being burned and
sacked -- The republic proclaimed -- Illuminations as after a
victory.
Only those who were at a distance from Paris on the 4th of September,
1870, can be deluded into the belief that the scenes enacted there on
that day partook of a dramatic character. Carefully and scrupulously
dovetailed, they constitute one vast burlesque of a revolution. It is
not because the overthrow of the Second Empire was accomplished without
bloodshed that I say this. Bloodshed would have only made the burlesque
more gruesome, but it could have never converted it into a tragedy, the
recollection of which would have made men think and shudder even after
the lapse of many years. As it is, the recollection of the 4th of
September can only make the independent witness smile. On the one hand,
a burlesque Harold driven off to Wilhelmshoehe in a landau, surrounded by
a troop of Uhlans; and a burlesque Boadicea slinking off in a hackney
cab, _minus_ the necessary handkerchiefs for the cold in her
head,--"fleeing when no one pursueth," instead of poisoning herself: on
the other, "ceux qui prennent la parole pour autrui," _i. e._ the
lawyers, prenant le pouvoir pour eux-memes. Really, the only chronicler
capable of dealing with the situation in the right spirit is our old
and valued friend, Mr. Punch. Personally, from the Saturday afternoon
until the early hours on Monday, I saw scarcely one incident worthy of
being treated seriously; nor did the accounts supplied to me by others
tend to modify my impressions.
Though the defeat at Sedan was virtually complete on Thursday the 1st at
nine p.m., not the faintest rumour of it reached Paris before Friday
evening at an advanced hour, and the real truth was not known generally
until the Saturday at the hour just named. There was grief and
consternation on many faces, but no expression of fury or anger. That
sentiment, at any rate in its outward manifestations, had to be supplied
from the heights of Belleville and Montmartre, Montrouge and
Montparnasse, when, later on, a good many of the inhabitants of those
delightful regions came down like an avalanche on the heart of the city.
They were the lambs of Blanqui, Delescluze, Felix Pyat, and Milliere.
They were dispersed on reaching the Boulevard Montmartre, and we saw
nothing of them from where we were seated, at the Cafe de la Paix. By
the time they rallied in the side streets and had marched to the
Palais-Bourbon, they found their competitors, Favre, Gambetta, & Co.,
trying to oust the ministers of the Empire. But for that unfortunate
delay we might have had the Commune on the 4th of September instead of
on the 18th of March following. Blanqui, Pyat, & Co. never forgave
Favre, Gambetta, & Co. for having forestalled them, and, above all, for
not having shared the proceeds of the spoil. This is so true that, even
after many years of lording it, the successors of, and co-founders with,
the firm of Favre, Gambetta, & Co. have been obliged, not only to grant
an amnesty to those whom they cheated at the beginning, but to admit
them to some of the benefits of the undertaking; Meline, Tirard, Ranc,
Alphonse Humbert, Camille Barrere, and a hundred others more or less
implicated in the Commune, are all occupying fat posts at the hour I
write.
A friend of ours, whose impartiality was beyond suspicion, and who had
more strength and inclination to battle with crowds than any of us,
offered to go and see how the land lay at the Palais-Bourbon. He
returned in about an hour, and told us that Gambetta, perched on a
chair, had been addressing the crowd from behind the railings, exhorting
them to patience and moderation. "Clever trick that," said our
informant; "it's the confidence-trick of housebreakers when two separate
gangs have designs upon the same 'crib;' while the first arrivals
'crack' it, they send one endowed with the 'gift of the gab' to pacify
the others."
One thing is certain--Gambetta and his crew did not want to pursue the
war, they wanted a Constituent Assembly which would have left them to
enjoy in peace the fruits of their usurpation; for theirs was as much
usurpation as was the Coup d'Etat. Their subsequent "Not an inch of our
territory, not a stone of our fortresses," was an afterthought, when
they found that Bismarck would not grant them as good a peace as he
would have granted Napoleon at Donchery the morning after Sedan.
At about ten on Saturday night everybody knew that there would be a
night sitting, and I doubt whether one-fourth of the adult male
population of Paris went to bed at all, even if they retired to their
own homes.
Our friend returned to the Palais-Bourbon, but failed to get a
trustworthy account of what had happened during the twenty-five minutes
the deputies had been assembled. All he knew was that nominally the
Empire was still standing, though virtually it had ceased to exist; a
bill for its deposition having been laid on the table. On his way back
to the Boulevards he saw the carriage of Thiers surrounded, and an
attempt to take out the horses. He called Thiers "le receleur des vols
commis au prejudice des monarchies."[80]
[Footnote 80: "The receiver of the goods stolen from
monarchies."--EDITOR.]
Let me look for a moment at that second-rate Talleyrand, who has been
grandiloquently termed the "liberator of the soil" because he happened
to do what any intelligent bank manager could have done as well; let me
endeavour to establish his share in the 4th of September. I am speaking
on the authority of men who were behind the political scenes for many
years, and whose contempt for nearly all the actors was equally great.
Thiers refused his aid and counsel to the Empress, who solicited it
through the intermediary of Prince Metternich and M. Prosper Merimee,
but he also refused to accept the power offered to him by Gambetta,
Favre, Jules Simon, etc., in the afternoon of the 4th of September.
Nevertheless, he was here, there, and everywhere; offering advice, but
careful not to take any responsibility. Afterwards he took a journey to
the various courts of Europe. I only know the particulars of one
interview--that with Lord Granville--but I can vouch for their truth.
After having held forth for two hours without giving his lordship a
chance of edging in a word sideways, he stopped; and five minutes later,
while Lord Granville was enumerating the reasons why the cabinet of St.
James's could not interfere, he (Thiers) was fast asleep. When the
conditions of peace were being discussed, Thiers was in favour of giving
up Belfort rather than pay another milliard of francs. "A city you may
recover, a milliard of francs you never get back," he said.
Nevertheless, historians will tell one that Thiers made superhuman
efforts to save Belfort. I did not like M. Thiers, and, being conscious
of my dislike, I have throughout these notes endeavoured to say as
little as possible of him.
The sun rose radiantly over Paris on the 4th of September, and I was up
betimes, though I had not gone to bed until 3 a.m. There was a dense
crowd all along the Rue Royale and the Place de la Concorde, and several
hours before the Chamber had begun to discuss the deposition of the
Bonapartes (which was never formally voted), volunteer-workmen were
destroying or hauling down the Imperial eagles. The mob cheered them
vociferously, and when one of these workmen hurt himself severely, they
carried him away in triumph. Nevertheless, there was a good deal of
hooting as several well-known members of the Chamber elbowed their way
through the serried masses. Though they were well known, I argued myself
unknown in not knowing them. I was under the impression that they were
Imperialists; they turned out to be Republicans. The marks of
disapproval proceeded from compact groups of what were apparently
workmen. As I knew that no workmen devoted to the Empire would have
dared to gather in that way, even if their numbers had been sufficient,
and as I felt reluctant to inquire, I came to the natural conclusion
that the hooters were the supporters of Blanqui, Pyat, & Co. The Commune
was foreshadowed on the Place de la Concorde on that day.
My experience of the 24th of February, 1848, told me that the Chamber
would be invaded before long. In 1848 there was no more danger for a
foreigner to mix with the rabble than for a Frenchman. I felt not quite
so sure about my safety on the 4th of September. My adventure in the
Avenue de Clichy, which I will relate anon, had not happened then, and
I was not as careful as I became afterwards, still I remembered in time
the advice of the prudent Frenchman--"When in doubt, abstain;" and I
prepared to retrace my steps to the Boulevards, where, I knew, there
would be no mistake about my identity. At the same time, I am bound to
say that no such accident as I dreaded, occurred during that day, as far
as I am aware. There may or may not have been at that hour half a
hundred spies of Bismarck in the city, but no one was molested. The
Parisians were so evidently overjoyed at getting rid of the Empire, that
for four and twenty hours, at any rate, they forgot all about the hated
Germans and their march upon the capital. They were shaking hands with,
and congratulating one another, as if some great piece of good fortune
had befallen them. Years before that, I had seen my wife behave in a
similarly joyous manner after having dismissed at a moment's notice a
cook who had shamefully robbed us: the wife knew very well that, on the
morrow, the tradesmen, the amount of whose bills the dishonest servant
had pocketed for months, would be sending in their claims upon us.
"Perhaps they will take into consideration that we dismissed her," she
said, "and not hold us responsible." The Latin race, and especially the
French, are the females of the human race.
I noticed that the gates of the Tuileries gardens on the Place de la
Concorde were still open, and that the gardens themselves were black
with people. It must have been about half-past ten or eleven. I did not
go back by the Rue Royale, but by the Rue de Rivoli. The people were
absolutely streaming down the street. There was not a single threatening
gesture on their part; they merely looked at the flag still floating
over the Tuileries, and passed on. When I got back to the Boulevards, I
sat down outside the Cafe de la Paix determined not to stir if possible.
I knew that whatever happened the news of it would soon be brought
thither. I was not mistaken.
The first news we had was that the National Guards had replaced the
regulars inside and around the Palais-Bourbon, which was either a sign
that the latter could be no longer depended upon, or that the
Republicans in the Chamber had carried that measure in their own
interest. I am bound to admit that I would always sooner take the word
of a French officer than that of a deputy, of no matter what shade; and
I heard afterwards that the troops at the Napoleon barracks and
elsewhere had begun to fraternize with the people as early as eight in
the morning, by shouting, from the windows of their rooms, "Vive la
Republique!" The Chamber was invaded, nevertheless; it is as well to
state that this invasion gave Jules Favre & Co. a chance of repairing in
hot haste to the Hotel de Ville, where the Government of the National
Defence was proclaimed.
To return to my vantage-post at the Cafe de la Paix. The crowds on the
Place de la Concorde, apparently stationed there since early morning,
did not seem to me to have been brought thither at the instance of a
leader or in obedience to a watchword. I except, of course, the groups
of which I have already spoken, and which jeered at the republican
deputies. The streams of people I met on my return in the Rue de Rivoli
seemed impelled by their own curiosity to the Chamber of Deputies. Not
so the procession which hove in sight almost the moment I had sat down
at the Cafe. It wheeled to the left when reaching the Rue de la Paix. It
was composed of National Guards with and without their muskets, each
company preceded by its own officers,--the armed ones infinitely more
numerous than the unarmed, but all marching in good order and in utter
silence; in fact, so silently as to bode mischief. Behind and before
there strode large contingents of ordinary citizens, and I noticed two
things: that few of them wore blouses, and that a good many wore kepis,
apparently quite new. The wearers, though equally undemonstrative, gave
one the impression of being the leaders. Most of those around me shook
their heads ominously as they passed; their silence did not impose upon
them. I am free to confess that I did not share their opinion. To me,
the whole looked like stern determined manifestors; not like turbulent
revolutionaries. I had seen nothing like them in '48. Nevertheless, it
was I who was mistaken, for, according to M. Sampierro Gavini, who,
unlike his brother Denis, belonged to the opposition during the Empire,
it was they who invaded the Chamber. I may add that M. Sampierro Gavini,
though in the opposition, had little or no sympathy with those who
overthrew the Empire or established the Commune. He had an almost
idealistic faith in constitutional means, and a somewhat exaggerated
reverence for the name of Bonaparte. He was a Corsican.
For several hours nothing occurred worthy of record. The accounts
brought to us by eye-witnesses of events going on simultaneously at the
Tuileries and the Palais-Bourbon showed plainly that there was no
intention on the mob's part to exalt the Empress into a
Marie-Antoinette. Our friend who had given us the news of the Chamber on
the previous night, and who was a relative of the celebrated Dr. Yvan,
an habitue of the Cafe de la Paix, had made up his mind in the morning
that "it would be more interesting to watch the" last heroic struggles
of an Empress against iron fortune than the "crownless coronation of a
half-score of 'rois Petauds.'"[81] As such, he had taken up his station
in the gardens of the Tuileries, close to the gate dividing the private
from the public gardens. It was he who gave us the particulars of the
scenes preceding and succeeding the Empress's flight, the exact moment
of which no one seemed to know. The account of these scenes was so
exceedingly graphic, that I have no difficulty whatsoever in remembering
them. Moreover, I put down at the time several of his own expressions. I
do not know what has become of him. He went to New-Zealand on account of
some unhappy love-affair, and was never heard of any more. Though
scarcely thirty then, he was a promising young doctor. His name was
Ramail, but I do not know in what relation he stood to Dr. Yvan; who,
however, always called him cousin.
[Footnote 81: In olden times, every community, corporation, and
guild in France elected annually a king;--even the mendicants,
whose ruler took the title of King Petaud, from the Latin
_peto_, I ask. The latter's court, as a matter of course, was a
perfect bear-garden, in which every one did as he liked, in
which every one was as much sovereign as the titular one. The
expression, "the Court of King Petaud," became a synonym for
everything that was disorderly, ridiculous, and disgusting.
"Oui, je sors de chez vous fort mal edifiee;
Dans toutes mes lecons j'y suis contrariee;
On n'y respecte rien, chacun y parle haut,
Et c'est tout justement la cour du roi Petaud."
(MOLIERE, "Tartuffe," Act i. Sc. 1.)--EDITOR.]
Young Ramail had been in the Tuileries gardens since noon. The crowd was
already very large at that hour, but it seemed altogether engrossed in
the doings of an individual who was knocking down a gilded eagle on the
top of the gate. "Mind," said Ramail, "that was at twelve o'clock, or
somewhere thereabouts; and I do not think that the sitting at the
Chamber began until at least an hour later. If the Republicans say, in
days to come, that the Empire was virtually condemned before they voted
its overthrow, they will, at any rate, have the semblance of truth on
their side, because there were at least two thousand persons looking on
without trying to prevent the destruction of the eagles by word or deed;
and two thousand persons, if they happen to agree with them, are to the
Republicans the whole of France; while two millions, if they happen to
differ from them, are only a corrupt and unintelligent majority.
"But I was wondering," he went on, "at the utter ingratitude of the
lower and lower-middle classes. I feel certain that among those who
stood staring there, half owned their prosperous condition to the
eighteen years of Imperialism; yet I heard not a single expression of
regret at the brutal sweeping away of it.
"I may have stood there for about an hour, a score of steps away from
the gate before the swing bridge, when, all at once, I felt myself
carried forward with the crowd; and before I had time to look round, I
found myself inside that other gate. There were about five hundred
persons who had entered with me, but in what manner the gate gave way or
was opened I have not the vaguest idea. We went no further; we stopped
as suddenly as we had advanced. I turned round with difficulty, and
looked over the heads of those behind me; sure enough, the gates were
wide open and the crowd at the rear was much denser than it had been ten
minutes before. Still they stood perfectly still, without bringing any
pressure to bear upon us. Then I turned round again, and saw the cause
of their reluctance to move. The Imperial Guard was being massed in
front of the principal door leading from the private gardens into the
palace. 'My dear Ramail,' I said to myself, 'you stand a very good
chance of having a bullet through your head before you are ten minutes
older; because, at the slightest move of the crowd among which you now
stand, the guard will fire.' I own that I was scarcely prepared to face
death for such a trivial cause as this; and I was quietly edging my way
out of the crowd, which was beginning to utter low ominous growls, when
a voice, ringing clear upon the air, shouted, 'Citoyens!' I stopped,
turned round once more, and stood on tiptoe.
"The speaker was a tall, handsome fellow, young to all appearance, and
with a voice like a bell. He looked a gentleman, but I have never seen
him before to my knowledge. His companion I knew at once; it was
Victorien Sardou. There is no mistaking that face. I have heard some
people say that it is not a bit like that of the great Napoleon, while
others maintain that, placing the living man and the portrait of the
dead one side by side, one could not tell the difference. I'll undertake
to say this, that if M. Sardou had donned a uniform, such as the
lieutenant of artillery wore at Arcola, for instance, he might have
taken the Empress by the hand and led her out safely among the people,
who would have believed in some miraculous resurrection.
"To come back to my story. 'Citoyens,' repeated M. Sardou's companion,
'I do not wonder at your surprise that the garden should not be open to
you and its ingress forbidden by soldiers. The Tuileries belong to the
people, now that the Empire is gone; for gone it is by this time, in
spite of the Imperial Guard massed before yonder door. Consequently, my
friend and I propose to go and ask for the withdrawal of these soldiers.
But, in order to do this, you must give us your promise not to budge;
for the slightest attempt on your part to do so before our return may
lead to bloodshed, and I am convinced that you are as anxious as we are
to avoid such a calamity.'
"If that young fellow is not an actor, he ought to be. Every word he
said could be heard distinctly and produced its effect. The crowd
cheered him and promised unanimously to wait. Then we saw him and M.
Sardou take out their handkerchiefs and tie them to the end of their
sticks. Perhaps it was well they did, for as I saw them boldly walk up
the central avenue, I was not at all convinced that their lives were not
in danger. My sight is excellent, and I noticed a decidedly hostile
movement on the part of the troops ranged in front of the principal
door, and an officer of Mobiles was evidently of my opinion, for, though
he followed them at a distance, he kept prudently behind the trees,
sheltering himself as much as possible. I do not pretend to be wiser
than most of my fellow-men, but I doubt whether many among those who
watched M. Sardou and his companion suspected the true drift of their
self-imposed mission. They merely wished to save the Tuileries from
being pillaged and burnt down. I do not wish to libel the Imperial Guard
or their officers, but I should feel much surprised if that noble idea
ever entered their heads. What was the magnificent pile to them, now
that one of their idols had left it, probably for ever, and the other
was about to do the same? At any rate, the suspicious movement was
there. I have forgotten to tell you that the inner gate was closed and I
saw M. Sardou parley through its bars with one of the guardians. Then a
superior officer, accompanied by a civilian, came out; but by this time,
the crowd, which had kept back, was beginning to move also, I among
them. All of a sudden, the general, who turned out to be General
Mellinet, gets on a chair, while his companion, who turns out to be M.
de Lesseps, stands by him. The Imperial Guard disappears, seeing which,
the crowd, no longer apprehensive of being shot down, advances rapidly
to within a few steps of the gate. Then there is a cheer, for the
Imperial flag is hauled down from the roof. 'Gentlemen,' says the
general, 'the Tuileries are empty, the Empress is gone. But it is my
duty to guard the palace, and I count upon you to help me.' He says a
great deal more, but the crowd are pressing forward all the same. I feel
that the crucial moment has arrived, and that the palace will be
invaded, in spite of the general's speechifying, when lo, the Gardes
Mobiles issue from the front door, and range themselves in two rows. The
gates are opened, the crowd rushes in, but the Mobiles are there to
prevent them making any excursions, either upstairs or into the
apartments, and in a few minutes we find ourselves in the Place du
Carrousel. The palace has been virtually saved by M. Sardou."
Half an hour later, we receive the news that the Government of the
National Defence has been proclaimed at the Hotel de Ville, and that
night Paris is illuminated as after a victory.